Category: Musing (Page 25 of 31)

The most potent of religious icons is the cross with the figure of Jesus, nailed and hanging, suspended ever in our psyche as the one who saved us from damnation. And for that, yes, I am eternally grateful.  Because of that most potent of religious icons, Easter is the most holy of feast days in the Catholic liturgy. And if the cross is the symbol of our salvation, Easter is a sign we can overcome sin.

Unlike other feast days and holidays, Easter acknowledges the world in which we live, how it moves through our universe and our relationship to the sun, although you could just as easily say the Son!  In order to determine Easter Sunday, you need to know when the earth turns so that our star, the sun,  moves across the vernal equinox heading for summer solstice, when we leave the bareness of winter and move into the spring of renewal. Using the Paschal Full Moon, which actually comes from our Hebrew roots, or Passover, and the 14th day of the lunar month, rather than a real astronomical event, Easter, in the western churches, arrives anytime between March 22 and April 25.

On the religious side the symbols and signs are quite clear and straightforward. You sin, you can be redeemed .  Outside religious events, there are what I think of as mascots. A baby boy for New Year’s Day,  Cupid for Valentines, Leprechauns for St. Paddy’s Day, Santa Claus for Christmas. And they all relate to the day. But.

The Easter Bunny has always been a particular  problem for me, mainly because he delivers eggs. As a kid, I never really thought that bunnies and chicks went together. I mean, chickens roam around, pecking at the ground, peeping and squawking inside an enclosure that even earned the name chicken wire. Whereas bunnies, or rabbits [and there’s a dilemma, are they the same or are they different? OMG, then there are hares!] sit in cages or behind rock walls or underground hidden by shrubbery, drop little black pellets and really don’t say much. So how did they come together?  I get that bunnies are the quintessential sign of fertility. Spring=renewal and what better way to convey that than fertility, ergo, bunnies. Eggs hold life. So.

Even though these are pagan symbols, the bunny and the egg, they bring together the most holy of beliefs that this season, Easter, on the first Sunday after the 14th day of the lunar month when the sun crosses the equinox on it’s way to the equator, is a celebration of renewal and life. Hallelujah! 

So. Maybe it’s just a grammar thing, but is it April Fool’s Day or April Fools’ Day? If it’s Fool’s then that means there is only one fool. But if it’s Fools’ Day then all of us fools have a day. But enough of that stodgy ninja grammar  stuff. Let’s talk about the name of the day.

Apparently at one time, after the vernal equinox and the arrival of spring, April First was considered the beginning of the new year. Who knew? I don’t think I’d ever hear that before. Maybe because everything was new? The cold and hoary winter was in the past. Trees and shrubs were blooming, babies were being born. New, I tell you.  According to an internet article April Fools’ Day has an uncertain origin. When the calendar was changed to make January 1 the beginning of the new year under the Gregorian Calendar, those who stuck to keeping New Year’s Day as April First were made fun of, sent on a fool’s errand, enticed to do silly things on this pseudo new year day. But there’s not a lot of evidence to support this.

Another theory is that back in Roman times, Constantine allowed the court jesters to rule the empire for a day, and they called for a day of absurdity. But that turned out to be just another April Fools’ Day joke by a professor of history at Boston University.

As there seems to be some doubt as to the origin of april Fools’ Day. Here’s my personal take on the origin of the day. It was a brutal winter. The snow was piled ten feet and people had to get out of the house through the upstairs windows if they went out at all. And then it all started to melt. All that snow had to go somewhere and because it became warm slowly, the snow melted into the ground giving a huge boost to all the local flora. Trees had bumper crops of leaves, bushes blossomed  without shame on every inch of their branches: forsythia, azalea, marigolds, snapdragons, lavender, wisteria, dogwoods, the air was perfumed with the fragrance of a million blooms. And one out of every five people were dazed and disoriented from the pollen; headaches, toothaches, sneezing, coughing, runny eyes. And they went nuts! Doing and saying the most foolish of things. That’s where it all began.  All because of Spring.

And, if you want to read about the top one hundred April Fools’ Day pranks, click here 🙂

We’re moving into the best part of the year, the liturgical year. You may think that is Christmas, but you would be wrong, in my book, at least. Easter is the best! It is the promise of new. It is spring. The awakening. The bountiful. The miracle. Easter with bunnies and eggs, jelly beans and almost everything that is wonderful about sweets.

One of the books I always read during Lent is The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. My copy is from 1961. It’s an old book. Almost bereft of cover, the price at the top right hand corner is $1.95.  But this year I couldn’t find it, and I almost didn’t miss it until I started thinking about the end of Lent, the beginning of Easter and all that information about the art of temptation. This is reading about sin and greed as a ‘good’ thing. We read  Screwtape’s instructions to his nephew Wormwood on how to undermine faith, and bring more souls to their master. When I was younger I thought of it as an ‘opposite’ book. Just do the exact reverse of what Screwtape suggests and you are golden.

As I grew I realized the exact reverse was harder than it seemed to a thirteen year old. And, during Lent, The Screwtape Letters are a gift, a reminder. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I’m pretty sure there are turn signals on every car on the road today. Well, maybe not the antique cars, like the Model T’s and so on, but every other car on the road. And yet, it is amazing how many drivers fail to use them. Talk about a lack of civility!

Ah, but you’re thinking, this is a little thing, the real problem is in politics or cable news shows. No. I disagree. Our politics have been bloodthirsty since the beginning. Good lord, it took a war for us to be a country. And then it took years, years I tell you, to get the whole federal versus state thing worked out and that only lasted until the middle of the 1800’s. True, slavery was a part of that, sadly true. But at issue too was states rights. And that issue is still out there, states are suing the federal government over the health care bill. So, to quote Lucy, Good Grief! does anyone really read their, no, our history? And our history shows that we can disagree.  But history is not the subject. The devil is in the details. Or. It’s the little things that count. Would you think the world more civil if the people you meet said ‘excuse me’? Or ‘thank you’? Or just ‘please’? I think the answer is yes. We can turn off the politics, the cable news shows. But it would be very hard to turn off our interactions with others.

Back to turn signals. LOL, a personal crusade of mine. Signal to move lanes and to turn. Not tough, you don’t even have to put your arm outside the window!

when Bayley was in high school an upper classmen  [or is it class woman since she was in an all girls school? do they even use that term today?] said that all cute dogs are always puppies. And so they are.

Our puppies, well, the three we have now, Grady having given us amazing joy, are worth their weight in fun and games. Sammy, that little rat terrier in the front, can not imagine a dog too big, a challenge to hefty, a chair too high. He’s up for it all. And if he doesn’t get enough face time then he appears and barks until it happens.

Missy, the coon hound on the right, really just want to have her twenty two hours of sleep daily. She’s not fussy. It can be on the grass, in a chair, on the deck, on the sidewalk or when too hot, on the tile floor in the bathroom! She is annoyed by thunder storms and anyone trying to feed her Denta sticks. Nope, she will turn up her nose at a treat if it is not in the appropriate form.

And Marcus. Never should have been named Marcus. We should have named him Eeyore. He’s afraid of everything, has a tail that could wipe out thousands and the softest coat, just like a Gunn bear. Soft.

I don’t often give them credit for what they add to our lives. So. Thanks,  guys.