Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb.  (John 20:1)

It’s the same Story every year, and it’s always new.  That empty tomb feeds ‘Alleluias’ of today and always.  The Story, as we hear it in Scripture, is the benchmark for whatever else we may say on a subject of many dimensions.  That is, while the Story resides in Scripture, it also resonates in our experience and is verified by our lives.  We come to live the Story as the Story lives in us.  The journey of back then is the same journey of today.  Each of us, then and now, is walking somewhere on the same way.  As I journey, I discover others.  As we meet and journey together, we grow together — and continue on God’s way in that never-ending Story.  In this part of the Story, concerning the empty tomb, Mary is our teacher and our guide.

She had come to The Tomb after the Sabbath to prepare His Body with spices for burial, but the stone was dislodged, and the tomb was empty.  Mary hurries to tell the others.  Peter and a friend run to the Tomb.  They verify her discovery; then they go home.  Mary, however, lingers in the Garden near the Tomb — lost, perhaps, in her own grief and with nowhere next to go; lost, perhaps, in her own thoughts.  Then she sees the Risen Lord.  At first she doesn’t recognize Jesus.  When He speaks her name, however, she knows who He is.  Nothing is the same ever again.  All things are made new.

When I was a kid I really loved this story.  (I still do!)  There were times in my childhood when I felt bored or unhappy for some reason.  There’s nothing new in that.  Most of us have some bad memories — some more painful than others; and most are soon forgotten.  However, I remember that, in my imagination (which was always really active) I talked with God.  It seemed so natural at the time.  I didn’t worry about God’s existence or about theology or even about faith.  God was in the daydream.  It couldn’t have been the same without Him, because God made it work.  With God in the daydream, I found refuge for my busy mind.  In the imagined conversation, I might learn something about myself, or about some other person, or about life in general.  The learning was painful sometimes, but not always.  Thoughts and possibilities could appear out of nowhere.  Constant was that security and comfort of talking with a trusted friend, even in the imagination, maybe especially in the imagination.  I could dream of a better world and hope and wait for it to be.

At first the Friend I talked with in my dreams was God or an angel or even a Spirit.  In time, though, more and more, that Friend was Jesus.  Nowadays we might say I was one really crazy kid — or maybe that I was learning something of self-reflection and self-awareness, in my own way — or that I was creating God and Jesus in my own image.  And the daydreams, well, we grow out of them — we hope — or others do, anyway.  But, that conversation with Jesus:  I got used to it.  I was comforted by it.  Maybe it was only a conversation in a child’s imagination.  Maybe I never learned how to pray but got lost in my dreams.  Maybe it was my reaching out to God — or, as I now believe, God reaching in to me.  Things happened.  After a daydream, or conversation, or prayer, I might feel more resolved, less worried, less afraid, more focused — ready to resume the journey.  One way or another I got older and wiser and stronger in spirit.  And that space I created (or discovered) — at first inadvertently in a child’s daydreaming — became a sanctuary: safe for prayer and conversation with God.  It was a quiet garden — commodious and close at hand.

Were those daydreams random and meaningless acts?  Was all of this simply a child’s play?  Perhaps, and over the years, step by step, I have become accustomed to that Garden and to my Friend.  It was in that Garden long ago that I began to hear Him call me by name.  The journey  hasn’t always been easy.  Sometimes I’m lost, but I am never alone.  I have always known where I was headed, and that’s what counts.  Every day all things are new.

“…He gave himself up to death; and, rising from the grave, destroyed death,
and made the whole creation new.”    (Eucharistic Prayer ‘D’)