floating ice skim on one of the ponds along Rt. 9 in Kennebunk Maine

“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus

Happy Easter! I am not sure why this is my Easter image this year. I admit it is abstract, and visually challenging (what is it?). But it is also full of life…full of mystery…full of grace and wonder. It is also highly unlikely. It is a super thin patch of floating ice on a pond along Route 9 in Kennebunk Maine. It was above 40 and had been for several hours when I found it, and this pond has been open for weeks, so I was not expecting ice at all. And the sweeping feather like patterns are more like rime ice on a car window than anything I have seen on the surface of water. And then there are the straight lines, the pattern of triangles among the feathers, like the leading in a stained glass window. And it is so thin, so fragile, so unlikely. Altogether strange and wonderful. It challenges my understanding of what is physically possible.

Then you add the colors of the reflected sky and clouds and trees and it really comes alive. It becomes not just an image of floating ice, but a image in its own right, containing a beauty of its own. Looking at it is almost meditative…it puts my mind into a state of open wonder and receptivity…and something very like peace. Something very like hope. Something very like joy. And so, after all, it is not so strange a choice for Easter Sunday!

What is more unlikely than the resurrection? More challenging to our sense of what is possible? More full of grace and wonder? What greater source of hope and joy?

He is risen. Against all odds. Against every expectation. He is risen and with him hope and joy. And though 2000 years of Christian history have not always given testimony to his truth, yet his truth lives on, and is there to be received by every generous eye. Unlikely as rime ice on open water. Unlikely as perfect triangles in floating ice. And more beautiful than the reflected colors of sky and cloud and trees. Jesus is risen! He lives. He lives in me.

Happy Easter!