esrosedotblog

BUNNY HOP

A regular reader of this blog will know that I am areligious. The spell check wants irreligious but I will stay with ‘a’.

By this, I mean that I have opted out of organized religion of any kind.

I have deep spiritual interests but I do not contain them in some prefab construct. Nor do I get myself entrapped by someone else's beliefs.

So you might not be surprised to find that easter is a nonstarter for me. Though, I guess, no-ender would be better. Christmas is the start; this the end. Or the re-start. Never mind.

All the dead, then not-dead stuff leaves me behind in the prop wash.

I was not brought up with a disinterest in easter.

It was, in fact, quite a holiday. There were eggs and egg hunts and a lot of candy. All very interesting.

There seemed to be an obligation to also go to church and hear about Jesus’ end-story but I never quite got the connection between it and chicks and bunnies.

Well, of course, there is no connection.

Once again, the organized christians had co-opted a perfectly OK pagan festival into their own rites and rituals.

It worked for the birth end; why not the death end.

So, the confused haze that passes for religious thought in most children’s (and adult’s) minds settled in and never lifted until I lifted myself out of the whole thing during my teen years.

I did not leave the church itself, incidentally. Not for, maybe another 15 years.

It takes a bit of courage to take that step, after all.

I stayed because I had business there. I played the organ and actually got paid for going! Sometimes, I led the choir and made even more.

That will help one bear up under a lot of doctrinal haziness as well as the hypocrisy of it all. Cash money.

It was also performing in front of other people! A life’s work.

The other reason I didn’t leave right away was my parents. And my kids.

My parents because I just didn’t want to hear it. My mother more than my dad.

My kids because that is where my mother would start and also because there was a bit of ‘let them decide for themselves’ to it.

Those years were not burdensome. We took it upon ourselves to practice the main tenets; gifts in winter, eggs and candy in the spring. Otherwise, we didn’t get too far in the theology; not much further than I had gotten as a child methodist. No concept.

We were secular christians.

Over the years, even the secular part dropped away.

Some parts have held on. I stayed with coloring eggs for many years and we always had an easter lily or two. More in flush years.

And we always had marshmallow peeps. You would let them get stale and eat them dried out.

Then, for caloric reasons, even the peeps fell away.

So there won’t be any easter stuff at our house except here in the blog.

End of an era.

I don’t miss any of it actually.