After so many days of waiting for Spring to arrive – it has finally come in all its glory!  Easter hardly seemed like Easter amid the cold and gray of some weather system preventing Spring.  So now, with a little warmth and sunshine, it is much easier to think about resurrection and new life.

But one comment from the Easter Vigil homily stays in my mind these last, few bleak and winter days.  The priest was speaking about the resurrection.  He said “The disciples didn’t believe any of this until they had experienced it.”  And each day since I have heard that, I have thought about it again.

How much can we believe if we don’t experience anything?  Experience is the key to faith or even the possibility of accepting something that may be difficult to understand.

Now our Easter promise is to fully experience all that we can.  These past days when I have not written, it is because I have been experiencing.  We went to a hilltop and watched the moon rise over the city; we have walked miles through Arlington Cemetery; around the Tidal Basin; around and around and around the Capital again and again.  We have made our way out to Shepherdstown, WV and found the birth site of the U.S. Army, where one of my husband’s ancestors (his 5th great uncle, Hugh Stephenson, and very possibly his 5th great grandfather, James) gathered troops to march to Boston to fight with George Washington following the Boston Tea Party.  We found the land where James was born and where James and Hugh grew up.  And, we went to a lecture by Madeleine Albright where she discussed her latest book Prague Winter.  Our days have been full and full of life.

Experiencing something requires us to be open to the moment; to be attentive to our surroundings; and to remember the sights and sounds and feelings that come over us.  Only then can we incorporate something new into our card catalog of experiences and draw on them as part of our understanding and even our belief.

How have you been experiencing the resurrection?  Have you allowed your experiences to impact your understanding?