Holidays are a strange thing on the Race. They make me evaluate the entire concept of a day designated to commemorate a certain motif or event. Perhaps the binding glue that holds holidays together and allows them to prevail is expectations. Without premeditated rituals, it’s unnerving how quickly days that once elicited excitement become merely another tally mark of the year.
When I look back at the last seven months, I think of my Thai Thanksgiving without turkey (or tofurkey for all my fellow vegans). I think of my team’s mad scramble to buy Christmas presents under five dollars in the night market on the 24th. I think of Valentine’s Day in Africa, as my students cautiously unwrapped melted Hershey’s kisses sent in a care package, delighting in their first tastes of chocolate. Despite my feeble attempts to preserve according customs, the most rewarding part of holidays on the Race is that they are often stripped down to the meaning of their creation. If you let go of the surface expectations, that is.
It’s cliche, I know. Remember the reason for the season. I just physically cringed as I typed that.
But isn’t it terrifying how life can go on devoid of meaning. Days become weeks and weeks become months. It’s far too easy to become a lifeless drone, just another inhabitant of this earth, is the name of “just getting by.”
Pardon my pessimism, but I think it is vital that we wake up from our suppressed states of being. When we do, it is of utmost importance to feel the pain that we so desperately try to numb.
These past weeks in Guatemala have been full of emotional ascents and descents. Perhaps it is due to the fact that I have been transitioning to a new culture with the spiritual heaviness of Africa still lingering in my mind. At any rate, I found myself this Easter season admiring the beauty of it all from a removed position. I appreciated the colors of the alfombras made of dyed sawdust, flowers, and fruit on the cobblestone streets. I was interested in the never-ending processions of carrying the cross through villages that go on until early hours of the day.
But it wasn’t until I woke up this morning that I thought, did I miss it?
How I could I have missed the disaster and earth-shattering brilliancy that is the death and rise of Christ? I know Easter is a date decided by man, and we must pick up our cross every day, but did I render myself ignorant of the Spirit around me-when it was so prevalent this past weekend? Did I self-destruct my opportunity to meditate on the fundamental truths of my spirituality?
As I flipped through the Gospel this morning, I found myself bearing similar pain to Judas and Peter, who “wept bitterly” at the realization of his denial. Yet, I clung onto the misery of my self-forgetfulness with abounding gratefulness.
It takes the awareness of our own human condition to grasp the brilliancy that is the forgiveness of our Creator.
Jesus was not merely a man who did good things, great things even. He suffered endlessly. He took away the power of death. He allowed my broken spirit to be stitched whole with peace.
Before Jesus died, He cried out, “Father into your hands I commit my spirit.”
I think the biggest offense against the Resurrection story is its renouncement to rhetoric. It has been told so many times, it too, like our own spirits, have been numbed down.
So break away from the idle lies of this world.
Awaken, child.
