What Shelley said

One of my favorite memories of Easter is the sweet bread-basket that held a hard boiled egg. My grandmother made these every year. One for each of us, the sometimes colored egg would be nestled on a tiny dough basket with more dough criss-crossed atop the egg for handles. The bread was coated with colored sprinkles and it was a trick to eat all the bread from around the egg without breaking the shell.

As a high schooler I remember going to my then girlfriend's house and watching Godspell on TV with her. Her parents weren't home and I was pretty well behaved. I must have managed to subdue any impure thoughts in the presence of a TV Jesus. That happens to be one of the few musicals I like. Mostly I believe musicals were sent by God to punish me, but I think that one in particular seemed to stick with me because I was a teenage Jesus freak and because a hip, singing, Good-News Jesus suited me more than my Catholic school prescribed tortured-on-the-cross Jesus.

Now I think more about the symbolism. I think of Jesus as the best example of a seed planted in the ground, human with latent divinity, and coming forth, as a seedling from a seed, as divine. How we each suffer and die to these less than divine aspects of ourselves and how we are refined and become the children of God. I think about how we “hide” the eggs which are like a seed (that grows into new life) and then we go about finding them. I think about how the egg is carefully nestled in a basket made of bread and passed from one generation to another and with it sustenance that is both sweet and at the same time sustaining.

And I think that Easter is always and most importantly about hope, hope that we can be better, hope that life is not always a dark, hollow place, hope that there are Plans, hope that there is Love. Easter is a promise. I think of Shelley's words though he may not have intended this meaning:”The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” Easter is the answer we have to the darkness of dreariness, despair and death.

With hope.,behold, it is WE who are risen!

If you celebrate, Happy Easter!