We have never been much of "Easter Bunny" type people. This year all is changed. We have a twelve year-old foster daughter (with a much younger mental age) who brought her own traditions. Apparently, the Easter Bunny is much like Santa Claus, save she is female (the wife of Peter Cottontail) and brings her stuff in a basket. As far as we could ascertain, she does not come down the chimney. Yet, a carrot is left out for her. We did not do this aspect of the tradition as our pugs eat carrots.
Like Christmas with very young children, the delight on our foster kid's face was worth it all. It's something like a celebration of life. And Easter, if it anything is a celebration of life.
There is a certain type of piety that I can no longer appreciate. It's that which focuses on suffering and blood-letting, of the kind that tries to imagine the torture of Jesus as somehow the worse suffering that anyone could suffer. I no longer linger with the morbidity of Good Friday, in the sense of trying to imagine what it must have felt like to be scourged, and beaten, and nailed to the crossbeam. Roman torture was a cruel affair. It is sufficient to know that Jesus—like countless other good people—faced it with apparent courage, forgiving those who tortured him to death.
I'm not sure why , but I have become sensitized to seeing violent acts. I don't like to watch violent movies and TV shows. Though I teach animal rights, I can no longer watch the PETA horror stories of cruelty to animals in factory farms. I heard recently of a famous Christian TV evangelist who boasted in beating his little ten pound dachshund with his belt to show the little dog who was master. I felt physically sick. There is too much suffering in the world without using the suffering of others as a weird voyeurism. People "get off" on violence and watching the pain of others. I fear that focusing on the torture of Jesus borders on the troubling edge of sado-masachism. So I don't do it.
However, I do use Good Friday to pause, to ponder, to say a prayer for those who do suffer at the hands of others. This year, my thoughts on Friday were for those who are incarcerated in solitary confinement. I posted to Twitter and Facebook a thoughtful philosophical piece by a phenomenologist. This careful philosopher called solitary confinement a "living death." She spoke of the depravation of any contact with others as torture of the soul. We are all relational, social animals. Without contact with the Other we whither away in agony. I cannot imagine such horror as the senses gradually shut down and the mind descends into insanity. So during the day, as I remembered, I said a prayer for those who suffer so, and a prayer too for the end of such barbarity. Not much to celebrate, but a serious questioning of a practice we are all complicit with in some collective way.
On Easter Saturday, Jane and I said goodbye to a dear friend. Michael, our hairdresser for fourteen years, passed away in February. Saturday was his memorial service. For fourteen years, four times a year, for twenty minutes or so, we talked about life, about politics. We went through the Bush years together bewailing the times. We were happy when things seemed to change with Obama. We talked about family and the longing for children, and fairness, and the possibility of marriage. You see, Michael was gay. Years before I knew him, he had suffered at the hands of religious folk who considered his life "wrong" and who tried to change him. Thankfully Michael stayed true to himself. Michael was full of life, was so creative and such a good man. I cried at the memorial service, even as we celebrated his life. I shall miss him. A celebration tinged with sadness.
This Easter Sunday, I awoke to the most glorious of days. There is not a cloud in the sky. No wind. Only the sound of the birds. My experiences of Good Friday and Holy Saturday lead me today, on this day to celebrate life, to enjoy goodness, to be thankful that I am not deprived of human and animal companionship. I celebrate not like the mythic ostrich who buries his head in the sand, unable to face the reality of oncoming danger. I celebrate because the story of Easter tells me that solitary confinement is not the end, that there is a movement to end its cruelty, that though death has taken a dear friend all too early, life continues.
After our brutal winter in upstate New York, the buds are now on the trees. The new grass is sprouting turning our lawn brilliant green from dull brown, the cardinals, robins, red-winged blackbirds are back, and the geese are nesting soon to bring new birth. There is always life. There is always newness. So, today I celebrate.
+Ab. andy