This recording features the Sunday Talk portion of the service. For the full service watch here.
Awakening To Transformation – Cityside Spring Celebration
DESCRIPTION
Spring has always been the season of awakening — the moment when what seemed dormant rises into new life. This Easter we celebrate across traditions to explore one simple truth: transformation is not something that happens to us once. It is the nature of life, moving always toward its own fullness.
SUMMARY
This piece weaves together ancient seasonal rituals, natural metaphors, and Christian resurrection imagery to explore a universal pattern of darkness giving way to light and life rising again. Observations of the spring equinox, Ostara, and the reemergence of eggs, hares, and flowers are presented as evidence that life continually returns after dormancy, revealing a sacred rhythm in nature. A second story of a seed breaking open underground reframes rupture and dissolution as the necessary beginning of new growth rather than destruction. The Easter narrative of the empty tomb is offered as a third telling of the same truth: what appears to be an ending is not the end, because love, life, and light persist and return.
Music and communal affirmation invite participants to “rise” by opening the heart, welcoming healing, and recognizing an inner spiritual power already present within. The message reframes Easter not as a final arrival but as an ongoing process of becoming, contrasting a life of “becoming who we were born to be” with “performing who we think we’re supposed to be,” and emphasizing that our true essence cannot be manufactured but uncovered. Drawing on Ernest Holmes, resurrection is described as a continual spiritual activity occurring whenever we move from a smaller to a larger story of ourselves, from fear to love, or from limitation to our deeper spiritual truth.This ongoing transformation often unfolds in an “in-between” phase where change is underway but not yet visible, and parts of us may lag behind what has already shifted, much like the disciples who had not yet caught up with the reality of resurrection.
Guided reflection and prayer invite listeners to see their own challenges and “breaking open” moments as the very soil of transformation, echoing the seed metaphor and the idea that “what’s in the way is the way.” Participants are encouraged to offer a gentle inner “yes” to growth, to recognize that every life contains such thresholds, and to witness one another’s vulnerability with the shared blessing, “Your becoming is fully supported,” affirming that no one walks this path alone. The gathering culminates in collective affirmations that life is awakening within each person, that challenges can transform us, and that “we rise together,” situating individual evolution within a larger field of communal and spiritual possibility.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Jonathan Hoffman:
There is a story that humanity has told over and over in almost every culture in every age. It doesn’t begin with words, it begins with darkness. It begins with the earth going quiet. With leaves letting go, with light pulling back, with things that were full and green becoming still and cold. And then always, always, something stirs. The first telling, the earth itself. Long before any holy book was written, people across the northern world watched the sky. They tracked the moment, this exact moment in the wheel of the year, when day and night finally balance. When light begins to return and hold its own against the darkness. They called her ostara, the goddess of the dawn of the east of emergence. Eggs appeared in nests. Hairs ran wild across the fields. Flowers pushed up through soil that had been frozen for months. These weren’t decorations or symbols someone invented.
They were evidence. Evidence that life, no matter how long it waits, always finds a way back. The people built fires. They danced at the edge of fields. They said to each other, “Look, it is happening again.” And they felt the sacredness that was happening.
Paul McHugh:
The second telling, the ground. Sometime last autumn, a tiny seed fell from a tree or was tucked into the soil. A seed, a bulb, an acorn, and it disappeared. If you had looked at it in December, you might have thought, “That’s finished. That’s done. There’s nothing here. But underground, something neither rushed nor forced was underway. The shell was softening. The life inside was reorganizing itself. And when the conditions were exactly right, not a moment too soon, it broke open. Not because something went wrong, but because something was finally ready. That breaking open, that’s not destruction. That’s the beginning of its beginning.
Rev Judy Ranniger Meza:
The third telling, a garden at dawn. A woman goes to a tomb expecting an ending. Instead, she finds a stone rolled away. She feels and senses a presence that she doesn’t immediately recognize. And then she does. Whatever your relationship to this story, whether you hold it as literal truth, as sacred metaphor, as mythic wisdom, the message at its heart is the message the earth has been telling all along. What you think is over is not over. Love does not end. Life does not end. The light always, always, comes back.
Paul McHugh:
Three stories, three traditions.
Jonathan Hoffman:
One truth. Life rises.
Musicians:
I close my eyes. I open my heart. I take a deep breath. Let the healing start. I lift my head. I plant my feet. I let love in. I feel the beat. Let’s call it us to rise. Rise. Spirit rise up. Rise in me. Already in my soul. I clear my mind. I’m here and now. In present time, I feel the power of a thousand sons. Not in up the dark. Holy rise. Rise. Rise. Spirit rise up. Rise in me. Your rise. Rise. Spirit rise up. Rise in me. Rise in me. I sing to you. You sing to me. Change up this noise. Make sweet harmony. Come on and rise. Or rise. Spirit rise. Rise in me. Rise. Rise. Spirit rise up. Rise in me. Right in me.
Rev Aimee Daniels:
I want to start with a question. When you think about Easter or you think about spring or any story of rising and renewal, where does your mind tend to go? Does it go to the end? Mine does. Most of us go to the ending. The stone was rolled away. The garden is blooming. The light’s returning. We go to the arrival of whatever it is. But I want to suggest this morning that Easter is actually not a story about arrival. It’s a story about becoming. And Mark Nepo in his book, The Endless Practice, opens with a premise. He says, “We spent our lives doing one of two things. We either become who we were born to be, or we’re performing who we think we’re supposed to be. So we’re becoming or we’re performing.” So the difference isn’t about effort or sincerity or anything like that. It’s about direction.
Whether the life you’re living is moving you toward your essence, that which you feel to be true within yourself. I think Nibo calls it the irreducible truth of who you are, or away from it. Maybe toward a shape that feels safer, more acceptable to others, people more likely to be approved of. But here’s the thing, you can’t manufacture your essence. It already exists. It’s already in you. And the endless practice that Mark Niepo talks about isn’t building something new. It’s about shedding everything that’s not that essence. Ernest Holmes taught that resurrection is the eternal activity of spirit. He says it’s not a single event, but it happens every time a human being moves from a smaller story of themselves to a bigger story of themselves. We could also say it’s true when we move from fear to love or when we choose to forgive, but it’s our true self, our spiritual self breaking through our human self.
That is a resurrection, which means resurrection isn’t something that just happened once 2,000 years ago. It’s happening all the time. It’s happening in this room. It’s happening within all of us all the time.
So you might be in the middle of something in your life. I just want to speak to this. You’re not at the end of it. Somewhere in the in between, I like to call it baking in the oven, where you can feel like something’s trying to come forward, but it hasn’t quite arrived yet. You know what I’m talking about? Anybody have that? But you can’t see it. You can’t see what it looks like yet. And Charles Fillmore, in talking about the story of the crucifixion and resurrection said, after the resurrection, the disciples were hiding because they were terrified. So the stone had been rolled away. Jesus had changed forms, everything had changed, but they were still behind a locked door. And you can understand that as a human, you’d be pretty frightened, right? But they didn’t still believe what had happened. It was kind of surprising to them.
And he said, Fillmore says, “Those disciples didn’t have a failure of faith. They represent the part of every one of us that hasn’t quite caught up with what’s already happened.” And I think that’s true when we’re becoming. Sometimes your life has started to transform, but you haven’t caught up with it yet, or maybe you haven’t even acknowledged that it’s changing. Anyone relate to that? And you can feel like you’re behind, you can feel like something’s off, but really what you are is in your own endless practice, as Mark Niepo would say, because the practice isn’t something that you do until you arrive. The practice is your life as it unfolds. So becoming is the nature of every living thing, us too. And I actually think that that’s what Jesus demonstrated. He demonstrated that his spirit simply changed forms and was freed from his body. That’s what he demonstrated.
He knew his spirit was eternal. Guess what? So is yours, right? And your spirit is eternally evolving, even in form, right? You’re eternally evolving, and that’s the good news. You’re always rising up to something new. So wherever you find yourself on your journey right now, you’re not behind schedule. Everything is exactly as it should be, and it’s becoming, and it will rise.
Musicians:
May long time shine, shine upon you. May the long time shine. Shine upon you.
Rev Linda Jackson:
Let’s take a collective breath together and settle in to the message that we’ve been receiving, and we’re going to move through some time of mapping this onto our own lives. And the season teaches us something profound about transformation. Seeds do not grow by avoiding the soil. They grow by entering it fully. The seed breaks open, not because something has gone wrong, but because a life within it is ready to move. It’s ready to shift and grow. And the same is true for us. Often the places that challenge us, the questions we carry, the moments when life stretches us, are the very openings where something new begins. As Mark Nepo writes, what’s in the way is the way. The very places we might wish to avoid can become the doorway through which life transforms us.
So if you’re willing, I invite you to close your eyes. If you’re comfortable. If not, you can simply take a downward gaze and begin to see your own life as a living field of a transformation. Just ask yourself, where in my life am I being stretched or challenged or changed? Where is there a breaking open? Simply acknowledging it, not pushing that experience away and not as a problem to solve, but considering it as part of your path of awakening. Sometimes what cracks us open is exactly what allows our deeper life to emerge. In many wisdom traditions, there is a recognition that our challenging experiences are not interruptions to the spiritual life. They are the spiritual life.
Every moment, joyful, confusing, painful, beautiful. Each moment carries something that can awaken us. And when we meet our lives honestly, we begin to see that even the hard places, and I would say especially the hard places, are shaping us, softening us, deepening us. Something within you already knows how to grow from exactly where you are. Just like the acorn already contains everything it needs to become the tree. Transformation rarely begins with certainty. It often begins with something quieter, a simple willingness, a softening, a small yes to life as it is. Not a yes to suffering, but a yes to being fully alive within our experience.
And if it feels right for you, silently offer yourself a small inner yes, a yes to the life that is unfolding within you. Yes to growth, yes to healing, yes to what is still becoming. And if you are currently in a place of change, if something in your life is breaking open, if you are learning, healing, or finding your way through something. And if we live long enough, we see that every life has moments when it breaks open, when something we thought we understood begins to change. So if something in your life is changing, if you are learning, healing, or finding your way through something, or if you have ever found your way moving through something, simply place a hand over your heart.
And if you’re comfortable, I’d like to invite us into a brief moment of witnessing, not fixing, not explaining, simply acknowledging the humanity we share. And I invite you to stay within your process and just open your eyes and take a moment to look around. Staying in the process. This is what transformation really looks like, not people being perfect, but people being courageous, people willing to grow. As you see someone with their hand over their heart, silently offer them this blessing. Your becoming is fully supported. And if your hand is on your heart, receive that support.
Your becoming is fully supported. None of us are walking this path alone. And I invite you to speak together slowly. I’ll say it and then repeat after me. Together we affirm. Life is awakening within me. Life is awakening within me. What challenges me can also transform me. What challenges me can also transform me. I welcome the growth unfolding in my life. I welcome the growth unfolding in my life and we rise together and we rise together. So just take that in. We rise together. Springtime reminds us that life does not end with the breaking open. Something new begins. Again and again, life rises.
We rise. Bless the breaking open, the challenges and the transformation. And I’m going to close us out with a prayer of gratitude. So just staying in this space of recognizing the infinite possibilities of life, the unlimited potential, the allness of life itself, the power and presence that I know is God, as love, as freedom. We are one with it and we are individual expressions of it. We are the expressions of that love, of that unlimited potential of that possibility, and how good it is to align ourselves with that truth and remember ourselves as the conduits for that possibility.
And I know that this is the truth for every one of us in this room, everyone watching online now or later that we are individuals expressions of unlimited potential, of infinite possibility. And I just speak a word of blessing over anything that feels like a breaking open, anything that feels like a challenge. And I call it transformation. I call it growth. I call it the becoming, and that this is not a one and done. This is an eternal state of becoming aware of the truth of who we are, knowing our truth, of course, in the moment, but also aware that it is an ongoing process, always becoming more. We rise, we rise up in our consciousness, we raise our vibration and it ripples out to our circle, to our family and friends, to our neighborhoods, to the cities, to the country, to the world. Let us rise.
Let us intentionally stay in that high vibration of possibility, of transformation today and always. We let it be so, and together we say, and so it is.