“If Easter says anything to us today, it says this:
You can put truth in a grave but it won’t stay there.”
Clarence G. Hall

These days, it seems to be mostly a day of indulging in tons of chocolate, chasing Easter Bunnies, and searching for Easter Eggs.
In my mind, today is the day that gives hope, more than any other day. A day that demonstrates, if that was necessary, that “you can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming” (Pablo Neruda). A day that proves that “life never ends and love never dies” (Kate McGahan).
The BBC has an interesting website dedicated to the story of the Passion in which they discuss many aspects of the event, the way it was documented, and its many different themes. They conclude that “the final theme of the passion is victory – the victory of Christ over death – and this is why the Passion story is inseparable from the story of the Resurrection”.
I agree.
For me, the story of the Passion and Resurrection is also a lesson for life. It reminds me that even when injustice is at its worst, when you are at your most vulnerable, people laugh and spit at you, when you are stumbling on your way up to Golgotha, there will always be people who will offer you support, even take that terrible load off your shoulders when you fall. You might not just fall once or twice, you might fall many times. But you will always get back up. Because you know that at the end, of course, there is not death but life. Because love never dies.
A few great and funny things happened during the week.
First there was the good weather changing everybody’s mood. The sun was out again. The sky was blue again. And the temperatures went up.
Have you ever seen a seagull getting a bit of heat by sitting on the roof of a car parked under a great blue sky? It happened right in front of the An Saol building during the week. We all had a great laugh. Why resting on the waves, in the cold Irish Sea, if you can sit on a different Blue: a clean, warm, bright new Ford?
Pádraig tried out an enhanced version of the handshoe mouse we had bought last summer, conceptualised, invented and realised by a really bright, enthusiastic student who has come up with great ideas to support Pádraig’s access to technology.
Pádraig is well able to click the three buttons on the mouse, but he has problems at times leaving his hand on the mouse. So that brilliant inventor student added the handshoe to the handshoe mouse.
He also designed a mouth switch – several switches mounted on a kind of mouth guard or retainer. That was a great idea because Pádraig has no problem moving his tongue thus accessing the switches is easy for him.
Unfortunately, it took Pádraig no time to dismantle the switches. We’ll be working on refinements.
There is a great air of enthusiasm around. Maybe it has to do with the time of the year. Maybe it has to do with Easter. Maybe it has to do with the fact that after night comes day; after winter comes summer; after a fall, you get up and keep going. You can (try to) put truth in a grave but it won’t stay there.
Happy Easter.
Reinhard
Thank you so much for this little gem about Easter. You are an inspiration as always and with great dedication you ensure each week to keep us informed about Padraig, An Saol and life. I am so delighted that there is a young student designing a means by which Padraig can access the virtual space; if he is not already doing so, on his own terms, with the help of this student there will be a way forward soon. I do not know if watch Tommy Tiernan’s show on a Saturday night; his guest was a neurosurgeon, Ciaran Bolger, from Beaumont hospital. I would suggest you listen to him. He started his life with the European Space Agency but he is now using Xbox for recreation; his comments are interesting. If one could get the mouse right for Padraig, there might be some scope with Xbox.
Happy Easter to you, your wife, Padraig. Always in my thoughts for only the best neurological options are ready to unfurl in the future to open up Padraig’s life even further. You as a family have never faltered in trying to tap those resources deep within his soul and life.
My tweet for today:
Happy Easter Sunday: an Easter Sunday that follows Easter Sunday of last yr but this time ple r so weary of Lockdown COVID-19. A quote: “Don’t judge a man by where he is, because you don’t know how far he has come.” ~ C. S. Lewis
Happy Easter to you all. Love the seagull photo! We have lots of seagulls but I’ve never seen one so that.