Happy (white) Easter!

So we didn't get a white Christmas, but by golly, we sure did get a white Easter. It snowed rather heavily overnight Friday night, and I awoke yesterday morning to a world covered in a fresh layer of snow, glistening white in the morning sun. We probably got about another 4 inches, but it is well in the process of melting, as the temperatures the past two days have been well above freezing and should remain that way for the week coming up. So by this time next week, it may (hopefully) look a bit more like spring, which arrived on Thursday with the Vernal Equinox. I never like these early Easters because it invariably means colder weather and my desire to dress up for church just disappears entirely. I just wore a sweatshirt, cotton pants and tennis shoes this morning, my usual weekend (and weekday) attire. I agreed to sing with the church choir today for both services, meaning I had to get up extra early to be at a rehearsal about an hour before first service. I hate having to get up early on weekends anyway, so it was extra hard this morning because I worked out with my trainer yesterday afternoon and then drove to Massillon to help a friend move, and unfortunately, found no one there when I arrived, so I left a note and turned around and came back home exhausted. So today I find myself very sleepy and achy and wanting to do nothing more than curl up on the sofa and sleep the day away, but we're having Easter dinner later on at my mom's, so I suppose I ought to stay awake for that!

The sermon at church this morning was really wonderful. So many of us Unitarian Universalists are healthy skeptics regarding Christianity, but I suspect that it's because that religion has been largely corrupted in recent years, particulary by the extreme right. They worship Jesus almost as a god himself instead of a wise teacher, which is more how I see him. I don't think that Jesus would have wanted people to worship him, even though he is often quoted, "I am the way, the light and the resurrection", or something like that. People take that stuff far too literally and don't seem to realize that a good deal of the Bible is probably written largely in allegorical language, because, after all, the four Gospels were written largely to sell early Christianity to different audiences, so they had to appeal to those cultures myths. They were also written for the audiences of the day, making whole sections of it irrelevant to our lives in the 21st century. Even as a child in Catholic school, I was a healthy skeptic who couldn't buy into the whole resurrection myth, which probably comes from the Roman Mithras legend, but you have to remember that the Roman Empire was still in existence at the time of the writing of the Bible.

Our minister's sermon this morning focused on getting past the literalist interpretation of the Bible and looking at things in a different light, that we can say "Jesus is Lord" and mean it in a different sense than what we hear other mainstream Christians say. What she means is that Jesus's message was of turning anger and violence into non-violence and peace, and thus, we can say "Jesus is Lord" and mean that he is our exemplar of living a life of dedication to peacemaking. And she also explained how we can view the Resurrection in the idea of life eternal, how spring and new life return every year, how death does not have the final word, that we live on forever in the hearts and minds of those who know and love us, and in the impact we make on the world while we live in it. We are also the product of all those who came before us, not only our blood relations, but those who lived before our time, like those who built our church with the wish that it should live on after their passing. We are the inheritors of their legacy, we carry on the work they left unfinished by their passing to carry it forward for another day. And so, death does not have the final word. There is always life eternal, and what we do with it and make of it matters. Thus, by this way of thinking, Jesus's resurrection makes sense. We don't have to take things literally and try to make sense of them. Goodness knows, I never bought into the whole saga, even as a child. It never occured to me that one could view things allegorically and find some sense in it all. Now as an adult, the Bible can be a far more approachable book than it ever was when I was young, thanks to a church that does not question my skepticism and encourages me to explore my own belief systems and how they fit into the larger picture. For that, I will always be grateful.