#Easter, Earth Week, and Birds

I am grateful on this day and all days. Though I carry my grief with me in all the things I do, I remember the phrase that keeps me going in honoring my son in Heaven:

Make everything as beautiful as him

Today is Easter. It is a holiday that parents know all too well. For those who observe, it is a holiday that involves church attendance and leading up to it…well, Easter Baskets, Easter Egg Hunts, and favors to pass out for classmates before Easter vacation from school.

Easter Day, 2010, my mother, my daughter Chastity (age 10 at the time), and my Angelson Ricky (age 4 at the time). Galilee United Methodist Church, Laurinburg, NC.

This Easter is special because it aligns with several other religious holidays: Passover, Ramadan and more.

It’s a convergence that happens only rarely. Coinciding with Judaism’s Passover, Christianity’s Easter and Islam’s holy month of Ramadan, Buddhists, Baha’is, Sikhs, Jains and Hindus also are celebrating their holy days in April.
LUIS ANDRES HENAO, Associated Press

Quite something, yes?

Those who follow this blogspace know that I am very spiritual and that despite my not attending church, I have a special relationship with my faith, which is an amalgam of New Age Christianity, Buddhism, and elements of Sufism.

Nothing is separate from God. My faith, even in the midst of profound loss is firm.

You might even think of faith as symbiosis or sympoiesis: faith is the relationship between the Egyptian plover bird and the crocodile, the wasp and the orchid, microbial civilizations in our guts and the memories we process. The water buffalo is the kasaya of the oxpecker; the ostrich is the yarmulke of the zebra. Faith means that bodies need bodies in order to thrive and in order to die well. It is coalitional, alliance-making, world-shaping, co-creative work. We live and breathe and die in faith.
Bayo Akomolafe

As we prepare to go into another week of mysteries, possibilities, yearnings, and receivings. let us remember this Earth, its abundant beauty, and the inheritance we hold to sustain it even in chaotic times.

It is Earth Week!

I will close this with my latest images of birds and landscape in Nebraska.

Love and peace to you.