Happy Eostre, the New Dawn*

One of the holiest moments of my life was spent watching an Easter sunrise at Delicate Arch in Moab, Utah. It was fifteen years ago, and this is where and when I first realized I could fall in-love with a landscape, a place as "other" as other could be, a place that both squeezed my heart and made it ache.

My BFF and I were just beginning our vacation, so this was before I had any inkling that I would leave New York City and move to Moab for a year, meet my husband, or write a novel.  We awoke in darkness in our cabin at The Lazy Lizard Youth Hostel (the prototype of the hostel in Edges) and made our way up the windy roads of Arches National Park to greet the dawn.


We were in the perfect time and place to watch the sunrise in action. Perhaps Easter got it's name from goddesses of the dawn: the Greek Eos and the Anglo-Saxon  Eostre (East-ra)? There is so much layering and absorption of other traditions/ religions into this dominant Christian culture.

Yes, it was holy, walking over the sandstone and up some rocks, waiting, for the sun to rise above the arch on top of the world, at the end of the world, in another world. The dawn, like springtime, promising new beginnings and fertility of ideas. I was finally going to find out what I was made of.

And I did, I still am. I am always learning and growing, even when it seems like I'm stuck or I've lost my way. Springtime is finding our way again.

I grew up in an Episcopalian seminary with a Father for a father. I went to church almost every day throughout my childhood and there is no way that Christianity hasn't informed my life, and yet . . .

And yet I was lost. I had to find my own way with my own relationship to a Higher Power. And I periodically find that I am lost only to be found again with a new sense of awe in the universe. This is why I love other stories of the death and rebirth of kings, the return of Persephone to light, the eggs and bunny rabbits symbolizing birth and fertility.

So what are we giving birth to in our lives right now? What has been planted and needs to be watered? What are we going to pay attention to? What is going to grow?

*No references to Twilight here.