Count down to the Great 50 Days

After these long weeks of Lenten fasts, how might we make much of the festal Easter hope?

Thank you for keeping me company through Lent. I pray that you have been encouraged and refreshed in the love of Christ, who endured the cross for the joy set before him. Before we immerse ourselves in the Triduum, I invite you to mark your calendars for the Easter Octave and the Great 50 Days of Eastertide!

Arcabas

Eastertide is for practicing resurrection!

One of my favorite ways to celebrate the Great 50 Days of Easter is to look for simple, beautiful ways to practice resurrection in my everyday life.

How do I practice resurrection?

The answer, I've learned, is one day, and sometimes, one moment at a time.

I try to be like the infamous, imperceptive disciples walking toward their Emmaus home, asking questions, following Spirit-infused instincts, hovering around life, inviting Life to come home and have dinner at my table. Occasionally, the Spirit of God flutters my almost-dead eyelids, and I get an eyeful of the Firstborn of Creation—our risen Christ—right there with me—eating and drinking and telling stories of life.

I start with the old things: scripture, church, and prayer. Then, I visit some new things: poems, music, and art. I combine generously with daily generative things: walks, conversations, candles, fresh food, flowers, champagne, neighbors, and gardens.

I also look for ways to take up something new I’ve dreamed about trying or begin again on something I have given up for Lent, or just because of busyness or complacency.

I take N.T. Wright’s counsel to heart:

“... we should be taking steps to celebrate Easter in creative new ways: in art, literature, children's games, poetry, music, dance, festivals, bells, special concerts, anything that comes to mind. this is our greatest festival...This is our greatest day. We should put the flags out.

..if Lent is a time to give things up, Easter ought to be a time to take things up. Champagne for breakfast again -- well, of course...”

I know that practicing lament and resurrection exposes us to a greater breadth, height, and depth of understanding of our belovedness.

In previous years, we've celebrated the Great 50 Days between Easter Sunday and Pentecost Sunday (Eastertide) with a series called Practice Resurrection (after the Wendell Berry poem). It's one of my favorite series of the year, and I'm excited to start it again. Instead of daily photo prompts, I want to extend a simple invitation this year: Take up something new for Eastertide.

An Invitation to Take Up Something New for Eastertide

For six weeks, we'll practice resurrection by embracing new things. I hope to share a photo on social media each day and a reflection in the Eastertide Daybook each day, the first week of Easter, and then once a week on Sunday after that. Along the way, I'll invite some guest posts from people I admire for the things they know how to do that I do not (and maybe you don't), and the ways they practice resurrection in their everyday lives.

But that's not all! I want you to play along from home. Take something up and share it with us. Maybe a six-week dance class? Please show us a picture. Planting spring flowers (maybe a new variety this year)? Show us! Taking a new route to work (maybe taking more time than necessary to honor the mad farmer’s poem below)? Please share it! Maybe you try to notice, make, or celebrate one new thing a day and keep a list. Whatever it is, let’s share the joy!

Friends, I invite you to join me in this Eastertide practice.

Three simple parts

• Wake up each new morning

• Take up or make up something new

• Share and repeat

I am crossing my fingers and toes that you and your friends will join in! Please share your pictures or stories with me through a comment, email, direct message, or social media tag. I'll share your photo stories in the Eastertide Daybook each Sunday with your permission. Of course, you don’t need to share photos with me or anyone else to celebrate Eastertide. The mad farmer would highly approve ( “So, friends, every day do something / that won’t compute”). Yet, my main connection point with you is here on this social media platform, and we’re drawn to it, I think, because we need encouragement from each other to live this resurrection life. In a resurrection context, a picture says a thousand life-giving words. Lord knows we have plenty of the other kinds of images cluttering our view each day!

Can’t wait to practice resurrection together this week, friends!

You might also enjoy 50 Ways to Celebrate the Great 50 Days of Eastertide! Choose one idea or 50, but whatever you do, do it with gusto!

Become a paid subscriber to access the free download below!