Just what happened 2,000 years ago?

Although it's not generally treated as such, this is one of the biggest and most significant days for Christianity. Today marks the day that one "Jesus of Nazareth" (or whatever it is you decide he should be called) was crucified. OK, we don't know for sure if it was him, in particular, but it this day that we set aside to remember whoever it was that was crucified around this time who, by all indications, changed the course of world history.

I'm not making light of the fact that we don't know historically for sure what happened oh, so long ago. I mean, in the end, what difference does it make? Normally, none, but we have the reality that more than 2,000 years later, the whole world, not just some obscure Jewish sect, arranges its calendars around this particular and specific event. I don't care who you are, you have to wonder about that. And, I don't care who you are, playing it off as nothing does no more for us than claiming that this is the be-all-and-end-all of human existence.

Me? Well, I have a very pragmatic streak: we all celebrate Easter (which was initiated by today, Good Friday) and I really have to ask myself what it means that more than 2,000 years after the alleged event, we're not only remembering it, but we're marking our time in relation to it. For sure: why is it 2016 and not some other year? And more significantly: why is it 2016 and not the-year-in-the-reign-of-so-and-so? Not only is it not insignificant ... it is downright defining of who we think we are as a culture (and, in the meantime, the world). Take a moment and let that sink in -- be you devoutly "Christian" (whatever that means) or an "atheist" (whatever that means as well).

I'm sorry: any way you take it, something happened. It might have been meaningful or it might have been a delusion, but something happened, and it doesn't really matter if that "something" was institutionalized "at the time" or some time later. Whatever it was, it changed the way we perceive and understand the world we encounter.

Even though I'm not necessarily so, I have to take the direct route this time: we don't know. I've got a lot of fundamentalistically inclined friends, and they have a lot of emotion and lot of themselves invested in believing that what happened then is a particular fact. I have a lot of other friends who are just as adamant about the fact that nothing -- and I mean absolutely nothing -- happened. The former have the burden of proof; the latter have the burden of explanation. Neither of them come close to shouldering their burdens.

So, here's my own, personal, take on the matter:

It doesn't matter. Neither of these extreme positions explains or accounts for anything.

I'm not saying that nothing happened. It is as plain as the nose on any of our faces that something did in fact happen, something so significant that we decided to change how we count the years. Oh sure, you can maintain that after the fact the dominant group imposed its way of counting on the masses, but that dominant group has changed identities as often as most people change their underwear and we're still counting in the "new" way. If I'm wrong, let me know. You may be able to rationalize or explain away the "event", but you're going to have trouble explaining away the consequences.

What I love most about today is that neither the die-hard believers nor the die-hard disbelivers can offer up reasonable evidence to support their case. In these days of scientific understanding, neither the totally-for nor the totally-against can make any kind of convincing argument to "prove" their position. I love that. We just don't know, and we have to live with it.

The big day is here

OK, I'll admit it: I'm absoluetly gob-smacked that today is just another holiday. It's Good Friday, fer Chrissake (with a tip o' the hat to Salinger), and while we're all happy that we have the day off (that is, for those who work for companies that recognize today as a holiday: some do, some don't, some only half-way), most people I know have no idea why we should care (be aware of the fact) at all.

OK, I have to insert a personal comment here: in the US (my other "home"), Good Friday really wasn't a holiday. I never got the day off; here in Germany, it has the status of an almost-official holiday, and most people get the day off with pay). This fact, in and of itself, is worth reflecting upon. In a country that prides itself of its "Christian values", the day is, at best, a half-day-not-having-to-work-day, while the world's export leader still has it enshrined as a full-fledged day-off-work-with-pay day, go figure.

But this brings us directly to the point:

A culture's values are reflected in it so-called holidays; that is, those days on which its commercial interests are willing to spend money even though they get nothing in return.

Let's face it: a truly modern-capitalistic organization can't be in favor of any holidays; that is, working days with pay. How could they be? Profits are generated through work, not through non-work or the absence of work or not working, or whatever. Holidays; that is, days without work, are unjustifiable. How is it possible, why should one pay wages for a day in which nothing constructive is done? Oh, I understand the logic, but at the same time I have to ask whether the logic is reasonable in the first place.

This is no pseudo-issue. It's real. Money may "work" 24/7. Profits may be generated 24/7. But, human beings don't function 24/7. I don't know about you, but every once in a while, I need to sleep.

And so, here we are with this "pseudo-holiday" that "business" would like to eliminate, but which, people be damned, it just can't do. And why? Well, it turns out that the answer lies neither in the holiday itself nor in the weakening cultural framework that imposes it.

For all the materialistic, money-talks-nobody-walks mentality that we like to propagate, the truth of the matter is that we have to accommodate and deal with people anyhow. For all the blustering about growth and ROI and stability in the future, we're all still dependent upon the fragile, unknowing, fallible human beings who do our bidding, to the best of their ability.

We've set up a system in which it appears that the "knowers" know what they are doing, but this is increasingly showing itself to be a facade. We like to think that this is how things have always been, but we're increasingly coming to realize that this is just the way we've made things for now. We want to believe that those who say they know actually know, but we're seeing day in and day out that the "experts" sleight-of-hand can't possibly be the way forward.

According to the "'myth' of the day", someone called power's bluff. Why is it that we still think that power has the winning hand?

Happy Easter!

For all you non-Christians out there, and for all you who call yourself Christian but who perhaps have forgotten, today is the biggest event of your religious year. Oh, I know, we like to do things up right at Christmas, but if you stop to think about it, Easter is t-h-e Christian holiday. No Easter, no Christianity.

According to the story, it was Easter when Jesus arose from the dead. It was the resurrection that distinguished the belief of those who came to be called Christians from all other believers at the time. I know a lot of theological baggage has been added over time, but the heart of the matter is that Jesus is the one who many have come to believe has conquered death.

Death, however, is a very touchy subject, is it not? There are not few cultures who have a really difficult time - as a culture, not as individuals - dealing with it. Americans are perhaps the best example. In their obsession with youth and beauty and, more than almost anything else, fun, they tend not to spend a lot of time contemplating death. OK, contemplation may be a bit much, but I really think it is time that we realized that death is as much a part of life as life is.

Death is not as bad for those who die as for those who remain. We can believe what we want about what happens to us when we die, but we can't be sure. We can be sure, however, of how we feel when we lose a loved one, when someone close to us is no more. No, we don't live forever, at least not on this place of existence, and we have to realize that all that we do is constrained by this simple fact. I think a healthy awareness and acknowledgement of this fact can help us think a bit more about what we do, and even more importantly, what we don't do.

We too readily blame, threaten, intimidate, harass, ignore, disparage, or look down on others. We too readily manage, control, order, suppress, force, coerce, or even abuse, others as well (that's really what modern management most legal systems are all about, in the end). We too readily send young people off to war. We too readily accept pain, suffering, despair, hunger, illness, willingly blaming the victims for their fate. We never quite seem to be able to muster the courage, the fortitude, the humanity to just say "no" to greed, corruption, and power.

I like to think that holidays were once the opportunity for us to stop and think, to reflect upon what we do and do not do, what we believe and what we reject, but as it is, most of us no longer know why we have holidays, why we celebrate, or what we could possibly make of such days. You know, there are a lot of ways to die, the most overlooked is simply no longer being able to feel compassion or empathy for others.

Easter eggs and chocolate can help sweeten up the day, to be sure, but do yourself a favor and make a more lasting contribution to overcoming the death that is so widespread in today's world. Resurrect your own feelings and put them to good use.

What's so good about Good Friday?

Growing up I learned about what allegedly happened on this day in history and asked myself, "So what's so good about it?" It seemed silly to call a day "good" on which somebody was put to death in such a horrific way. Granted, it is a necessary event to the big one that follows - Easter - but it all just seemed a bit bizarre to me.

Of course, being young and, well, more ignorant than I am now, there were a lot of things I didn't know. And one of these things is that over time, words simply change and shift their meanings. We tend to think that our language is however it is, at whatever time we speak, read, and write it, but there are times in which it changes more rapidly than others (like now, for example, with the rapid and broad-based influx of English words into German, for example) and there are times when it changes very, very slowly (for example over the couple of hundred years that it took, say, "awful" and "awesome" to literally exchange meanings). The bottom line is, though, that language changes all the time. Trying to stop it from changing is like trying to hold back the tide with your hands. This is very bothersome to some people, but I haven't yet figured out why.

The "good" in Good Friday is one of those words. There was a time when it meant more than it does today. It included meanings such as "pious" and, particularly relevant here, "holy". But, most of us don't know that anymore, and a growing number of people don't care, as long as they get their holiday; that is, a day, or perhaps only half-a-day, off work. Holidays are simply no longer "Holy Days", and it would seem than not much of anything is holy anymore.

This is really too bad. Oh, I know, some really terrible things have been done to our fellow humans beings in the name of things considered "holy". What one person reveres as holy, another thinks is a silly superstition, or as mundane as things can be. I don't think we have to agree on what is or what isn't holy, but there are times when I think that thinking something is holy isn't a bad idea.

The word has negative connotations for some, I know, but all religiously and spiritually tinged words do, but what is at stake is really the acknowledgement that there just might be something that we could all agree is worth striving to uphold or protect or that we could agree is actually priceless; that is, not "without price" but "beyond price", beyond what money could possibly buy, even if we wanted to.

In thinking about this, I became dismayed that I wasn't able to identify anything that all of us could agree on. We've come to a time in which there are significantly large groups of people in various places, who, for various reasons, believe that anything can be bought and sold. This was a sad realization. Maybe I just didn't think about it long enough, or hard enough, or clearly enough, even though I think I did. Maybe I've overlooked something, and if I have, do let me know. In the meantime, I'll just have to muddle along with the consequences of knowing that no matter what it is, someone somewhere is probably willing to pay money for it. How sad can you get?

Who's going to celebrate?

We moderns are just silly enough to think that it was a good idea to decouple ourselves from nature, from the natural world around us. Oh, I'm all for modern conveniences and technology (to an extent), but losing sight of where one comes from in the end means never being able to figure out where you're going. You lose all sense of orientation.

I find it meaningful that two of the world's significant religions decided to have their holidays at this particular time. The fact that they are movable, that they can, and do, occur not on a specific day but at a specific time, tells me that the fest was there first, the reason came later. This does not diminish the significance of either of religious holidays nor the reason for their veneration in each of their complex of beliefs. After all, what should religions be doing other than helping us understand ourselves and our lives more deeply. And I believe that is precisely what the religious stories surrounding this event do.

The Passover story is a story of true liberty, the chance to go forth and establish a just and free society. Sure, we're all still working on that ... most people everywhere are still working on that, but the story reminds us, at a minimum, that this particular struggle is worth the effort. It tells us that true freedom is gained with others, not in spite of others. The Resurrection story is also a story of freedom, the ultimate second chance. It is a story that tells us that even when we screw up, there is still hope for us, but only if we stop thinking just of ourselves and start thinking of others as well. What both stories tell us, what they have in common, of course, is that they are about a new lease on life ... not just the lackadaisical, oh-I'm-feeling-better kind, but rather a deep, profound, existential lease of life.

It is our modern arrogance that too often prevents us from accepting and embracing the opportunities we are given. Myth, my friends, is simply truer than we might want to believe. The details are not the deciding factor, the moral of the story is. The stories being told right now -- mythologically, spiritually, cosmologically -- are worth listening to. We all have reason to celebrate.

What's to celebrate?

Sometimes I'm just naive enough to think that everybody knows why we have holidays. I'm always amazed then when I find out how many people don't. OK, maybe it's not necessary to know the exact formula for figuring out when Easter and Passover come, but seen cosmologically, there does appear to be a very long-standing tradition of why it's now.

The Easter story is pretty straightforward: a young Jewish rabbi is accused of rousing too much rabble, so the powers-that-be decide his number's up and they crucify him -- the standard abominable punishment of the day; contrary to expectations, however, he doesn't stay buried, was raised from the dead, met his disciples leading them to draw the conclusion that this man was in fact the long-promised Messiah ... thus (in very abbreviated form) Christianity was born. Easter, then, is Christianity's defining moment: no Easter, no Christianity.

Passover is perhaps a little more complicated, but not very: the Hebrews are slaves in Egypt, Moses, who was incidentally raised by the Old Pharaoh, is tasked by G-d to get the New Pharaoh to free the slaves. After a dramatic series of events, the last of which killed the first born of the Egyptians, but not the Hebrews (for the Angel of Death passed them over), the Pharaoh relents, lets them go and they leave; then, after wandering in the desert for 40 years, they settle in what is now Israel and become the Jewish nation ... thus (in very abbreviated form) Judaism was born. Passover, then, is Judaism's defining moment: no Passover (Exodus), no Judaism.

Aside from any religious or ideological issues, am I the only one that finds it odd that these two holidays should coincide. OK, it's not all that rare that two different groups may have holidays around the same time, but these two holidays are not just any old holidays. Instead, in both instances they are the holidays that more or less define these two groups.

Sure, I hear the skeptics already shouting "coincidence", but to me the fundamental significance of these holidays speaks against that. As we saw between the years, it was anything but a matter of chance that Christmas ended up where it is, but what we also saw was that there had been a long tradition of a particular type of holiday at that time. Is it really to unreasonable to think that the same forces might be at work here? I don't think so.

Time to celebrate?

It might be advisable to get out of the hole for a moment. There are plenty of things to explore there, and we can get back to it whenever we please. It may have escaped your notice, but we've got the big spring thing going on, and I'd be remiss if I didn't at least mention it.
Yes, for some it's Easter, of course, for others it is Passover. The close affinity of the two religions gives us the overlap.

Like Christmas, believe it or not, just when these holidays fall is also related to cosmological events. You will recall we have two solstices (when the sun is farthest and closest to the earth, the longest day and longest night, that is, the beginning of summer and the beginning of winter). You will also be happy to know we have two equinoxes as well, that is, days when the days and nights are of equal length. These occur when the sun crosses the equator going north (spring) or south (fall). Spring just recently sprang, so things are looking up. If you're not clouded in at night, though, you may want to check out the moon, because it is waxing (getting larger) and on Friday (the 6th, for most of us) it will be all filled up. We'll have our first full moon after the spring (that is, vernal) equinox. The first sabbath thereafter is when the holidays occur.

It's all very logical, isn't it? Perhaps. Just as I mentioned between the years, we moderns don't handle these kinds of things very well. It all seems to arbitrary, doesn't it? Well, actually, no ... at least not to one who is still aware of the fact that we humans, whether we like it or not, are still a part of nature and still very much influenced by it. When the moon is full, the tides are higher and water flows more strongly. When spring arrives, the plant realm awakens from it's winter sleep and things start to bloom. And our hibernating animal cousins awaken as well.

For anyone who wants to take it seriously, let's face it, this is precisely that point in the year when we get a new lease on life. That's reason to celebrate, isn't it?