Easter

Don't miss out on Easter just because it seems like such a mish-mash of bunnies and crucified men and pastels and white shoes again. 

 

Easter is the BEST holiday, and it's easy to miss because it's so multi-layered it's difficult to know what to pay attention to.

 

Taking away what may or may not have actually happened, and remembering that when a story gets retold enough, it reshapes itself into something elemental, something deeply satisfying, we have what is the best fantasy the church has.  (Maybe that should read the "Church".)

 

We have the end of everything good, we have the tragedy of having killed it ourselves, of having taken this amazing prophet who got down in the muck and lived with the murderers and the prostitutes but remained alight with love, we have a mob of people losing themselves to suspicion and hatred and killing their God.

 

Everyone wakes up and realizes that means there's no God left.  No one to make sense of it all, no one to give comfort and clarity, no one to be the bedrock of what is true and decent.  The mooring is gone, the anchor unchained.  We are adrift.  We've killed what is best about ourselves and we have to stay alive without it.  We've snuffed our own candle and what's left is darkness. 

 

So in the midst of the worst possible version of being alive, the being alive with no meaning or joy or laughter, and with our only companion a pain of our own making, we follow these two broken women to a grave.  Or men - it doesn't matter who it is that finds out first.  Because what they find is such a relief.

 

Because what we find out is beyond religion, it's beyond magic, it's beyond our capacity to make up.

 

Life comes back.  We get God back.  We get daffodils and roses and lilys back.  We get babies who look like our dead mothers, we get white dresses and white shoes to start over again with, we get jokes and comrades and sunny days.  We get roads that lead somewhere, we get brand new Ikea furniture, we get blank pages that will soon be filled with something charming and delightful.  We get back the person we destroyed, even if it's ourselves.  It turns out that person was walking along the road with us the whole time, even if we didn't recognize him or her.

 

We get it all back, dancing and laughing and meaning, we get MEANING back. 

 

A light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

 

It doesn't matter if it didn't happen to Jesus.  It's happening right now to the world, because it's spring, and this is one way we can tell ourselves that story.

 

So go buy yourself a daffodil, or a chocolate bunny.  Or eat an egg.  But don't miss out on Easter. 

 

You don't have to believe it for it to be a true story.