Sunday Stream (74) ~ Easter Reflection

[mtmynd]

(Note: On this date, 1943, Albert Hoffman took the very first LSD trip! This fact has nothing to do with the following, other than, if you stretch your imagination, there is something about vivid colors and eggs... )

Easter Reflections

For chrissakes! Easter was originally intended to celebrate the Vernal Equinox, the passing of the Sun over the equator, on March 20 of this year. Those rabid Christians taking the fun out of astronomical occurrences worthy of all mankind to rejoice at the arrival of Spring... providing you live north of our equator. But no.... Jesus rose from the dead instead of leaves popping out to celebrate Nature's rebirth. God must be seriously disappointed, don't you' think? In Genesis it's even written by Him that He created the heavens and the earth. Now, these heavens included the Sun, which He wanted to cross the equator (North) of this Earth, (which He also created), which brought us Spring... new life, new crops to keep us going (at least those of us in the Northern Hemisphere. The folks 'down under' already had their Rites of Spring).

And it is written that God also made us... everyone one of we hu'mans, along with all other life and earth that we live upon. He wanted us to live and Celebrate this Spring-thing... His gift by golly. But old God threw us a curve - Jesus. The Vernal Equinox (Easter) was taken from us, (especially if you're Christian) and the Easter thing was totally dedicated to Jesus... the day he rose from the dead and disappeared. Hard to believe that God would take away something as celebratory as the Rites of Spring... something we've been celebrating for hundred of years and give it to the Christians and then He went and gave all these rules that ruled out celebrating His creation - the first words He wrote! Jeezuz, it makes no sense!

So here we are in the 21st Century celebrating this Son of God (what are the rest of us...???) using colored, boiled eggs and chocolate bunnies to bring us joy instead of celebrating His very own gift of the earthly phenomenon of Spring. The only thing I can think of is maybe, just maybe, He thought we were all a wee bit unready to understand that His people in the Southern part of His earth wouldn't celebrate all together with the Northern folks. If He could switch this thing and bring celebration to all the people at the same time that would appease Him. One of His mysteries, I guess.

But not one to disparage our efforts to celebrate, I offer an American Easter classic for the day:

"Easter Bonnet"

"In your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it,
You'll be the grandest lady in the Easter Parade.
I'll be all in clover and when they look you over,
I'll be the proudest fellow in the Easter Parade.
On the avenue, Fifth Avenue, the photographers will snap us,
And you'll find that you're in the rotogravure.
Oh, I could write a sonnet about your Easter bonnet,
And of the girl I'm taking to the Easter Parade."

Written by Irving Berlin

... and please don't question Mr. Berlin's focus on this very pretty woman on Easter day, hand in hand with him, strutting their stuff. The Rites of Spring are stronger than religion.


Cecil
16 April 2006

[Artguy]

"....the way things are goin they're gonna crucify me...."

Every age has it's Jesus.........

[Lightning Rod]

Easter is my favorite Christian holiday. The Easter story is so full of action and passion and praise and blood and tears and is so completely unbelievable that it can't help but inspire faith. It's got everything a good story needs--journey, struggle, injustice, betrayal, transformation, suffering and in the end the hero is victorious over death. What's not to like?

You don't have to accept a story as literal truth to be uplifted and inspired by it.

[Doreen Peri]

Cecil...

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying. The Vernal Equinox wasn't taken away from us. We still have that. And everyone can celebrate spring on the Vernal Equinox, Christian or not.

Eostra was the name of the Pagan Holiday celebrated on the Vernal Equinox and yeah, the name Easter was adapted from that, I'm sure, but I think it's fine that Christians have designated a day to celebrate their belief that one man and the only who ever lived arose from the dead. And they decided to celebrate this belief during springtime because what better time, when all the flowers are blooming and plants are coming back to life? Makes sense to me.

They call Jesus the Son of God because Christians believe that Jesus' life is the example of how we should live and that he was the only "perfect" person so they believe we should strive to be like him. Whether he really existed or not, whether his story is myth or fact, for people to have a day designated to celebrate what it stands for makes perfect sense to me and to do it during spring when there is rebirth everywhere around us also makes perfect sense to me.

The symbols used to celebrate Easter are simply symbols of fertility, representing rebirth which is the nature of spring and which is also what Christians believe happened to Jesus and what they believe can happen to each human being.... to be reborn to be just like Jesus.

Celebrate the Vernal Equinox! Yes!

But why fault Christians for setting aside a day to celebrate what they believe? What's wrong with that? It takes nothing from the Vernal Equinox.

[mousey1]

The rites of passage
the flavors of spring
are signified by everything
you dingaling ding

I am thankful on this Easter Sun Day
for everything that comes my way
be it feast or famine
a girl in a hat
a large piece of chocolate
merlot from a vat
(drunken not stirred)

and for Cec's lovely Easter blurb...blurbety blurbety blurbety

You made me chuckle mightily
the Christian in me gives a solemn thanks this day
the impudent imp in me nods in agreement with ya
I never thought of Jesus as a curve ball
maybe it's just the L S D
a little touch of the
Life's So Depressing I Just Have To Laugh syndrome

and so I laughed and laughed and laughed
and forgot what day it was
and my fucking ham burned

sandwich anyone?



ps: I shouldn't swear on Easter! Takes out tongue and slaps it around a little...and decides to make a sandwich!

[judih]

mousey, not a tongue-in-cheek sandwich

cecil...hoffman! arose from the compost of science to awaken his perceptions and i bless him for that

i would have liked to have been with mary magdalene as she checked out what went on in that crypt - the story is grand, the perceptions enhanced

happy spring awakening

[mtmynd]

L'Rod... howdy neighbor! I'm never one to refute a damn good story and all good stories have those qualities that you referred to in some degree to another. But I am also of the sort that takes not every story to be 'the way it should be'... I like a little humor injected here and there for I feel that humor is not a luxury but a necessity to living... something that seems to be sorely lacking in the bible.


Hi, Dor' - (should I add in parentheses "Satirical. Read at your own Risk of being offended!" ??

Re: "Jesus' life is the example of how we should live and that he was the only "perfect" person so they believe we should strive to be like him."

This 'perfect' is really saying that for a man to be a preacher is to be perfect, imho, which is what can be proven as to his existence (I think he lived and died). The reason I don't bring up the miracles, there is nobody amongst us that has any actual proof of such miracles but rather use faith and faith alone to believe in the miracles. To live like someone else can be an immoral thing to do if you believe that everyone of the collective us is unique and worthy of living our own life, (presuminig you and I agree against the evil side of mankind, of course!)

I also have trouble with this 'they' believing us 'we' to do as 'they' do. To agree with the many words that Jesus had spoken I have absolutely no problem in listening to or reading. My problem arrives when I hear 'what he meant by saying that.' It's those interpretations that actually do more harm than good for what Jesus was actually trying to convey to his followers. And, again, it is only recalled memories of what Jesus spoke regarding the spiritual that is what has been written... some 2-3 hundred years after he said them. But I will reiterate: I think the words he spoke were wonderful and useful for the search of the Ultimate Truth, as I think the words reportedly spoken by Buddha or Moses and, what little I know about the words of Mohammed, are equally valid for the seeker of the Ultimate Truth (God). Different men having the same spiritual (mystical) experience... but I'm also well aware that I'm in a very tiny minority regarding that school of thinking. Thank you!

Mousey! Thank you for 'getting it'!!! Yay! You maka me smile and giggle, too. My kinda person. (re: what I wrote here to L'Rod).

[gypsyjoker]

the first witnesses of his resurrection were women.

... and please don't question Mr. Berlin's focus on this very pretty woman on Easter day, hand in hand with him,

Jesus is my highway hero. That is my myth and I am sticking with it. I just wish he wasn't so moody.

Everytthing gets transmorgified, twisted. Christian church was taken over by its Marketing Department in the 4th centurcy CE. The Triumph of the ultimate woman hater St Paul. in my opinion,

Religion is all about belonging. Women to the left men to the right, to quote j from memory.

happy passover too
may all this pass over us on the first tuesday in november

[mtmynd]

Judih! Fancy seeing you here, Poetess!

Ah, yes, Hoffman... what a great experience he must've had, like the first person on an unkown island teeming with incredible new life. So glad he shared his findings with those that knew well of its power to bust open the doors of perception, drawing in new and fresh imaginings to colorfy the world and sense even more to life.

psst... you may have been mary magdalene. have you checked your past lives lately?

[gypsyjoker]

I used to do my shirts at the Magdalene laundries. I was just thinking of you, quoted you. Now I am thinking of a Joni Mitchell song about the convent in Ireland that was in business until 1975

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/j/joni-mitchell/75443.html

thanks Cecil,

[mtmynd]

Missed your reply, Jack.. but only momentarily.

I like: Religion is all about belonging. We all need a sense of community and greatfully have many choices in our selection of one that is suitable for ourselves. 'Trees' may be one, but the variety is abundant... each sharing something beneficial the others don't have.

Men/Womb-men - masculine/feminine forces entertwined for the sake of living. But yet another yin/yang fact.

[Doreen Peri]

Hi, Dor' - (should I add in parentheses "Satirical. Read at your own Risk of being offended!" ??

I wasn't offended. Nope. Not one bit.

Happy Easter!

No matter what people believe... whether they believe this man existed or the story is just a myth, there is value to the story because it is a beautiful story of resiliency, hope, and the cycles of life.

Let us celebrate the rebirth of love, acceptance, forgiveness and hope!

(hell, let's do that every day of the year!)

[mtmynd]

I really didn't think you were offended, Dor'... just another excuse to write! (as if I needed one, eh?) TY!

[gypsyjoker]

Yeah another reason to write.

I tell ya Cecil

And the reasons for quitin' are gettin bigger each day Merle Haggard

I have the faith of a Heretic. To paraphrase Leonard Cohen, I have no Angel to keep me from the heat, no arrows of direction to guide my feet.

I have read that there was a super Nova in the spring that year. Maybe that was the star. Doreen I think there is power in myth. I am not much on words like transcendent I am not an atheist yet. A lot of written documents, the Bible like the Norton Anthology of Religions of tne Near East at that time.


I like the idea that Jesus was born in the spring with the lambs for the slaughter. No doubt there is truth in the bible, but one most ponder that book for ones self. Doreen I read somewhere the Jews invented Historical Religion and the Greeks invented Historical science.

I do not know how much historical documentation there is for Buddha but I am sure there is some.

I heard a preacher putting down Thomas Jefferson's Bible. He edited the New Testament and left all the bullshit supernatural stuff out.


Jefferson Bible
The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth
Extracted Textually from the Gospels


Compiled by Thomas Jefferson

Edited by Eyler Robert Coates, Sr.

. . . Thomas Jefferson believed that the ethical system of Jesus was the finest the world has ever seen. In compiling what has come to be called "The Jefferson Bible," he sought to separate those ethical teachings from the religious dogma and other supernatural elements that are intermixed in the account provided by the four Gospels. He presented these teachings, along with the essential events of the life of Jesus, in one continuous narrative.http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible/

[gypsyjoker]

http://www.angelfire.com/co/JeffersonBible/