The Season of Return: From Ishtar to Jesus and the Power of Renewal

Every spring, the Earth begins again without asking. 

She moves in rhythm, softening the ground, welcoming warmth, and opening fully to what comes next. And in her quiet return, something inside us begins to rise too. The shift arrives quietly, without announcement. The wind changes, stillness gives way to motion, and light stretches across the sky a little longer than before. The soil begins to breathe, buds return to bare branches, and spring moves with quiet certainty, finding us whether we’re ready or not.
This is the season of return, a rhythm Earth has always known.

Long before the word Easter appeared on calendars, people stood in this same moment and gave it meaning. They felt the shift before they could name it. They watched the land begin again and knew something sacred was happening. The trees held signs of life, the fields softened, and light returned with a sense of calm that didn’t need proof. They trusted the cycle, watched for signs of renewal, and in their own way, moved with it.

We’ve always known how to honor what we feel but can't explain. When something stirs the soul, we shape it into story, speak its name, carry it forward, and give it rhythm so we can remember. Ishtar, Ostara, Passover, Easter, each name holds the same truth. Descent and return. Winter and spring. Whether it's a goddess moving through shadow, a prophet walking through wilderness, or a man rising from silence, the rhythm beneath it all remains.

This moment belongs to many paths at once. It rises through the Earth, speaks through the stars, and reaches anyone who has ever felt their light dim and wondered if it would return. Even in the quiet, something remains. It waits with patience, holds its shape with softness, and carries the quiet promise that life always finds its way back.
This return carries memory. It carries what came before as part of its shape, holding the weight with purpose and memory. It carries the cracks and shadows alongside the softness shaped in stillness. It moves with rhythm that needs no explanation, speaking to the part of us that remembers how to rise.

The stories we carry through spring are shaped by what we’ve lived. They rise from the soil beneath our feet, from the way light settles on the skin, and from the people who look up and notice something is different. These stories carry memory. They were shaped to hold meaning, to pass down what mattered, to remind us that renewal lives in every season. If the Earth can begin again, so can we.

Each year, something in us remembers. We gather around tradition, and move through quiet rituals that hold meaning without needing words. We take a breath when we feel the shift, the change in air, the return of warmth, the pull of something opening, and sometimes that’s all it takes. A single moment of presence. A soft awareness. A breath that brings us back. This feeling has its own language, and we're already part of it. Becoming is already happening.

You've lived through a winter. And now, something in you is beginning again. It begins in rhythm. It begins because it’s time. This is the same rhythm that shaped every ancient celebration, the warmth returning, the silence softening, the part of you coming forward that never truly left. This is where the story begins.

THE DESCENT AND THE JOURNEY INTO THE DARK

Before resurrection comes the dark.

The Earth knows this rhythm. She releases gently, allowing cold to settle and letting the light fade naturally when the season calls for rest. Trees surrender their leaves, animals find shelter, and the wind becomes sharp and clear. Something inside us also quiets, signaling the slow beginning of the descent.

Long before we had calendars or charts, people stood beneath the changing sky, watching in reverence as the sun’s warmth faded. Without fully understanding why, they observed life withdrawing around them. They studied patterns in stars and bones, waiting, wondering if warmth would ever return. And from that shared uncertainty came stories. These stories carried memory and meaning. Far more than myths, they were ways to hold understanding and hope. When the world seemed to be dying, our ancestors spoke about gods and goddesses, kings and prophets, who experienced the same darkness. Within these narratives, they found a quiet peace.

Ishtar, goddess of love and war, traveled through seven gates into the underworld. With each step, she released something precious, jewels, garments, power, until she stood completely bare before death. She’d rise again, but only after fully entering the shadows. Persephone was pulled beneath the earth, leaving behind grief so powerful it caused the world itself to pause. Nothing grew. The soil went silent. Her story explained winter, yet it was also something deeper: a gentle acknowledgment of loss, a way of saying, "We understand this."

Then there was Jesus, whose followers believed him beyond falling, yet found him laid silent and still behind stone. For three days, darkness held him. His believers scattered, uncertain and afraid, wondering if their faith had quietly dissolved. The tomb, the underworld, the frozen fields, all are one story told through different names. The descent belongs to no single tradition but lives as one of the oldest truths we carry.

We descend too. Grief pulls us inward, depression dampens our fire, burnout steals the strength we thought defined us. Sometimes we’re gently nudged into quietness, other times we fall into it without choice. Either way, we land in stillness.

The world often urges us to hurry, to bloom quickly, to remain productive and visible. But nature herself rests without apology, never rushing her return. She slows into the dark, listening deeply, patiently waiting. That’s the wisdom within these ancient stories. They invite us to honor our descent, to recognize the sacred unfolding beneath the surface. Silence becomes the space where transformation begins, offering stillness as the first step. Beneath frozen ground, seeds remain alive and reaching, gathering strength they can’t yet see. They root deeply in the dark, without waiting for spring, trusting that something unseen is already unfolding.

We rarely see the power of our own winters until much later. Looking back, we notice what quietly grew within us: gentle courage, newfound clarity, and a softness born only from stillness. If you’ve experienced this descent in your life, you recognize its shape. The heavy breath, joy just out of reach, feeling caught in a different kind of time, almost on pause, while the world moves forward. And, if you’re there now, you’re exactly where you need to be. This part of the story is often hidden yet profoundly sacred. Everything slows, nothing blooms, and silence seems endless. You're waiting for an answer, a change, a miracle. Yet this place is filled with possibility, memory, and everything necessary for when your moment comes to rise again.

This descent is essential, powerful, and sacred. It matters deeply. The story begins in stillness and shadow, in the gentle breath before life returns, and it carries forward through every moment of becoming.

THE RETURN AND THE BECOMING

Then, something changes.

It begins the way spring always does, quiet and slow, almost unnoticeable. The light lingers a little longer in the sky. A breeze carries warmth instead of bite. The air smells different, like damp soil and something new. Birds begin to call out in the morning. Tiny shoots of green push through the ground. A single bloom opens in a place that once felt still. Squirrels stir. Bees return. The shift is gentle, but it touches everything. What felt silent begins to stir. What felt distant begins to return. This is return, the part of the story that reminds us the descent was always leading here.

In the ancient stories, the turning point always came in silence. Ishtar’s return from the underworld didn’t erase what she saw there. She rose through the same gates she entered, piece by piece, but she was different. She’d faced death. She’d let everything fall away. Her power wasn’t restored because she escaped the dark. It was restored because she moved through it and brought something back. Persephone returns too. Her reappearance marks the change of season. The land awakens with her. The world remembers how to breathe. Crops grow. Color returns. People celebrate because something precious has returned, showing that even after loss, life still knows how to begin again. In the story of Jesus, the return unfolds with stillness. He quietly appears on a road, walking beside people who don’t realize who he is, with no applause or immediate recognition. It’s intimate, sacred, and personal.

And that is what resurrection really is. A return that carries death with reverence rather than denying it. A return that chooses love again through the understanding of loss. A return that embraces what’s becoming instead of reaching back for what was. Spring teaches this without saying a word. The bloom opens when it’s ready. The tree doesn’t mourn its bare branches. It responds to the shift and rises when the time comes. And we return the same way. We return as new expressions, shaped by what we’ve lived, different from who we once were.

After a breakup. After an illness. After a season of numbness, burnout, or silence. After the world feels heavy and our own reflection feels far away. We come back. Sometimes with laughter. Sometimes with tears. Sometimes both in the same breath. We carry the marks of what we’ve seen, not as signs of damage, but as part of the story. They remind us that we are still here, and that makes us real. This is what the ancient stories help us remember. They live as invitations, gentle openings that invite us to see ourselves within them. Resurrection belongs to the human. It lives in anyone who has ever felt the world grow quiet and wondered if they would ever feel alive again.

Resurrection honors the past. It remembers what came before, builds with it, and carries it forward. There’s a quiet courage in returning. In showing up when no one sees the effort it takes. In feeling the cold still lingering and choosing to step into the sun anyway. There’s no shortcut to this kind of rising. And there doesn’t need to be. Because when you return after falling apart, you don’t return empty. You bring with you wisdom. You bring softness. You bring fire. You bring the quiet strength of someone who’s known stillness and still chooses motion.

You aren’t who you were. And that’s the point. This isn’t a return to the same life. It’s a return to life itself. To presence. To breath. To being. And the world feels it when we rise. Just as the land responds to spring, people respond to truth. To openness. To others who carry their scars like stories instead of shame. The Earth doesn’t ask you to rise with perfection. She asks you to rise with honesty. To rise at your pace. To feel the pull of what’s opening and step toward it, no matter how small the step feels.

This is how resurrection lives outside of scripture. It shows up in the woman who learns to smile again after losing everything. In the man who finds peace after years of silence. In the child who forgives. In the elder who tries again. It’s the spark that returns to your chest when you thought nothing was left. It’s the way you begin to show up with your full self after hiding for so long. It’s the warmth in your bones that reminds you that you’re still here. And that matters. Return doesn’t need to be perfect. It only needs to be true. And if you feel it now, if something inside you is beginning to wake, then you’re already in the middle of it. This is what the stories have always pointed to. What the ancestors felt in the soil. What the prophets, the poets, and the seekers have spent generations trying to name. This is the season of return. And you are rising.

THE STORY EVERY CULTURE REMEMBERS

Look closely enough, and every culture tells this story. It comes through different names, spoken in different voices, but the pattern always remains. A rhythm older than words. Descent. Silence. Return.

Long before global religions rose and spread, people watched the skies. They noticed the sun set earlier each day and tracked the moon as she moved through her cycles. Certain stars disappeared and then reappeared months later. These rhythms were more than decoration. They were lifelines guiding people to plant, to rest, to prepare for the cold, and to trust that warmth was already making its way back.

People built relationship with the Earth through these rhythms. They listened closely, understanding that the sacred lived fully in the natural. Divinity spoke through the soil, the rivers, and the skies that changed constantly yet always knew their way home. When life returned in spring, they welcomed it deeply, honoring renewal as sacred. Calendars formed around these moments. Fires burned. Communities gathered. They told stories to remember what they already felt and knew.

Some called this return Ishtar. Some knew her as Ostara. Others told of Inanna, rising from beneath the Earth with her strength fully restored. People watched lambs appear in fields and broke bread together to mark the moment. Eventually, one story spread farther across time and geography than the others, the story of Jesus, a man who taught love, who walked with the outcast, who was betrayed, buried, and then seen again alive, changed, and radiant. His name carried forward. The timing aligned with what came before, and the message echoed a familiar truth: life returns, again and again.

These stories share more than similarities. They share a deeper truth. Myth moves beyond literal history, living as a pattern we recognize in ourselves, consciously or not. It is the shape of seasons, the map we carry in our hearts, a memory older than language itself. To return after pain means walking an ancient path. Finding meaning in rebirth joins you to every person who has ever stood in awe of spring. Whether you speak of Christ risen, light candles for the goddess, or simply sit beneath a tree and feel the wind shift, the power lives in the recognition itself. Something inside you knows this moment. Something inside you remembers.

This story belongs to all of us, to those brave enough to keep living even when it feels difficult, to those still beneath the surface and those already in bloom. It belongs to anyone who has felt the quiet ache of endings yet chose to trust the rhythm of life unfolding. The invitation of resurrection includes everyone. It honors every expression of life, every moment of courage, every gentle return. It ties us together in ways deeper than any book, wiser than any single voice. We live the resurrection right now, in every act of healing, every honest return, every time we choose presence after hiding, peace after war, softness after survival.

This story was always meant to move through us, reminding us what becomes possible when we surrender fully to the cycle and say yes to the rising. This is that moment. The rhythm is rising. It belongs to everyone, living in the realization that beneath every name and beyond every difference, we are—

One people. One story. Many voices.

We belong.