I’ve been feeling so grim lately that I surprise myself, I don’t pass a flower without wanting to high kick the head right off it, I tell birds to fuck off and you know this isn’t like me, really. Mother nature’s optimist with her daily reset button, I wake up grinning just happy to be nominated, that’s me. Only it isn’t, lately. Lately I want to hide under a bed, yes under it, or maybe in a hole in the earth, which is another way of saying grave or tomb. I spent the past week purposefully not thinking about it and waiting for it to come to me why — and oh god, no shortage of whys, ever really, for any of us and sadly me too — but I mean why now, all of a sudden. I knew if I didn’t worry at it, it would come and sure enough it did: it’s spring. I would love nothing more than to fast-forward to June, or better still July, just miss me with May completely, April has been hard enough.

This year spring scares the hell out of me; the idea of doing it all again, once more with feeling, putting my back into it, digging deep into the bedrock or whatever, digging my way out of it even, through sheer force of belief. My reflexes are dull, I don’t think I can make the triple jump anymore or do the backflip that stuns the crowd, flying though a flaming hoop with a knife in my teeth, grinning. Mostly I think I can’t do the grinning. I’m not ready, spring has caught me completely unprepared.

Today I told someone the story of how once, there was a liberation, a real snatched-from-the-jaws-of-death Hail Mary play, and it happened on Easter of all days - Easter by the old calendar. That part is important in the story because of what some prisoners did next, what one of them did: he recited the paschal homily of John Chrysostom by heart. If you don’t know it, it’s probably the most generous text in the whole of Christianity, powerful enough to cancel out St Paul himself.

In this homily there is no such thing as being too late; the table groans under the weight of the feast and all with no exception are called to partake. This includes people who didn’t know that there was going to be a feast, and ones who weren’t much bothered.

Are there any now weary with fasting? Let them now receive their wages! If they have toiled from the first hour, let them receive their due reward; If any have come after the third hour, let him with gratitude join in the Feast! And he that arrived after the sixth hour, let him not doubt; for he shall have sustained no loss. And if any have delayed until the ninth hour, let him not hesitate; but let him come too. And he who arrived only at the eleventh hour, let him not be afraid by reason of his delay.

Here it is, the eleventh hour, and I’m not ready: I spent the winter scraping through the days and I’ve found I have a knack for it, I can endure. What I can’t stand is the thought - no, the promise - of all that abundance. I’m not ready for hope.

I’m not ready to permit myself hope, and everywhere now there are the signs of it, the leaves are bursting forth, the magnolia buds opening, the cherries blossoming and it’s unbearable somehow. I feel too old, too exhausted to suspend belief again. Which is another way of saying, I don’t want to be let down again. The past two years have been a gradual peeling back of layers, of all the things I thought were certainties and truths and which really weren’t, not when exposed to any real scrutiny, and endless oh, this too? This too. It’s easier to believe in nothing at all when you think about it.

Later in the homily they chant:

Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with. It was in an uproar, because it was mocked. It was in an uproar, for it was destroyed. It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated. It is in an uproar because it is now made captive.

I have thought about the crafty verb tense change here quite a lot actually, and I think I know why it’s there: this is to say that every moment we are standing in is the abundant one always, the one of the moment of redemption.

I’ve spent the last two years losing one thing after another but the thing I held on to was the idea of reward, specifically that I deserved the things that happened to me, for good or for ill. It’s embarrassing to admit to, and I think this is the first time I’ve done so. Earlier this week someone said to me, ok, but what if everything wasn’t all your fault? What if you aren’t defective, or broken? What if you’re just a person? and I’m still thinking about it.

You that have kept the fast, and you that have not, rejoice today for the Table is richly laden! Feast royally on it, the calf is a fatted one. Let no one go away hungry

That’s the part that makes my breath catch every time I read it. In this one, nobody gets what they deserve, but everyone receives.

The prisoners in this story didn’t deserve to be saved. Better people than they were not. Though they suffered, they were more privileged than others, and a series of coincidences saw them still alive at the time of liberation. They must have known it, how could they not, in that place of no illusions. Despite this they fashioned vestments from what materials they could and wore them over their prison uniforms and recited the paschal liturgy from memory.

This story doesn’t have a moral or an ending.