The phone rings.
It is my mother.
"Hi, Chauncey. What are you doing? Did you start your day yet?"
I reply, "yes mom, I am grading papers."
"What are you doing for Easter? What are you cooking?" she says.
"You know my opinion about religion and such things mom, I don't really want to talk about it today."
Annoyed she continues, "Well, it is a very important holiday. I am cooking turkey legs and stove top stuffing and going to church with my friend. I also went to Bonton (note: Bonton may be the go to store for black old ladies on a budget who want to buy something bright to show off at church).
Fine then. Go back to you work".
"Sounds good mom, talk to you later".
This is a recurring conversation between me and my mother.
She knows that I rejected formal religion when I was a child. On a basic level, as a parent, she feels a bit of a failure that I am not a religious hypocrite who shows up one or two days a year out of a sense of forced obligation to get on my knees for an hour and proclaim a belief that I do not share with the other phonies in the building.
[One of my favorite conversations on this matter centers on her worry that when I die I can't have a church service. I told her to have me embalmed, put up on a dais, and to have a party in my honor with dancing, great food, testimonies to my greatness by friends and lovers, and have my favorite movies shown on a big screen.]
My mother is not religious per se. She rarely goes to church. Her faith is one of convenience, habit, and comfort that comes from watching TV evangelists, leaving Bibles open around the house to select pages, leaving glasses of water around the house for spiritualist purposes, and reading a PSALMS book that has a picture of Black Jesus meets Rick James on the cover...which she leaves next to one of her dream interpretation lottery books. If anything, mom is a pragmatist.
My beliefs can best be described as those of "an atheist who believes in God" and that science is the mind and organizing principle of some type of greater entity, one which may or may not care about humankind. I also believe that God/Fate is a trickster. I am also a die hard secularist who believes in a firm separation of church and state, that religious organizations should pay taxes, and that religion is a form of human livestock management best removed from the public sphere.
I am not religiously minded. I do not have the gene. My brain does not work that way.
I also would never pretend to understand or intervene against a person's testimony of faith or conversion experience. As long as they respect the law and keep their beliefs to themselves I could not care less.
Faith is by its very nature irrational and deeply personal.
Random observation.
I have also never met someone who has been "saved" or otherwise converted over to Christianity, Islam, or some other faith that has been made a better person by such a decision. In my small part of the world, such people's faulty personality traits and bad behavior are made worse by such a "revelation". It would seem they find a faith that fits their psychological needs--and this does not mean that the faith experience is palliative or positive for changing their bad ways.
The "Saved" also make for great fun--I smile thinking about how my cousin "found" Christ and then all the "big words" in the Bible were magically translated for her. She also would try to get me on the "right team" because no other religion had a "savior" who came back from the dead. When I told her that was not the case she had a mild moment of upset and confusion...which she resolved by wandering off to repeat her proselytizing to someone else.
Nonetheless, ritual and mythology have great power. For example, Jesus Christ likely did not exist. he most certainly did not look like a white surfer dude, and if the "historical" Jesus Christ was in fact real, he was not born in December, may not have been a pauper, and could have been married.
Jesus Christ was most certainly not a zombie who rose from the dead--although, that would make for a great episode of The Walking Dead.
Christendom's ability to borrow from existing pagan traditions helped it to gain popularity.
Like Christmas, Easter combines the rites and rituals of other ancient belief systems:
All the fun things about Easter are pagan. Bunnies are a leftover from the pagan festival of Eostre, a great northern goddess whose symbol was a rabbit or hare. Exchange of eggs is an ancient custom, celebrated by many cultures. Hot cross buns are very ancient too. In the Old Testament we see the Israelites baking sweet buns for an idol, and religious leaders trying to put a stop to it. The early church clergy also tried to put a stop to sacred cakes being baked at Easter. In the end, in the face of defiant cake-baking pagan women, they gave up and blessed the cake instead.Christianity and other enduring religious traditions constitute a powerful set of myths. The stories are compelling, very entertaining, and often contain a great amount of practical advice.Easter is essentially a pagan festival which is celebrated with cards, gifts and novelty Easter products, because it's fun and the ancient symbolism still works. It's always struck me that the power of nature and the longer days are often most felt in modern towns and cities, where we set off to work without putting on our car headlights and when our alarm clock goes off in the mornings, the streetlights outside are not still on because of the darkness.
A good one: "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."
I also like the part in the Bible where Jesus, bad brother that he was, fights demons and casts them out into pigs. I believe in that story we may have found an explanation for why pork is so tasty.
For those of you who are religiously minded and who may be celebrating Easter tomorrow, please do some teaching, help me to understand. Without judgement on my part, I am legitimately curious about the appeal of such a day. Do you actually believe that Jesus rose from the dead? Or is it a celebration of community, family, and friendship for those who are of the same faith? Is going to church on Easter or other days just a habit motivated by guilt?
I was abrupt with my mother during our phone conversation earlier today. I am going to call and tell her that I will make some beef short ribs or maybe a nice roasted chicken for Easter, just like we used to do as a family when I was a kid.
I am also going to get some jelly beans like the ones in the Easter basket that my dad would buy me from the old Hispanic man who sold them from his van near Yale New Haven hospital downtown.
I will also, as is my habit, buy a homeless brother or sister a meal.
If Easter and other holidays are about family and fond memories of home, kin, and being nice to each other for a day, I know that I have the capacity to not mention religion as a type of magical thinking if it makes my mother happy as she goes about her church routine this Sunday.
How did I get so soft and unprincipled in my old age? Young lions roar loudly. I am now an older lion who is content to pick his fights with more care. I am unsure if that is a gain or a loss.