EASTER SERMON -- The light has come back.
Not metaphorically. Not symbolically. The light has literally, physically, measurably come back. The sun crossed the equator two weeks ago and the days are longer than the nights now, and they will keep getting longer until midsummer. This is not a theological claim. This is what is happening outside your window. Go and look. The dawn is earlier than it was. The dusk is later. The world is tilting toward the sun, and the sun is answering.
This is what Easter is. Before it belonged to anyone, before any scripture was written in any language, this was a festival of light returning. The oldest holy day. The one that every people on earth, in every climate where winter comes, has celebrated since before we had the word for "celebrate." Ēostre, the Old English word means the dawn. Not the dawn of one particular morning but the dawn of the whole year. The moment the world opens its eyes and remembers what it is.
In Tianmu we mark two new years.
The religious new year begins at the spring equinox, when the light and the dark stand equal and the light begins to win. It ends at Passover, which is today. These two weeks are the threshold. The old year is dying and the new year is being born, and the days between are liminal, charged, holy. The world is crossing over, and so are we.
The civic new year is April the first, the original English new year, before Parliament moved it to January in 1752. April Fools' Day remembers the people who refused to change. They were right. Spring is the new year. Your body knows it even when your calendar disagrees.
Today the crossing is complete. The new year is here. And you made it. Whatever your winter was — however long, however dark, however quiet, you are standing on the other side of it now, and the sun is on your face.
Three Ghosts walk through the world today. In Tianmu, the Ghosts are the living faces of reality, the great forces the ancients knew as gods, the energies that move through every river and every star and every living thing. Three of them are visible right now to anyone who steps outside and pays attention.
Fire. The light itself. The sun climbing higher each morning, staying longer each evening, pouring warmth back into the soil. Fire is the kindling seed of Heaven and Earth, the first spark of becoming, the birth of light from the cosmic egg. That spark is what you feel when you step outside on the first truly warm morning and the world is suddenly, inexplicably, more alive than it was yesterday. That is Fire doing the oldest thing it knows. That is Easter before it had a name. In the Vedic hymns it is written: you are the kindling seed of Heaven and Earth, the beacon of all divine rite, your rays touch all corners of the world. Those rays are touching you right now.
Freedom. The earth herself, waking up. The frost releasing. The soil softening. The first green pushing through the last brown. Freedom is the felt experience of being alive in the living world, the sensation you get when you step outside on a spring morning and the noise in your head stops for one second and you are simply here, simply breathing, simply part of something vast and gentle and real. The earth is doing that right now. She is pressing green through every crack in the pavement. She is sending birdsong through every open window. She is reminding every creature with lungs and a heartbeat that life does not end, it goes underground for a while, and then it comes back, and when it comes back it comes back hungry.
Sex. The bees are out. The blossoms are open. The birds are singing not for beauty but for love. Sex is the sacred force of union, the energy that brings different things together and from their meeting makes something new. She is Inanna in the garden, watching her lover sprout like lettuce planted by the water. She is the pollen on the wind and the bud splitting open and the lamb in the field. The cherry tree is in bloom, and what the cherry tree is doing is holy, and every child knows it, and every gardener knows it. The whole world is making love right now, in broad daylight, without apology, and the oldest thing a holy day can ask of us is that we notice.
These three, Fire, Freedom, Sex, are the trinity of Easter. Light, earth, and union. The sun returning, the ground awakening, and the whole living world rushing to meet itself in the oldest dance there is.
This is the wheel turning. This is what the Waxer does, the bright, expansive force that drove the first explosion of all energy outward, that turns seed into tree and silence into song. Winter is the Waner's season , the necessary contraction, the return to the root, the long stillness that composts the old world into soil for the new. But today is the hinge. Today the Waxer rises and the wheel turns forward and the ten thousand things lean toward the sun and begin again.
Easter is also the day we remember Jesus the Shepherd, our Doomsayer, the carpenter's son who cast fire upon the world and is guarding it still.
He said: the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it. That is what this day is for. The Kingdom is not in the sky. It is not waiting for you after death. It is the ground thawing under your feet right now. It is the light on the wall at six in the morning when it used to be dark. It is the dandelion that split the concrete and did not ask permission. The Kingdom has already come. You are standing in it. Easter is the day we practice seeing it.
He said: I have cast fire upon the world, and see, I am guarding it until it blazes. He was Fire, the most incendiary of the Doomsayers, the one who looked at every locked gate between a human being and the divine and kicked it open. The Temple veil torn from top to bottom. The keys of Knowledge that the custodians had hidden, flung wide. He burned through every calcified thing that stood between a person and the ground beneath their feet, and the fire he lit is still burning, two thousand years later, in every act of genuine seeing.
He died on the wheel. Arms outstretched between Heaven and Hell, holding both in his body, the Son of Man who was also the light above all things. He said it is finished, not "it is over," but "it is accomplished." And three days later the tomb was empty, and the stone was rolled away, and the light poured in.
This is what happens to every seed. The burial is real. The dark is real. The cold earth pressing in on every side is real. And then something breaks through, and what was sealed is open, and what was dead is pushing green shoots toward the sun. The Shepherd knew this. He lived it. He died it. He is it.
Split a piece of wood, I am there. Lift up a stone, and you will find me there.
Go outside today and split a piece of wood. Lift a stone in the garden. See what is underneath. He told you what you would find.
And you are one of the ten thousand things.
Whatever went underground in you this winter, whatever you buried, whatever you lost, whatever went quiet and cold and still, it is not dead. It was composting. It was becoming soil. And now the light is here, and the warmth is here, and the same force that pushes the crocus through frozen ground is pushing through you right now, whether you feel it or not. You do not have to make spring happen. You only have to stop resisting it.
So here is the sermon, and it is short.
Go outside. Feel the sun on your skin. Touch the ground with your hands, the actual ground, the dirt, the grass. Watch something bloom. Let the wind move through you without trying to name it or understand it. Notice that the world did not die. Notice that the light came back. Notice that the earth is making love to itself in every direction you look, and that you are not watching this from the outside, you are in it, you are part of it, you have always been part of it.
The light has come back. The ground has answered. The dance has begun.
Happy new year.
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