Easter a time for renewal and peace

By Lethbridge Herald on April 19, 2025.

LEAVE IT TO BEEBER – Al Beeber

This weekend marks one of  the most – if not the most – holy events in  the year for Christians. Easter.

Calling it a holiday is not exactly the right word because that  connotates a celebration and dying a slow, horrible death on a  crucifix is nothing to celebrate.

Of course, while Good Friday quite frankly is far from good from a  purely objective standpoint, what Christians around the globe consider  the anniversary of Jesus’ resurrection after his unholy treatment by  the Romans and his betrayal by one of his disciples is Sunday, a day  of reverence and celebration among believers.

In the shadow of the Bellevue mine in what is known as riverbottom, we  kids spent plenty of Easters when we were young in the rickety  two-storey mine company house of my great grandparents Jan Hovan (or  Howaniec in Polish) and Maria (Mikulassik). While my memories are  vague of my great grandpa who died in 1963, I have many fond ones of  my great grandmother who lived to the ripe old age of 93.

Their home was filled with imagery of Catholicism which intrigued me  as a kid whose dad was an agnostic, if not a downright atheist and who  detested religion. The story of the crucifixion and resurrection  always resonated with me, the concept of death and rebirth being  perhaps a lesson that hope and future glory do exist on this earth.

After having a dream in 1987 the night after being released from  hospital after a brief heart issue when a voice told me to read Psalm  8, I’ve often contemplated the idea of death and resurrection from a  physical perspective and a figurative concept.

Psalm 8, which I learned about after sheepishly asking someone what a  psalm is and where to find one, told me that indeed a god of some sort  exists because there’s no reason why this dream would have occurred to  me, especially at that point in my life when my life was all about  working, working out – which landed me in hospital with an abnormal  heart beat that my pals in the gym whispered to me because I wasn’t  cycling the ‘roids properly, a flattering but wrongful explanation for  the beef I’d put on in previous months.

Psalm 8, as I’ve written about at least on two previous occasions, is  generally believed to have been written by King David. Like many or  most psalms.

In part it reads “O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all  the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.

“Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength  because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the  avenger. …

It concludes with “O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all  the earth!”

Website encyclopedia.com offers a potential meaning of the psalm,  saying “the speaker’s faith reminds him that man is made in God’s  image and is thus greater than the rest of God’s natural creations.  For this reason, man is given dominion over the natural world, but  only at a price.”

I still wonder why I was driven to seek out this psalm but like the  possibility of an actual physical resurrection, maybe I’ll never know  despite asking many times for a sign. Maybe the lesson is  humanity  can be resurrected in other ways, including spiritually.

Easter weekend, to many, is about celebrating with family with Easter  baskets and egg hunts, the reason for the holiday being either  dismissed or forgotten or shelved for an opportunity to spend quality  family time.

Regardless of how you choose to spend Good Friday and Easter Sunday –  through contemplation, at church services or devouring chocolate  bunnies – I wish you all a peaceful and healthy Easter.