A little girl found a bird that was close to death and prayed to Eostra [the Germanic goddess of spring and fertility] for help. Eostra appeared, crossing a rainbow bridge — the snow melting before her feet. Seeing the bird was badly wounded, she turned it into a hare, and told the little girl that from now on, the hare would come back once a year bearing rainbow colored eggs.2. In Norway, "Each year, nearly every TV and radio channel produce a crime series for Easter. The milk company prints crime stories on their cartons. In order to cash in on this national pastime, publishers churn out series of books known as 'Easter-Thrillers' or 'Påskekrim.'"
3. The Archbishop of York said: "God is creator of the Cosmos and that includes the Palace of Westminster and the White House. There are followers of Jesus Christ in all the main political parties in the UK. It is not for me to tell their fellow church members how to vote next month, but I will encourage them to use their vote."
4. Police in Tahlequah City, Okahoma nabbed a stuffed rabbit carrying $30,000 of meth: "We’ve intercepted narcotics in the mail before... The Easter Bunny I thought was a strange touch."
5. "When Obama spotted 5-year-old Donovan Frazier distraught after losing his egg roll in 2013, the president gave him a hug and advised him to 'shake it off.'"
6. Pope Francis said: Easter is "so beautiful, and so ugly because of the rain."
He had just celebrated Mass in rain-whipped St. Peter's Square for tens of thousands of people, who huddled under umbrellas or braved the downpour in thin, plastic rain-slickers.7. In 1926, Time Magazine considered the proposal to fix the date of the moveable feast that is Easter. Was Easter not more about commerce than religion?
People have stepped from decorating their altars to decking their bodies, until the Easter Sunday “parade” of fashionables and fops gets more notice in the lay press than does the sanctity of the holiday. This display of clothes and flowers and jewels and carriages, wily merchandisers have gloated over. None the less they have peered with squinted eye at the fluctuating date of the festival, even as they touted a robe as “hot from N’ York, lady,” or “new from Paris, madame.”8. "Do You Really Need Jesus for Easter?" asks Steve Neumann at The Atheist's Life at The Daily Beast.
[T]here simply is no supernatural realm for a God to occupy. Nature is all there is.9. David D. Ireland of Christ Church in northern New Jersey indulges in the kind of golf meditation that used to drive me crazy when I went to church in northern New Jersey half a century ago:
America's native philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson... wrote “Too feeble fall the impressions of nature on us to make us artists. Every touch should thrill. Every man should be so much an artist, that he could report in conversation what had befallen him.” Achieving that isn’t easy—if those impressions were too feeble 175 years ago, they’re almost undetectable now that we’re surrounded by a shell of concrete and steel, covered by a blanket of wireless radio waves....
“Time and nature yield us many gifts,” continued Emerson, “but not yet the timely man, the new religion, the reconciler, whom all things await.”
Easter is God’s mulligan to humanity. In golf, a mulligan is a stroke that is replayed from the spot of the prior stroke without any penalty. Your error has been forgiven. You may take the shot again. This Easter make a commitment to meet Jesus for the first time … again. Easter reminds you to keep trying to live the God-kind of life.10. "For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again."
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Thanks for ending on a high note. Happy Easter!
Birds that are close to death, die.
It's orphan baby birds that you can have wild success with.
Not that everybody can spot what's an orphan and what isn't.
Ah Easter. That accounts for Target being closed at their posted opening hour, probably, when I showed up for a dog food supply on a 3-month cycle.
The Professor never ceases to amaze nor does she disappoint.
"[T]here simply is no supernatural realm for a God to occupy."
String theory asserts that there are dozens of dimensions that people cannot perceive. Sounds like a possible supernatural realm to me.
Christmas tree light strings illustrate the additional dimensions, when you get them out again.
10 - Yes
1-9 not so much....
What an odd collection. I thought the worst, or dumbest, was the "Do you need Jesus...", followed by Obama's "shake it off".
For a guy who is clean and articulate, he's often not very articulate. But who knows, maybe Jesus spoke using a lot of Aramaic slang.
The Vet says to keep my Dobie on puppy food till age 2. That's a long time. I think she's making it up.
Anyway the store is out of the Purina One Large Breed Puppy Food. Time to switch to adult.
Each year, nearly every TV and radio channel produce a crime series for Easter.
That's wrong. In Norway, the mainstream channels mostly buy a crime series, only a couple have the funds to produce an original series.
Also, the majority of channels, like in the US, are specialty channels (sports, science, etc) and they don't have show crime series.
Just came back from a "sunrise" service in a rainstorm. We're very blessed to have the rain here in Fort Worth, and reminded again of the blessing of our risen Savior. Happy Easter, Ann and Meade and fellow readers!
Don't forget that great Easter tradition, New Zealand's Easter Bunny Hunt
Do you really need Jesus for Easter? .
Umm...yes...you do. And for Christmas too. And we'd all thank you to leave it alone.
He starts the article with that line about diabetic children eating chocolate bunnies. As if Easter, and Christians force fat little diabetic children to stuff their faces and ruin their health in the name of Christ.
Is this what passes for athiest intellectualism?
The resentment and lack of understanding that flows athiest community, and the consistant curiosity, and need to attack Christianity, rather than just turn the other cheek, make me wonder how many have seeds of belief.
I'm sure there are a large portion, of this small population, that hear God, but just don't want to deal with him. Fallen Angels among us.
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. - Questions that Easter Answers - April 21st 1957 -
"And in that moment, we can’t be nonchalant. In that moment, we are not exactly agnostic. In that moment, we unconsciously cry out for the meaning of this thing. And there is something deep down within our souls that revolts against saying good- bye forever.
We begin to ask, is the ultimate destiny of man a rendezvous with the dust? Is the spirit of man extinguished at death like a candle guttered by a passing wind? We begin to wonder if death is a state of nothingness that leads us finally to a meaningless existence with no reality.
Then comes Easter to answer the question. Easter comes out ringing in terms that we all hear if we seek to hear it, that the soul of man is immortal. Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ we have fit testimony that this earthly llfe is not the end, that death is just something of a turn in the road, that life moves down a continual moving river, and that death is just a little turn in the river, that this earthly life is merely an embryonic prelude to a new awakening, that death is not a period which ends this great sentence of life but a comma that punctuates it to more loftier significance. That IS what it says. That is the meaning of Easter. That is the question that Easter answers-that death is not the end. Amen"
The Easter is a way to begin again. Tomorrow, the greatest American who has been most vetted and is most transparent will start her engines.
Are you ready? Are you ready?
Hillary Clinton is your 45th POTUS.
====
The Clintons are coming
Coming
to take back their house
The White House
No one can stop 'em
Everybody loves 'em
The Press love 'em
The Donors love 'em
The Voters love 'em
No one loves GOP
No one.
The Clintons are coming
Coming
To take their house
The White House
====
Clinton machine will destroy Scott Walker and torch the state of WI for any decent. No one rejects the Clintons. They are here. The WH belongs to them and only them.
Mulligans are not sanctioned by the Rules of Golf. The Rules of Golf are generally not merciful, except in a random and unpredictable way depending upon the situation. Mulligans are an invention of Those To Whom The Rules Apply to avoid the difficulty of compliance.
That minister is a wishful wimp. Thus far The Resurrection has been available only to The Son of God. Are you the Son of God?
Warning to daughters: There might be something of a glass ceiling involved too. So far.
Maybe atheists can come up with a holiday of their own, where they can proclaim to each other just how advanced and brilliant they are versus those stupid, vulgar Jeebus-loving cultists.
Or maybe every day is like that.
Thank goodness the commercialization of Easter has stopped. The greedy merchants sell us so much crap throughout the whole year, they no longer have to 'cash in' on Easter.
Hopefully, Christmas will go the same route.
Am I the only one who hated Easter egg hunts as the kid? The eggs were terrible and so were the Chocolate Easter bunnies.
My wife has returned to good health a number of birds close to death.
Food, water, warmth, and a safe place to rest and recover.
No divine intervention required.
David said...
Thus far The Resurrection has been available only to The Son of God.
According to this 1968 documentary, it's not that rare.
rhhardin said...
The Vet says to keep my Dobie on puppy food till age 2. That's a long time. I think she's making it up.
It depends how big the dog is; small dogs about a year, big ones, >= 100 pounds, up to two years.
"We begin to ask, is the ultimate destiny of man a rendezvous with the dust?"
If so, Christianity is the answer to a badly posed question.
Even if Easter is "the answer," it came a little late.
Sebastian --
How would Sartre or any of today's atheist existentialists (which includes in one way or another most of the secular culture) pose the question?
And what would be their answer?
How would a committed Darwinist ask the question?
Of course, you also realize that saying "Easter came too late" is an oxymoron, a conflating of differing terms, an application of the temporal to the eternal?
They would question the question.
Why should it be meaningful to speak of a "destiny" beyond one's actual life? What sorts of reasons or evidence could one supply to speak meaningfully about any such destiny, even if there were one? If the Christian version is to be taken on faith, why this faith rather than another?
Don't get me wrong: for reasons I'll spare you, I do find the Christian faith most humanly appealing, and I despise the likes of Sartre and Dawkins.
Of course, atheists constantly attack Christianity. They have no shared belief, just a nullity - a non-belief in God.
Once you say "I don't believe in God" - there's no much more to say. Hence, the constant attacks.
do you really need Jesus for Easter? Well, do you really need Easter for Easter? Why can't today just be a Sunday?
Fuck you atheist. Don't tell Christians what they need or don't need.
"Of course, you also realize that saying "Easter came too late" is an oxymoron, a conflating of differing terms, an application of the temporal to the eternal?"
No. The Resurrection was a real historical event. That it happened in one place, at one time, in the real world, is itself an article of (Catholic) faith.
As the Catechism says,
"654 The Paschal mystery has two aspects: by his death, Christ liberates us from sin; by his Resurrection, he opens for us the way to a new life. This new life is above all justification that reinstates us in God's grace, "so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." Justification consists in both victory over the death caused by sin and a new participation in grace."
The historicity of the Resurrection has always raised the question of justification and salvation before Christ. Theologians have tried to answer, but my "a little late" comment was just a way of saying that I don't think their answers have been very satisfactory.
So your objection is to quibble over a word or two, e.g. "destiny," thereby deflecting from directly addressing the issue at hand? An issue which you clearly have already personally addressed and a question you have already asked in one way or other -- What happens when we die? Is this all there is?
You've clearly already asked and answered these questions -- "after" this life, there is nothing. Nothingness, emptiness.
And that invariably leads to the conclusion, as MLK notes, that life now lacks any great meaning, it too is essentially nothingness, so why bother, other than to get (or take) as much sensual pleasure as you can while you can.
The response of MLK (and the rest of Christianity) to the question, on the other hand, is to say that there is something beyond. That, many people would say, is a good answer to a question that everyone asks, however they may quibble about the wording.
Yes, the Resurrection is an event that happened in human history. It happened to one who is eternal, that is, one who transcends linear time, one who is Alpha and Omega. The Resurrection (and Crucifixion) happened 2000 years ago by human reckoning. They were also already happening at the creation of the world, and will be happening at its end from the perspective of the divine. They are happening now, right now, right this instant.
Do you really need Jesus for Easter? .
Yes, dumbass. Next question.
He is risen!
The most amusing athiests are the ones who claim they don't believe in God because God doesn't meet their high moral standards.
Really.
Don't mean to play the village atheist here, but :
"a good answer to a question that everyone asks"
The empirical assumption in this claim is false.
Of course, many people of faith consider the answer "good."
But the standard of goodness is generated by the faith itself. (Nothing wrong with that per se.)
That "the answer" has come in many versions and raises various logical problems raises questions about its goodness to outsiders.
If the answer is true, and its acceptance necessary to receive God's saving grace, then one would expect Christians to be a little more fervent than many are today in helping to save the souls of their fellow men. The Christian churches' internal secularization has made them more vulnerable to the Progressive onslaught in the West.
Happy Easter to all..
Yesss even to you atheists!
A beautiful Easter/Marian motet by the Renaissance composer, Heinrich Isaac. Isaac is one of those rare artistic personages where the opinions of his contemporaries agree with modern judgements, i.e. he wasn't quite as good as his buddy, Josquin Des Prez, but he was still pretty damn good, nonetheless.
Anton Webern, of all people, wrote his dissertation on Isaac.
Here's the score, if you want to sing along with Mitch. And, no, the countertenors are not singing at written pitch. It sounds to my awful ears like it's transposed down a fourth. Believe me, I have a recording where these two countertenors (Paul Esswood & Kevin Smith) do screech up to an A=440 G above the treble clef, and it'll clear the room, let me tell ya.
Ooops, broken link to score! this one should work!
I don't think tenors belong in mens' locker rooms.
Thanks, YoungHegelian.
I see that we agree even in music.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!! Alleluia!!
Don't touch my eggs!
...and Happy Day after Passover to the Elder Brethren in the Faith.
Nice.
I'm an atheist, but I do like the Christian holidays. Heck, I actually like going to church (modern life is so devoid of meaningful ritual, a Catholic service can be pretty awesome and majestic).
Easter without Christ is just a Spring festival. May as well put up a maypole and sing Bolshie hymns. Easter is interesting because it's about resurrection/renewal of the human spirit, not just the trees and flowers.
The first link, to NPR, is hilarious for the typical attacks on Christianity.
He is risen indeed!
"He is risen indeed!'
Jesus has a hard-on.
NTTAWWT
That story about the little girl and the goddess Eostre isn't in Bede. Someone made it up. If you know anything about Bede and his writings, you'd know that he'd never tell a sentimental Victorian fairy tale (complete with an Easter bunny and colored eggs, no less!).
Here's what Bede had to say about the goddess Eostre:
"Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated "Paschal month", and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honor feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honored name of the old observance."
That's all Bede--or anyone else in the eighth century--wrote about Eostre. We know nothing else about her.
Easter eggs are Christian symbols. They signify the rebirth that was Christ's resurrection. In Eastern Orthodox iconography Mary Magdalene is often depicted holding an egg because she was the first to see the risen Christ.
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