Easter

I slept in this Easter morning. The lower-functioning heart and all of the accompanying medications sap my energy and make me exhausted. Stephen gets up and hides eggs for our teens as they have requested, and I’m glad - it feels nice to extend this bit of childhood. We make biscuits from a can, and I forget them and they burn, so we pick the salvageable bits off of the pan and dip them in jelly in the kitchen, which smells burnt. 

Past years, I would get up early, light candles, fill the living room w Easter decor and white flowers in place of the Lenten rice bowl, the wooden spiral w Jesus and the cross, the stations of the cross books. I’d light an Easter candle in the middle of a large ordered floral arrangement. We’d have a big meal planned for after Mass. This year, we did none of that. The Easter decor is half-ass and has been up forever - I got it out after Mardi Gras. We will go to Mass today, sit outside on the grass, try to pay a little bit of attention, cross fingers that the priest doesn’t say anything too off-putting, especially as Abigail is kindly agreeing to go along. I’m not sure, but I often think Jesus Himself would not go to this church. The Jesus I recognize feels absent here. Yet here I am; yet, here he is.

I have some small guilt for not participating in Lent this year. I went to no services. I did zero stations. I shared no Lenten devotions with my children, and did none myself. I went to Mass and participated poorly and with irritation. My idea of Lent is a bit that you deny yourself and in proportion to your denial of self, you get the joy of Easter. Maybe I can have some of it anyhow - what if it has not got to be earned? What if there is mercy for all, freely given? What if there is empathy? What if there is hospitality and welcome for the outsider?

I became a Catholic because of welcome - I felt loved, welcome, called to, and accepted as a teen by those I knew who were Catholics. The rules were secondary to the welcome. I learned the rules, too, but what I loved was Jesus who knew me, listened to me, was really with me, hanging alongside me as a companion. I don’t see this as easily in the Church now - where I felt we were to run to the edges, the church I see here seems to have closed in on itself, walled off, terrified of contamination. As a teen and a new Catholic, I remember someone gentle saying that we ought to try not to see anyone as a person to be converted, but always as a person loved by God, with something absolutely valuable in them, just as they are. We are trying to change ourselves, and to love, not change, others. I would like to see that Jesus again one day. I hope for the turning of the church again towards joy and welcome and love. In the meantime, I suppose I just keep sitting in the grass. 

I always like the reading for Easter Mass in the morning. It’s the one where Jesus’ friend Mary meets Jesus in the garden and thinks he’s the gardener. It’s hard for me to recognize Jesus in the church these days in the people or in the parish. I might know him in a garden, maybe, if he said my name. I have a little garden, and I’m surprised this spring by the unexpected resurrections in it - what plants have withstood our Florida snowfall, a zinnia coming up where I didn’t plant one. I’m hopeful, but not terribly. 

If I still believe the Easter story, it’s important to me that Jesus came in the dark to people in darkness, not to the certain or the sure. That he came to people who didn’t think he would, or hadn’t really thought about it much at all. That he came with a love for each person - not a vague churchy love, but a love of the quirky humanity of each actual person. Like how I felt about meeting my former neighbors’ half-grown children recently after years apart - how did you raise such delightful, ridiculous, interesting people? How did these incredible young people come to exist? I loved them instantly. No part of me wanted to change anything about them. I want love like that. I know that when we love others, we want them to be better and happier - but that isn’t where we begin.

This morning, my children wake up late and we sit in the messy living room and they open their baskets, which aren’t too exciting this year. The egg hunt is just eggs w jelly beans - no fun surprises or super creative ideas. They are nice about it all. They make themselves coffee. They put on any kind of whatever clothes and gather up some gel pens and paper to entertain them at Mass. We will sit in the garden. Who knows what could happen, I guess.