This post started with a picture of the Hot Cross Buns I made for the first time ever. I made them on Thursday and it's taken the whole of Easter for me to get some thoughts together.
I admit to having a bit of a tendency to over complicate things.
So today's post is a bit of an Easter Ramble.
Belated Happy Easter wishes to those of you that celebrate.
So I made Hot Cross Buns and it all got a bit sticky.
Mr Stayingawake asked me why. Wasn't it easier just to buy a packet? No. I wanted to make them. So I made the buns, gave some away, and read about how the Ancient Greeks used to make small cakes around this time of year, which were also decorated with crosses. I must have looked this up before in a search to make meaning of Easter traditions for someone who does not have a Christian faith. I read somewhere that this also occurred in Saxon times as part of the worship of Eostre goddess of light at Springtime and that the cross might have symbolised the four quarters of the moon. I love this idea. Reading about how this tradition, and that of the egg as a symbol of renewal or rebirth, pre-date Christianity and were associated with Springtime rituals, gives me some comfort. A sense of belonging in the world, to the beauty and mystery of the universe and all that is in it, including human life with all of it's messiness.
As someone without a faith, who grew up in this particular place and time; I sometimes struggle to locate myself, to place myself, to find myself. I always feel lost. I know that it is not just the lack of a foundation built on religious faith that leaves me in this wilderness. It's part of the human condition isn't it? To seek some solid ground on which to place our feet. To seek community and sameness and belonging.
I also know that it is also a particular leftover of my childhood - this sense of aloneness, this loss of self. Thankfully I also know that it is one that I can choose to continue to feel....or not. It is a feeling. Just that. Left over from losing my whole family, life and home and from suddenly being plopped down in a whole other one. As I sit with this feeling, in a more peaceful way this year, I think of all those children who have also experienced this to a greater or a similar degree, and my mouth hangs open at the sheer horror of that feeling for those children(and for myself)....the unknown, the loss, the uncertainty, the fear, the grief.....the complete loss of identity.
Even for those who have not suffered any such childhood trauma, there has clearly been a breakdown of something we badly need in Western Society. How else do we explain the "depression epidemic" that is predicted by the World Health Organisation to be the second most harmful illness by 2020. Something about the way we live in the West always seems to spring to mind when I start to think on this. We seem to have gained so much in post-industrial Society, but in the process lost something vital to our well-being. Is it an ability to place our trust in something too vast for us to understand? Or is it what can go along with a religious faith? The community, friendship, love, tradition. ritual, something solid and deep?
I do think that we may be waking up to what we have lost however. The Internet seems to be a place where creativity, well-being, community and spirituality are thriving. I suppose the big question is how we now take this energy, and bring it to different parts of society who may not have the safety and security to get on board this amazing and loving wagon.
Anyway, back to my Easter ramble.....
One of the criticisms levelled at Western Society these days, is that people treat religion and spirituality as a commodity, that they pick and mix from religious and spiritual traditions/beliefs to suit themselves. A lack of commitment and need for a quick fix is highlighted as one of the ills of the new "selling of religion or spirituality" as a means to an end, self-fulfillness and happiness. Alongside this is a fear within the established church that religion is being marginalised in modern society, this is seen in the weekend's call from Cardinal Keith O'Brien for Christian's to wear a cross everyday of their lives and to give a cross as an Easter gift instead of chocolate eggs.
All of us are seeking this true sense of belonging. I have struggled with this, often bemoaning the destruction of community in consumer society. I hold up my hands as I write this, in acknowledging I am only just now beginning to understand the role we all have to play in creating community. On some occasions I have grappled with the thought of joining a Church, and have always been interested in learning about world religions, their beliefs and traditions. Every Easter I struggle with the Easter story, my own lack of faith, and find a place for the traditions that link me to my birth family. Dyeing eggs red, rolling them on Easter Monday, and eating hot cross buns on Good Friday, are all traditions that I associate with my Paternal Grandmother Lillian.
As a child, I did not attend a faith school. My only experience of Church was for Christenings or Marriages but Lillian did send me to Sunday School for a time, my memories are mainly about the bus journey I had to take to get there however. My Grandmother did not go with me to church, as she was by this time, becoming more and more disabled. She told people she was housebound, and walked with the aid of a frame, or was pushed about in her wheelchair by her grandchildren. In reality I think she had given up on life and was crippled by fear. She was always a lonely woman, isolated, except for family, perhaps due to issues with her parents when she was growing up and the fact that she had been a single parent at a time when this was something to be ashamed of. Whatever the case, like all of us, she was seeking truth, meaning and belonging, I remember her converting from one religion to another several times during my childhood and teenage years. Priests and Vicars visited her often and prayed with her in the house. I remember her taking communion. Maybe she was looking for forgiveness for her perceived wrongdoings. Maybe she was looking for a faith that would allow her to carry out her wishes at that time, which were to donate her organs, to medical science. I am unsure of the history of religious views on donating organs, but this link describes the position most religions take these days.
Every Easter I sit again with the struggle to find meaning, purpose and belonging. I see people in worship and wonder what it must be like to have such a faith.
This year I struggle with self-forgiveness; for wanting it to be easy; for finding commitment difficult; for being a child of our consumer culture; for making mistakes; for not being able to make it better; for being me in this place, here and now; for knowing I have choices.
This year I was helped along the way by the making of buns; by finding more questions than answers; by finding that peace and struggle lie together. I was also helped greatly, by reading this beautiful blogpost which reminds me to sit with the questions, even as I struggle; that "there is beauty in the rubble"; that we don't have to "make everyone OK"; that we are all broken; and that "somehow we all belong."
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