March 23, 2008...9:53 am
happy easter (and wester, and norther, and souther)
i wake up on easter day and realize that the commercial world has failed to conquer easter. that’s why easter is so nice. that’s why i get up on easter morning and the horrible leaded cloud that weighs on me like the apocalypse on christmas morning is not here. it’s wet and cloudy this morning, but other than that, and other than the fact that life offers you as many helpings of sadness as it offers helpings of joy, i feel fine. the sodden leaves of the tree outside my window are brown like it’s fall instead of spring. there are only few cars swishing by on the road in front of my house. it’s easter morning. it’s a quiet day.
happy easter if you woke up this morning and there was a note on the kitchen table that said “gone for cigarettes”
happy easter if your child, your firstborn who used to be so sweet he was the apple of your eye the joy of your day, has gone vegan and radical and hasn’t washed himself his hair his clothes in more than six months (this is for you G)
happy easter if you don’t have a plan no plan no plan at all where do i take it from here
happy easter if you fell in love with another your husband your family you don’t want them any more you want to be with another (this is for you X even if you don’t know it don’t read english don’t know this blog exists this is for you)
happy easter if your therapist is out of town how can you explain the pain to anybody who doesn’t have a therapist whose very existence guarantees their continued survival you feel as if the source of life were frozen in suspended animation and it’s scary oh god is it scary
happy easter if you have banged your head against the same spot in the same wall for years decades and there still isn’t the slightest dent not a shadow of a shadow of a sign that skin and flesh and maybe a fragment or two of bone where left there
happy easter if you don’t have anywhere to go, you’re welcome to my place, please come
happy easter if you’re tired of the long-ass freezing winter, so so tired, it was hard this year, it got too cold, i don’t want to live here anymore (this is for you L)
happy easter if your sisters, all three of them, forgot to celebrate your birthday
happy easter if you got fired you weren’t doing so well if only someone had given you a chance that’s all you wanted a chance
happy easter if life used to be a lot better oh yeah oh my god you should have seen me when now you are only the shadow of a shadow of your former self (this is for all of us)
…
you will get it back a hundredfold
…
this easter, this holiday of against-all-odds comeback from abject abysmal failure intolerable pain trauma rejection despair, this festival of hope against reason tenacious hope superglue hang-in-there splendid hope, is for you.
11 Comments
March 23, 2008 at 5:55 pm
I love the pun.
The litany reads a little like the Beatitudes. I always like the Beatitudes best when I am down; they make me a little uncomfortable when I’m feeling pretty good. I suppose that’s partly the point, and partly my hyper-everything.
March 23, 2008 at 9:03 pm
hey marcy! happy easter!
i love the beautitudes whether i’m bummed or not, b/c they end well, that’s what i like about them, they end well. since i, as i imagine you (doesn’t everyone? or am i uncommonly self-referential?), see myself in every “blessed are,” i think all these cool awesome things will happen to me. and since the gospel is really mostly about now, the way i see it, than about some foggy then, i add very soon!
and i find them delicious.
did you have a happy easter day?
March 24, 2008 at 9:02 am
It’s the ones in Luke that bother me — because it’s not just a list of the blessings, but a list of woes.
I did have a happy Easter… thanks.
March 24, 2008 at 7:20 pm
i confess, marcy, that i’m not up to speed with the fine distinctions between the synoptics! i’ll check luke out, compare him with the other guys, get back to you. you protestants beat us papists on the scriptures EVERY TIME.
March 24, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Oh, it’s just because I’ve been immersing myself in Luke for a few months. Not that it’s working. Except, apparently, on the Beatitudes.
March 25, 2008 at 6:29 am
in what way is it not “working?”
March 25, 2008 at 9:34 am
My problem is that I’ve been reading the Bible in bits and pieces for a long time, and while the passages I read have become familiar, and I can remember the gist of lots of them, I don’t feel I have a very holistic or integrated view of the Bible.
I thought maybe going in depth into one book for a time would help me get at least a more holistic and integrated view of that one book, and so on.
But just reading over and over, with lots of days where I forget to read, isn’t helping. I might actually have to study — work — at it.
Once at a college retreat we did a manuscript study — basically you print out the book on paper with double-spacing and wide margins, so you can make lots of notes as you read and re-read. But that requires a lot of paper.
March 26, 2008 at 1:44 pm
I’m a little late. Happy Easter.
I like “superglue hang-in-there splendid hope”
March 26, 2008 at 6:56 pm
hey rachel! someone told me it’s the only line they actually didn’t like. i guess the accusation, such as it was, was that it was corny. guess we both like corny, hey?
thanks for commenting.
April 1, 2008 at 9:48 am
So beautiful, and it makes me feel less alone especially with the kinds of pain I feel shame over and tend to want to keep to myself.
I love the combination of acknowledging the depths of pain we can experience with the crazy-miraculous possibilities of things turning, changing.
April 1, 2008 at 9:56 am
thank you! i hope you find ways of feeling less ashamed of your pain. pain and shame are an awful combination, for sure!
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