A thousand ages in thy sight

Conversation reported by my cousin, from two of her more secular friends:

Wife: What's good friday anyway? The day jesus died, right?

Husband: How'd he die again?

**

A little mind-boggling, this lack of basic cultural knowledge -- but at the same time, charmingly other-dimensional. I remember a fracas back in my grad school days in the mid-80s, when we were being introduced to the wonders of mainframe computers, and Dilworth instructed us to "type the lord's prayer" as a test of our ability to use the word processing program. There were at least two or three people in the class who said they had no idea what he meant, and he responded with some outrage about this being a basic cultural artifact, like shakespeare or the national anthem.

The conversation pings me also back to a second year comparative religion course I took as an undergrad -- I wrote something in a paper about the crucifixion being the "mythology of christianity" and the prof scrawled back "IF christianity has a mythology, this is not it."

(Again, mindboggling in a professor of comparative religion, but I supposed discovering the narrowness of realms of academic expertise has been part of my gradual awakening into adulthood. I will note that I seem to recall that this prof had some sort of seamy interlude later on in life in which he was knifed outside some bar in detroit, and I didn't have quite the same gasp of horror as I might have if he hadn't made me squirm in disgust).

All of this is really postmodernism in freeze frame action... assumptions that one's own mythology is the lens through which we all make cultural meaning -- and at the same time, so much *is* refracted against it, including the basic structure of canadian holidays and the tying together of redemption and the new life of spring. My online friend in Chicago notes that their cardinal was blessing easter baskets (wtf is that about, she says --I thought the baskets and the bunnies and the eggs were all pagan fertility symbols) when he fell down and broke his hip yesterday. Again with the absurdity of it all, like the enacted Passion in the streets of the italian neighbourhood here in which at least one of the Christs over the past decade was purported to be a well known gay leather boy sub quite into the flogging.

All balled together, creating riffs of bizarre intersection, some grappling by well meaning people for christianity that is about caring for others, all obscuring the way that religion is so efficiently used to create a "we" that others everyone else. It's easiest to think of easter as the affirmation of wanting to Do Good that my mother wants it to be, or the playful spring ritual of eggs and outdoor toys after the bleak winter my dad always made it. I squint at all the pieces that filter together across my own life, and can only find the bricolage of mud luscious spring, propulsion for rejuvenation after the bleak grey winter. Fresh hope for a drive around the lake where my car isn't in danger of being blown off the skyway.