Easter Weekend

[mapsedge]

It has taken a certain amount of getting used to, switching from the Church of Christ, Temple Lot to Christ United Methodist. At CoCTL, the Easter Bunny and colored eggs (among other things) are considered symbols of "ancient pagan fertility rites" (sic) and are therefore discouraged. 

Like fertility rites are a bad thing.  Like they actually know what those are.

CUMC?  Easter Egg hunt Saturday morning, with a visit from * gasp * the Easter Bunny.  The festivities opened with a prayer, then a puppet show (God save us from ever having to watch THAT again), then a mad dash for the south lawn and several hundred plastic eggs.  Better there than my living room, that's all I have to say there.

And, another thought: like so much else, such symbols long ago lost any significance they might once have had.  Complain all you like about Christianity supplanting the Old Ways: Madison Avenue is far better at it than the ancient Church could ever be.  The 11th century Catholics didn't have electronic media and instantaneous global reach.

Easter service was well populated (they always are) and the sermon was good.  It was a bit of battery recharging that I certainly needed.  It's a sense of community and acceptance that I never felt with previous churches (or covens, for that matter).  There are several people there who feel like family to me, made all the easier by the fact that if I miss a Sunday or two, upon my return I hear "Nice to see you!" instead of "We missed you at church last Sunday."  The difference is subtle, but significant. 

Of course, the weekend included work on the house.  Apologies to anyone coming over Tuesday night: the place is - as always - under construction, only moreso.  Got the arch-wall re-'rocked, doing the entire job with leftovers.  Saved a bit of money there, not having to buy new drywall for the project. 

Casualties this weekend (a few more than usual, since I had what I was standing on tip out from under me at one point):

• Left hand. Index finger: cuticle split; palm: big-ass splinter
• Right hand. Index finger: cuticle, cut on k2; thumb: cuticle
• Right wrist.  Scraped all to hell and gone.
• Right shin.  Likewise.
• Left ankle.  Twisted
• Right shoulder.  Sore, deep down.

The upside to all this (yes, there is an upside) is that my upper body is getting a helluva workout, and it shows. 

Comments

Next year

[wyckedgood.livejournal.com]

Suggest a may pole for the Sunday festivities. ::wink::

Re: Next year

[billthetailor.livejournal.com]

I think at either place, the suggestion would be met with a blank stare, and I just don't have the energy to explain it. :)

Re: Next year

[wyckedgood.livejournal.com]

Tee hee :)

[ladyniniane.livejournal.com]

I can do you one better - at our church (also UMC), we had the Easter egg hunt on *Sunday*, right after the last service. No Easter bunny, though - we used to have Breakfast with the Easter Bunny on the Saturday before Palm Sunday, but that got to be too much for some of the older ladies (read, traditionalists).

I think the modern labeling of Santa and the Bunny, et al, as pagan may have become more 'popular' with the fundie crowd in recent years, because I recall growing up in a Southern Baptist church and never feeling heathen just because I expected presents from Santa and hidden eggs from the Easter bunny (all of my church friends were expecting the same things).

While I can appreciate the actions of parents that want to downplay or avoid the commercialization of what is supposed to be a religious celebration, I suspect that the modern reaction may be just another way to push the christian line (lower case is intentional) as 'the only right way', superior to all others - and that bothers me, a great deal. My interpretation of Matthew 28 does not require me to loudly and constantly tell everyone else how wrong-thinking they are...

[jehosefatz.livejournal.com]

My interpretation of Matthew 28 does not require me to loudly and constantly tell everyone else how wrong-thinking they are...

I do this all the time... but not about religion, only things that I think I can make a real impact... like hardware platforms, programming languages, IDE's that sort of thing.

- Jeho
"Converting the heather masses to LAMP since... I dunno... a long time!"

[jehosefatz.livejournal.com]

Damn LJ and the lack of editing capabilities...

$_ =~ s/heather/heathen/g;

- Jeho

[butterflybill.livejournal.com]

We had an egg hunt right after Sunday Service in the courtyard at Grace Episcopal too, plastic eggs with chocolate kisses inside. ("We used to do it with hard boiled eggs, then one or two would be left behind and we'd find it in July after it had had time to get pretty funky...")

I agree that the neo-pagans have never been been able to come up with grass roots action groups like the local churches that meet weekly. At these you don't have to wait until Memorial Day and then drive 250 miles, and you just walk in the first time you visit, and you don't have to find someone to "sponsor" you.