A very merry re-birthday to me – to who? Whilst the characters of Alice in Wonderland celebrate 364 un-birthdays a year, I celebrate just one re-birthday. It happens every year on the 18^th April. But to tell the truth I would often celebrate it twice! You see, I was re-born into Christ at the Easter Vigil in 1987. As the date of Easter changes each year because of the sun, the moon, the equinox and Sunday; a combination that rarely falls on the 18^th of April, I have a choice to make – do I celebrate a date or an event?….

Now the Easter Vigil on which I was re-born is actually the day before Easter. So Easter that year was the 19^th April. It occurred again in 1992 and will not occur again until 2071 when I will be 84 years re-born. As I’m a lot older born-born, then I will probably be in my grave and my soul if not in heaven, then well on the way.

So do I celebrate a date or an event? A date is important but it usually marks a day in the calendar when we can get together with family and friends to mark an important occasion. An event brings with it the possibility of deeper meaning. Marking my birthday is all well and good, but it doesn’t demand anything of me. Marking my Baptism requires that I examine where I am now…how have I changed and grown and become more ‘Christ-like?’

‘Behold, I make all things new.’ (Revelation 21:5) Being plunged into the waters of re-birth is a freeing from stagnation. It is a movement of ‘Jah People’ from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the promised land of Isra-el (he who struggles with God – Genesis 32:22-31). An event like the life, death and resurrection of Christ can be revisited every day because it carries with it that possibility of movement, of growth and change. Loving more and more like he loved and being loved completely by the one who caused this life to be.

Time stands still for the Mad Hatter, stuck at 6pm. So life is the endless repetition of a tea party. It is a tea party without meaning. The only thing that they can think to celebrate is a birthday and because it is no one’s birthday it becomes an ‘un-birthday’. Life becomes un-done, un-interesting, un-rewarding, un-likable. When life is ‘un’ it is without anything. Rather than falling down a rabbit hole where time stands still or is a state of perpetual repetition, endlessly being served tea that doesn’t exist and told riddles that have no answers…

Let us celebrate what is. I am connected, I am alive, I am loved, I am forgiven…I am set free by the great ‘I am’ himself to live in the fulness of relationship. Although much of life is still mysterious, I am in touch with the energy of its meaning, life is no longer a riddle that I have to solve.

Easter Sunday – an event that invites us to face the East in expectation of the rising Sun. To rise, as if from the grave, accepting the glory of the risen Son and waiting in the expectation of his coming again in completion and fulness.

A Happy and Glorious Eastertide to you all…with multiple ‘Alleluias’.