It’s time to celebrate Easter once again. Like Christmas, Easter is one of the big celebrations in the Christian calendar year. The crucifixion of Jesus took place on Good Friday and the resurrection followed three days later. On Good Friday, many people go to church but not quite as many as on Easter Sunday. Even people who don’t attend church the rest of the year sometimes go to church on Easter Sunday. I once heard a priest lament about the numbers that come out for Good Friday services. He said that people aren’t as much interested in the death of Jesus as in his resurrection. Below are some interesting statistics I found on the internet showing the percentages of persons of different faiths (age-of-the-sage.org). As you can see, there are many people for whom Easter is just a secular holiday.
As far as the resurrection goes, even some theologians and priests don’t have all the answers. How could they or anyone else for that matter? Some are on the side of a physical resurrection and some say, we are “changed.” I say this based on the many Easter sermons I have heard in my lifetime by many different clergy.
It is a personal matter whether one believes in a literal resurrection or a symbolic one. The teachings of Jesus, especially those on love and forgiveness are relevant for all people of all faiths and can lead to changed hearts and lives. Perhaps, Easter for the human species is really about inner change, transformation, and hope. By the way, I am no theologian. I’m pondering and trying to gain valuable insights about life and living from the teachings of all religious faiths. 
Change is growth. For me it has been a very spiritual and musical rebirth.
Lenny Krazitz
Apart from the religious celebration, however, we are also celebrating Spring. It doesn’t matter what one’s faith, nationality, or preferences are – we can all celebrate the Earth’s birthday. Easter and Spring, Spring and Easter, are both about new life. There are signs of Spring all around right here in Toronto, and with it, the feeling that we have left the deadness of winter behind. Right outside my building yesterday, I heard many birds chirping beautifully in the trees. They have returned from wherever they had gone for the winter. It was a beautiful sound!
~ Janine di Giovanni
Whether you are immersed in the rituals and traditions of the Christian faith or are on the secular side of this holiday, have a very Happy Easter!
Here are a few quotes about growth, rebirth, and renewal to take with you on your Easter journey.
“Reshaping life! People who can say that have never understood a thing about life—they have never felt its breath, its heartbeat—however much they have seen or done. They look on it as a lump of raw material that needs to be processed by them, to be ennobled by their touch. But life is never a material, a substance to be molded. If you want to know, life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly renewing and remaking and changing and transfiguring itself, it is infinitely beyond your or my obtuse theories about it.”
― Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
Why stay we on the earth except to grow?
Robert Browning
So long as a person is capable of self-renewal they are a living being.
Henri-Frederic Amiel
Nature often holds up a mirror so we can see more clearly the ongoing processes of growth, renewal, and transformation in our lives.
Author Unknown