this is a holiday. a holy day. to celebrate an event that may or may have happened, but that many millions of people throughout history have staked their lives upon.
maybe it was a miracle, maybe it’s an old wives tale that somehow caught on.
and i may have only ever sat through one church service, but i know with every cell in my body that:
1.) God doesn’t see the connection between drinking before noon, eating chocolate bunnies and wearing $400 heels on a Sunday morning and his rise from the earth, either.
2.) Rabbits don’t lay eggs.
3.) “He Is Risen” is a poorly constructed sentence for all intents and purposes, save for the fact that because most English speakers would be ok with this clear mixing of tenses, linguists would have to accept it as a grammatical statement.
4.) God wants you to treat your waitress as if she really were a human. That’s kinda what he’s all about. That whole compassion, do-unto-others malarkey.
5.) God also wants you (if you’re going to celebrate his son’s return to the waking world) to stay home with your family on Easter, so that others can enjoy the same experience (see above, about the treat-thy-neighbor thing.) If no one got all spiffed up to go eat $20 eggs, then no one would have to spend the day serving on them, thus missing a gentle afternoon in reflection with their loved ones (surrogate parents included, beautiful warrens of my heart.) And parents would be forced to make conversation with their children, instead of chiding them for misbehaving in a restaurant.
So today we will drink this wine and muse about a pretty radical guy in the cradle of civilization.
And we will also think about our families, both the living and the dead, because, regardless of who your savior is, family is it.
And try to ignore all of the things that people do in the name of salvation.
Hope everyone had someone to hug today.
xoxo me.
p.s. today one of the chefs at work was making small talk and he asked me why i was in bellingham (practically no one is actually local- the city is full of nomads) and if my family was up here, or “just me.” and i said “no, just me” and it sounded so lonely i almost cried.
p.s.s. while i was writing this, i remembered the time when i was 14 or so, on the night before Easter. and I asked her what we were doing the next day. And she responded that we were going to the grandparents and that “your aunt will probably be all dressed up, so let’s look like shit.”
that one did make me cry.