Twenty-two years ago on this Easter day I awakened at first light, filled my helmet with heavily chlorinated water and shaved, handed my rifle to a friend and, with a few others, walked along the laterite road to a large tent set up by the Divisional Chaplain.

As always in dry season, we were covered with the orange-yellow dust which swirled in the breeze and quickly caked all over our bodies so that you could not tell where clothing and armor stopped and skin began. Walking slowly, each was aware of the stark loneliness, especially on this morning as we quietly remembered the Easter mornings of our youth - so long ago - last year. (John Wheeler, a writer and Vietnam Veteran, once said that we got there too young and came home too old.) There was also the memory of the night before, and a string of other nights before, when the artillery shook the ground and flares drifted - casting their eerie light across strange jungle vegetation - and then it was dark again, very dark, indeed.

At 0700 that (and any) morning it was already hot and the blinding sun could be felt through one's clothing, but when we entered the tent, the ground and shade brought a coolness to our minds, and we saw there the symbols of worship, the cross, the chalice, the paten. We saw the Episcopal Chaplain enter in full Eucharistic vestments. Incense covered the smell of water buffalo dung which permeated our battle dress and skin. We were carried from nothingness to somewhere else as Christ said, "Eat and drink this," and we did.

Leaving one at a time in silence, each of us was physically stopped by the strong hand of the priest at the tent flap. He placed a hard boiled egg in my hand. (None of us had seen a real egg in months.) Then, following an old Eastern practice, he quickly cracked the egg, looked into my eyes, and said with conviction, "Christ is Risen, the Lord is Risen, indeed;" and we walked, stunned, back into the sun.

The Resurrected Christ surprises us, comes to us even, or perhaps especially, in our particular times and places of death. He offers a new breaking open - a new orientation, a new work of hope into the midst of the numbing primeval forces which would have their way with us.


"He is risen, he is risen.
Tell it out with joyful voice;
He has burst his three day prison;
Let the whole wide earth rejoice;
Death is conquered, we are free,
Christ has won the victory."


Heyward+
Easter, 1989