Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise"
Day 747 March 24, 2016
Prompt: What did you love about Easter as a child? How do you feel about Easter now that you're older?

I have mixed feelings about Easter now. I remember waking up to our Easter baskets as children, with the day-glo colored plastic grass and big-eared chocolate bunnies. I remember hunting for brightly colored eggs in the yard with my brothers and sisters too. I also remember the church services. The time of Easter marked some of the most memorable services of my childhood.

I loved the somberness of Ash Wednesday, seeing the people leaving the service, their foreheads bearing the smear of black ash that meant they were observant and holy. Palm Sunday was another favorite service of mine. The priest would hand out the wispy palm fronds to all the adults and children and his sermon would tell the story of how Jesus entered the city walls while the crowd cheered and waved the fronds in welcome. If you are a child of a catholic family, you know how quickly that welcomed soured and how the story of the savior became the Messiah's trial and tribulation in order to save all God's children. If you grew up catholic, you know about the crown of thorns, the bite of the whip and the blood on Pontius Pilate's hands. A catholic can not celebrate Easter without first observing the twelve stations of the cross and without raising their eyes to Golgotha where Jesus died in agony for the sins of man. Easter Sunday service brings light in the wake of that darkness. The stone is rolled back from the empty tomb and Jesus is revealed as the savior, resurrected to sit at the right hand of the Holy Father. The service is marked by celebratory singing, by smiling children and uplifting words.

As an adult, Easter agitates me as a lapse catholic. As I color eggs with my daughter and fill Easter baskets, I know there is a deeper meaning, a spiritual connection that should be recognized and celebrated. I know I should be taking her to mass and educating her on the religious important of day that has been commercialized much as Christmas has been. I know I should take myself to church. I know that even as someone who has become disconnected from the church of my childhood, there is still something essentially good and pure about reconnecting to God through the familiar prayers and being bathed in the light that filters through the stained glass depictions of Jesus, Mary and the apostles. My catholic upbringing built a connection in my heart to something bigger, something mysterious, a higher power. I may have distanced myself from the catholic church, but there will always be a connection for me there.

I try to convey that connection to my daughter. At six, and a child of mixed faith parents, she is full of questions and observations. My husband and I try to find the common core of our childhood faiths, the place where Islam and Christianity overlap. We teach her there is one God and that to him we are accountable. For God we live a good life, we are kind, we are forgiving and we are thankful for the blessing we are given. She is growing with faith in her heart. This year I began to talk more about the true meaning behind Christmas. We talked about the baby in the manger and the star that told the world about his birth. That story is much easier to tackle than that of Easter with its complexity of the life, death and the Resurrection. For now, we will teach her Easter is about coming together with family, about celebrating love and new life and giving thanks to one God for all those blessings.


Blogging Circle of Friends
DAY 2226: March 24, 2016
prompt: how important are your dreams? do they serve a purpose? do you dream each and every night?n if you do why don't you always remember them? how about a story, poem, rant or rave about this.

I used to be plagued by the same violent nightmare in my youth, all the way into my college years. Even now, if I dream, I rarely remember them. The nightmare eventually stopped in my adulthood and my subsequent dreams seemed so mundane in comparison that I can hardly recall more than one or two that seemed vivid enough to remember. Occasionally I have a dream where I am losing my teeth or I am falling. I know these dreams must represent something significant if I would take the time to look them up. Honestly though I do not put a lot of stock in dreams. I think they are an active mind's cleaning service, sweeping out the bits of collected observation and memory we no longer need. They are widely open to misinterpretation.