So....It's Easter Monday....Now What?

The long wait for Lent is over.  The candy eaten, or most of it anyway. Now people pick over the left behind, gradually snatching the best flavored jelly beans and gnawing on the last of the lamb.  The day after Easter, Easter Monday, what do we do?  We ought to do something.  We've spent all this time waiting for Easter, and now we're here.  We're supposed to be changed, to be transformed by this event, by this day, by the knowledge of what happened then, 2015 years ago, and what happens at every mass, what is still happening, and what will happen again.

But today is Monday. It's ordinary.  The kids want breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack and wonder what we will do with the hours in between eating.  Laundry and dishes await, dust bunnies and beds to make, there is more, more and more, and still, the moreness promised by Easter seems far away, because the blooms have not yet broken the soil of the soul.  We've celebrated, we've begun, but now we must begin again.  

The air is warm, spring whispers its presence, but it is not yet garishly explosive in its beauty, not yet shouting to the world "He is risen."  Instead, there are occasional glimpses, a crocus here, a daffodil clutch there, bunny and bluebird sightings become less rare.

We come to the empty tomb, but we do not yet understand.  We go about our lives, walking to Damascus, talking about the events of the week, of our lives, waiting to understand all that happened and why.  We know something has happened, we even name it, but the reality is not yet fully understood, anymore than a bud is full bloom or a seed a tree.

My children want to know what they will do today and tomorrow and in the afternoon tomorrow after the activities of the day, they want to be distracted, diverted, entertained during their spring break.   I want them to understand the gift of leisure, so I let them struggle with the cross of boredom.  It leads to creative play, to shared playing, to going outside and discovering a stick makes a good flag pole when you attach streamers, and that tree is good for climbing.  The driveway provides a near endless canvas, and sunning yourself with a book and a blanket can be very relaxing.  But saying go do these things, would not give them the joy of these experiences.  They cannot be listed as options, or they lose their potency, the beauty of extemporaneous play is discovered joy.  It cannot satisfy any other way.  

Perhaps that same need, to let us be bored with the less of not Easter, is what we require to discover the more  that comes with the full reality of Easter.

Happy Easter Monday!