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Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me.”
There are so many Easters that I want to hold on to, forever. I want to hold on to that Holy Saturday night in the early nineties when I first experienced a Great Easter Vigil. I was thrilled by a wise, long-bearded elder in that community proclaiming the reading about God putting new flesh on the dry bones, the reading where God says, “I will open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people.” I want to hold on to the memory of that Minneapolis congregation holding aloft their new paschal candle and placing it atop a huge mountain of flowers, a triumph of color that seared my soul with gladness.
Oh, but I am still holding on to older Easters. For several years, I was an excited kid in a dark theater on Easter morning. Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, we kids were choristers at Memorial Auditorium in Worthington, Minnesota, singing for the sunrise service our church held there. Why there, and not at the church itself? Because our pastor was a painter, and he had created a huge mural of the resurrection garden, and they rigged the theater lights to slowly come up on the mural. In my memory they also piped in birdsong — a bit much, but why not? And there were so many, so many, so many pungent Easter lilies.
I want to hold on to each Easter lily.