odds and ends

I had a lovely Easter -- spent it with my boss's family -- my boss, his wife and son Rob and son's fiancee, my friend Stacy -- at the family home in Michigan. We enjoyed heated conversations on the present state of social affairs, an excellent lamb roast (I've never had lamb for Easter, but does anything make more sense?), and a good, relaxed time all around.

I've always been hard-pressed to choose a favorite between Christmas and Easter; I love them both, and the one that's in season is always my favorite. Christmas embraces the joys of everything sacred and secular, as perfectly noted in Sufjan Stevens' "Christmas Tube Socks" essay accompanying his "Songs for Christmas" album released last November. It's a hodgepodge, a mishmash, a fantastic revelry in the holy and the hilarious, and the lines are finely blurred.

Easter, on the other hand, is different. The juxtaposition between sacred and profane is clumsier, the rift between Christian and pagan wider, more easily identified (cf. Eddie Izzard's commentary in "Dress to Kill"). And Easter, preceded as it is by Lent, and followed by Pentecost, is surrounded by a starkness, an austerity, that throws its clearest meaning into sharp relief against the backdrop of bunnies, eggs, plastic grass and marshmallows. Christmas is entirely a celebration of a beautiful mystery: Incarnation. Easter comemmorates three days that encompassed the most terrible despair, and the most terrible joy, of earth's history. Seventy-two hours of gut-wrenching spiritual whiplash.

Bit dramatic if you don't go for the whole faith thing. But there it is, for those who do. Nietzsche got his moment on Good Friday, Saturday, and that very early Sunday: God is dead. Even we couldn't argue with that, if he'd said it then. The disciples didn't. (Well, whether or not they really KNEW Jesus was God, at that moment, is up for debate.) There was a stone in front of God's tomb. And then...there wasn't. Something incredible happened. In seventy-two hours everything turned around. Violently. Darkness fell over the earth in the middle of the day, the temple curtain was ripped in two, there were earthquakes and some of the holy dead came walking out of their tombs, alive, and Jesus was back. And nothing's been the same ever since.

I love Easter best because everything hinges on it. I love it because it's so simple, because thousands of years of orchestration, hundreds of prophecies, nine months of gestation, thirty-three years of life, and three years of ministry contracted to three days...contracted to that one moment, that one second, when the walls of Jesus' heart shuddered with blood and the walls of the tomb whispered with the echo of a breath. When the glory of God that left the temple in Isaiah chapter 6 looked through the newly opened eyes of the once-dead Christ (Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days). And I love it because it foreshadows the fulfillment of his promise when he said, Because I live, you also shall live...

Anyway. Yay Easter!

So work is going well -- it's been kind of consuming my life. I have trouble with balance. My life inner ear tends to go all wonky and I fixate on one aspect and let the other ones go to pot. So right now my house is a disaster zone and I think they might be calling in the Health Inspectors about my dirty dishes, but the office is about to become a phoenix of order and cleanliness. I've been working massive overtime, battling the ongoing sinus problem & headaches, and struggling to pay my medical bills (damn you, medical bills!), but the light at the end of the tunnel is nearing, and this time I'm confident that it's really the light of the summer sun and not the headlight of an oncoming train.