Experienceing Easter

A blog post by Jamie Goodwin about struggling with his feelings at this time of year, a discussion started by Jill Miller Zimon about the chocolate Jesus and her feelings about Passover has caused me to reflect more about my own experience during this time of year.

The Easter/ Passover/Spring Equinox time period has always been important for me though my feelings about it have certainly undergone many transformations. As a child growing up in a very Christian family, it was a time to reflect upon the death and resurrection of Jesus. I took the last super and the death on the cross very seriously, especially during the celebration of communion. The thought of Jesus, someone who was so pure and compassionate, suffering such a horrible death moved me to tears, and the idea that he died for my sins filled me with guilt.

I loved Easter morning when everyone got up early, looked for the hidden Easter baskets and enjoyed the hot cross buns my father always got from the local bakery in our neighborhood. I can still smell the scent of his shaving cream and aftershave as he got ready for the service and dressed up in his Sunday best. We always got something new to wear for this day, and I was very proud of how we looked as a family as we walked the couple blocks to our church. I loved the songs of triumph we sang and the Easter lilies in the sanctuary while the spring sun streamed through the beautiful stained glass windows. Then there was the walk home together and a special dinner my mother made. My brother and I each had our jobs to do in helping to get the meal on the table. When it was ready, we held hands and my father said the blessing. Easter was always fun for my mother, and she carried on the traditions for her grandchildren, buying them new outfits, hiding candy and eggs around the house, and always having a dinner complete with Easter decorations on the table. I miss my parents. I miss celebrating Easter this way.

Later as I began to think about religion in my own way, I tried to identify with Jesus by fasting from Thursday evening until Easter morning. It was my effort to feel his pain and share his burden in some small way. Remember the guilt I had growing up believing that he died to save me. Sunday morning took on a new feeling of resurrection after fasting for two days! Hot cross buns and jelly beans never tasted so good. The fast, my own personal remembrance of the Easter story, became more to me as I studied various religions, history, and grew more aware of events happening around the world. This story of Jesus suffering and dying to save humanity soon developed into an appreciation for all those who have had compassion and died in the cause of love, justice, peace and freedom. My feeling of hunger during my fast helped me remember that for many people around the world hunger wasn’t a choice, it was a constant. The death and resurrection of Jesus became symbolic, the victory of compassion, love, and forgiveness over greed, fear, hate and revenge. They could kill leaders like Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., but they could not defeat the voices of love and justice that echo throughout history. “Up from the grave He arose, With a mighty triumph o'er His foes, He arose a Victor from the dark domain, And He lives forever, with His saints to reign. He arose!” We will rise up- against hate, against war, against fear and slavery. I sang this song with new understanding and more feeling. It was no longer a physical resurrection, but a spiritual one.

Then came the desert of my unbelief. My father's Alzheimer's disease, and 9/11, contributed to my spiritual crisis. I joined the Unitarian Universalist Church looking for something, I wasn't sure what.

In 2003 and 2004, I was hiking on the Appalachian Trail, walking with spring, watching new life develop from what appeared to be cold and dead. There was a part of myself that was resurrected on my trek north. I was mourning the death of both of my parents in 2001, I’d just retired from my job and I was trying to understand just what I believed about God, life, death, humanity. My 2003 journal records the Easter meal, “Today is Easter. Our dinner consisted of the following ingredients all mixed together: chicken chunks, dried veggies, gravy mix, dehydrated milk, and stove top stuffing mix. Believe it or not, that doesn't taste too bad. Gary and I shared the pot of yummy stuff."

In 2004, we were in PA, “We got packed up about 9:30, just before the snow, or maybe we should call it sleet, came, not heavy, at first. Then it changed to flakes, then to drizzle. It is cold, not while hiking but when we stop, brrr. It wasn’t hard to get almost 13 miles in today because we really just wanted to keep going to stay warm. Today is Easter. Our dinner was tuna, noodles, and cheese spread on a taco shell.” Those two Easter Sundays were about as far removed from the memories of my youth as I could get except for the fasting part. Food takes on a whole new meaning when one is hiking on the AT. There is an appreciation for it that many Americans have never experienced.

Though the journal entries for these Easter Sundays do not give evidence of much reflection, my experience on the trail resurrected my belief in God, not the old man with the white beard, but my belief that God is in all of us and in everything if we only listen to our hearts and reach out with compassion to the world. Death is not an end but a new beginning. Life is not a line, but a circle. As I watched the white flowers poke through the brown leaves of the forests and looked from the mountain tops at clouds and stars, I felt so much a part of it all and at the same time so personally insignificant. I think this is the first time I celebrated the Spring Equinox as a spiritual event.

I spent last Easter and the one before in Columbus at a Methodist service where my daughter was singing in the choir. There were Easter lilies and stained glass windows. We sang, “Up from the grave He arose” , but in my heart, I wasn’t singing just about Jesus. I was singing that song of triumph for all of humanity, for the entire world. I was singing about flowers poking their heads out of dark cold earth, birds building nests and laying eggs with new life in them. I was singing about compassion arising from the ashes of our failed relationships with each other, and about people overcoming the slavery of addictions, prejudice, and hate as well physical slavery. This is the time of year to remember suffering people everywhere, not just the suffering of one man, and it is also the time to celebrate the victory we are capable of through the spirit of love we have within and among us.