Unorthodox Easter

Early this year, I wrote an intention in my notebook: set aside time and space each quarter for retreat. My desire sprang from three days in which my husband was away, and that I spent in silence and solitude at home reading the mystics, praying, getting grounded, and just being.

Having no clear picture of what such a retreat might look like, I spent a bit of time researching possibilities. A silent retreat at a monastery was at the top of my wish list, but I considered a few nights away from home spent in a hotel somewhere as a possibility, too. April dawned, and I felt a pull to plan something concrete for the second quarter. I held the intention loosely. There were, after all, three months in the second quarter. No need to force or rush anything.

As it turns out, I am currently on retreat. At home, again. Gerry is working for Elections Canada at the four-days of advance polls which entails working 13+ hour days at the polling station. He’s been doing this since Friday, and will be there again on April 28, election night. He’s out of the house after a quick cup of coffee in the morning and returns home after Molly and I are settled into bed (one of us with a book) for the night, leaving me with an abundance of time for myself.

A few years ago when we moved to small-city, Saskatchewan, we decided to go down to one car. It isn’t a hardship. We rented a second car one weekend last summer when we both had commitments—his, out of town—but with a bit of planning, we’re easily able to make it work. I tell you all of this to explain how it is that I’m on day three of a four-day retreat at home. No car + no husband + no commitments = retreat time. It’s turning out to be quite lovely.

On Friday, I participated in an Abbey of the Arts retreat called Ripened (S)aging with Melissa Layer—a couple of hours spent reflecting and writing. Truly, time well spent. Then I made some art, read, and wrote. I made soup, baked a pie (well, put a frozen pie in the oven), made more art, read and wrote a bit more.

“A man knows he’s loved when he wakes up to the smell of bread baking.”

That’s what my husband said yesterday morning when I took a loaf of bread out of the oven so he could make sandwiches to take with him to the polling station. He had used the last of the store-bought bread on Friday and, as I racked my brain thinking of what he could take yesterday, I realized that if I set dough out to rise around 5:30 a.m. it would bake in time for him to make sandwiches.

So I did, and he did, and, after texting a handful of Easter greetings to loved ones, am spending another silent and solitary day at home. It is the first Easter in a very long time that I haven’t celebrated resurrection Sunday in church. Instead, I enjoyed a second cup of coffee after Gerry left, went downstairs to my art studio and made a mess in my sketchbook with paint, pastels, and collage, while listening to Easter hymns.

“Alexa, play Christ the Lord is Risen Today,” I asked, earlier, while stirring a pot of noodles on the stove for lunch. Like magic, the voices of choristers came through the Echo Dot on my kitchen countertop offering one of my favourite Easter hymns in worship.

Just now, I’m sitting on the back deck (it’s finally warm enough) tapping out these words on my MacBook while Molly sniffs and explores in the yard. When I’m finished here, I’m going to make a cup of iced coffee and return to the deck with my Kindle and get lost in it for a while.

Christ is risen.

That I wasn’t in church this morning makes this day no less holy. In fact, I caught a glimpse of the divine in the fattening lilac buds on the bushes in the yard and hear it now in songs the birds are singing. I saw it in tiny spinach seeds I tucked in the soil in my garden. I feel it in the sun, warm on my arms, and in my heart’s longing.

Christ is risen, indeed.

Hallelujah.