Friday

It's Good Friday. I don't generally have any rituals commemorating this day or Easter other than going to church. I kind of wish that I did. One year we watched The Passion and I almost had a total meltdown. I don't ever need to see that again.

One year I participated in a Passover meal with some college friends. The meal was led by a Jewish man and the students volunteered to cook all the dishes. Not only did I not know anything about cooking at the time, what in the world did I know about anything "kosher"? Knowing me I probably looked the word up in the dictionary before we started cooking. Needless to say, our carefully constructed casserole concoction avalanched onto the kitchen floor about 10 min. before dinner started. With no time to start over, we did what anyone would have done (however blasphemous it may have been). We scooped it off the floor back into the pan and served it. I know. Awful. I'm sure there was some deep spiritual lesson to be had about how we try to keep things kosher but somehow wind up eating food off the kitchen floor.

Ireland prohibits the sale of alcohol on Good Friday. Eastern Orthodox Christians fast on GF. Some English countries serve hot cross buns. (I'm not sure why). Germany haults comedic performances and public dancing in some areas of its country. Bermuda, however, is my favorite. They fly colorful kites in the shape of a cross and talk about Jesus' death and ascension to heaven.

When I have kids (some doubt this will ever happen), I think we will spend GF eating hot cross buns and flying kites together. Maybe this doesn't sound super-spiritual. That's probably because lately life has felt more like that casserole on the kitchen floor. Messy. I know that many people spend today concentrating on Jesus' death and the horror of his execution. And I admire these people. I've been one of them.

But this year is different. This time last year my mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. I used to work for a medical company contracted with hospice. When my mother was diagnosed, I flashed back to all these people I had watched die a slow death and felt comforted that I knew something of what was ahead, but at the same time felt terrified that I could not stop something so horrific from happening to someone I loved so deeply.

I lived in Florida for two months while my mother went through some major surgery to remove her tumor. As it happened, just after Easter, the doctor told us that her tumor was not cancerous and that it had actually saved her life by encasing a ruptured appendix. I felt numb. Something about facing the reality of death with my mother made me value life in a whole new way. I decided at this point that I had been sad and depressed for too long. There were things in my life that I regretted and wanted to change, and emerging from this darkness afforded me the opportunity to make things different. I lost weight, forced my introverted self to connect with several of my friends I had drifted away from, I cleaned out junk rooms when I returned back home, and learned to lighten my load in a zillion other unmentionable ways. I traveled to India, which is something I had wanted to do for years and never had, and there God breathed new life inside me all over again.

Now here I am a year later and though my inner life feels kind of messy right now, I see God moving in me and all around me breeding life in places I would have labled as dead. And so while I have no ritual to celebrate Good Friday or Easter, I feel new inside and this makes me want to eat hot cross buns and go fly a kite.

But it's raining outside so I may just have to settle for the hot cross buns. In fact, I don't really feel like cooking, so I may just eat a cinamon roll and drink a cup of coffee while I read the paper. It will be the most spiritual cinamon roll to ever grace my lips. And I will thank God for all the good and messy things in my life that remind me of his great grace.