Easterpreneur

Hoping for inspiration I carried it around in my diary but the wretched thing just kept slipping out of my grasp.  Sometimes with the contents of my voluminous and overstocked handbag as the whole mess hit the floor.  Other times it just loomed in my mind’s eye daring me to have another go before fading back to black.  A bit like Easter itself.

I grew up with crucifixion stories grounded in the ancient tradition of blood sacrifice.  The idea is that Jesus, the central figure in Christianity, is sacrificed and his blood allows me and other sinners entry to heaven while bypassing hell and all its torments.  That’s hard to make sense of but the story has been a money-spinner.

Long before Jim’s cartoon, the church sold indulgences, a kind of get out of hell free card.  The profits were said to greatly benefit the building of St Peter’s in Rome.  However, once we began to see our world as part of a universal solar system the game was up.  Heaven and hell couldn’t be literal places.

Literalism aside, the long road to Calvary unfolds every year with the week leading up to Good Friday setting the scene.   Black cloths cover crosses in church, flowers are removed and altars are bare.  Long vigils inch along with hardly a word being spoken and if there is music it’s all rather somber, deep, dark and all about death.

Theatrically it’s a godsend but in New Zealand, where we have an aversion to talking about death, it’s largely ignored in favour of Easter eggs, an appealing symbol of new life and a sure money-spinner for Nestle and friends.

Death plays a big part in my life, a result of working in a hospital and hospice. It’s life enriching to walk alongside people who accept they are dying because there’s honesty there, often missing in lives that imagine they have eternity at their fingertips.  Continue reading