Umma embraced her role as Samonim, serving with a luminous smile. I never bought it. I judged it the face an Umma puts to protect her child from worries, even when her child became an adult and knows that life forces roles on you. Come Sunday morning, she was smiling.

This weekend, we celebrated the second birthday of Nemo, the child of two women who are giants in our community, who has grown up in and with the community. I saw this child who is filled with all of the different emotions we experience in human life, and his parents affirming each one with love and grace, holding space for those feelings. In the children of PAAC, including my own, I saw so much hope. These are children growing up knowing their families will love them for exactly who they are and will be, unconstricted by the restraints I grew up with (a world full of strict gender conformity and restrictive, toxic theology).

When the ordinary is too much to bear
and the days have bled one into another,
when the to-do list is too long
and everywhere we look seems to demand
more than we can give,

It is Easter morning and the world is broken. Alleluia.

It is Easter morning and we have been told a lie: The crucifixion of a christ was a necessary injustice. Alleluia.

To some, the Messiah was predicted to be a political leader, a singular hero, liberation through the only means that liberation could come. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. And no one had a blueprint for what would come next.

They identified with Jesus, because Jesus identified with them. Whipped, flogged, slapped in the face, crucified, hung.

We each have our own multifaceted relationship to the rhythms that have shaped us. Some we keep, sometimes improvising and re-creating it as our patterns of life change. Others we discard, knowing that they aren’t right for our souls right now.

When I turned the corner into the quad and saw the trees, my heart broke open in aching grief for my mother, who died two years ago. History incarnated this space and made it sacred, immersing me within this small piece of my mother’s life.