Seeing post after post on personal blogs and Facebook has made me want to write something… something to try to communicate what Easter is to me. But as I’ve thought of what to write, the task seems impossible. How can I fully communicate to someone else, some who hasn’t lived through the experiences that taught me what I believe about God, the majesty and wonder and awe that I feel on the day that commemorates Christ rising from the dead?
There are too many personal experiences, too many verses of scripture, too many pieces of art, and too many feelings for these pixels to capture. In spite of that inadequacy, I do want to communicate in part what can’t be said in whole.
Eric Whitacre’s “Alleluia” captures some of the gratitude and humility I’m experiencing today. Gratitude for a God who “so loved” the world that he sent is son, and from personally feeling that love. Gratitude for parents and a religious tradition that have both lead me to seek beauty and truth from the world around me. And humility from seeing that I have been given so much, and from knowing that I need to give more.
A large part of of why I’ve chosen this song is that Eric Whitacre describes himself as a spiritual person and an agnostic. I love that the experiences he had with Christianity at King’s College led him to write what he did. That, to me, makes the praise more valuable, in a sense, because even someone who’s not sure they believe can be moved by the love of a Heavenly Father.
On this Easter Sunday, I say “Alleluia, amen.”
Hugh Spackman 