Over 50 And Focusing The Mind

So this weekend officially moved me over the 50 line definitely in the 50+ category.

Starting to grasp that you are at the latter half of your life tends to focus the mind wonderfully.  It helps to being to (perhaps finally) cut through the layers of debris that one has allowed to clutter one's life up over the years.  One comes to realize - perhaps a little late but none the less - that one really does not have the sort of time one imagined (at least here on earth, anyway) to accomplish everything.

At least for me, life is very much becoming measured in hours:  how much I spend at work (too much, really), how much I sleep (not enough), and the remaining hours that are left over to pack in life (which really need to be growing in importance, not shrinking).  It also means that I have been doing some level of rigorously examining the current ongoing activities in my life, in terms of time and energy and money.

Some changes are already being made.  I have (realistically) the ability to really focus on two or possibly three things at a time with the hope of getting better at them. For me it means prioritizing Iai (which I have a decent chance of getting better at) at the expense of Highland Games (which I have probably just about maxed out what I can accomplish), or prioritizing a few languages I want to know better (such as Japanese and Icelandic) over the many I have always claimed that I want to know.  And given the choice of running or weight lifting, I have gone with weightlifting (and walking) to save my knees.

Money tracks with all of this as well, of course.  I have realized what I have blogged about many times, that I am surrounded by things for which (in most cases) I would rather have the money that I spent on them.  I cannot get that money back of course, but I can make sure that I do not continue to pour good money after bad.

So change really can be good - as long as it focuses the mind.

This Is A Solvable Problem

One of the things I respect most about my current boss is that for him, everything is a solvable problem.

I cannot think of a time in the past almost two years when there has been a problem which I have brought to him or seen him with that has not, in some form, been resolvable.  Yes, the resolution may very much look like more work or a different way around or more time or more money or even simply stopping, but there is always a resolution.

As I have processing this over this time, what I have come find is that such an attitude it built on a certain set of core beliefs and principles.  One of them, of course, is simply the belief that nothing is unsolvable.  But the second of them, equally as important, is a view that the world works a certain way and that as such, solutions are always out there.  It is a certain level of optimism in the possibility of future outcomes.

To this point, this has generally not been my outlook.  I am the most dour of pessimists, always seeing reasons why nothing will work and why problems, once presented, most often represent mountains that simply cannot be climbed.

But I am working on this, because of course we all absorb the environment we are in (eventually if not sooner).  And today, unbidden from my brain, popped out "This is a solvable problem".

Just saying it does not always make it so, of course.  But saying it changes the proposition from "there is nothing that can be done" to "there is something that can be done."

And if something can be done, it is merely a problem of discovering it.

Darkness Song

The night-bird sings out,

stars its only audience:

who else cares to hear?

On Alcohol

So I have an issue that I need to discuss and that I have recently actually been willing to admit to:

I have a small problem with alcohol.

It is not big in the sense that it is a problem 7 days a week.  It is not big in the sense that I hide my drinking.  But it is big that when I do, I cannot have just one.

(To be clear, this is a bit embarrassing and humiliating to write.  After all, I am over 50 at this point and should have things better in hand.)

I have always had a somewhat tempestuous relationship with alcohol - mostly because, like a great many people, once I start drinking I do not want the feeling of lack of inhibition to stop (to those who do not know, there is a reason they call it "Courage In A Bottle").  I have managed to avoid serious harm to myself and others  but have occasionally embarrassed myself and some of those around me. 

I have always rejected the slice of Christianity that rejects alcohol out of hand (I am pretty clear on what Scripture does and does not say in this regard) and, being somewhat stubbornly myself, have always felt that such a thing which was not clearly forbidden by Scripture but enforced as if it was to be the worst sort of authoritarianism and going beyond what God clearly states.  And I still believe that.

At the same time, I find myself in the position where my self control (which is also something that God clearly speaks about) is being consistently overwhelmed when I do have a drink.  And if my self control is overwhelmed there, it will undoubtedly be overwhelmed in other areas as well.

Why is this becoming an issue now? It has always been there, of course, but I do not wonder if the struggles I am going through right at moment - and in some cases finding myself at a loss for what to do in general - are pushing me towards some kind of "stress" relief.

The whole point of this, of course, is that it needs to stop.  Pretty quickly.

I have never (and will never) criticize or comment on other people's ability or willingness to enjoy a glass of beer or wine.  But I have reached the point where such a thing, which may be allowed for others, can no longer be allowed for me. 

A Single Dream...

On The Preaching Of God's Word

This is the second time I have written this post for today.

The first time, it was a frankly a rant - on the condition of the sermon I heard yesterday, on the condition of Christianity in my larger circle, on the seeming attractiveness of other forms of belief.  It was bitter, angry - and completely un-Christian.  So I decided I would have to start over.

What I would write about, instead, is the whole counsel of God.

We  now live in an age where (at least here in North America) the Church has largely abandoned the practice of expository preaching, of preaching through the Bible or even books of the Bible in their totality, going verse by verse and bringing out the meaning of the verses as they were written.  Under this method it can take years to get through a single book of the Bible - but within this style one captures the whole of the book, the good and the bad, embarrassing and unworthy.

What we have moved to - seemingly in larger and larger part - is topical preaching.  In this method, one chooses a topic and then finds passages or verses around it.  Another version - none better, in my view - is to preach through a book of the Bible but to do it selectively:  skip some verses here, a chapter there, all in the pursuit of the underlying topic you are trying to communicate.

As you may guess, I am a fan of the first and not the second.

Why?  Because the first gives the whole counsel of God's word.  It does not choose a point to emphasize which is often one important to the speaker but a minor contextual note but instead paints the tapestry of God's Word in all its fullness.  It can also create odd gaps in the understanding of the hearers and their relationship to God:  they know they need to be saved for example, but are not sure what they need to be saved from (the answer, of course, is sin). 

Improperly wielded, topical preaching makes the Church a victim of the age it lives in.  Suddenly God's word seems to speak to the particular conditions of our times (which it can, of course - it is God's word) but in such a way that our modern sensibilities are pleased (until they have to be redefined for the next generation's "modern" sensibilities).  The word then becomes void, merely a social action pamphlet of one sort of another.  And the people of God, instead of being fed true food, are given the sort of things that make them feel full but will disappear as quickly as sugar rush on Easter when the tough times come.

Strangely enough, I am not overcome with fear at this development.  Sadness, yes - God's word is so rich and we allow ourselves to only grasp the barest minimum and I believe there are many that will be unable to stand when the social currents they ride now suddenly turn against them.  But in reality, Our Lord always said this day would come as it has countless times before over the centuries.  And it gives us a principle which any good small holder would embrace:  it is not enough to rely on someone else.  In this, as in all else, we need to be as involved as we are in any other activity.

A Few Words From...Awa no Kenzo

"I must warn you of one thing.  You have become a different person in the course of these years.  For this is what the art of archery means:  a profound and far-reaching contest of the archer with himself.  Perhaps you have hardly noticed it yet, but you will feel it very strongly when you meet your family and friends again in your own country:  things will no longer harmonize as before.  You will see with other eyes and measure with other measures.  It happened to me too, and it happens to all who are touched by the spirit of this art." - Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery

Not Fitting In Part II

Today's excursis is the result of a comment PeteForester left on yesterday's blog:

"I'm going through the same thing, TB; a strange sense of disconnect from family, career, church, etc; a profound sense of burnout. I've prayed, and have gotten the same things back: "Trust in Me. "Rest in Me." It seems like a frustratingly vague answer, but when you think about it, trusting in God is the cornerstone of a fulfilling life. Everything else is secondary.

When you get an answer like this, you know two things; God is there, and you're exactly where He wants you to be at this particular moment. So go with the answer to your prayers, TB, and don't forget; Jesus felt disconnected at times as well... "The stone the builders rejected...""

The response I got today when I asked the question was no different than the one I got yesterday:  "Trust Me". Along with a second item:  "Accept where you are and what you are experiencing."

I know - at least intellectually - that Pete's answer is the correct one:  that God is in every situation, even this one, and that He has total control over the situation.  But emotionally, in my heart, things feel very different indeed.

We - and maybe I mean "We Americans" but perhaps this applies to other cultures as well - are fundamentally taught not to settle.  We should always be reaching and striving for more:  for more things, for more social station, for more improvement, for larger muscles, for better relationships.  To not do this does not at all bear the sense of contentment or even acceptance;  instead, it reeks of defeatism and laziness.  You at worst a fool and at best an underachiever.

At the same time, one has be careful about reading too much into the fact that the circumstances are occurring now.  Part of what makes something bearable - humanly speaking anyway - is that we have a hope that someday the situation will change.  Someday things will turn around - good heavens, is that not what God promised? (Ultimately yes; temporally, not necessarily - in case you were wondering)  That hope buoys us through the weeks and months and even years of the desert and dark valleys.  

But by thinking this we create the risk of putting boundaries on God and His ability to act.  If we look constantly for the time to end, we can become frustrated and lose faith when the situation does not change in a time frame such as we had "allowed" for.  It is one thing to go through a year of a poor personal close relationship or a crushing work environment or a disease; it is another thing when it extends to 10.

Today for practice, I tried the a rather Stoic philosophy style exercise that I have tried before:  "What if X never changed?"  What if the job, the career, the church, the relationship, the income, the sense of belonging - what if that all stayed exactly the same as it is today?  How would that feel?  Would I be okay with it?  I tried it with Pete's comments in mind - and it did help somewhat.  Accepting that something is happening and that (as God is in control) it is happening on His time frame, I could almost (at least for several seconds at a time) get over my anger or frustration.  It was a simple acceptance of the fact that it was the way it was because God desired it so.  

Two other things came out of this process as I sat and pondered them:

1)  Accepting that things are in God's will and are what they are can drive us to Him and Heaven all the more.  Ultimately all of this is a blip on the line of eternity; looking at the "okay" now can make me hungry for Heaven - if I allow it.

2) Accepting the situation as it exists  means accepting the fact that, possibly, I did not cause it.  Yes, I understand that much of what occurs in our lives is the result of our own actions, but I am becoming equally convinced of the opposite, that much of what occurs in our lives are not the results of our actions.  People pulling away or activities falling aside or a church that no longer wears quite right or a job that is a grind rather than the joy it was are not just because we made it that way.  Sometimes it is the result God intervening:  pulling those people or activities away or giving us a deeper or different hunger for a more authentic worship and sermon or causing drudgery to be our daily lot  may be in fact equally the inscrutable hand of God acting in our lives for reasons and ways we will only see in eternity.

And if I look at this as God actively moving in my life - even if it is in staid situations where everything seems to be moving away while I am standing still - suddenly I have a very different perspective indeed.

Not Fitting In

If I have not clearly stated it before, I am clearly going through a phase of not fitting in at all in my current life.

I do not fit in where I go to church.  Increasingly I do not feel like that in at my career place.  I do not fit in at Throwing like I used to.  I have not (for a while) felt like I fit within my circle of friends.

(For the record, I do still fit at Iai and and the Rabbit Shelter - but rabbits are pretty pleasant companions).  In almost ever aspect of my life, I do not feel like I fit in.  The sense is that my life is slowly being compacted and pushed off a ledge over a cliff from which I can hear the waves of the raging sea.

The problem seems to be that I am not really fitting in anywhere else either.  If there are other places that I might fit in, these have not readily come to mind or readily presented themselves (not that there seems to have been time for that of late, however).  Instead, it seems the lamps of my life are slowly being extinguished one by one while I wait for a dawn which I hope is coming - think is coming - but have no real guarantee is coming.

I asked God about it tonight walking Poppy - really, let us be fair, it was someone more of an accusation.  "When, God?  When do things clear up?  When do I find the path forward?"

The answer I got was "Trust Me."

Not, as you can imagine, the clearest sort of answer I was hoping for.  A time frame gives us something to framer expectations and efforts around but simple trust is something that says an event can go for five minutes or fifteen years.  And there is no really hint of such a trust dawn except to pay careful attention to the world around you for the dim lightning which suggests that it may be finally coming.

But this was the only answer offered.

And so I wait in the gathering gloom of nightfall.  I can feel that there is a next step but, like a man in a cave, I can make no progress without injuring myself - until the dawn arrives.

A Slow Moving Cultural Wreck

There are days and weeks - like this week, it seems - where I go through a sort of general sense of hopelessness about the future.  It just feels as if things are not getting better and have no chance at all of getting better, at least in my lifetime.

It has been said before by others more eloquent than I, but I cannot remember a time where the vitriol of one to another has ever been so high.  It is if we have abandoned even the pretense of trying to get along and have become embroiled in a one act monologue where the only subject covered are the idiocies and the meanness of the other side.

It has reached the point where it seems we are not just trying to fray the bounds that bind us together as a society but we are actively tearing them apart as fast as we are able in hopes of....

In hopes of what?  That is perhaps the most troubling part of the equation.  To anyone who has built a culture, be it business or religious or non-profit or even a club or role-playing group, it is understood how difficult it is to do such a thing.  Culture is something that has to be carefully nourished and protected to grow and flourish and then (once existing) has to be weeded and pruned and watered as carefully as any garden. Forget any of these and the cultures begins to die and once dying, is usually very hard to bring back to life.

So I suppose their hopes are to destroy things to the point that something new, something "better" can be built?  Utopianism at its finest I suppose - but a simple study of history will demonstrate the perils and usual outcomes of such a thing (check out Nazi Germany Soviet Russia or The Killing Fields of Cambodia or Communist China in its Great Leap Forward or Cultural Revolutions Phases [or even now, really])  for a sense of what "new cultures built on the ruins of the old" actually looks like.  It is a bloody, destructive affair that leaves a wake of death and destruction behind it.

The saddest part to me is that I am watching this happening, observer of a slow motion train wreck that is coming down the tracks at me - and all I can do is watch in horrified anticipation as it seems to gain sped.

Plugging The Hole Of Self Acceptance With Others

I am shocked at the extent to which I have tried to plug the holes of my own feelings of lack of self-acceptance with the lives of others.

It is something that has only become a matter of realization in the last week or so, precipitated by the realization that I really am not quite the central figure in the lives of others that I imagined I was.  As I slogged through the degrees of grief that occur with any relationship of worth, I realized that in point of fact I was not so much grieving their moving on as I was grieving a very real sense that a hole had been exposed once again.

It is easy to understand now that I can see it.  I have always struggled with acceptance:  my own acceptance of myself, and certainly God's acceptance of me.  My solution has been to find a way to make that feeling go away by finding others who I can draw close to help fill in the gaps that I feel I cannot close myself.

It is not a great solution of course, as it both manages to eventually alienate the other person (trust me - I have the wasteland of former friendships to prove it) as well as driving me away from the probable sources of the solution that would actually fix the problem:  my own acceptance of self, and my acceptance of God's view of me.

Living feeling as if you are continually performing below what you should be doing is a terrible burden to bear.  It is doubly hard when the person that administered that burden is yourself:  you can never really let yourself be pleased with your performance because, after all, you are the harshest critic of yourself.  Outside people theoretically remove this issue from you:  by being outside of you and "not you", they somehow have legitimacy the make you feel that sense of acceptance - after all, if they are receiving you, are you not okay?

The reality is that in fact in any relationship - any healthy one anyway - both sides are deriving a benefit.  When that benefit becomes one sided it either simply becomes a charitable event (and if you have never been a relationship charity, you do not know the pain of realizing it after the fact) or something that is on its way out the door.

Is there a solution?  The one I should tell you is "learn to accept yourself".  But that is the very thing that is the hardest, is it not?  I am no more likely to accept myself simply because I tell myself so than I am to fly by jumping off a roof flapping my arms.  There is a thing there, a thing I am missing - and my fear is that the road to recovery lies directly back through that gaping hole I am trying to fill.

Fencing The Garden

As I mentioned last week, my temporary solution of light plastic fencing for my garden was fairly ineffective once Poppy figured out she could go through it:

The time had come to get a few more posts:

And an actual fence:

I do not know that this will definitively keep Poppy out - she is a pretty clever dog.  The best I am hoping for at this point is that it will difficult and unpleasant enough that she will give up.

(On a happier note, the recycled wood pellets and rabbit manure have turned into an amazing top soil.  Pretty excited about that.)

Of Leek Pie

Wednesday night we had leek pie.  We have had leek pie before; the thing that made this one different was that it was leeks from our garden.

I was not quite prepared to take the out, but Poppy the Mighty had figured out that 1) She could go through the light fencing I had put up, and 2)  Things sticking out of the ground make a pretty good chew toy.  So it was pull them or lose them.

As we were eating it last night, I was suddenly struck by the fact that (with a little work) most of the ingredients were things that I could generate, if I had the room and time:  Leeks, eggs, wheat flour (for crust).  Bacon and Milk/cream/butter could be had at a little more effort and expense (or traded for).  But the thing could be done, with a little effort and ingenuity.

It is moments like this (mostly, finishing up the leftover piece) that makes me think and realize how much more possible such things are.  Yes, my reach always seems to exceed my grasp in such areas - I am still struggling after nine years of living here to get a garden I can actually eat out of - but occasionally there are moments that remind me that the future is out there, if I can just apply myself a little more creatively and be a little more patient.

And yes, the leek pie out here is delicious.

Greatness

You Giant Weirdo

We love the bunnies around here (third most abandoned pet after cats and dogs.  Live 9-12 years.  Smart as a cat, and well managed, not nearly the smell of a litter box).  Sunday, which for Nighean Dhonn and myself is Bunday at our local rabbit shelter, is always a day of happiness.  It is, however, important to keep perspective:

Buying New And Selling Old

This evening I made a trip to the local used book store.

We have been slowly compiling a bag of books that were no longer ones that we read - which turned into two bags, which then became three.  To be fair, most of them belonged to The Ravishing Mrs. TB, but over the past week I have started to become almost maniacal in my need to downsize things.  For me, it was probably maybe 20 books - but the fact that I would part with any of them should indicate the height of my energy.  They were all books that I had kept for years but had never gone back and read for one reason or another, so into the bag they went.

The grand total for a haul of three bags worth of books?  $12.00 (That is $15.36 to my Canadian friends).

Hardly seems worth it, does it?  Mind you, I would guess that well over $300 went into those books over the years as they were purchased.  And everything is driven by the market, of course (and I suspect cookbooks and some Christian books, which were in the mix, are hardly the sorts of things that sell well these days).  Still, as I pointed out to her, it is $12.00 we did not have yesterday and a little bit of additional space in the house.

What it did impress on me once again is the foolishness of buying new and selling old.

Buying new books is not the thing it used to be for me, once upon a time - I have not set foot into the last remaining Major Bookstore Box Marketer in probably three years.  Why?  Because the mark up compared to Amazon is stupid.  But even on Amazon, I more often will try to get the new rather than the older because, in my mind, I am "gaining value" by not paying the postage.  Fool!  What is more important - stretching those book dollars or just getting a slightly used one, like I would if it in the local used book store?

And selling old - once you have something that is not immediately usable or disposable, it seldom increase in value.  Yes, I can understand moving things out to make room or cut down on clutter, but never do it on the basis that somehow you are going to make back anything compared to what you put out for them.

Really, a lesson for almost anything you spend money on: very few things are best new, and almost nothing is quite as good selling old.

How You Made Them Feel

A great deal of truth here:

The Self Taught

If this is not the mantra of the Small Hold movement, I am not sure what is:

Rebuilding My Life

A' Chailin Rua sent me this quote the other day:  "If you knew how hard it was and how long it took to rebuild my little universe of peace and happiness then you would understand why I'm so picky about who I allow into my life."

As I looked at the quote and thought about it (and how much I agreed with it), the thought suddenly hit me that I am in the process of rebuilding my life.

It was not something that has intentionally happened - it is not as if I sat down and said "I am going to completely change my life."  But what seems to have occurred is that my life has been changing, first at the fringes and now more and more at the core.  Who I was a mere nine years ago - good heavens, a mere two years ago - has changed, and somewhat drastically.  And while I do not completely understand the nature of the changes or what it means, I am conscious that they are present  and that I have to adapt to them.

As I have written earlier, it was made more than obvious to me when I started doing the count of people in my life that are not passing associates at work or someone I see or speak to once in a while.  That number is low - and controlled to specific areas.  And as I considered that and considered my activities, I suddenly found that many of my interests had changed over time as well.  Not all of them, mind you:  the bedrock still seems to be there along with some of the things I have picked up along the way (Iaijutsu for example), but a lot of the other things have either completely disappeared or are receding quickly from view.

As I go through the exercise of slowly excising my presence from the InterWeb, I am discovering that I have filled my life with a great many things that while at the time may have been entertaining or important, no longer seem to hold any interest or importance.

I made my list on what I wanted to focus on for the next few years.  While it was not in many ways that different from a list I would have made 25 years ago, what was different was the distinct lack of "being social and connected" that was on it (or, as it is known, the social economy).  It seems I have passed the point of expansion, at least there, and am moving into a phase of significant contraction from all of that and much that the world has to offer.

And so I find, perhaps almost accidentally, that at a half century I am effectively rebuilding a life - or perhaps better put, removing the superstructure and rebuilding on the original foundation.

Spring Blog Cleaning

Over the weekend, I finally closed out my other major online presence.

It was an old blog, one that had been started after this one and one that was "published" under the auspices of my real, actual name.  Originally I was following the idea of Otis, who had published a business related blog writing about his career field.  Sounded like a good idea, I thought.  I should do the same.

Like most of my ideas, this was the one that was going to "take" me on to fame and fortune.  This was the blog that was going to put my keen insight on my career field and success on display for the world to see as me.  This was going to move the goal posts forward (finally) on my writing career.

As you can suspect by the fact that I shut it down, it did not quite live up to my extraordinarily high expectations. 

It would perhaps be fair to say that my writing on such things is not all that unique.  To succeed in the world of career and business or achievement blogging, you need to provide solutions.  I am not so much of a solution provider as I am a theoretical thinker.  I can take the thoughts and words of others or even myself, but I would just as soon theorize as I would provide solutions.

Oh, I got hits - far more than I ever received here.  But the tracking device revealed the unique hits were no more than I have done here over the years; I had become a magnet for spammers trying to post links to their products.

I did get some good out of it:  I learned to write fables pretty well.  Articles I am not so good at; fables are much more challenging and yet easier. If I did no other good, I did that.

So this weekend I carefully archived everything to my computer (we never lose writing here), and then quietly began the process of eliminating and shutting down the blog and all its links.

Besides just tying up another loose end online, I was surprised by the sense of relief that flooded me when I was done.  It was like I had been carrying around this burden of an old project that had never been completed but not really sure what to do with it.  The situation has been rectified, as with any good spring cleaning.   The InterWeb Desert, if you will, has once again wiped the slate clean.

Losing Emotional Baggage

This weekend some of my emotional baggage got lost.

It is not particularly attractive emotional baggage, you understand - probably 25 years old in faded tan and black colors.  No rollers on the bottom either, so you had to lug the things from place to place.  My name and address were attached at the top on some old Disneyworld luggage tags, the address crossed out for every time that I had changed locations. 

But it was my luggage, luggage that I had lovingly packed initially and then, over time, continue to pack until I could barely get anything else in there.  Arguably it was overpacked:  I never really go rid of the things that were in there but just kept pushing them to the bottom.

What was my hope, dragging this quite above the weight limit, overfilled, old luggage with me?  A fool's errand, mostly.  A belief that somehow this luggage held the key to something - happiness, if you must know the truth.  I kept moving it from place to place even as the rest of my life expanded because of a belief that my happiness - my fulfilling, true happiness, was right around the corner and I had to be ready to go when that moment showed up.  A whole subset of dreams and wants were packed into it, old ones being pressed down by new ones as the years went on and the previous ones faded.

And then, this weekend, I lost the luggage.

I showed up at the next point of entry and went to find my luggage on the carousel but it was not there.  I stood there, watching the last two bags slowly make their transit again and again with nothing else coming out, before I gave up. 

I had my luggage tickets and showed them at the "Lost" counter.  The attendant slowly shook his head after looking at the computer screen.  They had a record of the luggage but no record of where it has gone.  It was, truly, lost.

Which makes for a very odd feeling.

For the first time in 25 years I do not have that luggage striking at my heels every time I stop.  All of the things I put in there are no longer available for me to pull out or push back in at my leisure.  Everything in there that represented an investment of time and thought is gone.

And now I find myself at the edge of the airport arrivals section with nothing more than a small carry on of emotional items and without any real idea what the next step is supposed to be.  The outside world seems strangely barren and yet potentially full of possibilities at the same time.

And perhaps most strangely, I feel lighter.

Only The Now

Too Good Not To Share:

Happy Easter 2018!

Now Mark 16:1–8; Luke 24:1–10; John 20:1–8after the Sabbath, as the first day of the week began to dawn, Mary Magdalene Matt. 27:56, 61and the other Mary came to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake; for Mark 16:5; Luke 24:4; John 20:12an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat on it. Dan. 7:9; 10:6; Mark 9:3; John 20:12; Acts 1:10His countenance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow. And the guards shook for fear of him, and became like Rev. 1:17dead men.

But the angel answered and said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for He is risen, Hos. 6:2; Ps. 16:10; 49:15; Matt. 12:40; 16:21; 17:23; 20:19as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly and tell His disciples that He is risen from the dead, and indeed Matt. 26:32; 28:10, 16; Mark 16:7He is going before you into Galilee; there you will see Him. Behold, I have told you.”

So they went out quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to bring His disciples word. 

And as they went to tell His disciples, behold, Mark 16:9; John 20:14Jesus met them, saying, “Rejoice!” So they came and held Him by the feet and worshiped Him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell Ps. 22:22; John 20:17; Rom. 8:29; (Heb. 2:11)My brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see Me.”

- Matthew 28:  1-10, NKJV