Winter has ended (Easter's still here)

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(No spoilers.) 

   I watched the final episode of Game of Thrones last night and found it appropriate to the show. I won't say it's satisfying or everything I hoped for...I would love another few episodes, or another season even. It was a conclusion to a complex story that my wife Laura and I started with the books: first reading them, then listening to an audio version, then thrilled when the first season was released.

   I can't say I recommend it, it's violent and there are a lot of sex scenes in it (one friend even calls it "Dragon Porn.") It's a rich story told in a metamodern way: The heroes are flawed, the evil people have love for others, and there are all these mystical elements throughout. The final season has ended. Winter was coming, then it came, and now it is over.

   I listened to my favorite podcast, the Sacred Speaks, recently and learned that term "metamodernism" in John Price's interview of Linda Ceriello. She talked about the way mystical elements are showing up more and more in pop culture. For her, it is a sign of the spiritual-but-not-religious tendency. The churches may have fewer people attending, but the need to be in contact with the divine, the mystical side of life is still just as much present in our human experience. In my mind, and with my own religious language, I would say that "God is so creative that just because people may not go to church, that will not keep God from moving through creative people to say 'I'm here, and I love you.'"

   I don't have a degree in pop culture; I'm not an anthropologist; I've not yet written a mythic story like Game of Thrones. I'm a priest, and I'm still wading deeper into the mythic waters of our story of Jesus, the Christ, who was crucified, died, and was buried; on the third day he rose again. We call that resurrection, and people are still reading, marking, learning, and inwardly digesting that story and allowing it to work in and through them. Resurrection isn't just something that happened, it's something that is happening. Moving from a place of death to a place of life is something that people do. Like those Easter lilies that we planted years ago, life keeps happening; flowers up from dark soil: new life keeps emerging where things seemed dead.

   The Season of Easter is 50 days long (longer than Lent, so there!)  The season ends with that bizarre Pentecost story of wind and fire, and the disciples being accused of being drunk. It ends with the empowering Holy Spirit moving among frightened, locked-up people so powerfully that they spill out into the streets and share the love of God with strangers from foreign countries.

   I like all sorts of stories, and find that God can speak through the most unlikely vessels. I value pop-culture, and find stories from other religions fascinating and enlightening. I also have a long way to go with the story of our Trinitarian God. This Episcopal branch of the church keeps leading me deeper and deeper into my relationship with God and the world. This Easter story has no finale--we are the embodied continuation. We are living out what happens after Jesus is resurrected on the third day. We are continuing the resurrected life: moving from death to life, and inviting others to do the same. We are empowered by this Holy Spirit that moves so powerfully, it may cause people to question our sobriety, or even our sanity.

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