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Happy Eastertide! 
Eastertide is the festival season between Easter Sunday and Pentecost Sunday. 

While Christmastide is 12 days, Eastertide is 50 days!  I like celebrating the “tides” because it gives you more than one day to celebrate.  And practically speaking, that is really helpful.  Especially if you’re a pastor or someone who works on Sunday (or you’re recovering after 12 days of vertigo, as thankfully, I was this past Sunday). 
 
Heart-wise, we need to recover “seasons of celebration.”  We can be so quick to get to a holiday and so quick to leave it—going at such a dizzying speed, it can feel like a kind of vertigo of the heart!    
 
I don’t know about you, but I want to celebrate the reality of resurrection for more than one day!    
 
If you feel like you “missed Easter” or didn’t get to do what you wanted to this year, there’s still time!  What would it be like for you to celebrate the reality of resurrection for 50 days?  Not only the final triumph of life over death that Jesus Christ’s story announces, but all of the “little deaths” you’ve experienced…all of those times it felt like the future you desired was over, dead & buried…and yet new life came. 
 
God at work in your story, the ways you have been raised from the dead…it’s worth celebrating for more than one day!

What a strange Holy Week!  Episodes of vertigo and dizziness have lingered for ten days now.
 
The kind of vertigo I am experiencing (BPPV) often has no known cause, although it can be triggered by stress.  I happened to be stretching my neck at the time.  I also happen to be in a season of stress, marked by both positive & negative events.
 
In this uncomfortable and disorienting place I find myself in, I cannot help but think of that first Holy Week long ago and how that one week stretch must have been so disorienting for those early followers of Jesus!  Heads left spinning, wondering what was going on...
 
From Palm Sunday to Good Friday and then to Easter…to go from what seemed overwhelmingly positive to overwhelmingly negative to overwhelmingly positive again…what a whiplash of a week!  The human mind & body can only take so much (as I am being reminded).* 
 
A swirl of activity and inactivity.  A dizzying array of events.  A murky clash of praise and blame. 
 
Movement at warp-speed through the wisdom pattern of order, disorder, and reorder.
 
Currently in disorder, I am being forced to slow down, to wait and see.  When I don't, here comes the lightheadedness, as my body offers a warning that I am not to interrupt the healing process, so stop and be still. 
 
It feels like the in-between time of Holy Saturday. 
 
When one is trying to grasp what has and is happening to cause such a state, when waves of strong feelings and sensations come and go, exhaustion sets in from the strain.
 
In such a place, trying harder eventually runs its course and one is invited to surrender.  And remember.
 
It’s usually in looking back that I see the transformation or wisdom gained through a disorienting period of time.  Sometimes there is no clarity about a lesson learned or gift given, just an ever-deepening invitation to trust in the healing, transforming presence and slow work of God. 
 
The same was (& is) true of the followers of Jesus.
 
Holy Triduum blessings to you (even if it feels more like a disorienting rather than a blessed time).
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*Allowing for help during overwhelm is important and is part of surrendering (letting go of the "I can do it on my own" mentality).  I am grateful for access to healthcare, like a walk-in clinic and a physical therapist specializing in vestibular rehabilitation, a reminder that once well, to find a simple way to encourage such accessibility for others.  And I am thankful for the grace & support of my supervisor, counselor, directees, friends and family members.