For many today, they wake up on this Sunday morning and in some form, celebrate Easter. They mix traditions of such things as wearing their best clothes to church, often being the only day of the year some members of the family even go to church. I remember my father, on this day, would go with the rest of us, all in our suits and mother and sister in dresses with those little cap/hat things with the pretend veil that covered the forehead. They would even wear gloves.
Celebrating the rise from the dead of the Son of Man was almost always preempted, at least for a few years, by me sitting up in our Mulberry tree in the front yard with my fully automatic Thompson, that I got from the toy aisle of Skaggs Drug Store, waiting for the Easter Bunny to show up so I could machine gun his fluffy little butt back to Arkansas, or where ever Pez candies are from.
We use to hunt real eggs, not those plastic containers which, I'm sure, originated in France in some neighborhood where it is totally acceptable to have pasty skin, no chin, and a weak handshake all under that now well-worn label of just be yourself. You know the containers, shaped like eggs of different colors, where you put candy or coupons to a movie in. People have gotten so afraid of a little food poisoning. We use to hunt the eggs until their shells were so cracked they made a noise when you simply held them in your hand. Then we would bring them inside and make egg salad; the color from the mono-sodium gelatin phosphate #3 dye turning the salad a pale blue. Just eggs and real mayo, no celery or any other crap.
We kept the mayo on the shelf next to the sink, next to the peanut butter. We never kept it in the refrigerator until I got married and I was asked why I was putting the open jar back on the shelf. "That's where we've always kept it," was my answer.
I can't keep it there any more.
Not once did we get sick. At least I don't remember getting sick. Tying gastric-distress with egg/mayonnaise consumption in the Williams household in the late sixties was never on the radar. We were the family that use to dip our potato chips in a side of mayo. So, eggs that were hidden in bushes, under trees, and sometimes buried with a shovel never held a health concern. This age-old tradition has simply fallen by the side of the road, never to come back, I'm sure, because of those guys in France.
This Easter, we have a lot on our plates. We have things that distract us, push us down, cause to feel wounded and pained. We sometimes stop and realize things are not only not fair, but often it feels like bad guys and Evil is winning. I don't have all the answers. Most of the time, I don't know the question, but I know where to start.
Evil, never----ever wins, ever.
It starts with a basic question-If there is a god and if this god IS the God of the Universe-the inventor of the the Big Bang, Enya's music, the Banzai pipeline on the North Shore, and the cinnamon roll, then is it possible he could chose us to be his kids?
Sunday is about a lot of things, but most of all it is a love story, pure and simple, probably the best and greatest love story of all time. It is a story about a father running towards his lost child, scooping them up and holding them so tight they gurgle the words "Daddy, I can't breathe." Then the two fall to the ground and laugh and cry together, the father still holding the child close. Nothing that kid could ever do, would separate that father's love from them again---------------------------nothing-------------------ever.
Now, saddle up. Grab your Thompson's, a canteen of water, and some warm egg salad. We got some rabbits to hunt!!
Happy Easter.
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