easter snow

When I was in sixth grade I checked out a book from the library that is still a favorite today. Betsy and the Great World.  This book is set in 1914 and tells of Minnesota-born Betsy Ray's adventures while spending a year traveling through Europe in place of attending college.  We are talking steamer trunks, cobblestone city streets and overnight train travel through Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France and England.  The travel bug bit my twelve-year-old heart hard. 

One adventure really caught my attention.  Betsy spends a few days in Oberammergau, Germany, meets the main actors of the Passion Play and learns their story.  

In the 1600's a vow was made by the inhabitants of the village that if God spared them from the effects of the bubonic plague then sweeping the region they would perform a passion play every ten years.  The Oberammergau Passion Play was first performed in 1634 and continues today.   Every ten years over 2,000 villagers bring the story of Jesus and Easter weekend to life for the audiences that pour in from all around the world.  Someday I would love to be there.

Yesterday I met a real life Betsy.  Her name is Jean and she too wanted to travel the world.
In 1950, socially minded and full of patriotism, Jean left the mid-west for a boat ride to Europe to teach elementary school and give Germans a different perspective on Americans.  In her free time, she learned the language, toured castles and ate kuchen and strudel.

I had to ask her.  "Did you ever go to Oberammergau?"  
"Yes!"  She replied triumphantly.  "I was there for the last day of the Passion Play."

Then she told me about arriving at the Bavarian village on a cold, April day.  She checked into her pension, bundled up and made her way past the colorful building walls to the open air stage.  There, she watched transfixed as the last few days of Jesus' life were enacted before her eyes.

What she remembers the most is that it started snowing as Jesus was hanging on the cross. Big snowy flakes coming down on Jesus' head and arms.  They covered Jean too.

"I'd always pictured Jesus on a cross, in the Israeli desert, far away." She said.  "But watching Jesus in Germany being covered with the same snow that was falling on me...well, it suddenly became incredibly real that He died for me."

Eugene Peterson writes this.  “It is not easy to convey a sense of wonder, let alone resurrection wonder, to another.  It’s the very nature of wonder to catch us off guard, to circumvent expectations and assumptions. Wonder can’t be packaged, and it can’t be worked up. It requires some sense of being there and some sense of engagement.” 

In Jean's room, I realized my hope for this Easter.  That it, again, becomes more than someone else's story.  More than a far-away legend.  That I am caught off guard, overwhelmed with the wonder of it all.  That I keep having my own Easter story to tell.