A story to live by

On Maundy Thursday this year we shared a delightful Passover meal with our Jewish neighbors. With much kindness and care they had made a vegetarian Passover feast, creatively turning meat dishes into veggie just for us. We enjoyed their story-telling and their experiences of Passover from being children to the present. Our neighbor's parents had fled to Israel after surviving the Shoah, rebuilt their lives there, and eventually moved to the USA—truly a story of life from death, and deeply moving.
Stories of death and new birth are the most powerful stories we tell. "Death and resurrection" was for psychologist Carl Jung an element of trans-personal symbolism, something deep in the collective unconscious. Dying and rising is an "archetype-as-such" that emerges in stories, myths, and dreams in every culture and every human life. The details of the stories differ, as each emerges out of the depths of the collective unconscious. Yet, their power to shape our lives, give us hope, and provide a sense of meaning is undeniable.
Today I celebrate Easter with the age-old acclamation "Christ is Risen!" The ancient story has been with me as far as memory will allow. It has always been a story set in springtime, with the season's new life, and the beginning of warmer weather. In my front garden yesterday, in dealing with the waste of winter, I came across a single daffodil. "I'm here again! The death of winter is over. The cycle of life continues." And so it does.
Such is a story to live by.
Happy Easter to all,
+Ab. Andy