Easter Sunday

 Msgr Swann asked me "how are you in the Easter season?" and I try to tell him that the idea of the Paschal Mystery - once far too glibly expressed by me -  has become a moment by moment struggle with understanding Mark's death. It's all Mystery. I wish it was all Paschal - I wish I could make sense of the dying and rising again. Why the gift of life if only for death? What is this rising again? I get the Good Friday bit - especially the veneration of the cross, taking that into my life - but I want Easter.

Sometimes, my mind touches into something peaceful and whole that is beyond words - usually when I'm walking or working in the garden - but mostly, there is this great sadness inside, this great emptiness and loss and the prospect of years stretching out ahead of me without that companionship and love that we shared. Where I don't find that peace is in the institutional Church - except in listening to the readings, and in times of silence. I just want Mark. I just want to be with him and to go camping again, away from everyone else, sitting together under the trees with the fairy blue wrens around us.  

At the recommendation of others, I recently read 'The Shack' by Wm Paul Young, a novel about a man dealing with the death (by abduction and rape) of his young daughter, and his meeting with God in the midst of his Great Sadness. It resonated with me immediately because I was already referring in my mind to the Great Sadness that is inside. It's really badly written (stylistically) but there were sections that were good for me.

 I complain a lot. Pauline and Sue wrote a message to me. And yes, I hear Mark's voice often - "Just get on with it. Water my garden."