Showing posts with label Rev. Theresa Novak. Show all posts

Sunday, April 5, 2026

Easter and the Rites of Spring Verse--National Poetry Month 2026

The Resurrection--the central miracle of Christian faith.

It is Easter, the holiest day of the year for traditional Christians, celebrating the resurrection of Jesus, the conformation of him as the Christ, and the promise of eternal life for those who believe. It’s powerful stuff that brings comfort and hope to millions.

It also gives some folks the willies, the hives, or both. And a lot of those folks end up in Unitarian Universalist congregations. That’s gotta make it tough for our preachers—ahem ministers since we tend to cringe at the sound of that old fashion word and all it connotes. We are non-creedal and pride ourselves on being open and accepting to a wide variety of spiritual beliefs and practices united by covenant in communities that pledge mutual respect and support in the quest for meaning. But on Easter, the stresses sometimes show.

There are congregations where half the members stay home lest they endure the obligatory “annual Christian” sermon or even communion. In the heyday of humanists in the '50s and '60s when they dominated many congregations, Easter was even the occasion of more of a debunking lecture than a sermon. You don’t see that so much anymore both because the humanists, who still make up the largest philosophic segment of UU membership, have lost a little of that particular chip on the shoulder, and because of general rise in spirituality in our communities including various stripes of theism and pantheism.

That includes self-identified Christians and many others who identify themselves as “followers of the religion of Jesus not about Jesus,” meaning the rabbi of the Sermon on the Mount, and not necessarily who may have rolled the stone away to unseal his own tomb.

Since the World Parliament of Religions during the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 Unitarians and Universalists have become ever more aware of non-Abrahamic and traditional world religions. Seeking and finding the underlying, uniting universal principles among them has become our hobbyhorse. Among the probably not terribly surprising discoveries is the idea that spiritual practice as expressed in ritual is closely linked to the repeating cycles of the seasons.

Many of our Easter services make this a central theme. It is in our wheelhouse. It is sometimes done with embarrassing shallowness as a pared down metaphor that the minister can’t quite get his or her heart into. But in the right hands powerful truths are explored and unexpected depths plumbed.

Stripped down some sermons may follow these lines—

Easter’s date is tied to a Jewish calendar based on the cycles of the moon. Thus, Easter’s date slowly changes relative to our current solar-based Gregorian calendar and slowly creeps forward such that it would ultimately slip out of spring entirely—except the “reset” from the Julian to Gregorian solar calendars in the 18thCentury keeps the holiday in the spring.

Easter is tied to the Jewish calendar because Jesus and his disciples chose to travel to Jerusalem to observe Passover. Jesus and his disciples were religious Jews and the Last Supper was a Seder.

Passover celebrates the Moses-led miracle that saved the tribes of Abraham from bondage in Egypt—a virtual rebirth as a people and nation. For centuries the Yahweh-worshiping tribes who came to be known as Jews commemorated that miracle in lambing season, perhaps because it was blood of sacrificial lambs that was smeared on Jewish lintels that signaled to the killing Angels to “pass-over” Jewish homes—when the eldest sons from all other Egyptian homes were killed—the final catastrophe that convinced Pharaoh at last to free his slaves.

Whether or not Passover as a historic event actually fell in the spring, the commemoration is firmly placed in that season of rebirth.

Unitarian Universalists often cast Easter as just one of many festivals celebrating Spring and the rebirth of nature.

This annual explosion of new life just getting under way. And in a way that is good. The crocuses and daffodils remind us that in some ways the central Christian story—the death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven of Jesus—commemorates also the resurrection of nature we see around us every spring.

Celebrating the annual rebirth of nature cuts across and unites huge sectors of all cultures and religions.

While the Jews were celebrating Passover, their cousin tribes who worshiped Baal and the ancient fertility goddess Astarte (who some paleontologists find represented in the tiny pregnant female torsos found in Paleolithic sites) also held rituals that celebrated the season. The Seleucid Greeks who once conquered Judea, as well as those Romans who occupied the country in the time of Jesus, both had spring festivals associated with fertility goddesses.

Paleolithic mother goddess figurines found across much of Europe and the Near East representing fertility and often associated with the later Semitic goddess Astarte.

In Northern Europe long before Christianity was born, tribes celebrated the return of spring with a grand festival to commemorate their goddess of fertility and springtime. Among some of the Germanic tribes that goddess was named Ēostre or Ostara.

Like many traditional gods and goddesses associated with nature, Ēostre was often represented by the rabbit, that most fertile and prolific of all warm-blooded creatures.

Oestra was often associated with hares--the most fertile of all animals.

During the 2nd Century of the Christian era, when missionaries found that the rebirth holiday of those Ēostre-celebrating Germanic tribes coincided with the Christian observance of the resurrection of Christ, what could be more fitting than to join these two together into one holy day.

Today, our spring ceremony mostly still celebrates an Easter with chocolate bunnies and eggs side by side with a Risen Christ religious observance—joining together several traditions, like many other Christian customs do—the Yule log, hanging of greens, and erection of an evergreen tree alongside the Crèche at Christmas time.

One way or another, Passover, Ēostre, and Easter, all celebrate rebirth and renewal.

Here are some poems that touch on all of these themes.

The Morning of the Resurrection by Sir Edward Coley Burner-Jones, a member of the Pre-Raphaelite circle.

Christina Rossetti was a leading 19th Century British poet who was a member of the Pre-Raphaelite artistic movement led by her brothers. Identified as a romantic poet, she was also a proto-feminist and a High Church Anglo-Catholic mystic. This poem is one of the finest explorations of the personal meaning Christians find in the Resurrection that I have ever read.

A Better Resurrection

I have no wit, no words, no tears;
  My heart within me like a stone
Is numb’d too much for hopes or fears;
  Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimm’d with grief
  No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
  O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf,
  My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
  And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
  No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall—the sap of Spring;
  O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl,
  A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
  Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perish’d thing;
  Melt and remould it, till it be

A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me.

—Christina Rossetti

Easter Lillies, the traditional symbol of spring rebirth.

Teresinka Pereira is a contemporary Brazilian-American poet who saw the connection in this poem posted on the web site of the International Forum for the Literature and Culture of Peace (IFLAC).

Spring/Passover/Easter

The bridge between death
and return to life
is full of spring sights.
From the unexpected lightning
to the wind that comes back
with swallows and colorful sky
giving flowers to the gardens
there is a dream flowing
waiting for a chance
to stay forever.
Hope roars and echoes
in joy and happiness.
The lily of Easter and Passover
becomes Spring incarnation
in the eyes of the one who
dares to love.

—Teresinka Pereira

Oestre rises at dawn.

Lady Caer Morganna is the identity of a Solitary Eclectic Wiccan Priestess who blogs at The Wicca Life . Wicca is a modern religion—sometimes claimed to be the fastest growing faith in the U.S—which draws mainly from Celtic traditions but is also respectful of other so-called pagan traditions including the Germanic and Norse. Its pantheistic, earth-centered spirituality is shared by many UUs and indeed many practice both faiths.

Oestre

The snow has all melted
And winter has gone,
Now Nature is singing
Springs’ most beautiful song;
As we honor the Goddess -
The Devine Eostre,
While she breathes her life
Into the birds and the bees;
She's fertile and loving
Ancient Mother is she
From the youngest child
To the oldest tree

—Lady Caer Morganna

Rev. Theresa Novak.

Finally, let’s hear from a UU minister who forthrightly connects with the powerful resurrection story of the Bible. The Rev. Theresa Novak is now retired and blogs at Sermons, Poetry, and Other Musings .

Easter

What an effort it must have been
To climb down from that cross
So many centuries ago
They thought you were dead forever
It certainly looked like that
You’d prayed you last prayer
Healed your last leper
Driven out your last demon.
They even buried you.
t must have felt so good
To lay your head down
The funeral cloths were soft.
The darkness was comforting
So weary you were
Tired, hurt, bleeding.
You’d seen so much
Suffered so much
Done so much
What harm could it do
To give into rest
For a few days
It must have been hard
To hear the weeping
Of those who had loved you
Of those who had betrayed you
The stone was heavy
But you had to push it aside
Rolling away defeat
Banishing hopelessness
Overcoming fear.
What an effort it must have taken
To come back not knowing
What people would think
How they would respond
Would they think the miracle
Was only about you?
Thank you for letting us know
That we each have the chance
The opportunity, the responsibility
To be reborn
Resurrected.

—Theresa Novak

Monday, March 15, 2021

Looking back One Year—Coronavirus Hullabaloo and Poetry

The villain of the year,

Note—It was just getting started a year ago today, but poets were already weighing in.

OK. I guess it’s time to address the elephant in the room—the Coronavirus pandemic. Everyone else has. In fact it is dominating the national consciousness unlike anything since the days immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

I won’t duplicate the common sense precautions and recommendations that flood our TV, newspapers, and social media. You can get that anywhere. Nor will I inundate you with a history of the global spread of the disease or mind numbing statistics and prognostications. Those are grim enough and you are probably seeing infection spread maps in your dreams. And I am not even going to rail against Trump, his ignorance, vanity, criminally inept management, and attempts to use the crisis as a cover for tax breaks to wealthy cronies, attacks on Social Security and Medicare, and xenophobic exploitation. Surely he has not only shot himself in the foot but blown holes in the bottom of his sinking boat. I won’t wring my hands or finger point over panic buying and hoarding. There will be enough shaming.

From Friday the 13th through today, the Ides of March with all of its connotations of foretold doom, our lives have been turned upside down. Much of the country is on lock down. Social distancing is the euphemism of the day—a sad condition in a country that was already starved for human interaction in the age of being chained to our smart phones and devices. Individuals and families are stressed by lost income—so many of us live from paycheck to paycheck—and by having to cope with unexpected home child care. Even the most loving and well-adjusted of families might find enforced confinement with each other for days or weeks a harrowing experience.

My own life and community have been affected—although I have little to complain about compared to those who have actually been exposed to the virus and/or have fallen ill. Two major projects that I have been working on for weeks have been suddenly postponed. Poets in Resistance II had to be scrapped at the last moment when the McHenry County Department of Health declared an emergency and recommended the cancelations of all gatherings of 50 or more. That program will be difficult to reschedule and we will have to start nearly from scratch lining up poets and making other arrangements. The Promise and Practice of Our Faith, a special worship service featuring exclusively the voices of Black Unitarian Universalists was pushed back one week from today to March 23 and it will be conducted without the Congregation present, to be shared with Zoom meeting technologies.

Indeed the Tree of Life UU Congregation in McHenry, Illinois is closing the building to all meetings and gatherings until further notice. That includes the Social Justice Team meeting scheduled for this coming Wednesday and to long-planned Murfin family gatherings for which we had rented the church.

Meanwhile, because of my age—I turn 71 on St. Patrick’s Day and because I have an irregular heart beat and shortness of breath—my wife Kathy has decided that I should be held in close confinement. We are in intense and on-going negotiations about when I might be permitted to venture from the house. So far I may be permitted to walk a block and a half to cast my vote in the Illinois Primary on Tuesday as long as I pick a time of the day when turn-out is expected to be light. But absolutely no results watching parties or victory celebrations.

Meanwhile to help feed the spiritual need we share these inspiring poems.

The Rev. Lynn Unger.

The Rev. Lynn Ungar lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her wife, teenaged daughter, two dogs and two cats. She serves as the Minister for Lifespan Learning for the Church of the Larger Fellowship, an online Unitarian Universalist congregation. This poem when almost immediately viral and spread so quickly it was noted in an article in the Chicago Tribune.

Pandemic

What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.

And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.

Promise this world your love—a
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.

—Lynn Ungar

March 11, 2020

Brother Richard Hendrick

Brother Richard Hendrick is a Capuchin Franciscan priest-friar, living and working in Ireland He is the Guardian of Ards Friary in Donegal which includes a large residential retreat center, teaches Christian meditation and mindfulness, and works with the Sanctuary Spirituality Centre in inner city Dublin.

Lockdown

Yes there is fear.
Yes there is isolation.
Yes there is panic buying.
Yes there is sickness.
Yes there is even death.
But,
They say that in Wuhan after so many years of noise
You can hear the birds again.
They say that after just a few weeks of quiet
The sky is no longer thick with fumes
But blue and grey and clear.
They say that in the streets of Assisi
People are singing to each other
across the empty squares,
keeping their windows open
so that those who are alone
may hear the sounds of family around them.
They say that a hotel in the West of Ireland
Is offering free meals and delivery to the housebound.
Today a young woman I know
is busy spreading fliers with her number
through the neighbourhood
So that the elders may have someone to call on.
Today Churches, Synagogues, Mosques and Temples
are preparing to welcome
and shelter the homeless, the sick, the weary
All over the world people are slowing down and reflecting
All over the world people are looking at their neighbours in a new way
All over the world people are waking up to a new reality
To how big we really are.
To how little control we really have.
To what really matters.
To Love.
So we pray and we remember that
Yes there is fear.
But there does not have to be hate.
Yes there is isolation.
But there does not have to be loneliness.
Yes there is panic buying.
But there does not have to be meanness.
Yes there is sickness.
But there does not have to be disease of the soul
Yes there is even death.
But there can always be a rebirth of love.
Wake to the choices you make as to how to live now.
Today, breathe.
Listen, behind the factory noises of your panic
The birds are singing again
The sky is clearing,
Spring is coming,
And we are always encompassed by Love.
Open the windows of your soul
And though you may not be able
to touch across the empty square,
Sing.

—Richard Hendrick

March 13, 2020

The Rev. Theresa Novak.

Other poets faced fear. The Rev. Theresa Novak is a retired Unitarian Universalist minister who lives in San Rafael, California with her wife and partner of 43 years. She has written poetry since her teen years and blogs at Sermons, Poetry, and Other Musings.

When Fear Comes

When fear comes knocking

I never know

If I should answer

Or hide somewhere inside.

Maybe it won’t know

That I am here.

Maybe it will go away

If I leave it standing

At the door.

But fear is just a

Messenger, a warning.

Not a harbinger

Of what must be.

Listen, Fear,

I hear you.

I’ll be as careful as I can

And I thank you

For your time.

Go away now.

I need courage more

Just now.

Send some over, please.

—Rev. Theresa Novak

March 11, 2020

The Old Man reading at Tree of Life for the last time before the pandemic.

Finally, here is a doleful piece by the Old Man.

Love in the Time of a Plague

Have you wondered what it would be like—

in an Egyptian mud hut when the Angels of Death

did not passover your door?

When the calls of bring out your dead

rang from overburdened carts on London’s muddy lanes?

When wrapping your children in the Small Pox blankets

so kindly given to you by the invaders of your country?

When Yellow Fever seemed to rise in the swamp air

or Typhoid and Cholera did their mysterious work?

When Doughboy camps, refugee havens, and troopships

brought death dwarfing the gore of the trenches?

When ordinary summer colds sent children in the thousands

into iron lungs on crowded wards?

When the unwanted and despised were reaped by God’s wrath

and rest stood aside until the innocent were touched?

Now we know, or imagine we do, as Cassandras cry alarm

and we retreat into isolation.

That fear and isolation may be more lethal than an alien virus

sapping our lonely souls even if our bodies are spared.

Now comes the time of love in the age of a plague—

how do we reach out to caress a face we cannot touch?

—Patrick Murfin

March 15, 2020

Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Verses for the New Plague—National Poetry Month 2020

Poets tackle the Coronavirus pandemic.

One of the big jobs of poets is to reflect on the world around them. Whole books were quickly assembled after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and after the launch of the War in Iraq. The international refugee crisis and the U.S. persecution of asylum seekers and immigrant families is another recent example. And, of course, resistance poetry has become a staple of the Trump maladministration. So the Coronavirus pandemic and the extraordinary changes it has brought to all of our lives is fertile gist for verse. Here is a short roundup of just some of the poems and poets whose work I have encountered recently on social media.

Rev. Theresa Novack.

The Rev. Theresa Novak has been featured in previous National Poetry Month entries. She frequently posts insightful poetry on her blog Sermon, Poetry, and Other Musings. A graduate of the University of California at Berkley, she had a career as a Social Security Administration manager before enrolling at Star King and embarking on a second career as a minister. She is the Minister Emerita of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Ogden in Utah. She lives in California with her wife.

Covid Poem

Live Your Life

Live your life

Such as it is now

This isn’t ending soon

The world grows smaller

Shrinks down to a neighborhood

A house, a room, a prison cell.

Our connections are more distant

But deeper too

As we share the fear

The grief, the loss.

Howling in the night

We find some small release.

Live your life

Such as it is

While you have it

While you can.

Relish the sunshine

Savor the flowers

Bursting with spring

They are

What your soul needs now.

Talk to your neighbor

From a distance of course

Help them if you can.

We are all refugees now

There is no escape.

There are no borders

Anymore.

This is the whole world

A planet in pain and fear.

Live Your Life

Live your life.

It is what you have

For now.

Enjoy each day, each moment

Find a way to laugh

To smile.

Courage will come.

This isn’t ending soon

I hope not for me

Or for you.

—Theresa Novak

Ken Balmes.

Ken Balmes is a stalwart of the McHenry County poetry scene who has read at the Raue Center for the Performing Arts in Crystal Lake, at Atrocious Poets programs in Woodstock, and at Poetry Night Open Mics at the Hidden Pearl in McHenry. His work is deeply personal and often lingers in the quiet spaces of life. He is noted for the devoted care of his disabled and wheelchair bound wife who he brings to all of his events and for the kilts he always wears. He described himself as a “still living white male of mixed European ancestry (Celtic, Spanish, German, French Canadian) who never had a class in poetry.”

Covid Poem

Alone in the house

Not that unusual.

But mandated so

Makes verbal constraints

Feel as if physical.

A dictated singular solitude

Hiding from a twenty-first century plague.

Calling to neighbors across the way

Daring not to get closer.

Passers-by in the street

Greeted, but not approached.

At the market

Runs on goods and cash.

Days of overcast skies

Deepen the feel

Of imaginary bars on my door.

Those who could have prevented

Or lessened the scourge,

Did not.

Recalling Poe’s Masque of the Red Death

How fitting if they should meet that fate.

Yet out my window

Daffodils rising in the lawn

Birds at the feeder free to fly about.

There is hope, or at least solace

Life endures.

—Ken Balmes

Jerry Pendergast.

Jerry Pendergast is a Chicago poet and activist who frequently shares his work on the Chicago Revolutionary Poets Brigade Facebook group and can be seen at readings around the city at venues like The Guild Annex and Green Mill Tavern. This highly topical poem was inspired not only by Easter but by the Covid 19 death of John Prine and other artists.

Easter 2020 USA

A line by Yeats Revisited

Was it needless death after all?

Fingers that will never press another key

Others that will never strum another string.

Or hold another bow

Songs left unfinished, unsung

How low have we sunk?

Feet on a bed

with the rest of someone’s body

mouth waiting for a breathing aid.

Will they ever touch a stage or even a floor again?

spring the body in a leap

or a glide?

If not, will it be needless death?

Is breath, that will never again

send notes rising and falling

Voices that will never sung or speak

another word,

Goodbyes remote

or only imagined

needless death?

When recovered unable

to thank some of those

who helped them

because they are gone,

how deeper can we fall?

A panel that has no answer

Not even a guess

Are these needless deaths after all

Yes.

—Jerry Pendergast

Jessica Miller.

Jessica Miller is a young woman who lives in Crystal Lake and recently began attending the Tree of Life U.U. Congregation in McHenry. About this poem she wrote, “Patrick Murfin from UU Tree of Life inspired me to write a pandemic poem. I’m looking forward to his event [Poets in Resistance] in the future! It’s been awhile since I’ve written anything, but I’m feeling the muse today.”

Untitled

Day by Day

Hour by hour

Minute by minute

I’m starting to know people

Who’ve got the Corona

A teacher

A friend

A Mother

A Brother

Touching us all

Sneaking past

Our carefully

Or not so carefully

Crafted tower defenses

Churches open in defiance

Anointed in the BLOOD of Jesus

And the innocents

Just trying to pay the rent

With a job in the gig economy

To put food on the table

That has been taken TO and FROM

With great risk

We navigate the

Invisible

China

Virus