Happy Easter Y'all
I wrote a piece for this morning that is just too heavy to post on Easter Sunday. It's a beautiful sunny day here. Let's celebrate that.
I admit that we were not consistently religious when I was little. Mom was Catholic, but we attended mostly Methodist services when we went to church. Dad sometimes took me to the Presbyterian church. And I kind of liked the Lutheran church a friend of mine attended. As a grown person, my husband, from England, grew up in the Anglican church, with a Vicar grandfather. My father-in-law was a lay reader, bell-ringer, and organist in the church. So, the rhythm of church life is ingrained in my husband’s family. And I profess, I prefer the Anglican church’s more ceremonial services.
I was thirty-seven years old when we returned to America, and by then, the language used in the churches I attended as a child had changed pretty dramatically. It all felt “evangelical,” like missionaries I’d seen selling their snake oil overseas. (I don’t mean all missionaries are bad, but I met some who were clearly living very well while talking vulnerable, poor people out of their savings.) Every sermon I heard after coming back to the U.S. sounded like I was being talked down to by some bloated white man interpreting the Bible very loosely. These preachers were not interested in intelligent theological discussion. They were speaking as if to idiots. I couldn’t attend those services at all after a while. Meanwhile, my husband heard “pass the collection plate” a few too many times, and our children were mercilessly bullied at children’s choir practice, where the adults offered too little assistance.
Easter was always a big deal to me as a child, though not because some man at church said so. My fondest memories are of dying the eggs with my grandmother, and then hunting them on Sunday morning. I never questioned how the Easter Bunny managed to get those same eggs my grandmother and I colored outside to the flower bed to hide them.
I know it isn’t about the eggs, and that the real message is that there is life after death. And I believe that. I hope you do too, whether or not it is in memory of Jesus Christ. So, Happy Easter everyone. I wish you all glory on this beautiful day and every day. Happy Easter!
Churches, like all organizations, are made out of people. You can only expect just so much.
I tried to make this comment yesterday. I was not remembering correctly in the original post. I DID contemplate the nature of the Easter Bunny as a child. My mother loved to tell the story of me asking her whether the Easter Bunny was one big Jackrabbit, or a bunch of little Cottontails.