It's Easter weekend, or as I was taught in seminary to call it, "Pascal Triduum". Though I'm an atheist today, the observation of Easter is still a ritual touchstone of my year. Winter entices from me a depth of loathing that I cannot fairly articulate, so at the first signs of spring, you will easily notice my impatience with winter's residual chill. Every walk in the park encourages me to inspect the progress of leaf buds on low-hanging tree limbs. The earliest blossoms cause rejoicing untold. The death of winter is over, and I'm glad to be free of it.
This is the cycle of Nature. Life leads to death, but what is dead does not return; it reciprocally nourishes life. Life cannot be without death. You don't need special training to see this. If you eat food, you experience this truth graphically. Nature is change culminating in death, and beliefs otherwise are misleading.
The spring festival of Easter is about life, however, that winter has passed and new life is rising out of the coldness of death. The myth of Jesus serves as a metaphor of Nature's seasonal ritual, and I really don't mind that. The hymns of resurrection are not, to me, about a God-Man raised from the grave; they are poetic license, imagery that elicits joy at the arrival of spring's new life.
The believers may revel in their hapless naiveté, but I'll gladly dance with them and sing their hymns of life-affirming joy, because the glory of spring is not the misguided and childish notions of religion but rather the childlike pleasures of grass, warm breezes, the scent of magnolias, and the twitter of birds in the trees.
"Rejoice and sing now, all the round earth,
bright with a glorious splendor,
for darkness has been vanquished...."
Quote: Exsultet of the Great Vigil of Easter
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