Whether you want to call it Murphy’s Law, Karma or just bad-timing, our lives are in a crazy state. I was reading this past week about the top five-to-ten life stressors (you know, the ones that put people in an early grave). Somewhere in the piece the author mentioned how the physiological impairments brought on by one stressor are increased exponentially as a person invites more of the top ten items into her life. Even “good” stressors can be dangerous apparently. What are some on this list?
· Selling/buying a home or just moving in general
· Changing jobs
· Major health crisis
· Death in a family
· Divorce
Just reading that list out loud still makes me shake my head and laugh out loud. Let’s see:
· We’re in the midst of selling our home (and preparing for two, second showings tomorrow)
· Both the hubby and I began new jobs within the last eight months
· Duh, I have M.S.
· Oboe, our beloved pup, passed away just months ago
In an attempt to avoid the final item on the list above, the hubby and I decided to have a non-traditional Easter this year. I awoke with a nasty Tysabri hangover headache and began the cleaning woman’s version of the Flight of the Bumblebee in the early hours of the morning, preparing for tomorrow’s house showings. By 9 a.m. I knew something had to give.
We both called our respective families, wishing them well, telling them to enjoy their Easter feasts. We kissed my stepdaughters and swooshed them out the door for their respective days’ plans. We talked to my stepson in Vermont, bringing him up to date on life’s events, finished up cleaning and then set out to have a very different sort of Easter holiday. The chocolate bunnies and jelly beans have been long-gone for days now anyway. We honored Christ in our own way today, including a spirited conversation where the hubby reminded me that my faith is weak though my heart is strong.
We realized that it’s been months since we’ve been what our friends like to call “The Kim and Tom Show”; the funny couple, the life of the party. The last I checked, you actually have to find the time to go to a party to be the life of one. We’ve been consumed with new jobs, grief, and everything it takes to sell one home and fill another that we’ve lost ourselves a little in the process.
What a better to find that life again, than on Easter Sunday? So, as I wish each of you a happy and blessed holiday and down a handful of Advil to ward off this headache, the hubby and I are headed into the woods. We’re going to walk around the beautiful reservoir near our home, a place where we spent many a summer afternoon with Oboe. We’re going to reconnect with nature and with our joined spirits and maybe help me find a little of that faith along the way.
It sounds like your head is in the right place. Like I said the other day, it’s probably not MS getting you down, it’s just a really hectic life. Be sure to take time to enjoy yourself and to rest even in the midst of all the changes.
The woods is/are the right place to be when the demands of daily life get to be too much. Go there early and often.
“Palms DOWN”, was a dreaded notification.
In a Catholic elementary school in days of yore, an infraction was dealt with via corporal punishment. A wooden ruler was used to crack a small hand into orderliness anew.
Most kids were smart enough to simply hold out their hands and take the punishment, deserved or not. But a palm smack with wood really does not drive the message home.
“Palms DOWN” meant your knuckles would feel the full effect, a major ouch for a kid, though the punishment to follow at home was far worse, due to the fact that you got any ill treatment at school. Parents supported teachers 100%.
There was NO Court of Appeals.
Any Friday was tough on a Catholic youth back then. Confession was mandatory, to prep for Sunday communion (where no food could be eaten an hour before any Mass back then, any day). How many sins can a kid due in one week?
Some were automatically ruled out due to age.
A checklist of the 10 Commandments could help come up with some infractions most week.
Love God? Check.
(He favors kids; kids return the favor).
Gold for calf-making was not available in general.
No one told us there were other possible false gods, like ignoring the real God, love money, lust, greed, and some good ones.
Swear/ Take the name in vain? Not really. Today, WTF is universal, but back then, an “aw shucks” was about it. Kids were into relating with one another, not abusing.
Go to church on Sunday?
No kid was permitted to do that sin. You had to get out of high school to explore other faiths, or stay home. This sin was safely ruled out in the confession box, where if you looked up, there was a square hole in the ceiling where the Holy Spirit was supposed to “Come On Down”, after the priest gave the Holy Spirit, a Green Light.
Keep the day HOLY?
Mass, family dinner, baseball, dishes, homework.
Holy? Check!
Honor mom and dad?
No need to wait for Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.
An early death would ensue without that honor coming each day. This was a tough sin to do.
Murder? That was TV stuff.
Adultery? What is that anyway?
You steal?
You lie?
Now we are getting into some areas that would make any priest believe you did this. Coming up with the proper numerical combination was the key. Never steal and lie the same number of times by each Friday. Vary those numbers to keep the conversation in the box on keel.
Covet a wife?
Who wants ONE, let alone someone else’s?
This sin NEVER came up in elementary school confession booths.
Covet goods? This was fertile ground for some.
Most middle class to upper lower class did not know they were missing anything. All kids felt loved, got new clothes for school and Easter.
With an overload of sisters, and only one older brother, I was a little tired of hand-me-downs.
So, this sin came in handy some Fridays.
If by Thursday there was no decent sin to confess, I could always beat up my little brother and confess that.
But the rules changed in Holy Week (and all of Lent too). No meat for all of Lent! How did a butcher make a living back then? Tuna noodle casserola was a national dish.
Breads were made, and later blessed at church.
Food preparations, cleaning the house, getting shoes spiffed up, haircuts, coloring 12 dozen eggs. All the essentials were ok to do.
But Good Friday?
What was so good about killing a guy?
This was on the “Never-A-Sin” list for us.
For three hours from Noon til 3 pm, all kids were on their knees at church on Good Friday. The church was stripped of everything that was usually hanging around, so there was little to “check out”. A nun was within reach of just about any kid, and nuns were early hybrids of GPS locators of the troublemakers.
David DeMichael was class clown and usually good for entertainment, like a well timed fart in the midst of a test, or a spitball to the back of a head. He was monitored on Good Friday better than the thief on the cross each year.
He made us all laugh, but here’s a tip….do not stand in line behind David at confession. Go before him. Those priests made a big deal out of sin, like gum stuck under your desk at school.
I do not remember which year it was.
Every Good Friday was tough on a kid’s knees for three hours. The rest of the day was somber central too. Boys sat with boys; girls sat with girls. There was an order an cadence to life, and little mystery.
About 2 hour on the knees, everyone fidgeted and the “nun alert” went to what Tom Ridge would later call “Elevated Orange”. A whisper is not much noise, unless the entire church was in deep silence. Then, even a whisper was a megaphone and echo.
I think I found out it is a sin to whisper aloud:
“Why do we keep killing this guy every year?
He just keeps coming back anyway?”
What I meant was, if we didn’t kill him, and have him come back over and over, we would be on our knees far less on Good Friday. I thought we really killed him and he came back every year!
“QUIT killing him, for crying out loud”
It was a short conversation with a nun later.
“Palms DOWN”, she proclaimed as her ruler slapped her own palms lightly and rapidly.
It is tough to play baseball with sore knuckles.
In later years, I would attend the full gamut of churches.
Methodist — good food at potluck.
Baptist — a little serious, but you actually read a Bible here, instead of opening it on a family table in the living room, on the same page forever.
Assembly of God — that’s not holy roller, dad. They are dancing with joy. But I wonder a bit about the tongues speaking. Technically, it required an “interpretation to be legit. But often there was silence after a long “speaking”, so the pastor would come up with something to make God be ok again. Sometimes, God forgot to show up. The money plate always showed up, often for repeated visits.
“God wants to prosper you, so hand over your money and let him do it”
But at the Baptist church, I read my Bible and Jesus said: “The poor, you will ALWAYS have with you”. It can’t be both, so I have to go with a preacher or with Jesus.
“Eenie-meenie-miney-mo” system of choice was not needed. This false preaching was a no brainer, but lots of folks are deceived every week with this one today, everywhere.
Unitarian — only once, and an accident then.
If it was in elementary grade, it would have come in handy as a sin to confess, but I was an adult, and now questioned confession to a person in any form. Only Christ forgives sin. I think I will go straight to the source.
Presbyterian — get some new hymnals and songs.
Alliance guys? There were more gorgeous women I wished to make alliance with, and lust now became an eligible topic in the confessional, of earlier times.
In each place, and many more than listed here, I learned Easter was a biggie. You could not get a seat in the house unless you went way early, and there was the benefit of early escape if you parked close by coming early.
Easter was all duty for a kid, except the eggs colored, and candy; jelly beans, peeps, chocolate rabbits. Palm Sunday was a ride on a donkey, but I never once got a chocolate donkey. And it was my first association that Jesus was a Democrat.
The problem with Easter is not just the busy, busy, busy that Kim speaks about. The cleaning, cooking, deceiving kids with eggs and candy that somehow, God was in this mix.
In reality, much of Easter tradition is steeped in pagan cultural practice from early church days.
But who needs a theological debate?
My Baltimore Catechism never answered how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.
I always stop and thank a nun, if I see one, cuz they look like regular women these days, instead of mysterious black flowing garbed, big cross, ruler carying, teachers…..a Whoopie Goldberg in “Sister Act”
I love them all for they taught me of Jesus Christ.
True, they taught me in their own way, and corrections have come over the years of adulthood. But, they told me of God first.
God has hung around me ever since, through thick and through thin.
Always thank a nun.
If you are going to the hospital, choose St. Vincent over Hamot as there are loads of nuns at SV, and they will throw in many prayers at no charge to your HMO.
In an age when everyone chases celebrities, I get a kick that He hangs around a nobody like me still.
But lately, I have been thinking of Easter and what is going on. Everyone knows that Christmas is shot. It is a commercial season to make our capitalist system continue.
Buy, get debt, wrap, unwrap, pay debt, pitch junk, repeat in 365 days.
But Easter is a day to define the entire faith.
Unless He arose on the third day, the entire Christianity is false. Everything is based on one person in all of history coming back from the dead. (Lazarus did it too, but not on his own…and he wasn’t flogged and crucified, and speared, first; just a regular dead).
So all this huff and puff and tradition and work and busy for Easter has lately made little sense to me. Kim has a reason to rethink the day of Easter. She has MS.
I think we all need MS then.
If your faith is based on Resurrection, and you celebrate that on Easter as never before, each year (new dynamic media theater at ever church now)……
what happens to Christ on the other 364 days of the year?
Do we still have to “kill this guy and make him come back”?
OR, do we accept what we proclaim: HE is Risen!
And, if He is Risen King forever, should not every day be Easter in our lives if we believe this?
Should not people be able to tell if you are a believer by the way you are every day?
(I chuckled at a young local church blogger who actually wrote that “Things you may not know about me” or something to that effect:
“I am Christian”.
Hey, if people don’t know, if strangers can’t tell, what is “being a Christian” mean?). But I digress there.
My call is to reevaluate as Kim has done this year.
Is Easter a day, or a lifestyle and a movement?
Christ had no parking lots to pave.
No ushers to smile at you and sit you down front as you disturb the people who took the time to come on time.
No buildings.
No triple “pass-the-plate” collections.
No obscene salaried help.
His business was to lift your soul, shake it like an Etch-a-Sketch, and clear the slate of your sins.
He added: “Stop doing that!” to sinners he met, not because he was tired of forgiving, but because YOU are supposed to be a believer, holy and separate from the world.
Every person you meet, that is His temple….
NOT those buildings, old and stain glassed, or modern with media technology galore.
He lives in THERE, your neighbor, not a building.
We can’t GO to church; we ARE the church.
A lot of churches do not like to tell folks that.
Maybe you won’t come back and add money to the plate.
Maybe you will love your neighbor, help a homeless, encourage an MS or cancer victim, or both. Give someone food without revealing you did it. Watch a single parent’s child for a day so he can get a rest (in some cases she).
Vacuum the carpet of an elderly, or mow a neighbor’s lawn when they are not home.
Send money to aids orphans outfits instead of a collection plate. Don’t deduct any on your taxes, but make your motive pure. The list is unlimited.
Love God. Love neighbor. Everyday.
Or, do Easter and Christmas like we do and pretend this is what it is all about until you die.
Let someone preach to you each Sunday, OR, pick up the Bible, read it, and listen to what God wants you to know from what you have read.
Church today is like TV. You passively attend most spots and let someone else prepare the reading, the message, sing a bit, and go home for a week, with your work peers Monday through Friday never knowing a difference.
Like TV, after a while, passive attention no longer calms. People are turning off TV’s, and turning off going to church too.
If your Easter was yesterday, where is the risen King today on Monday, and tomorrow?
I think Kim got it right this year, for the first time.
Palms UP!….. and high five to you, Kim.
MS will be there for the next 364 days and you will live with it.
The same is true for the risen King.
He will also be there each day; but not all will live with him….until Christmas when we shop til we drop, hang a tree with bulbs, etc until exhausted.
An intimate relationship takes time to build and a daily intention and choice to maintain.
Or, you can send a Hallmark card twice a year.
May we all be blessed with the perception of MS “Easters”.