Holy Week: the king still has a crown

The flowers crown the fallen king. 

"The brief glow fell upon a huge sitting figure, still and solemn as the great stone kings of Argonath.The years had gnawed it, and violent hands had maimed it. Its head was gone, and in its place was set in mockery a round rough-hewn stone, rudely painted by savage hands in the likeness of a grinning face with one large red eye in the midst of its forehead. Upon its knees and mighty chair, and all about the pedestal, were idle scrawls mixed with the foul symbols that the maggot-folk of Mordor used. 

Suddenly. caught by the level beams, Frodo saw the old king's head: it had rolled away by the roadside. "Look Sam!" he cried, startled into speech. "Look! The king has got a crown again!" 

The eyes were hollow and the carven beard was broken, but about the high stern forehead there was a coronal of silver and gold. A trailing plant with flowers like small white stars had bound itself across the brows as if in reverence for the fallen king, and in the crevasses of his stony hair yellow stonecrop gleamed. 

"They cannot conquer forever!" said Frodo. And then suddenly the brief glimpse was gone. The Sun dipped and vanished, and as if at the shuttering of a lamp, black night fell."

- "The Two Towers," by J. R.R. Tolkien

***

I was in the grocery store this afternoon looking at Easter cards. There were a ton of cute, silly ones decorated with bunnies and chicks and whatever else is lately associated with Easter. It struck me how artificial this is. Even many of the religious ones missed the point, as they generally focused on spending time with family and friends as one of the purposes of Easter.

Um. While that's a nice benefit of the holiday, what about the paradoxes of innocence and guilt, suffering and healing, loss and victory, that bring us this holiday in the first place?

In our world we're always talking about suffering or loss or conflict or some sort of victory when things are going well - especially in the news - because this is what peoples' minds and spirits are geared toward automatically. Our spirits aren't made for merely marshmallow peeps (as beautiful as those things are) or newborn bunnies or even the Easter ham. Our spirits are geared toward connecting with something... something greater.

We all suffer. This season of Lent, and now Holy Week, and shortly the Easter season speak to the human experience. This season says, "It's OK to suffer and feel pain. You're not alone."

Paradox: a king himself suffered for no reason. But he remained a king, even when cast down. Even when the dark became darker until it was the darkest night humanity had ever yet experienced. Because the light would return in the end, amidst the scars that would remain as a reminder of the sacrifice.

And that's what Easter is about.