One place that I don’t go is church.
This isn’t because I’m irreligious, it’s just that I’ve never gone to church, and now that I’m a reasonably grown-up person, I find that it’s something I simply lack the skills to do. I don’t know, for example, which churches it’s in that you cross yourself, which ones where you sing which songs, and which ones where it’s okay for the person up at the front to be female or gay or a child molestor.
I have been in churches now about six times in my entire life: Twice for weddings, twice for confirmations, twice for funerals — just enough of each to know how things go, and just enough to realize how much I’m missing of what’s going on. When someone picks up their hymnal and knows what page to turn to, when everyone knows when to say “Amen”, when people kneel or don’t kneel or stand up or turn to each other and shake hands or understand Latin or all these other things that seem tiny by themselves but put together make you wish you hadn’t RSVPed for the wedding or at least that you had chosen to sit at the back where nobody can see that you have no clue what you’re doing.
I know the Bible. I even quote it sometimes, especially the neat little phrases from the King James version. I’ve read it from a medieval point of view, from a philosophical point of view, from a personal point of view, from an angsty teenager wanting to read about the Apocalypse point of view — name it, I’ve done it. Maybe I can’t go at a Jehova’s Witness chapter-and-verse the way I’ve seen my mother do, but I think I do pretty well for someone who doesn’t know the difference between a Pastor and a Minister.
On days like today, though, watching people drive by in their suits as they head off to hear the Easter service, I wonder what I’m missing. What are they hearing about, I wonder? Is it the same thing as it used to be, so long ago when there was no more important date on the Christian calendar than Easter? What’s the message? What does the Resurrection mean now to people, that it might not have meant a hundred, or five hundred, or a thousand years ago?
Is that a question that people even ask themselves, any more?
James: Hey sweetheart, are you ready with that map of where we hide the Easter Eggs?
Mary: Oh God, yes. Do you remember last year, when the dog found them all and we had to get his stomach pumped?
James: I’ll never know why you thought that Dalmatians were smart dogs. They run into fires, for God’s sake.
Mary: Listen, it was that or a fish tank. Did you want to scoop the kids’ dead fish out of there every week? I didn’t think so.
James: All right, all right. Oh hey, by the way, what does the Resurrection mean to you?
Mary: I think eggs will be fine for breakfa– I’m sorry, what did you say?
James: You know, the Resurrection of Christ. Have you been meditating on its personal importance to our lives?
Mary: Honey. Hide the eggs.
James: But–
Mary: Eggs. Hide.
James: Okay. Happy Easter, sweetie.
Mary: Happy Easter, darling.
Any good humanities or liberal arts student had that one class in archetypes, where we were taught by their terribly pleased professors that there is nothing new under the sun: That Easter’s date is based on spring equinox festivals the world over, that Christ’s death and resurrection is echoed and preceded by figures in the myths of cultures that were dead and gone long before the Romans even knew how to build crosses.
The symbols change, we were told. Christ, or Apollo, or the Green Man, or poor Baldur, betrayed by his wise-assed brother — they’re all the same. Death from short life, new life from quick death. What we may end up pinning on it, personally, is entirely up to us, but there is no shaking the fact that as long as there have been people, there has been that terror of beautiful things dying, and that renewed vigor from their rising again.
The other day, at the video store, I saw this bizarre animated movie with Jesus on the cover, looking down on these other people with sad eyes but smiling mouths, like they were happy to see Jesus doing what Jesus does best, but sorry that it had to hurt his arms and legs so much. The title was something like The TRUE Passion of Christ — a tale the whole family can enjoy!. I presume this means that when Christ is crucified, the scene cuts away to lambs frolicking in a meadow, or perhaps that the battle between Christ and Satan is waged using collectible cards.
Satan: I will play my Spear of Destiny, sapping 10 life points from your ribs! What say you to that, son of God!
Christ: Clever move, Satan. But not clever enough! Behold! I play the card of Noble Suffering!
Satan: Shit!
It’s funny, because with The Passion of the Christ taking in whatever it did — forty billion zillion dollars, or whatever — you’d think that you might have some idea of what people think Jesus is all about these days. The crucifixion is some pretty rough business, each step and each fresh agony holding its own meaning, so with all of those people watching Christ’s blood shooting halfway across Jerusalem, you’d figure it’s evident. The greater the suffering, the better the martyr, the more divine the salvation.
Unless you’re animated, and you don’t want kids freaking out. So, if the point isn’t the suffering, maybe it’s the sacrifice? Except that it’s sort of a comfortably-illustrated sacrifice, which you’d think means that the sins of all mankind aren’t really all that bad. Certainly not Mel-Gibson-and-The-Passion bad, where it’d take all the blood from that haunted hotel in The Shining just to get you absolved for humanity’s sins next week, let alone for all time.
So you end up back at the start, back when people were gathering in their homes and villages, sacrificing animals and asking whoever they thought was listening for another shot at life. Death and rebirth, old and new, last time wasn’t that great, maybe this time will be better.
That much I can get my head around. I am alone in a new house, after living with my family my whole life; I am suddenly single, after being with someone for six years; I am looking around and counting my blessings and realizing that, all that I’ve got and all that I know and all that I see, I am really and truly at a loss. I am someone that I wasn’t before, and I’m looking for my own new shot.
It’s moments like these that I almost think I get it, that I almost feel like I understand that it’s not so much literal death that you need — not fruit on the trees or plants on the earth or Baldur taking a holly branch through the heart — but just a shedding of the old. Understanding is a transformation all its own, a point past which you stop being what you were and start being something entirely new, and all you’re asked to sacrifice is everything that you are now, so that you can be something completely new.
But the people I see out the window, in their suits and their nice tidy clothes, never seem quite frightened enough for that to be the message. Maybe I should go to Church, and settle quietly into the embrace of a world of rules and scriptures and consolations that answer this question, this annual exhortation to disillusion and re-invent ourselves.
Or maybe not. I stand now at the threshold of being someone completely new, if I want, and the only thing I have to be afraid of is who I decide to be. I can’t do that in advance, any more than we can look forward to the rest of this year and know how it will turn out — whether we’ll all become rich on the stock market, or whether another tsunami will wipe out Japan.
All we can do is hope. And I hope I do okay.
Happy Easter.