Of Wax, Artists, and Mellancamp

Easter was wonderful this year - sun shining (after a freak snowstorm on Monday), children laughing, hymns played and sung well, and a profusion of tissue paper butterflies on the Good Friday cross. Great day.

I realize it's Doubting Thomas Sunday this week, but I think a more appropriate post-Easter (or post-Christmas) reading, at least for me, would be the story of Jesus' transfiguration. More specifically, the walk back down the mountain - back to daily life after the high of a light-filled festival. Back to daily life, where we constantly confront the question of what real difference the celebration makes in the midst of the mundane.

This year was our third Easter vigil, and the first time we actually got to start outside, having endured pouring rain for the past two years. So we had a roaring new fire and lit the paschal candle. The candle is very tall, so though we did put it out after the vigil was over, once we lit it again on Sunday morning, it was easier to let it burn all morning than try to re-light it for the second service. Herein lies the only real problem with young acolytes: too short for the paschal candle.

But the problem with letting the candle burn all morning is that, if you didn't put the little gold cap on just right, it will drip wax all over everything: down the candle itself, all over the font, all over the candle stand, onto the floor. (The floor part is no great loss; I'd do anything to get rid of the pink carpet, including a little paschal sabotage now and then.)

So I found myself on Wednesday afternoon, having taken Monday and Tuesday off for a little rejuvenation, carefully picking wax out of the candle, off the gold cap, off the font, up off the floor. Trying not to break the candle with my frustrating attempts to remove the little gold cap and set it back on correctly. And I thought to myself - something about this little, boring, mundane act is reflective of the post-Easter struggle. Is this it? Jesus died and rose again...so that I could pick wax off the paschal candle? Shouldn't there be more to it than this?

But then I met yesterday with an artist who is creating a mural for our entryway. At the moment, the theme is "Living Water," and the visual is centered on a waterfall, dancing around rocks and leaves and through light and darkness. She and I talked about how to help people understand that, though not explicitly religious, the symbolism of water still conveys something crucial to our faith. "I think people need to learn how to see God in the every day," she said, "as Luther said - 'God in, with, and under' - everything."

Then, in the car on the way to work this morning, I hear the gospel according to John Mellancamp:

Your life is now
your life is now
your life is now;
in this undiscovered moment
lift your head up above the crowd
we could shake this world
if you would only show us how
your life is now

Easter is still now, of course, quite literally - seven Sundays, not simply one. But it is not only the lilies and butterflies, the 200 extra people who show up a few times a year, the procession and the breakfast and the hoopla. It is also picking wax off the candle, listening to a brokenhearted friend, hoping for new life, choosing hymns for next week, interviewing the organist, going to the high school tennis match. Everyday life, ordinary life, infused with grace, one step at a time.