Some days I can walk down our long driveway to look for the post and I notice nothing. My mind is on what I’m expecting to find. Perhaps another ‘spiritual’ book!

But I find that if I pay attention to what is around me, a mysterious and beautiful pathway expands; rain puddles on the ground reflect tree branches in all kinds of patterns; the robin flies from one bush to another ahead of me. And the scent of pine needles and eucalyptus is heavy after the rain.

To me, it can be a resurrection because I’m allowing my spirit and my body to be friends with each other. Easter is a bit like that.

Easter can arrive and be all over so quickly. The shopping centres move on quickly to the next selling fest which is probably Mother’s Day.

Nothing wrong with that but for those of us who celebrate Easter, also known as the Pasch or Paschal mystery, the days following continue to unfold story after story of what happened after the momentous death and Rising that Jesus moved through – or passed through – to become The Christ.

He wasn’t just making a quick goodbye to followers and friends before rising to a spiritual existence; it seems to have been an extended time in which he ate and drank with them, lit a fire on the seashore in Galilee, cooked fish in the early morning mist, made bread and asked the unbeliever, Thomas, to touch his wounds.

He showed that he was not just a spirit but rather, a body that was changed or transfigured somehow. (What that means will be something we’ll need to keep reflecting on as we continue to discover more about the mysteries of our universe and our human selves.)

Through celebrating the feast of Easter, Christians become people who accept that body and spirit are One and that they belong harmoniously to one another. It’s not a flight of the soul or spirit from the body.

Easter means that we need to pay as much attention to our experiences of the body as we do to our ‘spirituality’.

by Barbara Stapleton