Reflections on the Easter Egg Hunt

Easter 2017

There is this tradition that has become attached to Christianity: hunting for eggs. I wonder why we do not search for them as we would search for God’s will. It is more like hide and seek than it is hunt and kill. We can blame the bible for this language of bloodshed, winners and losers, and the hero overtaking an enemy. It is, however, more likely that people are spiritually illiterate and have failed to recognize the figurative language.

Religion may be about intellectual knowledge, but spiritual living is about seeking the hope of peace and transformation. I remember finding an egg hidden in a tree and being delighted by the find after a long and tiring search. I no longer recall the egg, the color, or what was inside.

And I witnessed many times this searching for hidden eggs. There are sugar highs, the compulsive pursuit for more treasure than one can carry, and often parents trying to calm down a child and internalizing blame for a failed event. But I have never seen anyone, stop and say I like what was in that very first egg.

To be searching is to never arrive. To be searching it to discover who you are and take care to find your right place in the world. A world where, as Jesus said, no one is too rich or poor, sick or well, maligned or celebrated to join us at the table. To be searching for Easter eggs is to be searching for the hidden hope that will change your relationship to the moment, the hour, the day, and the year.

I do not care about your religion. The rituals you choose are really none of my business. My God is not your God and your God, most certainly not mine.

But I care about your practice.

I care about how your faith translates into living.

When I pray it is to be kind and useful. Sometimes I forget and get wound up in the axels and rage tears my edges until I trim the excess.

I care about how you read your history.

When I am afraid it is because I have literally read words that were meant to be symbolic. I cannot hold to scripture when it suits me. Perhaps that is why you do not stone your wives.

I care about how you interpret justice.

When I doubt that the world will be okay it is when I hear people say the poor are lazy and when women are raped that it is God’s will.

I care about the people your religion chooses to ignore.

When I meditate I see hungry mouths and hands reaching out.   I see you hiding behind your golden altars and I have become your fatted calf.

I do not care about your religion unless your religion says you are God. I do not care about your religion unless you seek it for power not consciousness. I do not care about your religion unless you claim your God is my God and force him on me.

I care about your religion when it fails to see diversity and uses money as absolution.

To search for eggs is to search for understanding. If you are Christian, the passion represents that we are flawed and can change. Other religions recognize, too, that this life of ours is possible because there is a transaction between the material and spiritual.

I do not care about your religion. I care about your humanity. How you and I live must matter more than the teachings of a different time and place, if we want to literally and figuratively avoid shooting each other down. If what we believe in theory leads to a practice that annihilates another we are doomed to miss the resurrection.

Published May 5, 2017