People who feel called to ordination generally do a fair amount of discernment work in their parishes before formally applying to the bishop for admission to the ordination process.   Part of that process is a series of interviews with the bishop and with the Commission on Ministry, the group that assists the bishop with the ordination process.  By the time a person is interviewed by the bishop and the Commission on Ministry, he or she has written essays and compiled transcripts and filled out an application, and more than that, has invested a fair amount of time and energy in community discernment at the parish level.  It's unsurprising then that the stakes feel really high during those Commission on Ministry interviews.  Though it has been many years now since I went through those interviews, I can still remember how nervous I was on the Saturday of the interviews.  I remember walking across Boston Common, dodging early morning dog walkers and joggers in my "interview suit."  I remember the sound of my sensible pumps clicking and of my own heart beating heavily in my ears.

One of the questions someone asked me that day was this: "Do you think you exhibit an 'Easter Attitude'?  How does that manifest itself in your life?"  What in the world, I wondered, does that even mean?  I don't really recall exactly what I said then, but it must have gone over alright because they invited me to continue down the path to ordination.  That question, though, is something I've continued to ponder over the years.

All of the gospel accounts of Jesus' resurrection are different.  One thing they have in common is that early on a Sunday morning, the tomb in which his battered and very dead body was laid, was empty.  None of the gospel accounts try to explain what happened inside that dark, chilly tomb between Friday night and Sunday morning.  But all of the gospels tell us that Jesus appeared alive to the people who knew him best and loved him the most.  Those first disciples had to grapple with the whole idea of resurrection.  So do we.  I think that anyone who doesn't have at least some struggle with the concept of Christ's resurrection isn't really thinking about it all that hard.  It's a simple fact that human beings expect that when someone dies, he or she stays dead.  The idea that Jesus would take on our humanity and become vulnerable, and that he would be willing to suffer and to die in order to be faithful to God and to humanity is tough enough to wrap one's mind around.  But the idea that God's love is more powerful than death, that Jesus could overcome even the grave?  Well, it's hardly a wonder that the first disciples first dismissed the news as "idle talk" or demanded proof, or reacted with more terror than joy. 

In the weeks after the resurrection, those first disciples had to make a decision.  They had to take a stand.  Resurrection changed them.  Their encounters with the risen Christ transformed them.  For one thing, they became brave.  Over the years, many people have said that perhaps the first disciples' accounts of the resurrection were metaphorical, that the disciples wanted to keep Jesus' teachings alive and that when they described Jesus as being risen from the dead, that Jesus was alive in their hearts and minds.  But the disciples staked absolutely everything in order to spread the good news of Jesus Christ.  All except one of them died for their faith, many in the same way Jesus had died.  I can't imagine being willing to die for a metaphor.

The good news of Easter is that God would do anything to reach us and God promises never to leave us.  We are not ever spared suffering; the world can hurl some pretty terrible things at us.  But we are not alone.  We are loved and named and claimed.  God's love is more powerful than death; even something as terrible as the cross can be used by God to break through our resistance and draw us close.  That love demands a response from us.  It is an invitation for a kind of resurrection of our own, a process of conversion and transformation that begins at our baptism and continues for all of our lives. 

I've come to believe that an "Easter Attitude" is shorthand for the idea that Easter was not just a one-off, in which once, a long time ago, something amazing happened and good triumphed over evil.  Resurrection is something that happens in our lives now and in our futures.  We believe that the risen Christ is not in the past, but in the here and now, and in the hereafter.  As Peter Gomes put it so eloquently, "Christ redeems the past by claiming the future."  And so we walk as children of the light, never of darkness, venturing boldly into the world as people who dare to hope.

 Pandita Mary Ramabai was born in India in 1858 and died in 1922.  During her lifetime, she faced most every obstacle women in India encountered in that time, and sadly continue to face.  She experienced a rigid caste system that placed seemingly insurmountable obstacles between social, racial, and religious groups, and a society that discriminated against women.  She devoted her life to making a more just and equitable society and to breaking down caste barriers, first as a Hindu and later as a Christian.

Born into a high caste, her father was a scholar who gave her a rigorous education and schooled her in classical Hindu beliefs.  Most of her family was killed in a famine, and then only a few years later, her husband died in a cholera epidemic.  Ramabai suffered isolation and discrimination because of her status first as an orphan and then as a widow.  In 1883, however, she decided to do something directly to address the difficulties faced by Indian women, and she traveled to England, where she stayed with an Anglican community of nuns who lived near Oxford; as part of that community, she worked actively to assist women who had been forced to work as prostitutes.  Ramabai was baptized as an Anglican Christian, and attended Cheltenham Ladies College, a school famous for favoring women's suffrage and for instructing young women in the same subjects taught in schools for young men.

In 1889, she returned to India and founded Mukti Mission, a home for widows and orphans of the Brahmin caste in Mumbai.  Eventually, she extended the mission to include women and orphans of all castes, and added a clinic and vocational courses.  Ramabai was fluent in several languages, and translated the Bible into Marathi, a West Indian language.  She came to be called by those who knew her "Pandita," which means "the learned one."  She worked tirelessly for the poor, particularly women and orphans.  "What a blessing this burden does not fall on me.  But Christ bears it on his shoulders," she wrote.  "No one but He could transform and uplift the downtrodden womanhood of India and of every land." 

Holy Week and Easter were such a marvelous journey.  Thank you to all the people who participated in making our worship so beautiful.  There are too many people to thank everyone individually.  Thank you to all the people who prayed during our vigil; every single person in our parish was prayed for during those long hours between Good Friday evening and the first celebration of Easter.  Thank you office volunteers who folded bulletins and counted the offerings.  And thank you to everyone who participated in our worship services: our choir and musicians, our altar and flower guilds, our ushers, acolytes, readers, and Eucharistic ministers.  Many thanks to our dedicated staff as well!  

All children from grade four through high school are invited to attend our diocesan camp, The Barbara C. Harris Camp

Thank you everyone who helped me with my project for Youth Leadership Academy, or YLA.  YLA is a youth project our diocese runs, with ninth and tenth graders.  We meet once a month for a weekend retreat, and we are supposed to come up with a service project that we do with our parish.  At the end, we spend a week in El Salvador, on retreat with kids from the Episcopal Church there, working and worshipping with them for a week in the summer. 

My project was to collect linens for Mission of Deeds in Reading, and I worked with both Good Shepherd and Epiphany Church in Winchester.  Mission of Deeds helps families transition to homes.  Some people have lost their homes in fires or other disasters.  A lot of families are moving into homes after they have been in shelters or homeless.  All the people have been referred to Mission of Deeds by other agencies.  I chose to collect linens and towels because I know that everyone deserves a place to sleep and needs a bed. 

Thank you for being so generous.  Lots of people at The Good Shepherd gave linens, some of them even new ones, and several people gave money.  My mom and I filled her car twice in order to deliver everything, and enough money came in that Mission of Deeds will be able to buy at least four new bed frames, mattresses, and box springs.  Thank you so much!

Chuck and Ginny Barthel, Dorothy Brown, Christine Camper, George Chace, Betty Fraser, Gloria Graves, Bernice Herrick, Allan Johnson, Deborah Katt-Lloyd, Lisa Kimball, Robert Knoettner, Mary Anna Krause, Tony Lopes, Carole Lutton, Maureen Manzelli, Jim McCallum, Lynn McDonald, Rheta C. McKinley, Sara O'Brien, Rhonda O'Keefe, Eleanor Schott, Kevin Smith, Ralph Ventola and Ashley Westerman.