Easter Weekend
How do I not ruminate on the meaning of Easter? Raised a fundamentalist Christian, I was and am shaped by the stories of the Bible, especially those of Christ’s passion. The facts of the story are grim, and the happy ending has been added by interpretation, a after-the-fact postscript. Life is like that though. The contingencies are many, some nasty and painful. No one chooses a cancer diagnosis. The future turns upon one’s response to the news. One can fight aided by the hard earned knowledge and skill of medical specialists. Or one can resign one’s self to the inexorable working of nature. The ending is open, a choice of interpretation.
Yesterday, Good Friday eve was spent at Emil’s, a local bar. We ordered the fish fry special from the menu, and a Blue Moon beer. The house was not over crowded, the atmosphere was pleasantly 
filled with conversation emanating from the tables around us. I caught a glimpse of Mike, the owner, behind the bar. There was a comfortable vibe in the room. By chance I happened to hear an exchange of words from the table behind me. Something about Jesus showing up at Emil’s. Seems to me that Emil’s would be just the sort of place that Jesus would have chosen to patronize. The stories depict him as a celebrity, a individual with a popular following–yet he preferred the company of ordinary working-class people. The working class do not have the shield of wealth or power to mitigate the contingencies of life.
This is also the season of Passover for Jewish people. The story of liberation of a people from enslavement under the auspices of one of the ancient world’s great empires is a rousing tale. The Exodus can be thought of as a precursor to the Jesus story which Christian’s take as a metaphysical liberation. Yesterday I received a essay from a friend for my consideration. The essay was written by an intellectual, Liel Leibovitz, employed by a publication of contemporary Jewish thought. I was surprised and intrigued by the title of the piece, In Syria and Elsewhere, Let Us Do Like the Pharaoh. I was intrigued to drop what I was doing to read the piece. The author takes the point of view of Pharaoh and his slavery based system. Leibovitz contended that since oppression and murder works, has great odds for success,–that ought to be the modus operandi for us in the West.
I felt repulsed by the author’s advocacy. While understanding a Pharaohonic point of view–in the long run this ends is ruin for everyone, slave masters as well as the slaves. “Might-makes-right is the essence of tyranny.
To end I offer this positive note, from Existentialism and Human Emotions by Jean-Paul Sartre:
Before you come alive, life is nothing;
it’s up to you to give it a meaning,
and value is nothing else
but the meaning that you choose.
In that way, you see,
is the possibility of creating
a human community.
—Jean-Paul Sartre
