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I can’t remember the last time Easter was like this: warm, sunny, fragrant, green, and blooming. For once the weather cooperated and delivered the glory the day celebrates.

I woke to my kids coming into my bed, wishing me a happy Easter. At 11 and 9, they’re both big for their ages and yet their hearts are still so tender and eager. Holding my daughter close to me, I flashed back to the days when her diaper used to rustle as she climbed into bed with me, her thumb and forefinger tucked into her mouth, her other hand holding a blankie.

She and her brother bought Easter gifts for us. E-Grrrl gave me a bright red ceramic cup and a bottle of nail polish. Mr. A gave me a set of colored pencils to use on my art projects and a potted narcissus he bought at the flower shop.

There was candy before breakfast and an egg hunt outdoors. Unfortunately, my stomach tied itself into a knot and when it came time to leave for church, I had to stay behind. By mid-afternoon I was feeling better and ventured out into the sunshine for a long walk on my own. I wandered the dirt lanes and wandelings near my home—the acres and acres of forest surrounded by fields that will produce potatoes, wheat, rapeseed, and beets later in the season.

With my camera in hand, I took photo after photo of the wildflowers, inhaling the rich scent of the earth, grateful not to be slogging through mud on the footpaths.

Easter. Resurrection. Eternal life. All things made new.

I turned all those big ideas over in my head as I walked, schussing out what I believe, what I hope for.

When I lost my sister and parents, I found scant comfort from the idea of an afterlife. Did it exist? Did it not? Did it matter?

At the time all that mattered to me was that I was here and they were not. Whether I’d see them again or not was irrelevant to how life felt without them in it. Their life with me in this time and place was over. Period. End of story.

I don’t’ spend a lot of time thinking about heaven and hell. I don’t think of hell as a place at all but tend to agree with a priest who once told me he didn’t think hell existed, that the “wages of sin” were indeed death and that evil souls simply died.

And heaven--I don’t know. Is it a place? A presence? A state of consciousness? A state of being? Another dimension? Does it exist at all? I love C.S. Lewis’s vision of heaven as a “new heaven and a new earth” where all is familiar and yet better than anything experienced before. Walking through woods dotted with wildflowers and blooming trees, I want to believe in the possibility of a fresh and new creation. A world unexplored and yet not hostile, a place shared by many and exploited by none.

While I sometimes question what Jesus’ death means, I never doubt his resurrection. While I struggle to hang onto the idea of eternal life for myself and those I love, I have far less problem believing Jesus did indeed rise from the dead.

So today in the woods on Easter Sunday, I accept all the mysteries of faith and embrace the miracle of the children I gave birth to, the beauty of the forest in full bloom, and the potential of the brown fields rolling out to meet a green horizon and blue skies. Keats said it best: “Beauty is truth, truth is beauty.” It’s all you need to know.

April 8, 2007