"Hey, you got your rebirth ritual in my fertility celebration!" "Hey, you got your fertility celebration in my rebirth ritual!"

Plaid Easter Egg. Yes.

It's Good Friday, one of the most solemn days in the Christian calendar, marking the arrest, persecution and crucifixion of Jesus. The day we celebrate his resurrection, Easter, shares a name with an ancient goddess, Eostre (also Osta or Eastre), who breathed life back into the world every spring.

I wrote earlier this week about thriving in chaos, how a crisis can help people live up to their potential. That's what today symbolizes for Christians -- the agonizing death that must come before rebirth and ascension.

St. Louis Cathedral, New Orleans.

But there is a rebirth -- a victory over death. For Christians, it is embodied in the Resurrection. When the women go to look for Jesus to anoint his corpse, they find an empty tomb. He is risen and the stone covering the opening to the tomb is rolled away. When he first speaks to Mary Magdalene, she mistakes him for a gardener -- who is, after all, a man who toils to bring life into the world.

I found an old email from a dear (and now departed) friend of mine, Dr. Edward Shirley, a theologian who taught and changed lives at St. Edward's University. This is part of his Easter email from four years ago:

There is no better way to describe it than it was a crappy situation all around. Religious leaders who were more concerned with their authority than with the welfare of the people. A corrupt foreign government that was concerned with its own power. An innocent man condemned to death for treason. 

Good Friday was not so good for Jesus. His closest associates, the men he had chosen as his inner circle, had abandoned him. One of them had betrayed him outright to the authorities. Peter, the Rock, had wilted in the face of a question from a maidservant. Only a handful of women stuck around to watch him die. Two days later, the men still cowering in fear, three women ventured to his tomb. The story is they found it empty. Their first thought was that someone had stolen the body. Only after they encountered the Risen Jesus were they transformed. 

One of them, Mary Magdalene (called by Tradition "the Apostle to the Apostles"), took the news to the men, who were reluctant to believe her. Peter, the Rock, and the beloved disciple ran to the tomb. The Gospel of John says that the beloved disciple (the mystic, who rests at the heart of Jesus, just as Jesus comes from the heart of the Father) got there first, but he waited until the Rock got there. Somehow the entire community was transformed through the encounter with the Risen Christ and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.

Ed went on to talk about the theme of renewal after crisis in Biblical history and in the history of the Church:

Yes, out of Good Friday came Easter Sunday. Out of the Great Schism came the teachings of mystics. Out of the corruption of the 13th century came the Franciscan way. God, it seems, had been doing this for a long time: Abraham and Sarah, well beyond child-bearing years, became the parents of a great nation. Joseph, sold into slavery in Egypt, rose to "vice pharaoh." The Israelites, coming out of slavery only to be confronted with the sea, marched to freedom on dry land. The kingdom and Temple destroyed, the king of Persia returned them to their land and rebuilt the Temple. For one who is familiar with the themes of the Jewish Scriptures, it should come as no surprise that Good Friday was not the last word.

Spotted Easter Egg by Molly Hayes.

Some Christians refuse to use the term "Easter" because they think it is too closely tied to the pagan goddess of spring, and instead refer to the celebration of Jesus' return to life as Resurrection Sunday. Me? I celebrate the fertility of spring and the Resurrection together. Although one is specific to a particular religion, and it is an important celebration, both recognize that life renews itself and that after the coldest winter, the world will grow and bloom again. After the darkest night, the sun will rise.

This song -- "Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground" -- is one that Blind Willie Johnson wrote by meditating on the suffering of Jesus on Good Friday. It is moving enough that it was included on the Gold Record that was sent into space aboard Voyager in the '70s and is arguably one of the most soulful songs ever recorded. Whatever your opinion of Christianity, I hope you enjoy the deep emotional expression in this song, and I hope that you get joy from the rebirth and renewal that comes with Easter (the goddess and the holiday).