Easter Bling

Yeah, today was Easter.

Such a weird holiday in the Christian year. No real build-up to the day itself, other than what takes place in churches, and no long trips or huge family meals. Small family meals, but people who live out of town don't make a big effort to come in. Good Friday is solemn if you go to church, but I worked Friday and then went out for sushi. Saturday I went shopping and did laundry.

But Easter Sunday is always fun. When we were little, my brother and I hunted Easter baskets that my dad took great delight in hiding. Last Sunday, when the big family gathering happened, he hid chocolate eggs in the condo for us to find.

And now, after the somberness of Lent, I really appreciate church on Easter. The only Sunday in the year where we have brass instruments playing during the service. A choir. Flowers all over the front of the church. And ridiculous amounts of unabashed joy.

Today I was sort of in charge of arranging our flowers into some kind of order. Sue had come in with a giant vase of forsythia, yellow and overflowing. We needed some balance on one side of the stage, so, when she asked where she should put it, I told her to place it there.

"Is it too much?" she asked. "Is that why you want to put it there? Is it bling? Is it too bling?"

Sue is about fifty, with three young adult children. She saw me laughing at her use of the word bling, and laughed too.

"Psshh," I said (and I really did make a sound like that). "It's Easter. It's all about the bling. You can't have too much bling."

I wonder if I said this too loudly. The church was filling up, and the service was going to start. It's quite possible that more people heard me than I'd intended. Oh well. It's true.

Later, after some unabashedly joyful singing and a lot of "Christ is risen"s, we went to the front of the church for communion. Our pastor, Ron, was ripping pieces of bread off his chunk and handing them to the congregants.

"Mel, this is the Body of Christ," he said to me. He pulled hard at the chunk to free a piece for me. "Gah. This is a really gummy loaf of bread."

First of all, I like that he called me Mel. Secondly, I like that he felt relaxed enough to make this comment to me. I took my bread on to the cup of juice, which Sue happened to be holding, and dipped the bread into it (as a bit of trivia, this way of taking communion is called "intinction"). "The blood of the new covenant," Sue said to me as I dipped my bread. I popped it into my mouth. "Have a bling day!" she continued. I grinned at her, my mouth full of gummy, doughy bread, and moved on.

Ron was right. That loaf of bread was not cooked through. I had to chew it like gum. And earlier that morning, I had seen him carrying the Giant brand grape juice into the church in its plastic jug.

I used to think that if you saw the mechanisms behind the rituals, if they weren't holy and solemn and mysterious, that they somehow seemed less meaningful. And I still feel that way, a little bit. But today was probably the least reverent communion experience I have ever had. And possibly the most meaningful.