The Slow Way Newsletter: Popping Champagne, Taking Naps and Eating Spoonfuls of Chocolate for Jesus
a weekly newsletter for all the frantic strivers, serial doers & weary achievers
unhurried thoughts
No, we should make Easter a forty-day celebration. If Lent is that long, Easter should be at least that long, all the way to Ascension. We should meet regularly for Easter parties. We should drink champagne at breakfast. We should renew baptismal vows with splashing water all over the place. And we should sing and dance and blow trumpets and put out banners in the streets. And we should invite the homeless people to parties and we should go around town doing random acts of generosity and celebration. We should be doing things which would make our sober and serious neighbors say, “What is the meaning of this outrageous party?”
-NT Wright, Surprised by Hope
Popping Champagne, Taking Naps, and Eating Spoonfuls of Chocolate for Jesus
I wrote this week about the daffodils popping open all over my garden, and the sweetness of color forcing its way out of the brown.
I have Easter on the mind. Year Two of celebrating Easter on my living room couch, singing along with the Church of the Screen. It’s hard to lean into celebrating. It’s hard to grasp the richness of the good news of Jesus when I feel like I’ve missed all the ways my body knows how to prepare for Easter: the ashes freely given back in February, the physical palm leaves waved and fidgeted with during the Palm Sunday sermon, the Maundy Thursday meal shared, the darkened Good Friday service at noon, the candles lit at the Easter Vigil. I missed it all this year, for the second year in a row, probably just like you did. And, though I tried to make it up, tried to keep the rhythms of Lent in our home and mark the days of Holy Week, this year I just didn’t come to Easter Sunday with the same level of joy, of intense readiness.
I shared on Instagram this past Tuesday that I struggle to lean fully into the celebration of Eastertide, how dragging myself through Lent is much easier for me than popping the champagne bottles of Easter. I know how to be good, how to go without. I’m not so great at embracing extra, leaning into the overflow. What does it mean to really celebrate Easter for all the fifty days of Eastertide? Where are the devotionals that teach us to embrace dessert and naps and long periods of reading in the sun for the sake of Jesus?
I kind of need a manual on how to give up Lenting so that I can start Eastering.
That’s where the metaphor of the daffodils comes in. Those bulbs planted deep in the ground back in October, their silent, ice-cold winter in the frozen soil, and their release -- the way they burst forth out of the ground, green and sleek and vibrant, until they finally explode yellow.
It’s not enough for the daffodils to simply survive the winter and make their way out into the open air. They also bloom. They release the flower that was hidden inside all this time. And that’s what I’m dreaming of for us this Eastertide.
I want more for us than the survival of Lent, the niceness of the spiritual practices we took on, or the chocolate cravings we ignored. I want our yellow, our color, the goodness of celebrating that Christ is true all the way through, from the frozen ground into the oxygen air. I want blossoms for us, real Easter-life.
That’s what I’m holding this week, as I’m filling my little glass cup with the peanut butter and chocolate chips I withheld from my afternoons for the past six weeks. Every time I bring that delicious goodness to my mouth, what if I held space for worship? Honor for the God of chocolate and daffodils and risen life? What if I leaned into joy that extends beyond the perfect combo of peanut butter and chocolate (how could it be better? I know) and settles in the space of gratitude for all that is good, all that brings delight, all that reminds us that life is deliciously good because the God of all truth and life has given us wine and cacao beans, and gardens, and space to see all that is as it actually could be.
a slow practice
Once I heard fellow writer Steve Wiens share a simple and profound prayer practice on his podcast This Good Word. I'm always thinking of ways to help myself and others experience prayer in a simple, grace-filled, ordinary ways. Steve talked about how he had made it a habit to acknowledge God's presence every morning as he took his very first sip of coffee.
I love that idea of taking a ritual we do everyday and using it as a spiritual marker, a sort of "here I am, living my life and reminding myself that I need God's nearness today." Perhaps we can take this simple practice and repurpose it for the next six weeks from now till Pentecost. Find something in your day that feels like excess. Maybe it's your dessert, maybe it's your afternoon sit in the sunshine, your daily walk, or yes, your morning coffee. Take that ritual and let it be your reminder to settle yourself in God's presence. You may just want to say hello, or practice repeating a word or a phrase, or simply sit in silence for a bit. The important thing is letting this thing -- your coffee, your champagne, your chocolate, your nap -- remind you of the presence of the Spirit of God, remind you that you are invited into loving communion with the divine. Often we use excess moments to distract us from our pain, to numb our own suffering. Instead, let your excesses point you toward something profoundly better: the goodness of God. Let the chocolate be the way toward the heart of God, and toward the goodness of Easter.