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In the Christian tradition, Easter Sunday is a happy celebration, when life triumphs over death. Winter gives way to spring. Baby animals are born. Christ rises from the dead. Yet as the calendar brings Easter around, I mostly remember the death part from church days, based on Christ’s words, Take up your cross and follow me.
A couple weeks ago my friend Gayla showed me a book she is reading titled Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire “offering a fascinating new lens on the history of Christianity, from its first centuries to the present day, asking how its early vision of beauty evolved into a vision of torture, and what changes in society and theology marked that evolution.” What? In the first centuries Christianity focused on beauty? One part of the book explains that before a certain century (can't recall which) there is no art to be found depicting the crucifixion.
Thankfully I didn't grow up during the Inquisition or anything remotely close to it, but there was the cross before us every day. Daily choices between this and that gave opportunity to sacrifice desires and find instead a chance to serve God, people or a greater cause. In other words: death to self. Or: What I feel doesn't matter as much as what God wants. Understandably the result was that feelings and desires became the enemy.
As a person who scored 50 to zero in the feelings vs. thinking section of the Myers Briggs personality profile - that's 50 on the feelings end of the spectrum and -0- on the thinking end (no comments from the peanut gallery, please) - this teaching that my feelings didn't count for much was painful. I never quite got the hang of it. For instance, I couldn't run on the track team when the coach invited me, because track practice was on Wednesday nights, and we had prayer meeting at church that night. As a preacher's kid, you have to be in church whenever the doors are open, as an example to the congregation. Eventually, questions about the whole ball of wax led me away from church, back to what I had always felt down deep, even as a child: that I wanted the roots of spirituality, the cosmic “laws” undergirding all of Nature, not the human rules interpreted from sacred texts in any one religion, and often used to control people's behavior.
As beautiful as religious celebrations can be, when you stop following, it’s tempting to throw them out because they no longer bear the same weight of meaning, or because they have been co-opted by commercial enterprise to sell the next stack of goods in grocery store aisles. This Easter, I am trying to tune out old mental tapes and mantras and re-discover the essence at the heart of this holiday that reflects the cycles and laws of Nature. Some symbols remain - eggs, a sunrise, a baby chick - because they are Nature's markers for release from the dark of winter and death. Do I sound Pagan and goddess-y? Well maybe you do too if you color Easter eggs or fill baskets with chocolate eggs for your kids, or even use the word “Easter” since that word came from the Pagan goddess of birth and renewal “Oester” (or the Babylonian “Ishtar”). Check out this site about Easter, eggs and bunnies and their Pagan roots.
The point of Easter is: It's a new day. Live it fresh, live it alive, live it in harmony. No enemies allowed.
