One of my close friends shared her poem with me…”A Covid Eastering.”   While we are still in the Easter season, and still in the midst of the Covid 19 pandemic, I thought it a poignant piece to share with all of you.  We do indeed continue to rise…and to witness the sheer sacrifice of first responders, health care workers, grocery store clerks and many others…who rise to work another day!   Maria Patterson, CDP wrote this poem on Easter Sunday…but it could be written and lived on any day in these challenging times.  May we all believe in the graces of that first Easter morn, when Mary went to the tomb and found it empty, and hear the Lord say our name, and indeed know that He lives.  May we rise to a deepened faith in our Provident God, trusting that resurrection is all around us…if we but have eyes to see.

For those of you who may not know, Maria also writes music and has two CDs.  They have wonderful and inspiring messages.  If you’d be interested in purchasing one of them they are titled:  “I Wait”  and “Breathe Your Soul.”  Each are $12.00.  You can reach her at mpatterson@cdpsisters.org to order.

An Easter morn thickly grayed
holding no chance of sunlight
much less hope for a resurrection.
Pelting downpours
larger than life raindrops
run rivers through my backyard
oceans in lower lying flatlands…
And Covid ravages our land
stealing breath and energy and yes, life itself,
before my very eyes life is swept away
before my very eyes hopelessness roots itself
into the collective psyche challenging
hope and faith to rise and stare down and hiss 
at an unseen foe.
Resurrection has its work cut out this Easter Day…
Still I trust
that with you, we rise,
though it may be unseen rising
perhaps mist in the air
or a shadowy movement…
Still, in faith, with you, we rise…
we rise faithfully, fully,
fully risen, fully alive,
A different humming echoes across hearts and lands:
We will not give up, over, or in
We will not be victims…
We will rise.

Barbara McMullen, CDP