In one particularly memorable Easter sharing, the good doctor invited us to think of Luke doing Easter as a Sunday evening meal with the risen Christ, while John focused on the encounter between Jesus and Mary Magdalene in the garden. But for Matthew, Easter is an earthquake with doors shaken off tombs and dead people walking the streets, the stone rolled away by the ruckus with an impudent angel sitting on it.

The world of Matthew’s time was in the tight death-grip of a bleak notion that’s still pretty much the case for most folks this many years after the magik. All that lives dies a totally eradicating death. The good get it in the end. Stop dreaming. Face facts. It may be a rather somber world, but it is our world where things stay tied down and what dies stays that way. And there are few surprises. Read your scripture, "There is a time to be born and a time to die." Get over it! Deal with it! It is what it is!

From that place in consciousness the women came to visit the tomb that sad and sorry morning to write one more chapter in the long poignant story of death’s ascendancy, one more episode of how the good always get it in the end. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper . . . a sad sigh of resignation at death’s dark victory.

And then Spirit said "Shazam!" The earth heaved, an angel appeared, the stone was rolled away, Caesar’s soldiers froze, the temple veil split down the middle, all the lights went out as an angel plopped himself down on the stone in one final act of impudent defiance of death as we know it and said to the women, "Don’t be afraid. You’re looking for Jesus? He isn’t here."

And then the angel turned to the soldiers and said, "Every idea you’ve ever had about how it is in your world has just been turned upside down. You may have noticed. You’re looking for Jesus? He isn’t here! Let me suggest, be afraid!"

Nobody went home the same.

I believe it was that venerable old scholar, George Bernard Shaw, who once suggested that, "All great truths began as blasphemies." And, I’ve got a hunch our brother, Jesus, is somewhere in the Mother’s Cosmos right now nodding His head in agreement with a fervent, "A-men!"

So, welcome to the one thousand, nine hundred and seventy-eighth (or so) anniversary of the day history’s Greatest Blasphemer ran a little Trickster Energy off on Jerusalem and Rome’s power brokers and changed, forever, the name of the Game. For anyone, that is, willing to pick up His Cross and follow His Illuminated Insights deep into a Kingdom of Radical Awareness that crucified ideological confusion masquerading as Divine revelation.

For sure, far more than the humanity of our Beloved teacher died on the Cross that Friday of Inevitability. Ignorance died too, for anyone with ears that hear and eyes that see. Ignorance like the terrifying notion that this precious gift we call Life, this capacity to bear witness to creation unfolding, is nothing more than a fractional line of existence that begins with a physical birth and ends with a physical death. Ignorance like the tragically popular misconception that human worth, meaning and purpose is available only to those living a "lifestyle of the rich and the famous." Ignorance like the ancient notion that human differences must be resolved by creating a deeper injury... a greater killing.

And more than an awareness of the Enduring Presence of all God’s children was revealed on that long ago moment of His Resurrection. An eternal invitation, carved deep into our souls from the very beginning was revealed to us that Holy Morning. It was an invitation to join Him in seeing with New Vision. An invitation to cross out, to crucify, once and for all, the dark ways of doing things. An invitation to follow Him in the graceful practice of breathing Compassion and Caring into every one of our acts and utterances.

It’s an Easter Party! The New Millennium’s Divine Project, and each of us has been invited... Don’t forget to R.S.V.P.

And let’s not miss the grace contained in the Easter story. Spiritually understood, Easter is a revelation that God’s vision for all His Children is a total renunciation of the sorry notion that the best we can hope for is to endure an earth life here on a wasteland full of sin and sinners praying our buns off that we’ve jumped through enough ecclesiastic hoops to exit this existence with a crack at a heavenly reprieve. All this going on while Easter is crying out, "Not So!!!"

Check it out! Take a look with eyes that see and you’ll be confronted with the undeniable certainty that the focus of the New Testament is on the power of the Resurrection experience to be the ever loving constant of our lives right here, right NOW! Though we may well be up to our fannies in spiritual immaturity, the Grace of Easter is that a "Truth that sets us free" was resurrected through the risen Christ blessing us with a Radical Insight so illuminated it has the capacity to liberate those who practice it faithfully from all self-imposed suffering including the fear of dropping the body.

So, Easter is more than bonnets and Fifth Avenue fashion parades. And Easter is more than a confirmation that consciousness does not die on a cross. Easter is a far more profound and immediate blessing than that. Easter is a declaration that there is a resurrection power available to us at any point along our eternal timeline. A full appreciation of the potential of the resurrection moment recognizes that it empowers us to inhabit heaven and be new creatures in Christ right here and right now... the very moment we "pick up our cross and follow Him" deep into the kingdom of love for one another as way of life.

We are created and sustained by a loving Father/Mother God to live in perfect freedom in this life, right now, without waiting for the next installment of our eternal adventure. The grace of the resurrection has set us free and empowers us, right now, to...

Live with spiritually informed values, to choose inspiring new commitments, to express a new spirit, to refine our capacities to love and forgive, to seek awakened attitudes and ideals, to pursue just, ethical goals, to be faithful in our spiritual practice, and to "rejoice and be glad" in every breath of this magical passage of time, form and circumstance we know as "life."

Let us gladly embrace and be thankful for the Easter revelation of eternal life yet to be revealed, without forgetting to bring immaculate perception to the moment that will eternally define our existence... the gift of Here and Now.

So... Dig infinity, beloved Unitics, and...

Enjoy the Grace!
~ Chad