Easter 2012
This will be my 39th Easter. I don’t remember all of them. I don’t remember most of them. I don’t even remember a third of them. In his book A Thousand Miles in a Million Years Donald Miller astutely points out how little of our lives we actually remember. It’s a little frightening when you think about it. It might be that I can’t even reconstruct a single Easter in its entirety. Not even last year’s. All I have are snapshots in my mind:
- · From childhood, I remember the goodies: white wicker baskets inundated with plastic green grass and so much love-it or hate-it candy. (People seem to either love or hate Cadbury Crème eggs and those marshmallowy easter eggs).
- · I remember a lot of polyester suits (almost always pastel blue) and a lot of clip-on ties.
- · I remember sunrise services at my grandmother’s church, Mt. Olivet Christian Church in Rose Hill, Virginia. How cool the air was and how wet the grass was and how strange it was to be at church before dawn.
- · I remember the out-of-tune piano and the equally out-of-tune voices that sang “Low in the Grave He Lay” and “Victory in Jesus.” I didn’t know they were out of tune, and I loved them for their volume.
- · I remember a lot of ham.
- · As an adult, I remember a lot of Easter dinners at the Cuthrell’s.
- · I remember walking around with my children in the front yard and pointing out the hundreds of eggs sitting in plain view while they slowly crouched and placed them in their baskets.
- · Now I I remember watching a child run with a pack of older children into the backyard and search frantically for every well-hidden egg they could find.
There’s more, I’m sure, but nothing’s coming to mind right now. Thirty-nine Easters seems like a lot, given how little I remember from all of them.
This Sunday we will gather together and celebrate the first Easter, a significantly more memorable one than any of my thirty-nine. And that’s the way it should be. You’d think the fact that I can remember so little of my own might cause me some distress, but I find it oddly comforting. Maybe because it puts things in their proper perspective. It’s a perspective I’ll try to share with all of you this year. And if I can’t? Well, we’ll always have pastel polyester and Cadbury Crème.