Letter from Amy: April 8, 2026

Comic #10 in a 30-day series on the resurrection by Madeleine Jubilee Saito. See the entire series on her site here.

Happy Easter, friends!

Easter is a whole season, not just a single day, 50 days (longer than Lent!) of celebrating the resurrection and all that it means for our lives.

Jesus' resurrection shows us that God's salvation of the world is happening through the material world, not in spite of it; through our human bodies, not in spite of them. One simple way to celebrate Easter, then, is to enjoy God's gift of being human in a created world. Take a walk or run or ride, weed a garden, listen to birds, linger over coffee with a friend, browse a bookstore, sit in the sun, build something, fix something. "Taste and see that the Lord is good" and give thanks! (This is also the entry point for praying the Examen, as we preached about throughout Lent, and which I hope you'll continue to practice.)

Sunday's sermon reminded us that Jesus is calling us to a new and fully human life in him. So this week, I wanted to share a few poems that get at the creaturely, humanly nature of this invitation.

Seven Stanzas at Easter

by John Updike (1960)

Make no mistake: if he rose at all

It was as his body;

If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit,

The amino acids rekindle,

The Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,

Each soft spring recurrent;

It was not as his Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the

Eleven apostles;

It was as his flesh; ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes

The same valved heart

That — pierced — died, withered, paused, and then regathered

Out of enduring Might

New strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,

Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,

Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded

Credulity of earlier ages:

Let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,

Not a stone in a story,

But the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of

Time will eclipse for each of us

The wide light of day.

And if we have an angel at the tomb,

Make it a real angel,

Weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in

The dawn light, robed in real linen

Spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,

For our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,

Lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed

By the miracle,

And crushed by remonstrance.

***

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

by Wendell Berry (1973)

Note: This is the poem I quoted, in part, in Sunday's sermon. I have always appreciated Berry's earthy vision for what it means to "practice resurrection," and I particularly love his line "every day do something that won't compute" in contrast to our world of algorithms and generative AI (the subject of Sunday's sermon). A number of you asked me for the full text of the poem, so I am including it here, with the caveat that a few lines are quite political, written in the context of the Vietnam War.

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,

vacation with pay. Want more

of everything ready-made. Be afraid

to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.

Not even your future will be a mystery

any more. Your mind will be punched in a card

and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something

they will call you. When they want you

to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something

that won’t compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace

the flag. Hope to live in that free

republic for which it stands.

Give your approval to all you cannot

understand. Praise ignorance, for what man

has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest

that you did not plant,

that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested

when they have rotted into the mold.

Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus

that will build under the trees

every thousand years.

Listen to carrion — put your ear

close, and hear the faint chattering

of the songs that are to come.

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts.

So long as women do not go cheap

for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy

a woman satisfied to bear a child?

Will this disturb the sleep

of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.

Lie down in the shade. Rest your head

in her lap. Swear allegiance

to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos

can predict the motions of your mind,

lose it. Leave it as a sign

to mark the false trail, the way

you didn’t go. Be like the fox

who makes more tracks than necessary,

some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection.

***

I'm taking a couple of days to rest after Holy Week, but I'll be back on Thursday! And I look forward to seeing you Sunday as we continue our celebration of the resurrection.

With love,

Amy