Jean Gendreau

Forty-one years ago on Easter weekend, I was holding a baby. I was trying again. I had a new life after crawling out of the shame of my divorce and the griefs of my first baby’s death and my ex-husband’s alcoholism. For me, this laughing, easy-tempered, pretty baby proved rebirth.
As mothers do, I had fallen deeply in love with her. She had a fairy-like quality, a magical way of moving softly through the days. My older girl had a sister. And my new husband’s surprise and wonder was holy. His own mother had given him away to an abuser. When he held this little girl, you could feel his shock and joy. He had never imagined that such love existed.
On that same Easter weekend, my little nephew died from neuroblastoma. None of us will ever forget the sound of my brother’s voice when he called on that day. A few days later, when everyone else went to the funeral, I chose to stay home.
What was real to me was Easter. It’s not that I wanted to avoid the pain of my nephew’s death. I had had a baby die. I knew that the light can disappear completely. Sometimes darkness wins.
But even after total defeat, after irreversible destruction, something can happen that makes no sense at all.
At Christmas, as blackness comes close, we dream of the future. We strain to see any flicker of light. But in the days before Easter, we admit despair. Did the baby even matter? It’s over. There’s nothing left to hope for — The body is already cool.
This isn’t about religion, although people think it is. Hope is not a Christian proprietary brand. All of us need to manage despair. The Christian texts work for many. I go to church every week, but my version of the teachings might not work for others. Many people can no longer stomach their church’s version of “the only way to heal.” Hope comes to “nature is my church” people and atheists too.
Think instead of a paddler in the wilderness. He’s a bit lost and he paddles hard. Storms come and go. He finds his way along rivers, portages through thick forest, discovers lake after lake and then gets lost again. He never knows the end. One day, he’s paddling along a rocky shoreline. There are rocks ahead, but he can’t quite make out what’s there. Working hard, he pulls close enough to see. It’s a point, a rocky point. There’s a corner to turn. The wind and waves push at the canoe, and he has to paddle hard. His arms ache, but he’s got grit. He keeps going. Finally, he makes it around the corner. Goosebumps ripple down his arms. Awe. Wonder. Mystery. This lake is flat and brilliant and easy. He’s never seen such light. And it has no end. It’s easy and it has no end.
On that Easter weekend, I held joy in my arms. This wasn’t Christmas. It wasn’t about the darkness that might come. This was Easter. This was after the darkness had won — and that was the whole point.
There are times when we have howled until we are empty.  We cannot cry harder or louder or longer — And still it isn’t enough. Nothing is enough. Then there is a quiet that comes. It’s a kind of peace, but you can’t call it easy because getting there is the most brutal road in all human experience. Yet, finally we come to the silence, the emptiness.
It’s a terrible, beautiful openness in which everything is possible.
Even though it makes no sense at all, there can be something beyond the rocky point. The paddler turns the corner. My nephew let go of this body to open into the wonder.
We think we “know” that the world is a terrible place. We hunker down in despair. Like nightmares, our busy brains mutter thousands of examples of suffering. We might pride ourselves on being mature adults who know for sure that nothing much is possible. “Life’s a bitch and then we die.” We firmly lock the door. Hoping just hurts too much.
But we have no idea what’s really possible. Our safe guesses are miserable versions of reality. What’s coming? We don’t know.
Rebirth is as old as life. But how it happens is way above my pay grade and yours.
We could allow the word “maybe.” Many wisdom teachers tell of a reality, a quality of awareness that underlies everything we think is real life. It’s a veil, a sheer curtain, a wisp of breath right under our noses. This is where “maybe” comes from.
In the winter, a seed has no choice but to lie in the blackness deep under the ice. A caterpillar knits its chrysalis without hope. It has no plan for how to make wings.
I can’t out-think this mystery. I have no choice but the next step, even though I have no idea what the next step is. I do not know the deep magic because thoughts and beliefs confuse me. I worry, hope and fret. I fail to trust what I cannot imagine.
The mystery requires utter blackness. Thinking doesn’t work. We cannot plan or understand. There has to be the release of giving up. That’s when we finally relax into the emptiness.
That’s when the deepest magic, the power, the tenderness can take us over, knowing us better than we know ourselves. It shatters the seed’s shell by trusting the softness of a seedling’s leaves. It tears the chrysalis open by loving the joy colors of wings.
On Easter, even though the body is cold, we raise our heads from the ground. We look up because we hear something, a wisp of song. Yes, sometimes everything really is lost—jobs, marriages, lives. The destruction is complete. For a time, despair is true.
And yet — and here’s the surprise — in that openness where there is nothing, something new grows. We have no idea what is possible. A wisp of a song, a loving touch, a feeble flickering light that grows. We cannot know. We do not understand. It makes no sense. But it is good.