Easter week-end
So yesterday was Good Friday and I meant to put up a post about it but I got sleepy and fell asleep reading Agatha Christie instead. I love crime novels. I’m afraid I have terribly violent taste. But, they have to be intellectual too. Private investigators stumbling around having affairs with people and finding the truth only by brute force and ignorance isn’t my style. My favorite is Dorothy Sayers but Agatha Christie really isn’t half bad. Apparently I can still be surprised by a few mystery authors; usually I know who the murderer is by half way through but this time it took me three quarters of the way to guess. Who knew?
Anyways.
It rained yesterday. I said to my dad that it was rather appropos. He said why? I said, well, aren’t we supposed to be rather sad today? He said no, only thoughtfully and deeply thankful. He is right, I suppose. He always is. But that made me think about me (quite egocentric, aren’t I?) and why I would associate Lent and Good Friday with gloomyness. I suppose I am rather more catholic than him– despite the fact that his mother is Catholic and he himself went to catholic kindergarten, while I was lutheran when I was younger and now am not anything in particular at all. It’s interesting, though. I think it only right that it rain on Good Friday. I think it fitting and rather picturesque…it’s quite heartless of me really. A very impersonal way to relate to the savior: “This is the day we remember that you died. But why bother talking to you when I can listen to the rain and think only of the fact of your death, as though that were what mattered or as though you still are dead? And then, after not talking to you, I can go color eggs originally meant to celebrate a pagan fertility rite.” My celtic roots are showing, I suppose. I am rather inveterately superstitious. My dad says that he is both more Christian and more pagan than most people. Maybe I am, too.
I really wanted to go to an Easter Egg hunt today that my church volunteers to help put on for children in the neighborhood; they paint faces and give away chocolate bunnies to the kids in the neighborhood, who are nearly all low-income. But I couldn’t get a ride down from my parents’ place, so no dice. I baked a bunny cake instead. (In the shape of, not made of, Josh!)
Tomorrow I will go to church and then I will come home and listen to Appalaichan Spring by Aaron Copeland (you may know it by the name of “Simple Gifts,” the Shaker hymn that is is basically variations on). I hope it’s nice and sunny. And warm! And then, in the evening, I’ll be back in Clifton for good! With a great big black plastic boot to wear on the foot I had surgery on. Yay. I’m kind of nervous, because I’m going to be a TA this quarter and I’ve never done it before. And the first class is 8am Monday morning. The prof emailed me a few days ago to ask what name and email address I wanted on the syllabus. Crazy! I hope it goes well.
Happy Easter.
March 27th, 2005 at 11:01 pm
I think you are right. Rainy days and Good Friday are both paradoxical. On one hand, they are gloomy and dreary. On the other hand, the both have a beauty, and both give life.