The Spiral Path: A Ritual for Easter & Earth Day
News –
1. Begin
What’s just starting to happen in you? What’s so new that only you can see it?
Instructions for Engagement:
Take one seed and hold it. Just one. Carry it with you through the rest of the spiral. This is not planting time. Just holding time. Feel the weight and wonder of a new beginning.
Reflection:
The story of Jesus begins quietly—born to a peasant girl under empire, carried across borders as a refugee, raised in a colonized land. He is not born into power. He chooses a path of presence. He begins his public ministry not with certainty, but with baptism—submitting to something larger than himself, something that calls him into truth. The Earth teaches us the same: beginnings are not spectacular. They are specific. A single seed doesn’t know what it will become. But it begins.
To begin something now—in an age of climate crisis, polarization, and violence—can feel naive. But to begin is to resist despair. Every garden starts somewhere. Every movement. Every return to joy. What are you carrying that wants to live?
What you can do:
- For yourself: Try something new, even if it feels small or slow.
- For your community: Cheer someone on who’s just starting out.
- For the Earth: Plant a seed and take care of it while it grows.
2. Grow
What part of you is changing? What do you want to grow into next?
Instructions for Engagement:
Shape the clay gently around your seed. You might cover it, cradle it, or form something entirely your own. Let the shaping be an act of care. This form will travel with you until planting.
Reflection:
When Jesus begins to teach, he does not point to heaven. He points to people. He heals bodies. He feeds crowds. He welcomes outsiders. His growth is visible, and it disrupts the order. Not everyone wants the poor included, the sick touched, the powerful challenged. Growth is political. So is compassion.
To grow today is to become visible in systems designed to keep us small. The Earth, too, grows with resistance—roots cracking pavement, green returning after fire. In Minneapolis and beyond, people are reimagining what growth looks like: community gardens, mutual aid, food sovereignty. Growth asks: Can you keep expanding without forgetting what you carry? Can you stretch toward the light while staying grounded in truth?
What you can do:
- For yourself: Choose one way to grow toward your best self this week. Make it physical.
- For the community: Support a community garden or grow something to share.
- For the Earth: Compost. Shape life from what would otherwise be waste.
3. Break
What do you need to say, even if it’s hard? What needs to go for you to grow?
Instructions for Engagement:
Hold one broken object. Feel the edge, the center, the opening. Then, place it in the bowl. Let it represent a truth, a loss, or a part of you that has changed.
Reflection:
Jesus did not die because he was kind. He died because he lived the truth out loud. He turned over tables. He told the powerful they weren’t divine. He broke silence, and was broken in return. His crucifixion was not only a tragedy—it was a consequence. He belonged to a movement, and his body carried the cost.
And yet, he was not broken alone. He was held by women who refused to leave. By ancestors and prophets before him. By the Earth, who receives all our bodies. Today, breaking is still happening—at the climate’s edge, at the border, in every system that silences dissent. But breaking is not the end. It is the middle. It is the cracking open that lets something else breathe.
What you can do:
- For yourself: Let go of one illusion or safety that keeps you from truth.
- For the community: Say a hard thing that needs saying. And stay.
- For the Earth: Find out who in your neighborhood is most affected when the Earth is hurting. Whose air is harder to breathe? Whose water is less safe? What can you do to help make things more fair?
4. Wait
What part of you needs a little rest or quiet so another part of you can speak or grow?
Instructions for Engagement:
Sit or stand. Breathe three slow breaths. Let one part of you rest so another part can speak. You may place your clay-formed seed at your heart. You may do nothing at all. That is the work here.
Reflection:
Jesus lay in the tomb for three days. Not because God was slow, but because resurrection takes time. His people scattered. His body rested. The movement paused. This is where so many stories falter—where we mistake waiting for absence. But the Earth waits constantly: in winter, in drought, in the space between pulse and breath. Dormancy is not death. It’s devotion.
In our time, urgency is a drug. Activism, community care, climate work—all these can be devoured by burnout. Stillness is how we remember what is ours to carry. It is how the seed becomes ready. Waiting is not lazy. It is how the Earth prepares for resurrection.
What you can do:
- For yourself: Choose to rest for a moment while it’s still your choice.
- For the community: Help someone else take a pause. Offer to stay with them a while.
- For the Earth: Sit outside and do nothing but listen. For ten minutes. For a lifetime.
5. Rise
What are you ready to grow? For you? For the future? For everyone?
Instructions for Engagement:
Plant your clay-formed seed in the shared soil. Press it in with your hands. Breathe in. Then let it go.
Reflection:
Resurrection is not erasure. Jesus does not rise as he was. He is changed. Scarred. Still human. Still committed. His rising is not power reclaimed—it is presence reoffered. He shows up in the garden. He walks with friends. He returns to feed, not to reign.
In our lives, rising doesn’t mean triumph. It means rejoining the work, recommitting to what matters, carrying our stories forward in changed bodies. The Earth rises this way too—through shoots, sprouts, returnings. We are not saved from death. We are returned to life through it. To plant is to trust what we cannot see. It is to rise again, rooted.
What you can do:
- For yourself: Make a real commitment to something you love. Start again.
- For the community: Rejoin something that matters. Show up with your full self.
- For the Earth: Plant a tree. A seed. A commitment. And stay to tend it.