Pulsing Earth

One thing I like about my church is that there's a sort of freedom in worship. People dance or lay on the floor and draw and whatever else. So it was perfectly alright for me, suddenly getting an idea, to sit down on the floor and whip out my journal and write a short piece of prose. See, there was your typical Easter song about the whole earth rejoicing at Jesus' resurrection, and I got this idea that Mary and the others probably WEREN'T very appreciative of any joyful airs that may have been around. I decided to poke around in Mary's head... anyway, just read it for yourself.

The trees are singing for joy and birds flit about. The very ground seems to be rejoicing. I know that usually on a day like this, I would feel so joyful just to be here, singing and dancing even though I'm not as young as I used to be. But oh, I cannot dance. The birdsong and playful rush of wind--do they not know that he is dead, my son is dead?
He was the messiah and they killed him--on the eve of the Sabbath! I could not even prepare him properly for burial--how insolent this spring of grass and bloom of flower. Stay in your buds! What right have you to burst forth? They laugh as if they know something I do not. Be silent, birds, you mock me in my grief.
And now we have arrived, over a day late, to properly anoint my boy... myself and two others. With mourning and grave silence, we enter the plot of land. The bushes are thick and vibrant. Open flowers, open skies, the world seems so energetic, the setting of freedom, and it is reviling. Open branches, open land, open tomb--open tomb? My heart jumps, burning, into my throat and I cannot breathe. They have taken him!? And on top of the stone that sealed it sits a frightening man. The guards have fallen from the sight of him and he grins at us genuinely while I continue to panic. "You won't find Him here," the angel says. "He is risen, just as he said." Suddenly I remember all the times he told us that. I was so foolish, so ignorant to think that death could have held him! And now I see why the very earth beneath my feet is pulsing with life--it is a life day, a day for living! Even as the angel commands us to tell the others, I am already running down the road, pounding the earth with my feet as it pounds back, and I am filled with an awe of something huge, the same joy that has infused all of creation.