Easter

...and Other Recurring Resurrections

¹ In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

² And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

³ And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

⁴ And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

⁵ And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day...

It was these words that he read, sitting in his accustomed seat and pew before first Service.

Earlier in the week, he had pondered the concept of Day in the translated Genesis narrative, King James, and concluded that Day, as well as Up and Down, were concepts relevant only to a defined solar system. Up was an absolutely opposite direction on farthest sides of the globe.

If creation were universal for planets with different periods of rotation, Day no longer had the same universal meaning everywhere in absolute hours.

As a biologist, he was aware how long evolutionary biology took to come to pass, and the notion of creation of biology and all its now extinct antecedent forms, in a single terrestrial day of twenty-four hours, was untenable.

Yet, Genesis narrated the various creatures and life forms created on each of the first days.

Deep within, however, the notion of biological creation without some abiding plan or principle, was likewise unthinkable.

There was no possible way the biological splendor of that morning in early April, could have spontaneously arisen, solely at the behest of chaos.

Especially not on Easter.

* * *

He had arrived early on Easter, knowing how crowded Church had become lately.

Early on, when few others had arrived and an air of informality prevailed in the way the celebrant, in simple black robes, stood precariously on a folding chair, as the Junior Warden hovered below worrying, offering her hand as he struggled to remove the wick guard and light the tall Pascal candle.

In the pew before service he had nothing to entertain him.

There was some satisfaction in gaining his usual pew in advance of another recently joined couple who, if they arrived early, took his place. He did not enjoy the trouble of considering another berth.

* * *

Banning had begun to feel an uneasy sense to time passing that Sunday morning.

But what surprised him was the ease with which he arose Easter in the false darkness of a shaded room well after sunrise.

It had been a late night before and he had only reluctantly agreed to accompany his wife to an evening session of English Country Dancing: not a formal ball requiring period costumes as took p;lace twice a season, but a simple three-hour workout to live music with other couples and singles of several generations.

He had agreed even though she refused to attend Easter Church.

“Wait: I agreed to your dance event. Where is fairness?” he had blurted out.

“They blame the Jews for killing Christ,” she said. “Makes me uncomfortable...”

She was not Jewish, or more accurately, she identified as Jewish in current usage but had not attended services in years. It was not clear that any of their mutual friends at church would hold her personally responsible for accusing, trying or crucifying Jesus Christ, although her excuse might have been plausible under other circumstances.

Later, he considered that the trial and crucifixion, according to Scripture, took place between Palm Sunday as celebrated and discussed the previous weekend, and Good Friday, not on Easter.

Anyhow...

* * *

He had only picked up the black vinyl-bound Bible, King James Version, from the bottom of a stack of prayer books in the aisle-side corner of the upholstered seat of the pew. But that was only when a few more early arrivals made him feel self-conscious about the pocket-sized black-bound notebook he was holding on his knee scribbling notes as the others chatted in the nave and went about pre-service chores.

Their demeanor lacked the usual reverence and quietude that were appropriate decorum in the few moments before acolyte and priest push through the side doors of the sanctuary.

He often was compelled to pull an index card and pen from the inside breast pocket of his herringbone jacket when inclined to capture some pithy comment or sarcastic take on the proceedings, in real time.

Most often he limited himself to memorizing the mood of the moment for later use in fiction, but it was exactly this weekly service and its thoughts, propositions and assertions expressed in archaic, but strangely august language, that spurred him to write.

At times, he felt it was all so much mumbo-jumbo and subject to tinkering each time relevance to modernity was considered more important, but be that as it might be, there was scholarly and intuitive agreement that the origins of English as an established language, sprang from an earlier version of just this same 1928 liturgy.

It was therefore to this wellspring of his native language his notions returned when he felt the need of expression.

* * *

9 April. 6:24 A.M.

...that morning despite the late hours dancing in Herndon the previous night, the chatter of spring beyond drawn shades woke him.

With professional certification course in progress and the multitude of farm chores opening up in the first week of April, he had not written lately...

Such were the barely legible notes he returned to later.

For some reason, resurrection and Susan, and the completion of his first book Emily were much in mind that morning as he glanced from where he lay with sunlight creeping around the edges of the curtain and noted again the loud, nearby birdsong that had awakened him.

He was inclined to write Susan’s elder and sole surviving sister these seven months, since her sister’s unexpected message on social media had shocked him as he had never been shocked. Susan had been helping him edit a fictional memoir which had been written, more or less, at one sitting over three weeks, years earlier.

It had never been intended for publication until harvest was over that season, and he had a month or two free time to put old manuscripts in order.

He had heard from her with feedback every few days until ten days of silence elapsed. He knew she was not feeling well, but it wasn’t until her sister informed him of her funeral that same day, that he realized the seriousness of her condition.

Despite his overwhelming sensation of Susan’s ethereal presence in the context of new greens and a likewise overwhelming freshness that spring, he did not wish to unduly revive her sister’s grief with the flood of memories he had experienced since her passing in her house facing onto a golf course in Sierra Vista, southern Arizona.

Easter: life, death, resurrection; springtime.

As adolescents consumed with the first sensation of adult obsession, he and Susan had often toyed with the hormonal spirituality in which the found themselves wallowing. They had discussed, as all naive lovers do, reaching out to the other, whomever died first.

He had actually believed the propositions he made with her about spiritual unity and immortality, such was the shock of those first days and months when a young man suddenly understands at least at the physiological level, what developments in personal biology had taken placed without proper context or expression.

Although she had become disaffected, and they were apart and out of touch so many decades, there was so much he regretted throughout the days of his life as he passed on to other things and traveled widely, and read to the point at which he felt he must write, not read, more.

The fact was, with every next morning and its associated muscle cramps from heavy farm work, and the arrival of reminders of his own approaching mortality, somehow Susan remained at the center of that mystery.

It was not possible even months later to accept that she was no more flesh and blood, no more than a packet of ashes at the foot of a marble military headstone that marked her late husband’s grave, nor had there been room on her husband’s marker for so much as her own name and dates.

It was curious that seven months after her death he could feel the emotional detachment, the hollowness of the deep pain where she had been.

It was not his enduring sadness of her bypassing his interest and moving on, unwilling to wait for him to complete his education, as his own regret had to remain hidden, preserved as a reminder not to become too deeply involved again at any point in life.

Her memory reminded him to write, and write when he was exhausted and distraught, and write and write more...

* * *

There it was before him, the celebration of that unique resurrection, that singular and miraculous event called resurrection that he knew, as a biologist, was impossible.

A man cannot know or understand resurrection until a young woman he loved, and who incorporated and embodied life itself, has died. And nothing came of it, as if she, and he, had never existed at all.

And yet as creed and article of faith, and as the motive force that drove him to write that Easter morning, he knew it meant something important and worthy of obsession.

After all those years, “Aunt Jemima what took you so long?” she would whisper when they finally passed out of the early and awkward stages of courtship. He had been dubious of women, or at least the cravings of friends fully women in body, but shallow of understanding. In his youth, she thought she had him figured out and her self-confidence in “landing” him as a young woman, was almost as appalling as her passing so suddenly.

She had succeeded in converting him, in enlisting him, in capturing the obsession she instinctively knew in her own heart far sooner and better than he did.

In some ways, that aggressive impression and planting of an attraction was of such power and focus, it kept him going for the rest of his life. She had succeeded in pressing him as far as offering a proposal when he was too young, not when she and her unspoken expectations wanted it, but a year later, when he was too consumed with frustration and desire to fully comprehend what he was doing. Perhaps she did not expect it, or perhaps her anger prompted his offer which she had always wanted to refuse as a point of pride.

There was that nagging afterthought that as well as he knew her, he really did not know her at all. In the same way, her confidence as a young woman kept her from comprehending where he was with priorities of career and future.

It was ridiculous in retrospect years later, almost a year after her death, but the notions, the sadness and ambitions of a lifetime, and the impossibility of resurrection somehow reactivated him on Easter Sunday.

* * *

His book: he had written it as best he could, as he was compelled to resurrect the manuscript.

She had always aimed her career as a literary editor or agent in Boston, but ended up a school crisis counselor who was called in by police to resolve active shooter situations.

And now, his editor, the one about whom he could not write enough, was gone.

The years seemed not to matter; he had been infatuated with her only three or four years of his early adulthood while the matter of career and education demanded his full attention.

There was her move to his college in his senior year shortly after her father died, her expectations, and then her unspoken and sudden change of heart when he did not discuss marriage, that scene of the future the two of them would replay frequently at first, then every year or so, then five and ten years, as their lifetimes passed.

Susan was gone: it was Easter and spring, and resurrection was on his mind despite changes which he would not admit.

* * *