Last year, as I mentioned, I essentially refused Easter. Too much sunk in Good Friday. I experienced Easter a week later, while on retreat, pondering Thomas touching Jesus' wounds. Which was entirely appropriate.
This year, I found myself wondering how I would feel about Easter as it drew closer. This has been the struggle with me for months, really, whether there is in fact hope in the face of so much suffering. If in fact anything I do matters. Whether there is in fact any hope for healing.
By the end of Holy Week, I found myself yearning for Sunday's resurrection story. And I woke up this morning excited to go to church and hear that story, and to sing about hope.
We sang a song I learned from a Nicaraguan pastor and liberation theologian. I haven't sung it in years, but I found myself yearning to sing it, to sing it in community. So we did, and I held his smiling face in my mind, and felt my feet tapping under my guitar, and marveled at how my body easily remembered how to play the song after such a long time, and sensed my voice break inside my chest, and heard all the people around me singing, and I believed.
I believe.
El Jubileo
Nuestros ojos abiertos están
viendo muerte, pobreza, y maldad;
Sin embargo, seguimos creyendo
que el futuro está por llegar,
la esperanza provoca el andar
por la fe, la justicia, y la vida.
Mañana, cuando nazca el sol
vendrá la libertad, la fiesta y el perdón,
y descanso para todo aquel que sufre.
Mañana, cuando nazca el sol
la tierra volverá a aquel que la perdió,
y el trigo crecerá y habrá abundancia.
The Jubilee
Our eyes our open,
seeing death, poverty, and evil;
nevertheless, we keep believing
that the future is arriving
hope provokes our journey
for faith, justice, and life.
Tomorrow, when the sun is born
freedom, the fiesta, and forgiveness will come,
and rest for all who suffer.
Tomorrow, when the sun is born
the land will return to the one who lost it,
and the wheat will grow and there will be abundance.
Nuestros ojos abiertos están
viendo muerte, pobreza, y maldad;
Sin embargo, seguimos creyendo
que el futuro está por llegar,
la esperanza provoca el andar
por la fe, la justicia, y la vida.
Mañana, cuando nazca el sol
vendrá la libertad, la fiesta y el perdón,
y descanso para todo aquel que sufre.
Mañana, cuando nazca el sol
la tierra volverá a aquel que la perdió,
y el trigo crecerá y habrá abundancia.
The Jubilee
Our eyes our open,
seeing death, poverty, and evil;
nevertheless, we keep believing
that the future is arriving
hope provokes our journey
for faith, justice, and life.
Tomorrow, when the sun is born
freedom, the fiesta, and forgiveness will come,
and rest for all who suffer.
Tomorrow, when the sun is born
the land will return to the one who lost it,
and the wheat will grow and there will be abundance.
