What Easter Says About You

Some of you may know that I am studying for an MA in Clinical Mental Health at UNC Charlotte. I am nearly to the end – I intend to graduate in December of this year. Part of learning to be a counselor is learning how to ask the right questions at the right time. The undergirding mantra of the profession is “the client is the expert” of their life and experiences. Through developing active listening skills, the competent counselor finds the cues that lead to the deep issues that the client is wrestling with. Using one theoretical approach called Cognitive Behavioral Theory (CBT) the counselor tries to listen for negative thoughts that cause a client to have cognitive distortions about themselves and then teach the client to challenge those thoughts. For example, someone might be suffering from Social Anxiety and having difficulty attending parties because they think, “everyone thinks I’m weird.” I might ask questions such as, “did someone tell you they think you are weird?” or “how do you know people think you are weird?” etc. Then you collaborate to help the client find a better internal message, such as “I am an interesting person,” or “I am a good friend.”

In my class on Spirituality and Counseling, we have been covering topics that essentially boil down to how religious beliefs can help or hinder someone and add to their emotional distress. (I took this class so you don’t have to, lol.) Through assessments and careful listening, the counselor can pick up on positive or negative effects of spiritual beliefs or practices. How is your faith tradition/religion informing one’s perception of self? Does one find affirmation or hinderance? The messages we get from our faith matter. In class this week, I wondered about the messages you might be getting from our worship at St. Alban’s as we move through Holy Week and into Easter: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil. How does the experience inform how you see yourself, affect the thoughts you have about yourself?

In April 1945, near the end of World War II, C.S. Lewis preached a sermon titled “The Grand Miracle,” which was later published as an essay. In it he said,

“A man really ought to say, ‘The Resurrection happened two thousand years ago’ in the same spirit in which he says, ‘I saw a crocus yesterday.’ Because we know what is coming behind the crocus. The spring comes slowly down this way; but the great thing is that the corner has been turned. There is, of course, this difference, that in the natural spring the crocus cannot choose whether it will respond or not. We can. We have the power either of withstanding the spring, and sinking back into the cosmic winter, or of going on into those ‘high mid-summer pomps’ in which our leader, the Son of man, already dwells, and to which He is calling us. It remains with us to follow or not, to die in this winter, or to go on into that spring and that summer.”

We are, at the core of our faith, an Easter People. Each year we return to this season to remember the events that led Jesus to cross, from the foot washing to the Crucifixion. We remember the drama, the tragedy, and the weight of the world that rejected him, the one who came in the name of Love (as U2 sang it.) At the Easter Vigil, we retell the essentials of our identity and our relationship with God from Creation to the empty tomb. Easter morning, we lean into the surprise and joy of the Resurrection.

What messages do you receive about who you are in relation to the drama of Holy Week and Easter? That is a very big question, with many possible answers. Each of us has the potential to answer in many different ways. Your answer may depend upon what is going on in your life or your stage of life. No matter what else you grasp onto, I hope it is something that helps propel your inner life into the realm of “high mid-summer pomps” that Lewis refers to – that feeling of light and life and above all else, unconditional love. Let your inner monologue be “I am beloved, a child of God, an Easter person.”