Of Unhidden Easter Eggs and Unwanted Rabbit Holes

Hello My Dear One,

It was a hell of a Holy Week this year.  I found myself pulled as usual in multiple directions, Passover, Easter, the Bipolar I nightmare that is the month of April, excessively high blood glucose levels, and dealing with a school vacation that robs me of my routine as well as a week's worth of pay.  Spring has never done much for me, I love summer, but that's another story.

Anyway, as far as the Holy Week issues, I could have defaulted to my old standbys of religious discord as the basis for my current distress, however that would have been a lie.  This year I have been more at peace with who and where I am on my spiritual journey than I can ever remember.  I watched and listened as the Jewish and Christian holidays and traditions danced, dovetailed, and diverged as they always do.  I marveled at their relationship and my relationships with each of them.  In reality my problems with Holy Week have far more childish roots, or at least, reasons that are rooted in my childhood.

The angst I experience each year stems from what I didn't get to do as a child, what was not done for me, and how I leap down the rabbit holes of distortion over and over again.  Every year I perseverate on the missing elements of the holidays and the ones that I as an adult am now responsible for.  There is a deeply wounded place within myself that recoils at the jobs that are now mine.  And there is but one reason that underlies my petty unwillingness to participate in a manner befitting an almost 40 year old.



My parents never hid easter eggs for me.






It appears trivial in a way, never having been gifted with the opportunity to seek out plastic eggs filled with jellybeans, candy, or coins.   It seems silly, to be sad over children's holiday games that ultimately do not enhance the spiritual meaning of the religious tradition.  And it even seems a little pathetic that I, a trained theologian, become morose at the thought of Easter morning because there will be no hidden eggs, no basket, no store bought candy waiting for me when I awake.  My desire for religious growth is buried under a heaping mound of missing chocolate bunnies, stringy vinyl easter grass, and those damned plastic eggs.    

Now, for sake of transparency, I will admit that I did receive easter baskets in my youth, they did have candy in them, albeit from the fancy candy store from our beachside town, and that there were indeed plastic eggs with goodies in them in the basket itself.  Mind you, the coins within the eggs suffered from a dirty, sticky, cough drop infused coating that made the money seem more like a scrounge through the bottom of my mother''s purse than a special treat.  The amounts weren't even clever, just assorted clumps of change that my mother had in fact fished out of her purse that afternoon.  Oh, and the dreaded black jellybeans were in other eggs.

But these childhood slights are not about the traditions themselves, not the actual hunting for eggs, or shrink wrapped, toy filled, plastic baskets from the local department store, but rather what they represent. They represent the normal that I longed for that was never achievable in my nuclear family.  I wanted adults to be adults and hide the Easter eggs for me to find, just like my neighbors' families did.  I wanted to believe in the Easter Bunny, but just like Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and every other childhood fantasy staple, that desire was crushed on a yearly basis.  My parents were people unwilling or unable to play the magical roles that create a foundation for playful innocence and joy in a child.  Instead, they chose to explain how the magic tricks were done, leaving behind no mystery for me to be amazed by.

So, I hid the easter eggs for them.  I was the Easter Bunny.  I was the magician performing for my parents.  At the tender age of 9, I secretly hid the eggs and ensured that each one was found.  I hid those stupid plastic eggs for people who should have been hiding them for me.

So, like most years, Easter morning arrived this year and once again there were no eggs to be found.  In fact, because there is often a hectic rush to church on Easter morning, the Easter Bunny visits our house while we are at church.  Translate this statement to mean that when the church service ends, one parent must rush home, hide the eggs all over the lawn, make sure the baskets are ready, and display the handwritten note from the Easter Bunny himself stating how many eggs he has left for the boys to find.  This final touch ensures that each child will have an equal number of eggs at the end of the affair.

It was my parental turn this year, so I came flying home to be the Easter Bunny again, 30 years later, this time as a father attempting to perform the magic for his children.  And as my stomach turned, I hid the plastic eggs, and did my best not to fall into the rabbit holes of my mind, where the sadness, unworthiness, and fear reside.  I tried to hide the eggs skillfully and with joy, but most of them just ended up barely hidden in obvious places.  And in retrospect this lax effort was not a mere fall into the rabbit holes, it was a knowing leap.  

As I squeezed into the darkened tunnels that twist and turn, creating a never ending maze of fear and disappointment, I willingly stayed in the confinement of distorted thinking and behaviors.  It is not a truth I want to disclose, but I wasn't the parent I wished that mine had been.  I didn't bring my best that day, and I didn't miraculously evolve into a better, richer, more fully actualized version of myself.  No, I limped along, tried to make the best of it, and still managed to be an unpleasant fool to be around for the rest of the day.  

At the end of the day I had still done more than my folks ever did, and I knew that my boys were happy with whatever magic I had managed to create.  And in the days since then, I have realized more and more that I can see the rabbit holes before I fall flailing into them.  It doesn't mean that I won't fall or leap into one, but it does mean that I don't have to, and that I can climb out before I get sucked down further.  Just like the disappointing plastic eggs of youth, those rabbit holes are not filled with what I need, want, or even desire anymore. 

What I need, want, and desire is to be a man of integrity, dignity, and inherent value, and I want that for my sons as well.  I want them to know that they are loved.  And maybe, if I can watch where I'm going, I can lead them away from the rabbit holes that I've fallen into too many times.  Maybe, I can lead them to the hidden eggs where the treasure is in the finding, and not what is inside.

Thanks for joining me along this crazy bunny trail of a journey.

Be well, love your neighbor as you love yourself, and remember to actually love yourself.

- Ari   

Of Passover and Easter

Hello My Dear One,

It is nearly Spring, nearly Solstice, and nearly the time for the holiest events in 2 of the major world religions.  It is a time of great ritual and practice that is occurring during these weeks in March.  And for me it is a time of great reflection and deep digging into the core of my faith life.  I find myself particularly challenged as I experience the many ways that my families of origin and choice celebrate this time of year.  This renewal of Spring when we are released from the darkness of Winter.  It is the dawn from that darkest point that we have all been living in.  It is redemption from a fruitless season to growth and newness.  It is obvious that we need to get out of the hibernation and begin again to bloom from the holes that have kept us safe from the cold and dark of Winter.  

Having spent many of my birthdays in the middle of Passover and Holy Week, a time of internal faith struggle for me to begin with, there is an added layer of reflection on the anniversary of my entrance into this world.  I am forced to accept that even as the world around me continues to renew itself with plant and animal life, I am another year older, and my time here, though never guaranteed, is shorter than it was before.  This is a daily occurrence of course, however most of us are able to block that thought out in order to be more present to what we are doing.  If I spent everyday obsessing over when I will die, and today might be that day, I would never get anything done.  For some people this knowledge acts as a motivator to live life to the fullest, but I've never liked this 'live as if you were dying philosophy,' because it emphasizes the death part of the equation rather than life. I choose to assume that I will live another day and so I continue to fulfill my daily responsibilities.  It has to do with knowing I will die, but tomorrow morning will probably come whether I like it or not.  And honestly this means that there will be a new day with new opportunities.  For all of my inherent pessimism, this is one of the areas in my life where I turn into an optimist.  And this construct of life and death, life vs. death, life and death within each other, spurs my desire to know why these holy celebrations of life and death are both necessary and challenging for me season after season.

When it comes to Passover and Easter, I value both traditions in my life, however, having both creates immediate conflict as one denies the other, despite the fact that the one has come to being because of the other.  Christianity took Passover and turned it into the Resurrection Story and therefore the premise of the entire religion.  Judaism, although deeply rooted in the celebration and necessity of Pesach, is not solely defined by that series of historical events.  It is a rich and foundational part of Judaism, but it need not exist for Judaism to exist.  The belief in the one G-d of our ancestors is enough, though greatly enhanced by this act of redemption from slavery and salvation from imminent death.  This is frankly a recurrent theme throughout all of the Hebrew scriptures, a nomadic or exiled existence that seeks a physical address to call home.  And time after time our forefathers and foremothers sought a  location, a place, or even an idol to represent this sense of a spiritual home.  And usually, this did not end well.  This may in fact color my own religious experiences as I feel uncomfortable trying to confine G-d to a specific place, let alone a religious doctrine that excludes other faith practices.  And I believe that it reflects my own sense of wandering through a world wherein I did not have a stable foundation to build my life on.

So, the newer religion of Christianity, which was built upon the foundation of Judaism, took the historical act of Passover and used Jesus of Nazareth as both a new Moses and the embodiment of the Exodus, and the Promised Land.  I respect the incredible job done by the writers of the Christian scriptures who wove together all the important parts of Pesach into a format that would speak to the Messianic Jews of 1st century Palestine.  I also respect the work of all of the writers of the Hebrew scriptures, who gathered the oral traditions, the rituals, and the laws that were created throughout the millennia of early Judaism, to create a cohesive and meaningful storyline that would maintain a people who were being scattered to the 4 corners of the earth.  The difficulty therein for me is that I see both the Hebrew and the Christian scriptures as divinely inspired, yet written by humans with their own agendas.  And during this particular season, I have an ongoing battle over denial and acceptance that both stories hold truth for me.

Jesus was a prophet in a long line of Hebrew prophets, spreading the message that you need to love   G-d and love your neighbor as you love yourself.  Jesus' accurate condensing of the 10 commandments correlates with Moses' delivery of them during the time in the wilderness.  Some call us to love G-d and some guide our relationships with others.  So Jesus simplified the message for people who had gotten caught up in the details.  He was looking for reform, just like every other prophet, and he suffered the consequences of telling the truth.  For that I have deep respect and understanding that truth or even Truth is something that most people don't want to hear.  It is far easier to live with yourself if you can deny that some of your actions are harmful to the people and the world around you.  From snotty attitudes to global warming, from getting a bargain on cheaply made goods to buying genetically modified foods, from ignoring the suffering around you to holding tight to grudges that lost their significance decades ago, we all separate ourselves from the Truth that who we are is not what G-d calls us to be.  And when we do this we stop loving G-d and we stop loving our neighbor.  Jesus was trying to impart this message to the people of his time and like most who dare to speak up he was killed for his passion.

For believing Christians the story doesn't end there though, Jesus is revealed to be the Son of G-d and will be granted a resurrection from death because he is in fact partly or wholly G-d, depending upon your understanding of trinitarian theology, and therefore offer eternal life to those who believe this.  Now, the thought of eternal life in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing, but it runs contrary to the Jewish understanding I have had throughout my life.  I see eternal life a little, ok a lot, differently than angels, and humans, playing harps and singing songs of praise to G-d, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit after an apocalyptic massacre of non-believers and the destruction of the Earth.  Of course not all Christians believe this, but the majority I have known and studied with in seminary do believe in some sort of afterlife wherein a heaven exists and we will be united with dead loved ones and live in this beautiful calm for all eternity.  For me, this is not what I was hoping for.  Honestly, the thought of that makes my stomach turn.  Because I see eternal life as a return to the components that have caused me to be here on Earth in the first place.  I understand my corporeal state as temporal and made up of atoms, molecules, and chemicals that are spinning around so fast that it gives the illusion of a solid existence.  Yes, I hold to a relative belief in string theory, and that there is complete validity to the Higgs-Boson theory as well.  I believe that when I die those particles, those atoms, those chemical compounds will be returned to the Earth, and the galaxy, and the universe from which they came.  I will simply be reabsorbed into the world that made me and become a part of millions of other things.  And that is a far more satisfying belief for me, that I will have a purpose in the ongoing Creation that G-d has made.

You see, I still believe in an ever present and unconditionally loving G-d, and I believe that this G-d is so much larger than anything that I can imagine that He/She/They/It/We doesn't need a tiny group of humans singing to it for ever and ever and ever.  I believe in a G-d that is in every molecule of my being and that seeks to create again and again and again in new and exciting ways that will create wonder, and joy for each new creation.  I believe that every creature experiences the awe of being, and that love is the foundation for that awe.  And simply put, I don't need an embodiment to give me a reassurance that I will continue on even after my time on this planet in this form is complete.  I don't need it because I witness it daily as the leaves rot and turn into life giving soil, and dead animals are turned into fuel for other animals, and their bones slowly return to calcium to feed the plants that they used for fuel when they were alive.  It is an endless daily cycle of death and rebirth that G-d has created and continues to be in each and every moment.

So, where does this leave me in the middle of this holy time?  It leaves me with a deeper sense of wonder for Creation, for enslavement, for liberation, for redemption, and for salvation, because it is happening every moment.  I am able to see the beauty of the world around me and the universe that contains such a tiny speck that allows me to sit here, at a machine, writing down my thoughts, and beliefs, and share them with more than just myself.  For that to be, I must believe in a G-d that is within each and every particle that exists.  And therefore I can believe that G-d was just as much a part of Moses as G-d was a part of Jesus.  We all are.  And that is the greatest saving grace of all.

Thank you for your continued sharing of the journey we are all on.

Be well, love your neighbor as you love yourself, and remember to actually love yourself.

-Ari