A New Way to Meet Easter
For most of my life, Easter meant one thing ~ a gory crucifixion followed by a “resurrection” that we were then supposed to be excited about. The main doorway to spirituality was really about the suffering, the sacrifice, the weight of a body on a cross.
Today, on Easter Sunday, I’m sitting with a different question: What if we have outgrown that doorway? Not only as a center of gravity for a particular religion, but as a governing meme affecting much of humanity. 
I’ve been in conversation ~ call it meditation, call it prayer ~ with my sense of Mother Mary and Mary Magdalene. Two women whom I believe were actually there in what was (at least in one timeline) a real event. Two women who have been underestimated, misrepresented, and sidelined for two thousand years. And what they keep saying is this:
Yeshua came full of life. That fullness was the message.
As they tell me, the table where Yeshua ate with friends was just as holy as the cross has come to be perceived. The laughter was just as divine as the tears. Mary Magdalene, who understood his mission the most deeply of his apostles, speaks of a man who touched the untouchable, who treated women as equals, who found God in vineyards and fishing nets and the return of a prodigal child.
I believe that Jesus ~ the fully alive one ~ is still waiting to be received.
When suffering becomes the primary portal to the sacred, we absorb a dangerous lesson in our bones: that sacrifice is the price of love. That the body must be crushed to reach the divine. That unworthiness is the beginning of devotion. We don’t just learn this theologically ~ we live it out in our relationships, our self-worth, our institutions.
What I believe wants to emerge now is a kind of spirituality that is rooted not in wounds, but in a feeling of communion with Infinite Source. Not in torturous death as the central miracle, but in resurrection as a daily practice of upliftment.
Can we mature out of the punishment program into something authentically supportive of humans and our connection with the Divine?
With that in mind, on this Easter Sunday here are three ways to honor the holiday in new ways:
- Celebrate “resurrection” as a living practice, not a historical event. Ask yourself: what in me has been buried ~ a dream, a truth, a part of my identity ~ that is ready to rise? Easter becomes personal when we stop projecting the miracle onto something or someone outside ourselves.
- Find the sacred in the ordinary and alive. Share a meal intentionally. Sit with the spring earth. Notice what is blooming. The earliest Easter traditions were rooted in renewal, in the return of light. Let this day reconnect you to life as it is actually showing up, right now.
- Honor the women who witnessed. Mary and Mary Magdalene did not look away. They stayed at the tomb when others fled. This Easter, practice that quality of loving presence ~ with someone in your life who is struggling, with a part of yourself you’ve been avoiding. Show up. Stay. Bear witness.
In its pre-Christian form, what has become “Easter” has always been about transformation. Maybe this year, the transformation begins with how we hold the story itself.
What a beautiful way to celebrate Easter.
Thank you for reading and sharing, Susan!
This is such a beautiful way of looking at Easter. I have been focusing on it as resurrection. But I know there is somewhere deep inside me because of my 10 years of catholic training in school, the horror of the crucifixion is still very much there. Even the beautiful play, which I saw in London, of Jesus Christ superstar, ended with the crucifixion. I was deeply shocked that they did that. They missed the point. We must tend to our own resurrection. Thank you so much for this post.
Sterling, my heart is moved by your sharing. Thank you!
I read the phrase “Crucifixion state of mind’ many years ago, and Marguerite has elucidated upon it’s meaning…our planetary existence is a multi-dimensional experience…so just know there is a deeper and grander ‘story’ than what meets our eyes.
Thank you, Brian, for reminding us all there is much more than meets the eye!
I so love this interpretation. This morning I did. Meditation on Resurrection and Rebirth. Our individual resurrection of exactly what you spoke about and Rebirth of the new. New human, New Earth, New Consciousness. I have loved Mother Mary and Mary Magdalene a long time and it was because of them the Resurrection occurred. Thank you for sharing your more expanded version of Resurrection.
I love the timing, Amara! Thank you for taking the time to share.
🩷 Grateful
Appreciate you, Victoria!
Exactly! So beautifully said. A deep bow and Thank-you!
with love and gratitude to you and this work with The Marys and all that we can transform into a sustainable story.
Marie
And the story continues unfolding… Thank you, Marie.
I love the idea of a daily resurrection. And to discsrd the torture images of the cross
Hi Maria. Thank you for reading and sharing!
Thanks for this blog Marguerite. It’s a lovely perspective and certainly the pre-christian aspect needs to be taken into consideration especially in embracing the ancient feminine celebrations around fertility, rebirth and transformation etc. I also see the need to move away from the punishment for sins narrative and focus on wounds. However, what I see happening and it’s where the challenge now lies, is in dealing with the” complete denial ” by many in both my own culture and others of the crucifixion and the events in Yeshua’s life along with Mother Mary’s as even being Yeshua’s mother let alone it being a Divine birth and Magdalene’s very real part in this also as a powerful priestess . To lose this would be a great travesty.
Thank you for this thoughtful sharing, Nora. I’m moved by your words.