OUR OWN UNIQUE WAY TO A GREEN EASTER, GREENER EARTH

For Easter this year our Portland and Seattle families gathered at my wife's and my home in Newberg, Oregon., U.S.A. Nine people, aged 12 to 80 years, enjoying each other amid Easter activities: greetings, a feast, an Easter egg hunt, good family fun. Just joyful togetherness.

My wife and I wanted very much to provide a unique and green Easter activity. Our suggestion was to invite each family member to write out an Easter-time hope for the year ahead. Then we'd bury the written hopes in the flower garden--the wishes on paper to compost naturally in the soil and to provide some nourishment for plants. A new round of life for the multi-colored paper.

Lucy came up with a booster idea. Why not write the hopes onto decorative paper cut to resemble the future flowers. Then tape each written hope to a foot-long, thin wooden stake. The project morphed into a bouquet of paper flowers.

Our Easter Bouquet

What did the family members note on their hope flowers? Here are their spectacular hopes:

• "To discover ways to stop global warming    No bueno"
• "Having fun"
• "The end of despot leaders and end of meanness in the world"
• "Peace and prosperity"
• "$10.5 million and a pony"
• "Generous kindness"
• "Wondrous love"
• "Peace in the world"

How do you react to this bouquet of hopes for the future? Do you find that one or more of these hopes echoes your own hopes? Or do you have a unique hope of your own? It's not too late: write it out on a cut-out flower.

Final step: we bury the notes in God's green earth. 

From here, nature itself transform the hopes. The earth will be growing greener by virtue of this return of a wood product (paper) to the earth. The earth will be a greener. 

One way to celebrate Easter, very much in keeping with the "Growing Green" theme of this blog-site. For us, it brought special meaning to our weekend together. Now back to home-making, studies and work for we nine earthlings, one family, fortified by our green Easter activity.