Spring Thinking

I was thinking today about how much I disliked Easter as a kid. There's a whole cluster of childhood sensations that still comes back to me: uncomfortable clothes, pastel colors, soggy pale daylight, dreary extra-long church service, the blank dishwater smell of my grandmother's apartment. I see the pictures and every year was the same: kielbasa, rye bread with butter, Kosciusko mustard and kapusta. That sounds really good to me now, but back then the overload of savory-sweet flavor was strange.

It's ironic, the disconnect between the message and the messenger. Underneath everything it's all about death and rebirth, and I see so clearly that the world needs death and rebirth, it's one of the great central gears that makes everything turn and function. And yet, the Catholic church never dies; it's like a living relic. It seems to believe it ought to be immortal, and I think even God scoffs at that. It grasped too much, it's afraid to let go, and it drags everyone down with its weight.

I want to celebrate in a different way this year, but how? March 20, the vernal equinox, falls on a Saturday, so that's good, but we need something to be reborn. Maybe we need to rebirth ourselves...a long hike in the rain and cold, but with food, music and games waiting at the end of it. Kielbasa, rye bread with butter, Kosciusko mustard and kapusta....