I'm basking in Easter!After a mad rush to get a few things done… …including some more seed planting (the ones I did last month… …are starting to appear!), Holy Week was quite peaceful.Although the far away kids stayed far away for Easter Sunday, we had a restful and beautiful day.With so few to set the table for (5!), I broke out the bread plates along with the rest of Grandma's china 🙂 Those lumpy rolls are supposed to be bunny buns! And to amuse the young one, we borrowed Jen's idea (normally I would feel no need to up the crazy quotient at my house on Easter morning 🙂 and used miles of ribbon, going up and down both staircases and around bedrooms (each bedroom in this house has two entrances!) to create a little excitement in the Easter basket hunt. The Chief thought I had lost my marbles as I made him follow the line to the grownups' basket, and Will resorted to extraordinary means to win the race… (read: cut the ribbon rather than untangled :).
When I talk about Order and Wonder, nothing illustrates what I mean better than the feast days. Each year there is the order of the same round of liturgies, the same foods, the same “things we always do”.This very predictability frees us to be astonished yet again by the poignancy of Palm Sunday and the Last Supper, in which we embrace the Passion — and yet feast before the feast, willing to sing Hosannas even though we know what is coming (and our part in it). We feast out of gratitude for the gift of the priesthood at that celebration of the Passover, even as the cost begins to dawn on us.On Good Friday, the sadness is overwhelming, isn't it? How would we explain that to our children? No, we must experience it in the dreaded monotony, if you want to call it that, of doing the same thing every year — yet every year the monotony falls away and we are there, shouting “Crucify Him!” along with the others. It's ghastly, isn't it?
Then the Vigil, with tired little ones, standing in the dark, waiting, understanding what this growing candlelight means at last — The Light of the World — hearing each of the many readings from Scripture, seeing the promise of Christ in the passing of the weary years of darkness from the very beginning, throught the suffering and death, until the amazing NOW, when He is here, risen, for us!The very best we can offer is to be a part of this journey with our children. Not only as something we do for them, but with them. Our family, in our home, is where all this new understanding –old, yet new! — spills over into a loving enjoyment of the gift of the wonder of each other!
Every Sunday this feast lasts the day. Every Easter it lasts as a Solemnity (a high holy “day”) for eight days and as a feast for fifty days! How happy God wants us to be!
Decadent Housewife says
Beautifully written and said, Leila. Hope your Easter was blessed and wonderful.
Sue says
Beautiful words, and beautiful photos! I love your dining table — nice and roomy, yet so inviting.
Brenda@CoffeeTeaBook says
I love your large table.The thing I miss the most about my former (and much larger house) is my big dining room.I still have the same table but it's the smallest it can be to fit in our tiny dining room.Otherwise I love my small house in the country. It was a different season of life when we lived there and my grandchildren live 1,000 miles away so small is fine. 🙂
Jen@Balancing Beauty says
I am so glad you had fun with it…or I should say, looks like the kids had fun with it. :)We did our eggstravaganza, treasure hunt and my bro did some funny magic "egg" trick.
jennygirltherat says
That looks so serene and beautiful! I love this blog.I meant to thank you for something you posted a few weeks ago about kids and parenting and keeping a home, something about the best thing you can provide is order.Not in a regimented sense, but in what it says about stability and safety and consistency. This has stayed with me, it resonated with all of the things about mental illness I struggle with, and has helped to clarify what I'm striving for.