Whenever I am side-ways with the world, whenever melancholy sinks like June gloom on La Jolla’s shores, I read Mary Oliver. Maybe that’s why I’ve returned to her so often this spring. She knows what it’s like to be on the outside looking in, finding community not with the saints but with God’s creatures, great and small.

What is Easter to the deported and disappeared? Easter is the two thousand year invitation to participate in the ongoing story of death and resurrection. Easter is knowing what it means to dream wide awake, to live threatened with the promise of new and unending life.

As we mourn the ongoing corruption of Christianity at the hands of white evangelicals and their demonic pursuit of power, remember every empire from Rome to America requires a legitimizing narrative (American Exceptionalism) and a legitimizing religion (White Evangelicalism) to sanction its activity and existence.

Here, even alone, I am part of a mystical pedigree who, in times past, also entered this holy place seeking solace. In such places, my life is mysteriously and spiritually connected to everyone else who has knelt, prayed, and worshipped here. It’s no wonder more individuals in Britain come to faith these days because of buildings instead of people.