I don't usually write about religion and politics. However, I just wanted to share with you, dear readers, my experience on Easter Sunday. My wife, younger daughter, and I attended the 242nd Easter Sunrise Service in Winston-Salem, held where Salem College and the Moravian Church are joined at the hip. People began gathering well before the 6 AM beginning, young and old, male and female, black and white, sweatshirts and suits. All of us standing.
When the service began with a traditional liturgy, the crowd stretched from the parking lots and side streets, down the main street of the college and church, to "God's Acre," a Moravian Cemetary where every grave has identical, recumbent headstones with only the deceased's name, birth date, and death date. This represents that in death we are all the same. Humbling. Good for one's perspective.
As we moved along the cobblestone street, small brass bands played, urging us forward, and echoing from behind. In the clear, crisp morning air, and as the sun was appearing in the east, we strode slowly to "God's Acre."
Once at the cemetary, we stood, heard the word of God, and sang hymns as the sun rose higher in the sky, shedding light on a gathering of congregants with one thing in common, our love for Christ and one another.
After the benediction, the crowd broke up and headed out and away down more cobblestone streets, by the oldest women's college in the nation, back to our separate lives and hopes and dreams, united briefly during that Easter morning service, united eternally in our faith.
