Easter in other clothes
After lying on the couch for months, letting other people cook the food, take the kids to their activities, and even wash my floors (some favors will never be forgotten) and seeing that life goes on when I am not controlling it, you would think that I would remember that lesson. But apparently there's no end to my humanness.
We are not home for Easter this year. I stayed in Bloomington my freshman year of college because I had a track meet on the Saturday of Easter and because the roommate of one of my friends was the choir director at a local church and needed my 18-year-old soprano voice. But every other Easter since 1979 I have spent at the same church. I look forward for 364 days for Easter to come again. I wasn't very gracious, therefore, about the spring break visit to my in-laws coinciding with Easter. It just wouldn't be Easter without Widor's Tocatta and without my pastors and my family and the stained glass at my church and the lillies, etc. Of course I know that those things are not Easter. The message of Easter may be expressed for me through those means, but they are not the message itself. So I say with my words, but my heart was less convinced.
Given that we left home on Thursday, I missed the Muandy Thursday and Good Friday services as well. I told myself that if I need to miss them, this is the year, since I haven't been able to rejoin the choir yet and would therefore not be missing that experience as well. Was I being a touch more gracious about it? Maybe. But it bothered me that I was missing out, that the Easter experience was going to be even further diminished.
Yesterday it occured to me that I hadn't seen the skirt I had "packed" for myself nor the dress I had "packed" for Gretchen hanging anywhere in my in-laws' house. I had laid them on the bed at home and expressed that they were to be transported on hangers, and they had disappeared from the bed, so I assumed they were put in the car. They were, however, only moved to just inside the garage door and did not travel with us across the state. And so I faced the fact that not only was I going to have to go to a church where no one knew me, but I was going to have to go there in jeans. On Easter. I was not pleased at the prospect, but I also know that while I love the fact that everyone puts on their brightest and best for this wonderful occassion, it's also not about the clothes.
Last night I made tacos for the extended family and in the process had to chop up four jalapenos. I didn't wear gloves (you see where this is going?) And although I washed my hands, somehow enough of the oil stayed on my hands that when I rubbed my eye or removed my contact hours later, jalapeno seems to have gotten into my left eye. It was still burning when I woke up, still stinging after a shower and breakfast. I put makeup on to try to counteract the effects of wearing jeans and having one inflamed eye.
Before we left for church--two of us in play clothes--the kids found the eggs hidden around the family room and kitchen. The seeking went from cooperative and kind to, at the end, one child snatching all of the remaining eggs out from in front of the other child. At the end, after a great deal of effort was put forth by one child to rescue an egg from a toy, as soon as it fell free to the floor, the other child snatched it up. And that ended the egg hunt for that child. Same child then complained about going to church and asked to bring a book to read. Arguing ensued. Bad attitude. Dawdling. And when same child was offered a "gift" by other child and did not respond politely, same child lost dessert privileges on Easter. The walk to church, therefore, was not employed in observing the new life emerging in the yards around us but in discussion about my expectations that, first and foremost, above-mentioned child is to be kind and loving. Child, who has been going to church multiple times a week for all of his eight years, claimed not to know who Jesus is. Yeah. Easter.
We entered the church amid all of the dressed up women and little girls and took our places near the back of the sanctuary that doesn't feel like home. I braced myself for inferior music and inferior preaching. I prepared myself to sit through the service and go home. Those things did happen. But also what happened is that the pastor from the church to which we do not belong came up to us before the service and greeted us, asked about us, and told us that there were bags along the back wall full of coloring books for the kids to use. During the service, people were invited to take the pew Bibles home if they did not have one of their own. An Easter gift. After the service another pastor asked for our names, noticing that we are not regulars. Kindness and grace, welcome and love. Even to the strangers who arrived in jeans with one bad-attitude kid and one eye watering from last night's jalapenos.
And isn't that the message of Easter? Would Jesus care what I was wearing? Would he want me to stop lovingly raising my children just because it was Easter? Wouldn't he say something about the Kingdom of God being like a woman who made vegan tacos for her family and got jalapeno juice in her eye? As I was listening to the story of Easter, of people who saw the man they had called the Messiah die by crucifixion at the hands of their oppressors, of women who arrived at the tomb expecting the lifeless body of their beloved and found instead a stranger clothed in white and news that the dead were not really dead, I thought that the message of Easter has something to do with letting go of our own habits and our own expectations in order to see the upside-down, jalapeno-in-your-eye, wear-what-you-have way of God. Maybe Easter shouldn't be exactly the things we thing we hope for. Maybe Easter shouldn't be something that happens exactly as planned.
On the way home from church we did appreciate the sun which had come out since our walk to church. We noticed the crocuses beginning to bloom. We got to try again, and we did a little better at being filled with kindness and grace. Easter can happen anywhere, in any clothes, even for people hung up on the wrong details.
We are not home for Easter this year. I stayed in Bloomington my freshman year of college because I had a track meet on the Saturday of Easter and because the roommate of one of my friends was the choir director at a local church and needed my 18-year-old soprano voice. But every other Easter since 1979 I have spent at the same church. I look forward for 364 days for Easter to come again. I wasn't very gracious, therefore, about the spring break visit to my in-laws coinciding with Easter. It just wouldn't be Easter without Widor's Tocatta and without my pastors and my family and the stained glass at my church and the lillies, etc. Of course I know that those things are not Easter. The message of Easter may be expressed for me through those means, but they are not the message itself. So I say with my words, but my heart was less convinced.
Given that we left home on Thursday, I missed the Muandy Thursday and Good Friday services as well. I told myself that if I need to miss them, this is the year, since I haven't been able to rejoin the choir yet and would therefore not be missing that experience as well. Was I being a touch more gracious about it? Maybe. But it bothered me that I was missing out, that the Easter experience was going to be even further diminished.
Yesterday it occured to me that I hadn't seen the skirt I had "packed" for myself nor the dress I had "packed" for Gretchen hanging anywhere in my in-laws' house. I had laid them on the bed at home and expressed that they were to be transported on hangers, and they had disappeared from the bed, so I assumed they were put in the car. They were, however, only moved to just inside the garage door and did not travel with us across the state. And so I faced the fact that not only was I going to have to go to a church where no one knew me, but I was going to have to go there in jeans. On Easter. I was not pleased at the prospect, but I also know that while I love the fact that everyone puts on their brightest and best for this wonderful occassion, it's also not about the clothes.
Last night I made tacos for the extended family and in the process had to chop up four jalapenos. I didn't wear gloves (you see where this is going?) And although I washed my hands, somehow enough of the oil stayed on my hands that when I rubbed my eye or removed my contact hours later, jalapeno seems to have gotten into my left eye. It was still burning when I woke up, still stinging after a shower and breakfast. I put makeup on to try to counteract the effects of wearing jeans and having one inflamed eye.
Before we left for church--two of us in play clothes--the kids found the eggs hidden around the family room and kitchen. The seeking went from cooperative and kind to, at the end, one child snatching all of the remaining eggs out from in front of the other child. At the end, after a great deal of effort was put forth by one child to rescue an egg from a toy, as soon as it fell free to the floor, the other child snatched it up. And that ended the egg hunt for that child. Same child then complained about going to church and asked to bring a book to read. Arguing ensued. Bad attitude. Dawdling. And when same child was offered a "gift" by other child and did not respond politely, same child lost dessert privileges on Easter. The walk to church, therefore, was not employed in observing the new life emerging in the yards around us but in discussion about my expectations that, first and foremost, above-mentioned child is to be kind and loving. Child, who has been going to church multiple times a week for all of his eight years, claimed not to know who Jesus is. Yeah. Easter.
We entered the church amid all of the dressed up women and little girls and took our places near the back of the sanctuary that doesn't feel like home. I braced myself for inferior music and inferior preaching. I prepared myself to sit through the service and go home. Those things did happen. But also what happened is that the pastor from the church to which we do not belong came up to us before the service and greeted us, asked about us, and told us that there were bags along the back wall full of coloring books for the kids to use. During the service, people were invited to take the pew Bibles home if they did not have one of their own. An Easter gift. After the service another pastor asked for our names, noticing that we are not regulars. Kindness and grace, welcome and love. Even to the strangers who arrived in jeans with one bad-attitude kid and one eye watering from last night's jalapenos.
And isn't that the message of Easter? Would Jesus care what I was wearing? Would he want me to stop lovingly raising my children just because it was Easter? Wouldn't he say something about the Kingdom of God being like a woman who made vegan tacos for her family and got jalapeno juice in her eye? As I was listening to the story of Easter, of people who saw the man they had called the Messiah die by crucifixion at the hands of their oppressors, of women who arrived at the tomb expecting the lifeless body of their beloved and found instead a stranger clothed in white and news that the dead were not really dead, I thought that the message of Easter has something to do with letting go of our own habits and our own expectations in order to see the upside-down, jalapeno-in-your-eye, wear-what-you-have way of God. Maybe Easter shouldn't be exactly the things we thing we hope for. Maybe Easter shouldn't be something that happens exactly as planned.
On the way home from church we did appreciate the sun which had come out since our walk to church. We noticed the crocuses beginning to bloom. We got to try again, and we did a little better at being filled with kindness and grace. Easter can happen anywhere, in any clothes, even for people hung up on the wrong details.