easter eggs

i love mini eggs. they're one of my favourite signs of spring.  once that pretty blue bag shows up on the grocery store shelves, i know the snow will soon begin to lessen and temperatures will rise.

and until then, the last ugly weeks of winter will be sweetened.  mmm.  mini eggs.

one of my friends asked something like this last year.

"what's up with easter eggs?  what does chocolate have to do with the death of Jesus anyway?"

good question.  why do we celebrate easter - that bloody, awful weekend - by sending kids out into the yard, eager and hopeful to find ... eggs?

i remember being a little kid, playing outside in the sodden ugly brown of canadian springtime.  wet grass sucking at my rubber boots.  the sky overcast.  hands, free from a winter of wet mittens, red and chappy.  nose running.  cats stalking low under bare shrubs.  friends playing nearby, in that alone-together way kids have. 

when i suddenly found myself standing quite still. 

there, at my feet, half-hidden in the rotten twigs and sopping squelch of melting snow, a robin's egg - blue as the sky on the last day of school, and more delicate than my grandmother's crochet quilt.

one half a perfect cup, the other half in chips and shards. 

i thrilled with the excitement of it.
a bird was here.
new to life, and not eaten or crushed or frozen to death.
here - flying around somewhere, maybe chirping or swallowing worms - a brand new bird, just like that.  alive.

the sheer magic of it.  life.

and that - of course - is the great story of easter, the thrilling unreasonable truth of it.  early one morning, women went walking, carrying spices to wrap Jesus' dead body.  expecting to argue with guards to open the tomb, expecting the dank ugly underground to be heavy with inevitability, expecting their hearts to sink even lower.

but they did not find death.
they did not find death.
they found no guards, no seal -

they found the empty tomb.
an eggshell, burst wide gorgeous open and Jesus is alive. 
hope like a trembling new robin beating in their breasts, sky bluer than that sweet blue, delight richer than a creme-egg ...

alive.

and that is the good news that easter eggs carry.