Happy Easter

DT, WonderGirl, Rocco and I attend a Unitarian Universalist (UU) church. UU tradition is strongly rooted in Christianity, but it is a creedless church and pulls people from all sorts of faith histories. Just as an example, UUs are comfortable talking about Jesus as an historical figure but a mention of God in our church is usually either:

1. qualified ("God, Creator, Spirit of Life, Instigator of Patterns...") or
2. controversial within the congregation, leading to emails to the minister.

Despite these boundaries, yesterday we had an excellent, even spiritual, sermon on Easter. (In case you're wondering, yes, UUs do get dolled up for Easter, and yes, we did run out of seats in the sanctuary.) We read the biblical Easter story, where Mary Magdelene goes to Jesus' tomb and finds it empty, then mistakes the resurrected Jesus for a gardener. One point of the sermon was then that resurrection isn't the same as revival. It is appropriate in the story that Mary Magdelene didn't recognize her teacher; he was transformed.

The sermon, the beautiful weather we're having, WonderGirl's predilection for pretending to be a caterpillar who cocoons then emerges as a butterfly, Rocco's increasing engagement with the world and let's be honest, the wine I've been drinking every night on the patio, have all contributed to a sense of spring which I don't remember feeling for a long time. There is a transformational nature of spring for me this year instead of just the rebirth of the sun. Simply, it's good and I'm grateful for it. I hope I can hold it for a while.

In the same vein, a solution to our fertility problems was apparently right in front of my nose the whole time. An alternate view of Easter can be had via Overheard in NY:

Old man #1: Do you know why a bunny is connected to Easter?
Old man #2: No.
Old man #1: It's because Easter is about fertility and rabbits are animals that are always copulating.
Old man #2: Huh, I never heard about that.
Old man #1: Think about it. On Easter, you have the bunnies and the bunnies have eggs and the eggs have children in them.

--Penn Station


Overheard by: Amanda Matteis