“Happy Easter?”

That is the first thing EA said to me as I woke up on Easter morning. I stretched and rubbed my eyes.

“I still believe in Jesus. It’s just the church that I’m not sure about.”

Some context: This was the first Easter in our 20+ years of marriage (and likely in either of our lives) in which we did not have a church to attend. It’s been about a year since we’ve gone to church as a family. Honestly, the church that we attended after I stepped down from working in a congregation had a tall order to tend to our hurting family. It was a good group of people, but the services and community never really clicked with our boys. Then early last year, I got moved to a Sunday morning shift. EA tried for a bit to go by herself but it wasn’t what she needed. In the end, I was gone for about eight months before anyone in the church really noticed and we decided to take a break.

I acknowledge my uncertainty about the church is a bit over-dramatic. Of course, there are great churches out there. There are wonderful people in congregations where my family and I have experienced the most pain. It’s akin to writing off burritos for life because you got violent food poisoning from one (This is based on a true story; I have not written off burritos just that particular Chipotle location). But the church hurt is real. As is the MAGA-fication of the denomination in which I grew up that feels so antithetical to the teachings of Jesus. So we don’t have a place to call home and it’s weird and sad and understandable.

Absurdist Note: I really want to add “Woo-ooh!” after the title. If you know, you know.

I have not pulled off this year’s Lenten disciplines the way that I set out to. When this 40 day period began, I set out to take on this fasts/spiritual practices:

1. Stop drinking Coca-Cola

2. Stop eating French fries

3. Stop playing Disney Solitaire on my phone

4. Do a daily devotional from Richard Rohr’s Wondrous Encounters

5. Write a blog five days a week

When the war in Iran began and threw another log on the fire that is the world, it pained me both spiritually and physically. One of the ways that played out was headaches and since headaches were already part of removing the caffeine of Coca-Cola from my life, I decided I probably shouldn’t compound a problem and began drinking Coke again. I have had French fries a few times; not many, mind you, but enough to break up the fast. There have been several multiple day stretches where I did not do my devotional. And my efforts to blog five times a week quickly fell by the wayside. I have managed to keep from playing Disney Solitaire, but that still puts my Lenten average in Mendoza Line territory.

Several hundred, some may say several thousand, years worth of anticipation hung thick in the air. Like summer humidity that sticks to your shirt the second you step outside, you couldn’t avoid it if you wanted to. Especially not during Passover week.

There was a guy making his way into Jerusalem; a guy claiming to be the Messiah. This was nothing new. He would not be the first that people claimed would save us. There had been tons of guys going around saying that they were the One; saying that they were going to show Rome what’s what. So a would-be messiah making his way to Jerusalem was about as common as a singer-songwriter making their way to Nashville. 

But this felt different. He seemed different. Now there was a fair amount of debate whether he was the right or wrong kind of different. For starters, word got out that he had tried to keep a lot of the messiah talk and even tales of his miracles under wraps. But it is difficult to keep those kind of stories quiet: dead men walking, the blind seeing, demons plunging a herd of pigs over a cliff, and thousands fed from a lunch meant for a single kid. You can tell people to keep that hush-hush all you want, but it’s not going to happen.

I’m a day late, but I have continued my long tradition of filling out an NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament bracket based on which team’s mascot I think would win in a fight. Let’s break some rules and get going:

• One-on-one fights unless plurality is indicated by the singular form of the nickname (e.g. Wolfpack or Pride)

• Mascots have to engage with one another, you can’t just hide and wait it out

• Specificity typically bests generality (e.g. Grizzlies defeat Bears)

I should also state that although my Furman Paladins are in the Tournament for the second time in my life and I will be staying up way past my bedtime to watch them tonight, I tried to not give them an unfair advantage (though you will see that they go far for what I believe to be legitimate reasons). Any questions? Don’t know what you’d do with them because this is a blog. Let’s go!

There are days when words flow easily. And there are days when well just seems dry. Today is the latter day and I will simply let it be.

Our oldest son has spent the last two months serving on the crew of his high school’s spring musical that culminated this past weekend. This group of teenagers and adult volunteers put on a production of Hello Dolly that punched way above its weight. The set, choreography, orchestra, singing, acting, and all the things was so impressive and the show was a delight in spite of some dated gender politics.

It is special to see over a hundred students harness a myriad of talents into such a cohesive end result. Even better was witnessing the real community that grew over the production’s formation. I could see it in the hugs and tears on closing night and I heard it for weeks in the stories that Jim would tell me when I picked him up from school. These kids are alright and that is good news for the world.

John Mulaney had a bit about seeing a gazebo that was erected during the middle of the Civil War and compared it to the absurdity of doing stand-up comedy during the fraught and, in retrospect, quaint days of the first administration of the White House’s current occupant. The same logic could apply to putting on a song-and-dance musical in the midst of our current upheaval of violent ICE overreach, the thick corruption surrounding the Epstein Files, bombing of ships near Venezuela, and now another way in the Middle East. Is it absurd to put on a musical in this kind of world? Maybe. Is it essential? Absolutely.

I wish I had the confidence
to say what I knew to be true
that the perceived limp
was that hitch in a step as
a runner hits their stride
or that maybe the hobble
was akin to Jacob’s affliction
a sure and steady sign of
a holy tussle with the Almighty
Those words did not come
so I walked away with a limp
that was not there
a limp that has healed
but still sometimes hurts