Happy Easter (Monday)!

Did you know Easter lasts for six weeks in the church calendar?

(The flowers from our Seder and Easter table--white and gold are the colors of the season.)

Our Seder table was very pretty.  Somehow, between frying latkes and bouncing babies, I didn't remember to take any pictures during the dinner.  But rest assured, it was great.

Unsure about having to sit in his high chair, Brother is equally unsure about being photographed while in confinement.

Not so this mysterious person, who kept showing up whenever Miss Boo disappeared.  Who are you,masked stranger?  Who?

Plastic eggs rock...

...but not as hard as using them to walk around with...

...or stealing them from your sister, with a clever "I don't even have to look at my theivery" motion.

Miss Boo takes matching up the eggs seriously.

Brother, not so much.  They are fun to smack and chew on.

Easter Sunday, and Brother apparently thinks that the church service would benefit from a DJ.  He's practicing while riding on Daddy's shoulders in this shot.

What? I should put down my sippy for my closeup?

You got it, babe!

Easter service was great.  The ham I cooked wound up being too big (why was I sure that only six of us would be able to eat that thing?) but now at least I have leftovers to do stuff with.

And yes, I am aware of the contradiction inherent in having a Seder supper one day and a ham dinner the next.  We're Messianic and not kosher anyway, ok?

I'll write something later about Easter Week (this week), but for now just enjoy the cute babies.

Cheers,

Breanna

Good Friday

...or "God's Friday" as some people think it used to be called (aren't they all His?), in the same way that Goodbye used to be "God be with ye".

This is the day that we remember the crucifixion and passion of the Lord.  (I have a confession: I've never seen The Passion of the Christ.  I just can't psyche myself up to it.  I get weepy just thinking about the previews.)  This is the day that we can identify, if we choose to use it as a devotional aid, with various people in the story.  Who fits you?

Perhaps it's John Mark, the young man who is so frightened when the soldiers come to arrest Jesus that he runs away, losing his garment in the process, and flees naked.  This is one of those times, I think, when God uses an event that really happened and also gives it symbolic significance--He's good at that.  Because surely, what makes us more naked than fear?  And what better way to lose the covering grace of the Lord than to abandon Him, rather than running to Him, in our fear?

Or perhaps you identify more with stubborn Peter, ruled by his emotions.  When Peter isn't allowed to fight violently for his Lord, he doesn't know what to do, and loses his courage.  Maybe you've denied the Lord like Peter did, for petty reasons, in front of people that didn't matter.  (Surely, the servant girl in the courtyard was not the person who could threaten a full grown, burly fisherman.)  Maybe you've repented.

Perhaps you identify with the women, unable to see what was going on, knowing He was arrested, knowing something bad was happening, seeing all your fears confirmed when He emerges, bloody, forced to pick up the instrument of His death.  Perhaps you've been watching someone you love carry death--death in a hospital, death at home, death coming in the next days or months or years.  I pray not.

Perhaps you are like Simon of Cyrene, caught up in this drama against your will.  You were just going about your business this Easter and suddenly you are brought face-to-face with Christ, and you have to look into His eyes.

Perhaps you identify with the centurion, who was just doing his job, on a busy, exhausting holiday weekend, in a country he probably didn't much like.  Perhaps you've been forced to see God in the mundane, and perhaps you've realized that the job you were wanting to get over with has been the most important moment of your life.

Perhaps you identify with Pilate, and you just want the whole, embarassing mess over with.

Perhaps you identify with the theif on the cross, knowing Christ is what you need, and knowing just as surely that you can never presume to reach out to Him.  Remember, His arms are stretched out to you.

But unfortunately, I think most people on Good Friday identify with everyone else in Jerusalem--they are just going about their business, and while they may know something is happening outside the city where they execute the scum, they have their own worries to attend to.  Business is business, after all, and by the time the veil of the temple rips, the earth cracks, and the sky blackens, it's too late.  He's gone, and it was only a strange earthquake.

But remember, as we spend tonight and tomorrow in vigil, mourning the death of the Lord: it's only Friday.

Sunday is coming.

Breanna

Well, So I Skipped Spy Wednesday

Mostly because I had to take a couple of bags of handmedowns to the secondhand store, and that led to me looking at their furniture department, which led to me finding the perfect new bedside table for The Husband, who has been longsuffering-ly using a red cube thing we got when we were first married that is much too short for his side of the bed, and that tended to get rearranged every day by the kiddos, who found it the perfect height for mayhem.

Anyway, this is Maundy Thursday.  We're supposed to think about Christ washing the feet of His disciples, and hopefully later tonight we'll have our own little session with warm washcloths and lotion, but I found myself translating the service idea already today as I wiped certain chubby, wiggly little people up during morning diaper changes.  This motherhood gig--really can be means of sanctification.  Sigh.

Which is not, of course, to say that automatically sanctification has to be unpleasant, or that everything unpleasant is necessarily a means of sanctification.  But it at least lends an aura of greater meaning to the drudgery tasks--the picking up of dirty socks that you already picked up, that someone threw on the floor because they wanted the laundry basket for a boat, or washing the dishes, again, or vacuuming the floor, again, or changing the sheets you just put on the bed yesterday, only the baby puked on them...

Ah, yes, everyone has drudgery.  Doctors, pastors, mothers, factory workers, even, I imagine, fashion models (it can't be entertaining to have to stand in place for three hours, being told "now widen your eyes.  Alright, now look to the right.  No, my right.")  The drudgery is the place where we can choose. 

We know that we're supposed to be joyful in suffering--I think a lot of Christians would make a fine showing if Red Dawn happened and suddenly the commies were lining people up in the street and demanding they renounce the Lord or get shot.  (Seems like a lot of trouble to go to, by the way, when you've already got a high school football team militia running around the hills, yelling "Wolverines!")  No problem.  I'm only a bullet away from eternity, and I know what I'm supposed to do in this situation.  Likewise, it's not hard to do the right thing when we're having mountaintop experiences--when we're at a moving service, when your child looks at you and whispers "I love you, Mama, you're a good Mama", or when you get to be in on a person's conversion.

But it's very, very hard to do the right thing, and think the right thing, when you're scraping spattered bits of tomato sauce off the inside of the microwave.  Again.  And you're not being so demanding--all you want to do is get a FEW MINUTES away from the tomato sauce (or the annoying, talkative neighbor, or the pile of incoming papers to grade) to do something completely inoffensive that you like.  Knitting, maybe, or writing, or brushing your hair all at once.  It's very easy, in the midst of drudgery, to think resentfully, and (what's worse) to think that it doesn't matter what you think at that moment.  After all, it's just an ordinary, average, less-than-ideal moment.

The truth is that ordinary moments make up most of our lives.  Relatively few of us will, probably, be called to stand in the streets and choose the Lord at the cost of a bullet.  A relatively small portion of our spiritual lives will be taken up with experiences of emotional sweetness and supernal enabling.  Most of it will just be work, and a percentage of the work will be, I hate to say, drudgery.  So unless we can get in the habit of seeing our drudgery as service to the Lord, well, we'll spend most of our life thinking wrongly.

Which is something to remember when your son has the Epic Poopout of all poop-outs.  (It was even between his toes.  Wow.)

Service, baby.  Christ didn't have to do it, but He did it, and in the humblest guise imaginable.  Now if I can just remember this for the rest of the year.

Cheers,

Breanna

Yep, My Genes

Guess what we did today?

I bet "digging through the hope chest because Mama started cleaning the closet and got on a re-folding, opening-up-drawers-and-chests tear" didn't cross your mind first.  But anyway digging through the hope chest (cedar chest, I suppose I should call it now, since I'm not "hoping" to get married anymore) I found this cup, which I got I think for high school graduation and which I had forgotten I possessed.  I was charmed.  Miss Boo was charmed.  We simply HAD to have a tea party.

The guest was extremely well behaved, even if she did tend to keep switching hats with me.  Yes, that's a real china cup she has there.  Thanks Nomi!

We took careful sips with both hands.

And the cup HAD to be Miss Boos because it had roses on it.  So, there you go.  It's like, fate or something.  Or a great-grandma who knows a thing or two about tea parties.

What was The Destroyer of Worlds, aka Brother, doing while we were having a tea party, you may ask?

Growling and moving furniture.  It's the American Pastime.

Sometimes he just chills out, trying to decide if he's ever going to take an unassisted step.  So far he finds walking by himself underrated, and much slower than crawling.

Other times, he likes to play "Baby Wombat popping up out of nowhere to scare the spit out of Mama Wombat".  Guess who plays Mama Wombat.

In Holy Week prep, we have completed the housecleaning (bet you wondered why I was digging through closets...) and have been duly trying to meditate, while sorting through old shoes, on the way Christ has to clean out our hearts.  I really hope there aren't the spiritual equivalent of seven pairs of black flipflops in my soul...

Grandma brought an Easter Tree over today, so we decorated that (sorry, no pictures) and also a nice little devotional that we'll be doing.

The Husband and I are trying the experiment of wearing the cross necklaces we gave each other during Holy Week, as reminders to pray more.  Also, they are very nice necklaces, and I have to teach Brother not to strangle me by my jewelry sometime.

So much for Holy Tuesday and the prep work.  Tomorrow used to be known as Spy Wednesday for the logical, if not particularly poetic, reason that it represented the day that Judas betrayed the Lord to the religious mafia of the day.  Perhaps it will help if, instead of getting incensed at a guy who hanged himself so many years ago, I repeat my meditation on Judas from last year.

Talk to you on Spy Wednesday.

Cheers,

Breanna

The Girl Who Doesn't Need A Nap

Ever.  Never ever, Mama.

Those "begats".  They'll getcha every time.

The question for Mama is: it's 3pm.  She's supposed to go to bed for the night in 4 hours.  Do I wake her?

How can I?

Sigh.

Breanna

Holy Week Commences

Yes, yes, yes, I'll post pictures of the kids in their Easter clothes.  Just not today.  I need to write about things today.

First of all, in pursuance of my recent obsession with "church time", or the liturgical year, we're going to celebrate Eastertide this year.

You may not know that Easter has traditionally been a season, like Advent, or that there's a whole set of meditations that lead up to it.  Because of certain yucky things that have been happening in our local church lately, it's nice to be joining the communion of saints--i.e., all Christians everywhere--that is untroubled by such things.

And so we have three days this week to shop and plan and work, before we reach Maundy Thursday.  Sabbath observers don't by or sell on Sunday; they don't do work; and they don't pursue secular activities.  I like football and I haven't been convicted that I need to use this particular spiritual discipline, but it's something to consider as we come to the most important Sunday in the church year.  Originally Christians celebrated the death and ressurection of Christ every Sunday, after all.  I am going to concientiously try (try! I have babies) to plan my week so that all my buying and selling is done, and all my housework is done, before sunset on Thursday.  (Not cooking.  Cooking I will be doing, but after all, someone had too cook the Last Supper, right?)

Sunset on the Thursday before Easter, the Tridium (or "Great Three Days") begins.  On Maundy Thursday we remember the Last Supper, and Jesus washing the disciples' feet.  Apparently some churches actually engage in a footwashing service on this night.  Then, traditionally, the altar of the church, which is generally a decorated place, is stripped and shoved against the wall.  This symbolizes when Jesus was stripped--of His clothes, His dignity, and His freedom.

We have no altar in our house, per se, and I'm pretty sure our little SBC church has never heard of the Tridium, but it might be a healthy exercise in perspective for me to get a warm washcloth and wash the two pairs of little tootises that I'm responsible for every day.

Come to think of it, I wonder why we don't have an altar in our house, or at least a corner devoted to prayer.  Hm.

Good Friday is, of course, the Friday before Easter.  We'll be celebrating a Seder on Good Friday evening, which the Husband leads in superb fashion.  We're under the new covenent, so while we try to keep kosher for the meal, we alter the Haggadah a little.  Instead of the whimsical rabbincal tale that our Haggadah ends with, my husband smoothly transitions to Corinthians, and serves us all Communion.  It's incredibly meaningful every year.

Often in Protestant circles we don't celebrate Maundy Thursday or Holy Saturday, which is what comes next, but it might behoove us to do so.  Holy Saturday is the day that Christians have traditionally kept vigil, remembering the time Christ spent in the tomb.  I can't fast this year, because I'm nursing a baby and there's all kinds of things that go wrong if nursing mothers fast, but typically the observance on Holy Saturday is a fast.  We're doing the next best thing and having a day of simple food, a rest between the "festive meal" of Passover, remembering the first time the Lord freed His people, and the Feast of Easter, remembering when the Lord freed the universe.

Then, of course, comes Easter.  It's actually a little more difficult to make Easter meaningful than it is to make the days leading up to it meaningful.  For one thing, nobody who isn't a Christian is going to be worrying what Maundy Thursday is, but everybody can get behind dying eggs and chocolate bunnies.

Like many Christian holidays, Easter took over from a pagan holiday--the festival of the goddess Ishtar, actually.  This isn't a bad thing, or any kind of indictment against the holiday.  We won, see.  Nobody wakes up on Easter saying "Go Ishtar!"  In fact, people who never otherwise attend church come on Easter.  But there are remnants of the pagan holiday running around, just like the secular landslide of "The Holidays" between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Namely, the bunnies and the eggs, potent symbols.

--PG-13 REFERENCE COMING UP, HIDE THE EYES OF KIDS--

As the comedian Eddie Izzard says, "Eggs are for fertility and the rabbits are for shagging."  (Sorry.  But this is a grownup blog, not for kids.)  In a C.S. Lewisan kind of way, this actually makes sense.  Lewis had this theory that there were germs of truth hidden inside most of the old legends and pagan beliefs, like bits of information smuggled across enemy lines.  The Lord could use these germs of truth to prepare people for the Gospel.

So, two symbols associated with the making of new life--eggs and rabbits--go very well with a holiday that is deeply about life, about the conquering of death, about resurrection.  Granted the eggs and the rabbits were originally accessories of a tawdry pagan goddess, who had a story about like what you'd expect from a tawdry pagan goddess.  But so potent is His death and resurrection that even the dang eggs and rabbits have been redeemed.  Get it?

I orignally mulled putting together an Easter basket for the kids without eggs or bunnies in it.  They do sell chocolate crosses, after all, but standing in the aisle at Wal-Mart holding one made me feel vaguely sacreligious.  (Chocolate?  This is an instrument of torture and death.  Why not make chocolate electric chairs and nooses while we're at it.  On second thought, don't mention that to the candy makers, or I'm sure they could sell a lot of them on Halloween.)  And hopefully, by the time we get to the eggs and the bunnies, the kids will understand on some level that this is all about Him, that our lives are all about Him, that the entire universe, in the end, is all about Him, and the central event that shook the heavens:

He is risen.

Cheers,

Breanna

They Did What Now?

Yep.

They made it law.  If you happened to be hiding under a rock yesterday, I'm talking about "health care", the bill that PBO just signed to insure every American.  Or something like that.

From what I can glean, reading an equal amount of glowy, rainbow-y tributes and angry, steamy ranting, what the bill actually comes down to is: buy health insurance or pay extra on your taxes.  There is no low-cost option for insurance, so pretty much people are stuck with the same cost for healthcare they've always had.

Just as an example, let's pretend that if the Husband's employer didn't offer us health insurance as a benefit, that we could get our insurance from Blue Cross Blue Sheild at the same rate that we get it now.  (This is just for an example.  We couldn't get it this cheap--the company gets a deal.)

We pay right around $260 per month for insurance for our family.  If money was tight (as it presumably is for uninsured people), it would make more sense for us financially to pay $400-$700 in our taxes each year than it would to pay over $2400 in insurance.  And that's just if we could get the insurance for our current rate--we almost certainly could not.  It would be much more likely to be $2400 a month, to insure the whole family, with vision and teeth.

You can argue that it will ultimately cost more to be uninsured.  Maybe--but that doesn't change the fact that we don't have an extra $2400 per month laying around.  We simply don't have the ability to buy insurance if our employer doesn't help.

So ultimately what this legislation would mean to us, were we uninsured, is that we would remain uninsured, but we would have to pay (minimum) $400 more on our taxes every year.

I think universal healthcare is predicated on the idea that no one is uninsured willingly, they are uninsured because they lack the money to be insured.

So this legislation makes sense how, again?

Breanna