Easter Reflection - Edith Franklin

What does Easter mean to me?

This Easter, I am going to stay at a monastery. A monastery can be a bit like a university library; it’s quiet, and people look mysteriously studious and preoccupied with something you can’t see. While I'm already wondering if I’m going to accidentally fall asleep in any of the many services I’ll attend during Holy Week, I’m also excited to spend some time away from my normal life, partly to try being more awake to reality, to resist normalising apathy or despair.

For Christians as we remember Jesus’ story over the coming days, we’re re-enacting a faith that can feel paradoxical. We’re asked to stay with the reality of injustice in the world, not to turn away or find scapegoats. In the Easter story we find that God draws nearest to us in the darkest places and moments, and that love is the deepest form of resistance.

It’s a message that is truly applicable to everyday life, but only if we pay attention. One of the gifts of spring is that the days are longer, and the sky sometimes clearer. It feels as if we are being given another chance to look longer and more closely at the world around us.

Unlike the evergreen screen you’re probably reading this on, reality appears in cycles. It sleeps and wakes, decays and re-springs, and now is the time to bear witness to that change. I hope that, for anyone reading this, it is a restful break, and a chance for renewed attention to our shared world. Happy Easter!

Written by Edith Franklin - Multifaith Chaplaincy Student Assistant

The views expressed in this reflection are those of the student and do not necessarily represent the position of the University of Birmingham's Multifaith Chaplaincy.