Holding on by the root

Rogue Christian searches the Easter story for connection and hope

This one runs deep so get a good grip.

Last year at Easter I pulled out twenty square feet of goutweed from the back garden after what looked like a decade plus of neglect. Its gnarled, knuckled roots reached across the soil exactly where I wanted well-ish behaved flowering plants.

Taking the goutweed out was easy. Destruction often is.

As the springy earth turned warm and soft, the little patch I had left behind, just for good measure, brought me more joy than I had expected.

I actually wondered if I’d been too hasty with my shovel.

Luckily, bad gardening is like a bad haircut. If you wait long enough, nature forgives your mistakes.

This Easter weekend, instead of ripping out goutweed, I have a new project: celebrate Easter. Properly.

As a matter of cultural continuity and belonging, I find myself wanting to explain Easter to my kids so they understand their heritage, but there is so much about my own early Christian education that I feel conflicted about.

So this is me working out what I want to say to them - two kids who’ve never been to a weekly church service, who’ve never been introduced to a father-figure god (judgmental, loving or otherwise), but who’ve wished on birthday candles and put crystals under their pillows for peaceful dreams, and who have prayed, once to my knowledge, with a loving but ambiguous salutation led by me, while holding hands in the dark after watching their friend get loaded into an ambulance last summer.

For others who struggle with this, I hope it helps you too.

The Easter Story, for kids who are new

All of our holidays exist for a reason. Many are connected to religions. Religions are a set of beliefs that a group of people share. The beliefs are about important things like how the world works, and what is right and wrong.

Easter is an important holiday for the religion called Christianity.

In Christianity, the belief system is built around a loving God.

The word “god” is a label used to describe a being with powers beyond those of humans. Some religions have one god, and some have more than one god. “God” might be viewed as the source of all creation, a gentle parent, a spirit helper, an embodiment of pure love, and so on.

The Christian God is kind of a three-in-one god. It consist of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The Son is Jesus Christ, and he is so important in Christianity that the whole thing is named after him. Even Christmas (Christ-mas) has his name in it. That’s the holiday when Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Easter is the holiday when Christians celebrate his death and resurrection.

So who was Jesus? Jesus was a real person who lived two thousand years ago. Jesus was a teacher from a young age, sharing ideas and stories that encouraged people to focus on love and kindness. He gathered followers, including twelve disciples, who traveled with him and helped spread his message of love. Large crowds of people would come and listen to him teach outside. He even healed sick people.

Not everyone liked Jesus. Eventually the government arrested Jesus and sentenced him to die. They attached him to a cross with nails in his feet and hands and put a crown of thorns on his head. Dying that way was long and painful and public. The crosses you see at churches and on necklaces represent the cross that Jesus died on.

After he died his friends put his body in a tomb.

Three days later, they came to the tomb and his body was gone. An angel was there instead, telling them that he had risen from the dead.

After that, a few of Jesus’ friends said they saw his spirit. He walked with them and showed them that life exists after death.

Jesus died and rose again to give hope to the world. His death showed us that even when bad things happen, miracles sometimes follow.

*

I just checked my garden. The perennials I planted where the goutweed was are starting to grow. The whole area sings the song of possibility. The old goutweed will grow and be beautiful, and so will the new plants.

And just like that, the spiritual foundation of my childhood (and maybe yours too) can keep growing and nurture our kids, even as we evolve some.

Religion is not known for adaptation, but maybe that’s the point. It forces us to reckon with a set of beliefs that predated us and our parents and our grandparents and great-grandparents and on and on…..

People used to fix broken dishes with special staplers. Now we throw them away and order new ones from Amazon, generating the carbon footprint of a small apartment building.

Sure, evolution is good. Prune the shrubs? Yes. But maybe leave a little of the past, for good measure. Time will teach us, but only if we let it.

The next miracle might be right around the corner for all of us. That’s what I’m hoping and praying for this Easter.

*

Happy Easter to all.