When curses break

In the movies or books when someone comes out of a barren and lonely wilderness experience it's, to my recollection, often portrayed as straight triumph. Squeals, giggles, and jumping around in circles (or roars, fist bumps, and chest thumping if you're the sterner sex) seem like the natural accompaniment to engagement rings, entrance letters, positive pregnancy tests, and last minute touchdowns. In many cases they are. Today though, I thought about a time when deliverance and triumph brought confusion and weeping - namely, at the empty tomb of Christ. We, living several centuries later, jump straight into the glory and victory of Christ's resurrection. We sing "Christ the Lord is Risen Today!" with bursting throats and glowing faces, and we revel in all that the atonement has bought us. We look forward to being with Christ and being reunited with our loved ones in Heaven. We rest in the thought that our future in secure in the one who defeated death and made it possible for us to live in friendship with God. However, as our pastor pointed out, Mary stood weeping and wondering where Jesus' body was. Simon Peter and John didn't have any answers either. The very symbol of our joy was initially a time of sad bewilderment to those who first saw it.

Why is this important to me? One of the dangers of denigrating or downplaying literature is that people stop learning to understand narratives. They don't study how actions and characters play out in a variety of circumstances. This plays out in real life as well. Who's the bad guy? Where's the unreliable narrator? Who's the quiet force for good whose life is overlooked by those who seek power to change in obvious places? What, you may ask, does this have to do with answering my question? The Bible is at it's heart a book of stories. It's a narrative of redemption. In it we find people in a myriad of circumstances encountering the God of creation - from a faithful young Jewish girl to a bed hopping Samaritan woman to old prophetess. It doesn't matter if you're weeping or laughing or tapping your toe with a stern look in your eyes - there is a story that touches your life somewhere. This really hit me when I was listening to our pastor recount the Easter story because for a while I thought I had a story that didn't fit anywhere until suddenly I saw it writ large in the confusion of Easter Sunday.

When I found out I was expecting our son I didn't have a picture worthy hallmark reaction. I didn't blush or cry or giggle or anything like that. I swore. I'd been waiting for years to see that positive test, and when it showed up I swore because I though surely this was a cruel hoax. After all these years (and after what my doctor last said about starting fertility treatments) I was sure this couldn't actually be what it obviously was. When I walked down the hall to tell Allen it was very much in the same way Mary might have approached the disciples - "You won't believe this - something must be wrong.
For weeks and months later I was uncomfortable with this part of my story. I thought there was something wrong that I reacted with disbelief and confusion, but listening to the Easter story at church today I finally saw my story in their story. I saw the wondering and the weeping and the questioning. I saw people who doubted what was in front of them. I saw a great curse defeated and heralded not with shouts or parades but with people running around trying to find where they'd left their sorrow and defeat. In some strange way I found it comforting to know that I was reacting the way other good and faithful people have reacted in assuming that this great blessing was only a new and varied sorrow. All that afternoon while I waited to hear from the nurse and tried not to think too hard, I was by the tomb of Christ not quite realizing that He had broken the curse and was bringing new life to me. (And I will add here that I have been deliberately and literally cursed in my life by someone who should have know better. Someone tried to speak words of death and condemnation over my life, but by the grace of God His grace and His power have prevailed.) Then I called the nurse and heard the good news and rejoiced. I saw as I had never seen before how curses fade away before the goodness of God, and I rejoiced.

Sitting there in the church where our son was recently baptized listening to our pastor describe Mary waiting beside the tomb it seemed as if I saw where my own quiet longings and desires had been buried in my at the time lifeless womb. Like Mary there were times when I would sneak away to weep beside this grave, and like Mary I was astonished one day to see that the stone had been rolled away. But to what purpose? Was this only another trial and disappointment to bear? No, it is life as perhaps Mary and I hardly dared dream. It is the story of resurrection, and it is the story of how we found out were expecting our little buddy. Roughly. The Bible doesn't report any swearing in the Easter story, but now that I think of it I'd be surprised if at least a couple of the disciples weren't muttering imprecations under their breath.

Easter Blessings

My best wishes for a joyous and blessed Easter to all you folks out in the blogsphere. I'm coming to realize that Christianity is in many ways truer, harder, and more blessed than I'd realized. It takes time to let it sink down in your bones to the point where you have room for your faith and doubts to rub elbows and not bother each other so much - to have room to believe all of Scripture (especially the hard bits) and still wrestle with fitting them together and living them out (especially the bits you take for granted). Our celebration of the Resurrection is a time to enjoy our beliefs and work them out with roast ham, chocolate rabbits, new dresses, and perhaps a more fervent proclamation of the words "Christ has died! Christ has risen! Christ will come again!" One day I hope to live this holiday well and celebrate it with all the joyful fervor I can muster. This year though, I will celebrate with a home scattered in pieces around me, boxes half unpacked, remodeling barely started, and it will be enough.

Easter Menu

Ok, so this is my first time ever heading up an Easter celebration, and I'm just praying everything turns out ok. There's going to somewhere around a dozen people total -mostly young folks like us who can't celebrate Easter with their families. Young folk - Allen turned 30 this year. I guess young is truly relative. Anyway, fortunately our church is deeply rooting in the "tell me what I can bring" tradition, so I don't have to do quite all of it myself. We all live in relatively small places and are used to loaning each other chairs and folding tables and such and therefore enabling each other to host rather more people than our normally modest abodes allow. Allen and I live in "large" apartment, and even we find it a stretch to fit a dozen people in here. But enough about California housing!

Easter Menu:

Appetizers:

Cheese Plate
Devilled Eggs
Veg and Dip

Main course:

Roast Ham (recipe from Perfect Recipes for Having People Over)
Tamari Marinated Chicken Breasts (MIL recipe)
Mashed Potatoes
Oven Roasted Harvicot Vertes
Rolls
Salad
Wine/Italian Soda

Dessert:

Trifle
Undecided
Limoncello
Coffee/Tea



I've tried to pick items I could prep in the days previous or that would cook quickly with minimal attention. The roast can cook while we're at church. Things like trifle, devilled eggs, and rolls I can make ahead of time. Most everything else will either cook quickly or be brought by my delightful friends.

The big deal right now is just getting things cleaned up. We're in the midst of an organizational shift, which means that I've accumulated clutter from the "oh that will go somewhere else later" pre-organization that's been going on lately. It might be about time to make a pot of strong black tea and just blast through some of that. Of course that likely means my back bedroom (otherwise known as that room full of stuff) will become even more impossible (and impassible), but at least I'll have my new sideboard cleared away. Yes, I have a new sideboard (ok, it's from Ikea), and my dining area is so much nicer now. The table actually fits where it's supposed to instead of being awkwardly thrust out in the middle of the room because I had no place for dishes but the baker's rack and no place for the baker's rack than that much needed corner of the dining area.

I hope I really can get through that clutter quickly because until I get that done I really can't decorate, and that's one of my favorite parts of celebrations :) I don't know that I'm all that good at it, but I love setting out candles and turning on my Christmas lights (which are year round contributors to my bookcase). Oh, and I found the most amazing idea for an Easter egg hunt. One of the suggestions I found was to hide puzzle pieces in the eggs. I thought that might be a fun element to get people mixing together and moving around a little.

So there are my Easter plans. I'll try to post pictures once some of this comes together, but for now I need to clean out my closets so I have a place to put all the stuff accumulating on various surfaces.