What can we learn from the first Easter morning? Follow your big, wild dreams | Opinion
What is your wildest, most outrageous dream? Do you have one? A dream that perhaps you keep secret, hidden deep inside yourself?
The story of the first Easter morning as recorded in Christian scriptures is an example of a bunch of ordinary guys in an extraordinary situation: Their leader was dead. Intombed. Gone. Their dreams were crushed. They had gambled everything on an extravagant hope. With their leader gone, so was that hope. They gave up.
Very human, right?
Opinion
But what they found on that first Easter morning was this: Their wildest dreams just weren’t wild enough!
A woman who harbored a scrap of faith went to the tomb — not because she thought a miraculous beginning had sprung from an ignominious ending, but because she just couldn’t let go of a dream.
She found a miracle she was not looking for: She found an empty tomb.
What began that day was a wild party that has not yet ended. A man rose from the dead. How’s that for an outrageous dream? That’s a dream people were inspired to die for. And the campaign of a dozen crazy dreamers encompassed the world.
What’s your dream?
I want to tell you mine (at my age, I am at the end of any conceivable computation of maximum life expectancy, mine may be past tense) but bear this in mind: I’m not done yet!
I am the mother of two of the finest people who walk this earth. Douglas and Jason are honest, compassionate, loving people who live lives filled with goodness and light — a mother’s dream come true.
During my wage-earning career, I was gifted with multiple opportunities to work with children. Play with kids and get paid for it? Now, that’s a crazy dream! And it came true for me. I remember it all: So many children who brought their innocence, passion, unspoiled imagination and willingness to do good. These are dreams indelibly printed on my memory.
I enjoy excellent health which enables me to still do a physically demanding job. I know many of you from bagging your orders at Safeway. Strange as it may seem, I look forward to interacting with staff who value me and our customers who smile every time they see me. It is concrete dream fulfillment every morning from 4:30 to 9:30.
After a lifetime of purposely living elsewhere, I am now delightfully at home in a beautiful little house right here in the town where I was born. I do what I please every day. When there is something I desire to complete my happiness, I don’t have to ask permission from anyone. It is a dream occasioned by strong women who, through years of effort, wrested their fulfillment from resistant authority figures.
I have a backyard just spacious enough to have a good party. When I was house-shopping seven years ago, my son, Jason, and I were looking at a house that I thought might satisfy. Jason said, “Mom, this won’t work because neither the house nor the yard is big enough for a party.” Looking at me, the real estate agent said, “Well, at your age, how many parties will you actually be having?”
Jason calmly said, “Wrong question. You don’t know my mom.”
I host my family’s get-togethers for Easter and Halloween each year. There are piñatas, egg hunts (yes, even on Halloween!), good food and the sharing of connectedness. The ties that bind — now, that’s a dream worth nurturing. I also host the occasional crew party for my friends at Safeway. These are dreams that fulfill.
But the biggest dream? The most amazing outcome of a casual conversation with the opinion editor of The Modesto Bee?
You’re reading it right here, right now. I am writing. And I am writing for you. Without you, writing would be a very lonely endeavor. You, my dear readers, have completed my joy. Every time you come up to me and say, “I love your column”; every time you email me or write to the paper — you are the dream that has come true.
No matter what our faith, I think we can all learn from that first Easter morning to dream big and to make those dreams wild. It sometimes takes audaciously outrageous perseverance and an eye on a prize that no one else sees.
I know the power of a dream. I’m living it.
Bunny Stevens lives in Modesto, her hometown, and has served on The Modesto Bee Community Advisory Board. She is the opening courtesy clerk at the Safeway supermarket on McHenry Avenue and an ordained minister in the Universal Life Church. She has also been known to represent the Easter Bunny and Santa’s Elf for children of all ages. Reach her at BunnyinModesto@gmail.com
