Tiny things
Tending the ordinary in the in-between times, and my family Easter curse
We have a family Easter curse, says my son. Roughly every other year, illness gets in the way of us celebrating Easter. A couple years ago a stomach bug ripped through. Before that, pandemic shut downs kept us all home. This year, I’m spending Easter Sunday home alone recovering from a cold that won’t quit - though maybe more accurately I am the one who will not quit, and didn’t take adequate time to rest and recover sooner. So once again this year, I find myself stuck in the in-between time between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
I’ve been thinking a lot this Easter weekend about the women who went to the tomb after Jesus’ death to bring oil and spices to anoint his body, still worthy of care in its brokeness. In their dedication to affirm human dignity in the face of violence, to do the ordinary acts of tending and grieving that needed to be done, they became the first witnesses to the extraordinary power of love and life, the unstoppable force of resurrection.
Torture and death, the crucifixion of marginalized peoples and the destruction of ecosystems deemed by the empire to be a necessary evil for securing the prosperity of others, abounds in our world, touching all of us with its tendrils in interdependent ways. Like the women at the tomb, we need to keep showing up even when it feels like the ending is already written. Showing up together to care, and tend, and to say that all life is precious and worthy of dignity. Worthy of flourishing.
I’m tired and run-down fighting off this cold and keeping the despair at bay that creeps up with each news headline and social media sound bite about a future that looks farther away from mutual flourishing than ever. So I’m focusing on the tiny things this weekend, the dandelions springing up in pavement cracks. Tiny things that assert the power of life, care and flourishing. Tiny things that keep me going.
I voted. Together with neighourhood friends & kids, on a day off for all of us, we waited in line at the advance polls and joyfully voted in the Canadian federal election for a local candidate with a track record of standing up for vulnerable people in our community and around the world. And then we hung out at the playground and enjoyed being outside together in the mild spring weather.
I’ve taken up embroidery again, something I learned as a child that I haven’t practiced in a decade or two, to try my hand at visible mending. Mostly kids’ pants with holes in the knee. I patch them up with colourful designs and loopy flowers. Feels like joyfully, artfully, embracing slow fashion and simple living. It also feels like resistance to disposable consumer culture, and like embracing knowledge passed down through generations - I’m learning from the tradition of my elders who kept scraps of fabric from old clothes and turned them into quilts, into works of art to meet the needs of daily living. I’m not piecing quilts out of worn shirts and outgrown dresses yet, but maybe I could. Maybe I will.
Last year I transplanted perennial pollinator flowers from my aunt’s garden into my garden. I can’t remember what all I planted, but scarlet bee balm, I think, and something with pale green discs of leaves that are already plumping up and filling out in the balmy early spring. I will be surprised and delighted to see what emerges and blooms.
Tiny spring ephemeral flowers are blooming in the forest right now. Blootroot, bluebells and snow-drops. The spotted leaves are up for the trout lilies but no delicate yellow flowers yet. It’s a yearly joy for me to see these early beauties who are so essential to pollinators and the whole forest ecosystem.
What is giving you life these days? Where are you seeing flowers growing in the cracks of pavement, and communities of care overflowing? What are the tiny things that keep you going?