An Easter Alleluia!
Easter is the most unique of all the feasts we Christians celebrate. Simultaneously it is marked by both the heights of joy and and the depths of grief. I have always thought of both of these as competing for the spiritual space in our lives. Both are exceedingly powerful and all-encompassing. At one moment our lives are buoyed up to beyond-the-imagination levels, and the next moment destabilized with sadness and emotional blindness. The late Thomas Merton, a Christian monk who lived near Louisville, KY, was one of the true American spiritual mystics of the last century. Once during a particularly difficult period in his life, when was struggling with grief over his identity as a person of faith, he wrote: “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe t