Seven Stanzas at Easter

Seven Stanzas at Easter by John Updike
(yes, that John Updike) (really)


Make no mistake: if he rose at all
It was as His body;
If the cell's dissolution did not reverse,
          the molecule reknit,
The amino acids rekindle,
The Church will fall.


It was not as the flowers,
Each soft spring recurrent;
It was not as His Spirit in the mouths
          and fuddled eyes of the
Eleven apostles;
It was as His flesh; ours.


The same hinged thumbs and toes
The same valved heart
That - pierced - died, withered,
          paused and then regathered
Out of enduring Might
New strength to enclose.


Let us not mock God with metaphor,
Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,
Making of the event a parable,
          a sign painted in the faded
Credulity of earlier ages;
Let us walk through the door.


The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
Not a stone in a story,
But the vast rock of materiality
          that in the slow grinding of
Time will eclipse for each of us
The wide light of day.


And if we have an angel at the tomb,
Make it a real angel,
Weighty with Max Planck's quanta,
          vivid with hair, opaque in
The dawn light, robed in real linen
Spun on a definite loom.


Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
For our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
Lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour,
          we are embarrassed
By the miracle,
And crushed by remonstrance.

Did Not See This Coming. . .

I almost hate to break into Holy Week with something so mundane as my sporting interests, but. . .

My Spartans are back in the Final Four, for the seventh time in Coach Izzo's 20-year tenure.  This has got to be the most improbable of all his Final Fours, or any of the others in the history of my alma mater (both of 'em).  We graduated a decorated group of players from last year's team, and this had all the earmarks of a rebuilding season.  We just didn't have the kind of players that make deep tournament runs (I mean, heck, we lost to Texas Southern in December - at home!).  Even as late as February, there were serious questions as to whether our string of consecutive NCAA tournament appearances (this is our 18th) would be coming to an end this year.  But things came together in the waning weeks of the season, and we made a solid showing in the conference tournament.

We got a 7th seed in the NCAAs, which seemed a tad low, by the time we got there (but only a tad; I thought we deserved a 6th seed, or maybe a 5th).  We duly won our first round game, and then threw a complete defensive blanket over Virginia, a highly-ranked team who won the regular-season championship of the vaunted ACC.  In the next two rounds, we came from behind in both games to pull out gritty, hard-fought victories.

And now we are in the Final Four.  Again.  We play Duke this Saturday, and we don't exactly have a long track record of success against them (Coach Izzo's teams have beaten Duke exactly once in nine tries); and they hung a ten-point loss on us back in November, just to reinforce the point.  But, you know, that was then, and this is now.  And even if we should somehow beat the Dookies, Kentucky is looming, and the conventional wisdom says that nobody can beat Kentucky this year.  But, you know, once you get to the rarefied air of the Final Four, you never know what might happen.  And no matter what happens, it's been a heckuva ride already.  So, we shall see what we shall see. . .

GO GREEN!

And, just for fun, there's this. . .