Easter and beyond

We're still in the Easter season in church life - all the way to Pentecost. I guess that should be at least 7 weeks. The $28 million spent on Easter eggs must have made some people happy on these happy islands we call New Zealand. I gave it my best - is what some people say in their persuits. Exams, motor racing, surfing, preaching. Preaching? What an odd pastime! Well it's really my job - as an ordained minister I "preach" on a sunday to people who choose to show up and listen. At the same time I advocate that people should not preach AT each other. Something weird here. Preaching can be dullish monologue and pretty boring to boot. I "preached" at a funeral today. The lovely people said I did a good job! And that it was a lovely speech that I gave!
Easter and beyond. I spoke on the resurrection last Sunday. Again. For decades I have spoken about this new life and at umpteen funerals spoken of the hope we have after death.
So what lies beyond your Easter? Another long wait to the next long weekend? The next party, celebration, birthday or even Christmas? Do we really lurch from Friday night binge to the next on these our islands? To each new reason to drown our sorrows or eat some exotic new something to boost our energy and lagging enthusiasm?
What really keeps us going? A quest for something better? A new cure so that we can live longer? A new holiday so that we can escape again? Or as in my case a new Monday to recover from the mysteries of my job - preaching to people who volunteer to listen politely and forget quickly.
Easter and beyond. We will continue to reflect on the resurrection appearances of Jesus - the new community that He established which kept on telling more people about that same resurrection.
Life after death does not seem to excite this generation. Their "other" world is primarily a cyber-world - so connected are they across the wireless networks, copper wire families and fibre-optic friendship circles - their "otherworldly" life a present utopia. Or so they tell me.
But wait. Just a minute is the old way of waving a conversational flag or pressing a pause button in our thinking. I am talking to you, dear reader, using this same network of keyboards and screens. How few of you talk back. Comments do not abound, despite my readers who have a little look from all over the globe at these mutterings. Blogging is it? I had a 7 year old asking me this week to help him blog - to set up a place where he can write.So like me he sounded - words wanting a place to sit for just a minute.
Words - my food, my blood, my drink - they run around this aging brain and kick away in depths of conscience and in my thumping heart which for a reason known only to greater authority bangs away in my head and ear in the silent hours of the night. Next thing the adverts on my Facebook page will shout "tinitus" alongside nagging requests to share in new gout trials. How perverse you are the ism of consumer. Forever twisting these old arms to buy or test some new source of sickly sweet corporate profit.
Beyond Easter? So much awaits us - the calming and inspiring lines of new songs and tunes we could write. More poetry that waits to paint vast new landscapes of rythmn and lexical cohesion or subtle confusion. Or the animated conversations over coffee on street corners in predictable cafes with their unpredictable chatter. Perhaps there await new hours of solitude in which we reach far deeper - nearer that place between soul and spirit in our very depths - those prayers that creak and groan in agonising rooms of doubt and hope all jumbled up together.
Easter and beyond. The shiny wrappers tossed away and tonnes of chocolate processed and forgotten - what joys could there waiting be for you and me - beyond.