In the wisdom of ancient Christian tradition Easter is not a one-day event but a season, the fifty days between Easter and Pentecost. The idea is that the message of Resurrection is so huge, so transcendent that it cannot be contained in a one-day observance. As I write we are halfway through the Season of Easter. Sometimes the season is called Eastertide, a lovely name, I have always thought.

In terms of the calendar, May 2020, it is a time unlike any we can remember: confined to our homes, sheltering, practicing social distancing – at least six feet, please, isolation actually, unable to put our arms around our children and grandchildren, no hugging anyone, unable even to shake hands warmly with dear friends. Social Scientists are analyzing the emotional and physical effects of distancing and minimal human contact and loneliness and urging us to do what we can to reach out to friends, particularly those who are alone. We decided to call at least one friend a day and, in a peculiar way, the result has been a deeper sense of friendship and renewed gratitude for the lives of our friends.

We need Eastertide. I need, as never before, the reminder that at the heart of my faith, at the heart of everything that is, is the good news that there is a light shining in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome the light.

As I hear reports of continuing infections, hospitalizations, intubations and deaths, I need a reminder that at the heart of all reality there is a love that overcomes everything, even death itself. As I ponder the truly heartbreaking reality of people dying alone in hospitals without the comforting presence of their dearest ones, I need the reminder that even in the valley of the shadow of death, God promises to be with us. (Psalm 23) And as I think about the unthinkable, unable to be with those I love dearly, to hold a hand, pat and comfort and express my grateful love, I need the promise that there is nowhere any of us can go that is outside the reach of God’s love: that “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night, even the darkness is not dark to you: the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.’” (Psalm 139)

I am grateful for the wise and good reminders of Eastertide. And, although not related theologically, I am grateful as never before that it is finally Spring. In the upper Midwest Spring takes its good old time coming. Where I live T.S. Eliot’s “April is the cruelest month” is painfully, literally true. Spring officially arrives March 21-22 but in Chicago it’s a bad joke. It snows in March and April and occasionally even May. To make matters more painful there is no baseball this year. Another precious, trusted tradition has been taken away from us and some of us are in grief and feel the loss profoundly. But – finally – it is Spring and life is reappearing and renewing all around us. Trees are budding, even my old, stately, stubborn Beeches which always seem reluctant to awaken, the daffodils came finally and stayed for a long time because it is so cold, iris are growing robustly, obviously planning to put on a luscious show by the end of the month. I am more aware than ever, more grateful than ever, that the power of life is planted so deeply in the creation, the world God made and gives us as a yearly gift.

I read a remarkable book recently that, in its own unique way, reminded me and celebrated the message of Eastertide, that out of the deepest darkness light does shine: that out of pure, unvarnished evil, the good always, always emerges and ultimately prevails. The book is Grace from the Rubble: Two Fathers’ Road to Reconciliation After the Oklahoma City Bombing. The author is Jeanne Bishop whose stunning 2015 book, A Change of Heart, chronicled her pregnant sister’s and brother-in-law’s brutal murder by a teenager – and the author’s progression through grief, anger, desire for revenge, to an honest encounter with her Christian faith’s mandate of forgiveness. After much personal struggle, Bishop made the courageous decision to reach out to the killer and, finally, to forgive. Grace from the Rubble tells the story of two fathers, Bud Welch, whose 23-year-old daughter, Julie, died in the bombing and Bill McVeigh whose son, Timothy, was the bomber, convicted, tried and executed. Both men lost their children. Bishop’s compelling narrative describes events leading up to the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1999, the horrendous destructiveness of the bombing itself and the aftermath in which the two fathers somehow remarkably find a way to forgive and forge a friendship.

It is an Easter story, of course, a fine way to remember the real life power, implications, and relevance of Resurrection. Grace from the Rubble is an Eastertide book which I am deeply grateful I read.