Christ Is Risen!

A blessed Easter to you all, late in writing it though I am. Perhaps this shows exactly how little use for a computer (or time to use one) I have had since Palm Sunday. Whether or not it's demonstrable of my time (I've been rather lax on posting anyway), I had a very beautiful and enjoyable, if cold, Easter. I'll never get over how wonderful it is to share this celebration with so many family and friends... and to have any number of little ones thrown into the mix, running around and enjoying themselves!

We had multiple (two is multiple) parties, one on Saturday in which I colored a single egg and ate delicious cinnamon rolls, and another on Sunday for which I contributed to the dinner in the form of two bunny shaped cakes that successfully came out looking just like every good bunny that's had a disagreement or two with a dog over the state of its life ought to look (next year I'll try for the uneventfully raised pet store variety). Should I feel a need, I've got ingredients for other types of candy and chocolaty things to fill myself with (or just hold onto and make for the next big gathering... minus, I suppose, the chocolate eggs).

The choir sang Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and also last Tuesday for a Seder meal which wasn't, in fact, so much of a meal. They discussed the symbolism (and tasted some of it), and included portions of the ceremony such as the four questions (had I done a Good Friday post it would have been entitled Why Is This Night Different From Every Other Night, partly inspired by my own thoughts on the subject and helped along a great deal by the movie The Passion), but overall left out the majority of the actual ceremony (even the majority of the Christianized version of it I've participated in most years). The simple and out of context explanation, aside from being metaphorically interesting in places, did nothing to bring across the beauty and meaning that the meal still holds for us today. To celebrate a Christianized Seder is to see where we as Christians come from and, when viewed with an understanding not only of the events the Jewish people recognize but also in light of Christ's birth, death, and Resurrection, there is if anything an even deeper meaning to words and rituals involved.

Anyway, the choir sang many different times, and my voice lasted (surprisingly, as I began to get sick mid-week) through most of the Easter Sunday Mass, though it entirely departed me in the midst of the Gloria to my own surprise when I realized I could no longer hear myself as well as that of the person I was sharing music with, who I caught looking over in curiosity as to why I wasn't singing. It lasted long enough for me to be a cantor at the Vigil Saturday night - something that, now, I almost shy away from mentioning, in the awkwardness of bragging of my own accomplishments when talking above all about celebrating Christ's Resurrection - I'd shy away, but that it holds special meaning for me, to be able to stand on my anniversary (Yes! It's my anniversary!) and say, "Look, see the new life God has given me. He rose from the dead and has given me new life also, and I am free, I can stand without fear before the people and sing my praises to God." Anyone who has known me more than a few months can, I am sure, picture the time when such an accomplishment would have required physically dragging me up to the podium, turning the microphone volume on high, and waiting to see whether I dared whisper anything into it before racing for my life out the doors. Yet in this celebration of His life I have proof of the life he has given me also; and I think I am not amis in being pleased to see what he has done, and in sharing a part of it.

Of course, my voice has yet to fully return, having been gone all the rest of Sunday, even more fully all day Monday, and now only partially recovered into Tuesday evening.. but it does provide a good excuse for avoiding work at SuperBigEvilPlace, so I'm really not complaining. It can wait a day or two yet.

I did, also, obtain an Easter basket with a bit of candy and a "You can't scare me, I'm a nanny!" mug, and two bouquets of flowers sent from home, both with which I'm very pleased and one that's giving my room a quite pleasant smell at the moment. (It still remains to be seen whether there are candy sales when I bother returning to work again. But I'm fairly well stocked up - and even made it to the vigil reception in time to grab a large slab of frosting with some cake attached. So, either way, I'll survive.)