A White Easter

He is Risen! For the first half of my spring break from Loma Linda I've returned to my home-away-from-home in Wilmore, Kentucky where I spent two years at Asbury Theological Seminary. I spent a blessed Easter with old friends at my old church, St. Patrick's Anglican. It was a wonderful service with a baptism the way a baptism should be. I especially enjoyed the preaching from Father Peter Matthews. It was a short message but it was one that confronted the reality of death with the stronger reality of the Resurrection. The day became even more interesting when last night it began snowing hard here in the Bluegrass of Kentucky. It only snowed for a while and there wasn't much more than a trace of accumulation but it was the first "white Easter" I had ever seen.

In his message Fr. Matthews talked about the unnaturalness of death. He talked about how the very center of our beings cry out against this reality we all must face. Fr. Matthews didn't preach that we should somehow embrace death as a natural part of life. He said that there is a reason why death seems so wrong to us. That is, we were not made for death but for life. In his message he quoted this poem from Dylan Thomas:

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.