22. Revisiting Palm Sunday, Hunger of the Heart

It has been said that those who follow in the footsteps of Jesus are Easter People, though I would contend that you need not be a Christian to be an Easter Person. An Easter person is someone who understands in a profound way that suffering and death, sorrow and pain, are never the final story. To be an Easter person is to understand that the end of the road is the beginning of a new journey. It is to understand than in the bleakest of forecasts there are unseen possibilities. It is to understand that in the darkest evil there still shines the possibility of divine light. 

The particulars of the Easter story may be familiar. But I would ask you to listen again as though you have never heard it before. In fact, listening is the theme of today’s podcast. It tells the story of the Palm Sunday parade, a time when some people listened and heard the quiet heartbeat of a single man on a donkey over the louder noise of the Roman war drums. 

Listen, then, and listen well. And you too may hear that single heartbeat that beats in tandem with the heartbeat of the world. Listen for the quiet rustle of the palm leaves, listen to the ones who live in your home. Listen to those who live in your heart. 

The world is in need of Easter people to see past what is, to what might yet be. 

Your heart can hold everything

Including the world – 

Its darkness and its light. 

Including your story, 

Including my story

Including the story

Of all of us….

And when your heart hears your own story

It hears my story too. 

Your story. 

My story

Our story….

Listen

To the sound of your feet, 

The sound of all of us, 

The sound of me.” 

— Holly M. McGhee, from ‘Listen’, Illustrated by Pascal Lemaitre, Roaring Brook Press, New York