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Beautiful, yes, but just a humble box of Paas egg dye will do.
Bulgarian orthodox Easter Eggs by Ikonact. 7 April 2007.
CC BY-SA 3.0; Wikimedia Commons. |
Easter has
never been an important holiday for me, in part because it has rarely resulted
in a day off (although in
Canada at least
Good Friday is a holiday) and
in part because of sunrise services as a child. I'm not a morning
person--despite the fact that I'm writing this at 7 am on
Easter Monday. Insomnia is not the same as being a night owl, by the by.
Yes, I know I'm missing the point, that Easter is not all
about me and my very special needs, as rich and detailed as they may be. I'll save the exhaustive theological philosophizing for another time (and another person--again, not really my thing), but the religious aspects of the Easter story just do not add up for me. I'm not an atheist, but I am a realist. I'm intrigued by the idea of
Jesus, but I just don't know that I should take his life story literally, that I consider him the one true
Son of God, and that he died for my sins. (Because wouldn't that mean I get a free pass into eternity?) And don't even get me going on the
Resurrection. Color me confused on this and many other aspects of Easter.
This blasphemy, oddly enough, is in no way meant to besmirch Jesus as a human being or as holy person. My issue with Jesus is and has always been with his adherents, not the man himself. I suspect Jesus was a loving, intelligent, contemplative man who questioned authority and immediately endedf up on the wrong side of society and the law. It's an age-old story, although I would be hard-pressed to come up with anyone currently alive who is cut from the same cloth.
Edward Snowden? Don't make me laugh! See, the thing is, to be
Christ-like, you have to be unaware and unconcerned that you're being Christ-like.
I reckon the last person on Earth that deserves the crown, at least as far as I'm aware of, was
Nelson Mandela. May this great human being rest in peace and continue to teach us about strength and forgiveness for generations to come.
* * *
In short, I have never had any talent for being a
Christian.
Plus in matters secular, I have never had any talent for finding Easter eggs. This carries over in other
areas of my life: Sometimes I just can't see beyond the surface of
things, or rather, I can't see the particular thing I should see because
of all the clutter of the other things I see. Let's be kind and call it
"sensory overload," but it could be that I'm just very, very dense.
The one time I was successful at Easter egg-hunting is also one of my
favorite Easter memories. We were visiting my grandparents for Easter,
as we often did (so, see, this holiday was important to at least some of my family), who lived on a small farm in
Eastern North Carolina. It was pouring rain, so we couldn't hunt for Easter eggs outside, which given my general lack of expertise in this area was perhaps secretly a blessing to me.
Nonetheless, my family hid the eggs inside the
house for my cousins and me to find. I was probably still a failure as a
"hunter" that day, but I did at least find some eggs that time--and if
I recall correctly, I found them more than once because we hunted
Easter eggs repeatedly inside the house on that rainy day. Those eggs were cracked and squishy to touch by the end of that day, dirty from so much rough handling, but that is what I remember most and cherish about Easter.
Oh, and the candy, of course. Chocolate, of course, and now later in life, I've come to appreciate jelly beans, although as kid I thought they just looked weird and their pleasures too fleeting.
I
don't know why you should care about any of this, but it's my weird way of saying
Happy
Easter, Happy Passover, Happy Spring, Happy Sunday, Happy Three-Day Weekend, Happy whatever you
may or may not celebrate.
In this time of birth and renewal, here's to your successful hunting and gathering of whatever you may be looking for.
