April 14

     This time of year, things hidden become visible.  Hard ground softens, wildflowers spring forth.  Dark branches etched against gray skies blossom in purplish-red, pinkish-white, green-green leaves against a pure blue backdrop.  What was dormant comes to life.
 
     Noticing this enlivening enables me to make some sense of resurrection, to have intimations of a hidden reality that my measly, impaired five senses cannot detect.  Reality is more amazing, more colorful, more spacious than I can see, hear, feel, taste or smell.
 
     Jesus of Nazareth appeared to most of the people of his day as just another poor Palestinian Jew.  Yet those who loved him began to intuit that there was more to him.  Through the Easter experience, they came to see him and themselves by a different Light.  The hidden, Holy Spiritual dimension became visible to them as their hearts were awakened by Love.
 
     Resurrection, for me, has something to do with the hidden becoming apparent.  Gerard Manley Hopkins referred to this usually invisible dimension of reality as “God’s Grandeur.”  It seems we humans are able to develop a type of “sixth sense” that can apprehend “the dearest freshness deep down.”
 
      I have seen deep-down compassion for the homeless in a five-story building on the Campus for Human Development.  I have heard the dearest, fearless honesty while sitting in Al-Anon meetings.  I have smelt grace in the freshly baked bread friends have brought me in times of distress.
 
     The story of Jesus of Nazareth’s life reveals that “sixth sense” is activated when our hearts awaken—when we love.