Image by David S. Soriano, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
On Sunday, many people celebrated Easter. For some it meant bunnies and chickees and egg hunts. For others it was a religious holiday of renewal and hope. For still others it celebrated spring as the name Easter or Eostre, the Germanic goddess of spring implies.
What we are talking about here is resurrection. The coming back to life. The liberation, the freedom from real or apparent death.
Here is a story of freedom, resurrection if you will.
A woman decides to work to exonerate a wrongly convicted man, with a sentence of 25 years to life for a crime that that he did not commit. She enlisted additional support and got witnesses to recant. The prisoner was declared innocent by the courts.
This woman’s efforts also led to the exoneration of the wrongly accused shooter in the above-described incident. That man, 15 years old when his alleged crime was committed, was serving 72 years to life.
The result of the woman’s interest was two resurrections, and a surge in interest by the public on similar cases of wrongfully convicted citizens.
I can only imagine the inner joy of walking out from a life in prison. Liberated from entrapment like a butterfly from its cocoon.
Regardless of our traditions, should we not look and dream with hope and a measure of joy to a future where we are liberated from systemic injustice and our internal and external personal and national divisions are bridged? Sometimes all it takes is for one of us to take a little interest in a dire case and the resurrection of a doomed individual or cause takes place, echoing that of the Easter story.
Resurrect the message of Easter today. Take action in opposition of the continued murder of civilians in Gaza, Ukraine, Haiti and other violence-torn places.
Joy to all in owning the moment and taking action!
I've been gathering my own words, Manuel, on the need for new Light out of this current Darkness - the resurrection you write about. This is a bit from a piece, "May I be the Change, Speak the Change" ... so much for searching for answers beyond the questions.
"It’s an ongoing nightmare of our own making. It’s Vietnam all over, it’s the Trail of Tears, enslavement, the “Great Hunger,” it’s human trafficking, it’s every hate crime and form of domestic violence perpetrated against children and intimate partners. It’s the hate we carry in our hearts distorting how we see one another, how we justify retribution – the terrorist that is part of each of us, how we act looking into the face of fear.
I guess I’ve landed in a new place, I crave future-thinking, new approaches, not more to debate, or perspectives to polarize around – valuable time wasted while more starve, more become houseless, more die.
Just not sure how to pull on one thread as a teaching tool. How will we educate a new generation who won’t default into victim/persecutor dynamics – hold a perspective where the ends rarely justify the means? How do we help them see the pattern of un-grieved loss, of fear of the “other” …. How hatred begets hatred?"
To be continued.
Wellll said.