An Easter Ode

If you've read this blog for many years you know that I love to attend Easter services. Today I went to the Old Fort Baptist Church nearby for their morning service. I enjoyed watching their reenactment of Christ's resurrection (a short clip of the passion play they've been presenting this week), singing their modern worship songs, and listening to their fiery pastor. During the sermon, he said that there is a time and a place for reverence, but that this day is not one of them. I can't imagine a Mormon ever saying that about Easter Sunday. In fact, it inspired me to write a poem, which I titled: To the Virgins and High Priests of the Second Ward: An Easter Message.

I am pleased to note that Church with the Mormons this afternoon did not suck. There was some nice music by the choir, a Primary class did bells to "He Died that we might Live Again," (yeah, that was my class), and the closing talk on Resurrection was wonderful. The first talk was on the Atonement, and I'm glad we didn't spend the whole time on that subject. Though I think it's necessary to talk about the death of Christ at Easter, I like the emphasis to be on the risen Christ and the joy in such an event! (and, come on, we have all heard the story of the boy who took the whipping for the kid who stole his lunch...)

I can never get enough of the music, the pageantry, and the poetry that is Easter. Kristine has given some wonderful musical links for the day, Lynette compiled some Easter theology, and I will leave you with one more poem before you end your Resurrection Day. 

Drawing: "Violets" by Veronica Lawlor

An Easter Ode

by Paul Laurence Dunbar

To the cold, dark grave they go
Silently and sad and slow,
From the light of happy skies
And the glance of mortal eyes.
In their beds the violets spring,
And the brook flows murmuring;
But at eve the violets die,
And the brook in the sand runs dry.

In the rosy, blushing morn,
See, the smiling babe is born;
For a day it lives, and then
Breathes its short life out again.
And anon gaunt-visaged Death,
With his keen and icy breath,
Bloweth out the vital fire
In the hoary-headed sire.

Heeding not the children's wail,
Fathers droop and mothers fail;
Sinking sadly from each other,
Sister parts from loving brother.
All the land is filled with wailing,
Sounds of mourning garments trailing,
With their sad portent imbued,
Making melody subdued.

But in all this depth of woe
This consoling truth we know:
There will come a time of rain,
And the brook will flow again;
Where the violet fell, 'twill grow,
When the sun has chased the snow.
See in this the lesson plain,
Mortal man shall rise again.

Well the prophecy was kept;
Christ "first fruit of them that slept"
Rose with vic'try-circled brow;
So, believing one, shalt thou.
Ah! but there shall come a day
When, unhampered by this clay,
Souls shall rise to life newborn
On that resurrection morn.

Like Wheat Arising Green

Now the green blade rises from the buried grain,
Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been;
Love is come again like wheat arising green.

Click here to read the rest!

When DH Calls Me Out of the Grave, Will I Answer?

Whereas: DH never calls me by name any more, he now calls me "your mother." As in: "Where is your mother?" and "Did your mother make dinner yet?"

and

Whereas: I don't understand why men should be the ones to learn the power of resurrection and call people forth out of their graves, even if their wives are more interested in physics and chemistry and they are more interested in watching the Utah Jazz...

and

Whereas: I prefer to picture the Morning of the First Resurrection as Joseph Smith described it in our new Joseph Smith manual--"When we lie down we contemplate how we may rise in the morning; and it is pleasing for friends to lie down together, locked in the arms of love, to sleep and wake in each other’s embrace and renew their conversation."--rather than a familiar voice calling, "Is your mother ready to get up yet???"

and

Whereas: This seems to be a church teaching that is going the way of Kolob and one really doesn't hear it taught much any more...

When DH calls me out of the grave, will I answer?

(I really don't know whether I am more bothered by the teaching on LDS husbands calling their wives out of the grave, or by the disturbing feeling that doctrines I've been taught as a young person are now fading away and being lost in the mists of time. Alas! I find myself conflicted once more.)