THE EASTER STORY - AND YOU

Over a couple of thousand years, the immediacy of the crucifixion and resurrection fades for most people. Some wonder if it really happened at all - was it a cruci-fiction? Humans being what we are, this is understandable - we need to find relevance in the story that links it directly to our own lives.

It is not possible to independently verify all the details in the story. Yes, we have the four gospels, written anywhere from 70 to 200 years after the event. The most painstaking scholarship tells us that the gospels were, in the main, not written by those present at that time, but by their followers of another generation.

Historians of the time report almost nothing but a line or two in passing, and nothing that ties directly to the gospel narrative.

So, it comes down to this. What kind of faith do you have?

If your faith is rooted in materialism, then you need to believe that the events were real, substantially as the gospels report them, and that there is physical, historical event that we celebrate each Easter.

If your faith is of another kind, as is mine, you will not care so much what happened or whether, because there is an esoteric (e.g., hidden) meaning around the notion of crucifixion and resurrection.

The agony of crucifixion symbolizes the pain of letting go of our material existence - the death of the person rooted in the things of the world. After a period of three days (three symbolizing a cycle of perfect completion), the spiritual person is reborn, with new powers that show how the material world has been overcome.

This process is one that calls out to all people - to let go of the world of grasping, getting and spending, appetites and addictions - and move into a new set of experiences, where we have risen above these things.

Wordsworth wrote "Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;"

The Easter message is not about something two thousand years old, but about an opportunity that remains our, in this moment - to rise above our problems, our agony and angst; to succumb, to let go, and then to rise again, renewed!

By the way, sorry to disappoint, but 'Easter' celebrates the ancient goddess Oestre, the spring goddess of fertility - hence the symbolism of eggs, from which will come our Thanksgiving dinners; and bunnies, whose fertility always amazes. Oestre is the later version of Astarte, Ishtar or Ashtaroth, fertility goddess of ancient Sumer, Babylon, and Phoenicia. The Greeks equated her with Aphrodite.

Happy Easter!