Not thrones and crowns, but men

spatch was raised in the Pioneer Valley in the United Church of Christ and the Easter observances of his childhood were always sunrise services on top of a mountain; his father the minister would time his telling of the Easter story so that the sun rose just as the stone rolled away.

This year, because it was important, we walked to the top of Prospect Hill and Rob told me the Easter story so that the sun rose just as the stone rolled away.

We saw no one on the way over in the sea-swimming pre-dawn except for a rabbit sitting fearlessly in the middle of the road under the late moon and the sodium streetlight; there were two other couples at the tower at Prospect Hill, but they kept their six-foot distance while Rob told me about the tomb and the woman who came to give her beloved friend proper burial and the gardener who met her there. The sky turned the color of a robin's egg and all the east-facing windows beneath us started to pick up gold. We returned home via Boston Street because we thought we might get a clear shot at the horizon; we were halfway across the McGrath Highway Bridge when the sun came visible in a persimmon-orange blaze and Rob said, "He is risen," and we sang Sydney Carter's "Lord of the Dance." We came home to seagulls gliding dawn-gilded above our street and cats who avowed that hard-boiled eggs are the natural cat's breakfast, just like poached eggs on waffles with crystallized maple sap.

I am pretty sure this is the first Easter service I've attended since college, when for about a semester I went as many Sundays as I could manage to Emmanuel Church to hear the Bach cantatas. I have not yet determined whether I will chase it by falling asleep.