Eastertide Update, Part II
Last Day of Eastertide 2026
Tomorrow is Pentecost Sunday, officially marking the end of the Easter season and the beginning of Ordinary Time. Yet what I have been reminded of this spring is that things don’t always change simply by flipping the page on the calendar. I wrote last week that I lived Lent this year, instead of observing it. And I’ve noticed that it turns out Easter is a process, and not instantaneous. I’ve written about processes taking time (Trust the Process and Healing Takes Time, among other examples). But I had not lined that up with the liturgical calendar before.
Easter, also, is a process. Resurrection, rebirth, new life: it’s all a process; it all takes time. Plant shoots don’t suddenly burst forth from the ground; you can gradually see them forming and taking shape. My puppy did not actually grow overnight.
Major, traumatic events can happen in a split second, or just a few minutes, like the Oklahoma City bombing national memorial park reminds us. Recovery, the new life afterward, achieving a new normal takes a lot of time and a lot of work. Anyone who’s been thru any kind of rehab, physical therapy, occupational therapy, etc., can tell you about the time and effort needed for recovery.
That time and that work are part of why I didn’t write on Substack during this past Lenten season. I have to have bandwidth to write, and I didn’t have it this spring. The other part is that I’ve struggled with what to write. I can’t pretend things are the same. I’m not sure I can write how I used to – I’m not who I used to be, even just in the three and a half years since I started this Substack. A friend of mine changed the title of her Substack a year after starting it, to convey a more accurate message of its content. I’ve debated changing mine, but I don’t know to what. Confucius said, “The beginning of wisdom is naming a thing rightly.”
I think this Substack is still named rightly. Liturgical seasons are still important to me, even if sometimes I struggle to switch gears with the turn of the calendar page, and reflections are among my better forms of writing. So, we might just keep going, and see how, or if, things evolve. As always, I’m open to any feedback and suggestions you might have. Thank you for continuing to read.