While It Was
Yet Dark:
A 7-Week Easter Practice
Below you will find seven video teachings, daily journal pages, and discussion questions to be used by yourself or in a small group.
Download:
START HERE
In April 2020, we realized we needed something different to get us through the uncertainty ahead. (Little did we know how long that uncertainty would last.) We needed Easter, but not Easter as usual. So in the midst of early quarantines, I enlisted my husband as my videographer (…and editor and sound engineer and set designer and director) and we filmed a series of videos from my living room.
Easter is not just a day. It is the stretch of fifty days that begins Resurrection Sunday and lasts until Pentecost. This is the season of practicing hope… even when hope doesn’t seem easy to come by.
Here’s how to use this free Easter material:
1. Each of the seven sessions includes a short video (between 6 to 9 minutes in length). Here I will offer teachings around themes like interdependence, limited agency, precarity, and joy. Feel free to play these over Zoom with friends or show them during a small group or Sunday school class to ground your time together.
2. Below each video, you’ll find 3-4 video discussion questions as well as a prayer you can use for individual reflection or to guide a group conversation. (This can also be downloaded in a single Discussion Guide PDF for easy use.)
3. Below each video, you’ll also find a link to download daily journaling pages (that are available to be printed or filled in digitally) if you want to dive deeper into a daily practice of prayer, connection, and self-reflection.
A note before you begin: You may hear me mention a “forum” or “comment section” in the videos. Due to limited bandwidth within my team, we have decided to disable comments for the time being. Our hope is that you are able to discuss these themes with others using the new discussion guide.
WEEK 1
No Escaping Precarity
Discussion Questions
- It can be easy to imagine our problems are something we just have to overcome. But, as Dorothy Day would say, perhaps the experience of uncertainty—precarity—is something we learn to live alongside. Are you someone who wants to believe all problems are overcome-able? Or are you more comfortable with life’s uncertainties?
- How does the experience of uncertainty change the meaning of hope for you?
- When have you seen someone living beautifully inside of things they couldn’t change? What inspires you about their example?
Prayer
God,
Give us faith to live here, inside lives we did not choose. Give us the courage to see things a little more clearly, and the language of gentle honesty. As our ties to certainty are loosened, may you surprise us with the certainty of Your love and expressions of hope unimagined.
Amen.
WEEK 2
The Sliding Scale of Agency
Discussion Questions
- On the range from empty to full, what is your battery at today
- If your battery feels fairly full, notice the spaces or people you’re drawn to. What might you offer?
- If your battery feels low, what might you need? A nap? Pet cuddles? A meal? A walk outside? How would you describe your relationship to gratitude?
Prayer
God,
You are all powerful yet you inhabited our world of limitations, chose to live within our calendar. May we embrace the tender margins of our finitude. You are far more gentle with us than we are with ourselves. So center us in Your compassion, that soft place of discernment.
Amen.
WEEK 3
The Smallest Number
Discussion Questions
- How would you describe your relationship to gratitude?
- When big, beautiful things seem out of reach, there is kindness in the little things that might add up to something meaningful. What have been your little things lately?
- To do small acts with great love is what Thérèse of Lisieux called the little way. What might that look like for you right now?
- Have you counted more blessings or losses lately? How does that feel?
Prayer
God,
Give us the courage to gaze at the things within our reach. You know the beauty in the ordinary details of our lives, though we’ve grown accustomed. In seeming inertia, give us something to stand on, a new bloom, the gaze of a friend, a beam of sunlight, reminding us of the love to be found, even here. Rightsize our gratitude, that we might hold our present tension well.
Amen.
WEEK 4
We Need Each Other
Discussion Questions
- Are you in a season of dependence? Or being depended on? What are the gifts and difficulties of each?
- When you have been in a season of dependence, what cultural myths seemed true?
- Do you find it difficult to give help to your friends who are in hard seasons? Do you find it difficult to ask for help or for what you need? What—if any—correlation do you see in your answers?
- What do you think “interdependence” looks like in your life?
Prayer
God,
Help us to risk intimacy, to receive the gift of friendship. May we learn how to do your bad math, to love when it makes no sense, and to receive love when our humanity feels like a liability. Breathe your compassion upon us that we might find ourselves wrapped together in your insistent love.
Amen.
WEEK 5
Hope vs. Optimism
Discussion Questions
- How would you explain the difference between optimism and hope? Or the difference between an optimistic group of people and a people of hope?
- In what circumstances are you most drawn to performative optimism?
- How have you been surprised by hope?
Prayer
God,
Let us see things clearly. Let us be people of hope.
Amen.
WEEK 6
Life Together, Apart
Discussion Questions
- Why do you think loneliness is so stigmatized?
- How might you describe the difference between aloneness and loneliness?
- When have you had the honor of seeing someone’s humanity up close?
Prayer
God,
You are our belonging, yet we know absent space all too well. Draw us out, towards your beloved community. And draw us in, through our divine longing. May we know the urgency with which you long for us.
Amen.
WEEK 7
The Absurdity of Joy
Discussion Questions
- Gary Haugen said that “joy is the oxygen for doing hard things.” Describe a time when something joyful has buoyed you.
- What do you think it means to be joyful in your current circumstance?
- When have you experienced the surprise of abundance?
Prayer
God,
We want to feel it all, grief and delight, joy and sorrow, the things unlikely to coexist. Thank you for the capacity to hold seeming contradictions within ourselves. Open us up, ever so slightly, to the everyday loveliness of the world You created.
Amen.