This was my entry for the FFF for Easter

I can’t write about Easter

Easter I thought, Easter! Well I can’t write about Easter. I’m retired so it’s not a welcome break from the office, I have chocolate whenever I want, it’s medicinal, honestly and so what else is there. It’s not part of my belief system though I have to admit it’s a powerful story. Then I remembered last summer when I walked around a local cathedral, a tourist site, with my little grandson and tried to explain to him the stone images on the walls.

“The stations of the cross,” I said to him.

“What’s that granny?”

Now, we are in no way a typical Christian family, I come from a long line of Spiritualists and though I am more than willing to acknowledge the existence of Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Moses, oh all of em really and have no problem with other people building a religion around one or other I have my own thoughts and I am happy with ’em. The grandchildren, well that’s a different matter, their mum and dad go to church for weddings and such, my son is still searching for his beliefs and it’s not something I discuss with my daughter in law however I have been told. “Don’t you be telling em any of your mumbo jumbo!” so I don’t and here we were with pictures on the wall of incredible human suffering, passion, despair and unspeakable grief and then the “miracle” the wonder and all of that.

So, I walked around with him and simply told him what each picture was and it brought a lump to my throat. This brave and gentle man whipped and scorned and tortured, his friends and his mother, oh his poor mother and the storm in the middle of the day and the rending of the cloth in the temple, I know the story you see, well I’m a writer how could I not, it’s powerful stuff. When we came out, me and Charlie, we were both quiet and saddened at man’s inhumanity to man and the vicious cruelty that one human can inflict on another because of fear and greed and ignorance. Well that was my take on it, perhaps Charlie was wondering if there was an Xbox version!

So today, what can I write about Easter, we are still killing and fighting and destroying and in the name of the Nazarene and Mohammed and so on and we are still inhumane and we torture and scorn and ridicule and then…

I made a cup of coffee and went to sit in the garden, the bird song was wild, exuberant and joyous, the nesting Nuthatches in the dead tree stump on the patio were frantically carrying food to their babies and the Blackbird was stealing ALL our worms for his family. The apple tree is in blossom, the last of the daffodils wave like little stars in the long grass and the butterflies spin and dance in the warm breeze. It’s all happening, it’s living and renewing and replenishing and it is beautiful and though there will be no chocolate eggs, no holy observance and no roast lamb in our house there is much to write about and much to wonder at not just now, at Easter but every day in this wonderful, precious, amazing world and maybe, just maybe one day children like Charlie will think about the brave young man struggling up the hill with the wood on his back and they will say, no more – and wouldn’t that be wonderful.