RESURRECTED

Happy Easter!!!!!!

Notice the proliferation of exclamation points? It’s because I’ve never been so excited to write my reflection for today. How excited? On Sunday pandemic mornings, I have the luxury of not rushing out of bed to go to mass or to The Feast because I can catch them online…in my house clothes…without makeup. But here I am, at 6:26 a.m., writing.

I’ve been writing reflections for Didache for years. My three blogs are filled with reflections. So, what makes today different that my emotion is moved almost to the point of tears? I don’t know. Maybe God gave me such a powerful insight that I can’t contain it. The message is actually age-old, something that we have been told over and over again. It’s probably the experience set in this crisis that moved me. Or maybe it’s the different way God led me to present the reflection that is so exciting. It’s been done before, but it’s a novel experience for me.

“I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord.”  - Psalm 118:17

In my last blog, Rescued, I mentioned I was going to make, as my reflection activity, two paintings – the Rescued Sunflower and the Resurrected Sunflower. I posted a picture of the first painting. It’s been yearsss since I last held a brush, so I wasn’t too happy with it. But I was grateful for the love and appreciation showed by friends for the little my talent could produce.

I was more eager to make the second painting because I already had a design which I liked. It’s from an oil painting I made in 1994 that has been condemned to the darkness of our bodega. Even if the canvas I used was recycled from another painting that I wasn’t happy with, I still wanted to frame it because it came out well. (Note: it’s not my design, I interpreted it from a picture I saw.) But I never got to apply the finishing touches, so it gathered dirt in storage until it became unframeable. So, the design becomes resurrection number 2. Number 1 is the paper of a painting of lilies that wasn’t good enough. It was recycled for the sunflower paintings.

Halfway through making the Resurrected Sunflower, I realized the Rescued Sunflower did not match it in scale, style and quality. I decided to make another version. Back to my art supplies I went. I was lucky to find a paper sculpture I was working on and, again, never got to finish. I used half for version 2. Then I felt the other half still looked promising enough to finish. Resurrections 3 and 4.

So, here’s my Resurrection reflection in pictures.

Our God is a God of second chances. In Him is our hope!