Resurrection Sunday: Let Him Easter in Us

For a week or so I’ve been drawn to the Gerard Manley Hopkins line, “Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness in us.” I’m reconsidering its meaning this year.

I first saw the line in a Catholic bookstore at an Iowa retreat center 20 years ago. Hopkins’ words were incorporated into the mission statement of a female religious order in the Midwest, and one of the Sisters of the order had painted the line in watercolor, beautifully depicting the phrase in a way that caught my eye. I’ve kept the framed work in a place where I can see it almost daily since that time.

All these years, I’ve been moved by the novelty of Hopkins’ use of “easter” as a verb, an action word. Again this Holy Week, I’ve played around with what “let him easter in us” might mean. At the moment, I only have hints and guesses. For now, I’m exploring.

A couple of days ago, I randomly connected Hopkins’ line with a familiar verse from Mary Oliver. Surely to “let him easter in us” has something to do with life and vibrancy.

The Mary Oliver question which came to mind in my pondering simply asks: “Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?”

The line comes squarely in the center of her lengthy, “Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches,” a poem which invites us to a more vibrant, alive existence by getting out of our self-focus and into the lives of things around us: The long branches of young locust trees in early summer, or the sea, or the grass.

She writes:

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!

And then:

For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!

It has occurred to me this week that “breathing just a little and calling it a life” is not the same as letting him easter in us.


Further, this week I am holding the tension of reconciliation as I ponder “let him easter in us.” Paul wrote in 2 Cor. 5 that this was Christ’s work in the world, reconciling the world. I assume this work continues in an even greater way post-Resurrection. Christ eastering in us and in the world surely has something to do with reconciliation, making right the divisions and factions that exist within us, among us, and in the world.

Reconciliation is making right, making peace. The dictionary definition says “to restore to friendship or harmony,” so it includes a work of restoration.

Many times I am like the political leaders who urge oneness and harmony among partisans, but who really mean, “There will only be oneness and harmony if you come to my position on this issue, if you see things my way, if you adopt my value system.” This is a sham of harmony and has nothing to do with reconciliation.

Authentic reconciliation stands in the center and holds all the sides, all the partisans, all the variances together. Again, Paul said that in Christ, there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no rich or poor, no slave or free, but all are one in Christ. So it sounds like, when I take one position or another – and believe me, I definitely have my firmly-held positions!! – I’m in no place to reconcile. If I am in one position or another, dug in, I’m no longer able to reconcile, to bring together. I may be entrenched, but not in a place of restoring friendship and harmony.

From that place, people in the “opposing camp” become “elites” or “snowflakes,” or they become “a basket of deplorables.” Reconciliation cannot happen there.

It seems to me that reconciliation somehow holds both (or all) the extremes together, in order to work toward healing and oneness. This is strenuous work, and requires that we get outside of ourselves, that we take on a new mind, that our lives are oriented as “the mind of Christ.”

It is a bogus oneness to say that we all need to come together as one nation or one denomination or one whatever, while advocating that everyone needs to agree with me . . . that only if others come to my position can there be oneness. This is a pseudo-oneness, a sham of reconciliation.

To reconcile is to make peace, to live into a wholeness which transcends one position or another position. To make peace – shalom – brings completeness . . . making peace and restoring friendship with God . . . making peace among the scattered parts of ourselves, befriending our own lives again . . . making peace with others, especially those with whom we disagree.

Are some causes unjust? Certainly!

Are other causes worth fighting for? Definitely!

But in every case, we are invited to follow Christ, whose work was reconciling the world to God . . . to be reconcilers, to make peace, to listen to the other, to treat the other with respect and friendship, to work toward shalom . . . the invitation stands for those who are post-Resurrection disciples.

Let him easter in us. At some level, at least in my thinking today, Christ eastering in us means we join him in his work of reconciling the world.