A few local friends here were very kind and invited me to a couple of Easter weekend activities, and I am afraid that I turned them all down. The real truth of the matter is that this year I simply had no desire to acknowledge the existence of such a day.

But, of course, this is American and you cannot hide from a Judeo-Christian style holiday, no matter how hard you try. So I did spend some time pondering, not the idea of the day, but my relationship to it. It wasn’t particularly festive.

When I think about the Easters of my past the overwhelming memory is that of forced happiness. Easter was supposed to be the happiest occasion in the Christian calender, and there was intense pressure to be emotional. No matter what was going on in your life this was the day you were to put everything aside and rejoice. Shout hallelujah, wave palm fronds, sing loudly. And it just felt so, very, odd to me to feel that I really had to let everyone know how happy I was. And usually I wasn’t feeling much of anything at all. It was a weird sort of reverse monasticism to somehow discipline oneself into joy. I remember coming home from morning church services and feeling the need to happily reflect on the terrible sacrifice(s) made for my salvation.

Which is kind of weird, when you think about it. Madeleine L’Engle has written about how appalling she found this concept of rejoicing in the brutality of one man’s murder. And her concerns make sense. When you hear this from the pulpit you are told that we aren’t celebrating the death of Christ (on Easter), but instead the fact that he rose from the dead. But we can’t separate those things. The fundamental concept of Christianity is that humanity is redeemed through death. And when you look at this from the other side… it’s hard to see how that translates into a religion based on love.

Anyway. Those were some of my thoughts this weekend. No lectures, please.