I must confess that I didn’t go to church this Easter — the first Easter I’ve ever skipped. In fact, I haven’t gone to church at all this year. A little like a bad sport, I’ve packed up all my marbles and refuse to play the game. My refusal to attend church is somewhat principled. What is more, I refuse to be mistaken for a Christmas—and—Easter Christian. I don’t want to be like the divorced man who keeps sleeping with his ex because he can’t get his jollies anywhere else.
However, I haven’t abandoned all my Easter traditions. After church, Tamiko came home and picked me up so we could all drive downtown and share brunch with the rest of the family at the Café Victoria in the King Edward Meridian. It’s a buffet brunch with a piano player and a chocolate fountain and calamari and truffles. The ceiling is twenty feet high with faux rococo moulding and tall windows looking out onto the street. I sat directly across from one of the windows, and as I ate, I watched a man pan—handling on the street corner, sometimes sitting down beside a green garbage bag, sometimes reaching into the garbage bag for one thing or another.
I began with a salad plate of cold seafood: shrimp, mussels and calamari. Then I had grilled vegetables, boeuf cordon bleu, and asparagas. I enjoyed diced kiwi and mango, and strawberries slathered in chocolate sauce. And for dessert I had cheese cake and a chocolate mousse cup which I washed down with a small pot of coffee.
When we left, I made a point of exiting the hotel from the doors on the far side of the building.
Clearly, I no longer take Easter seriously. The Easter message is supposed to be hope—filled. Instead, I felt trapped — compelled by a sense of obligation to share in a meal that left a great hole in my stomach. This Easter, I stayed away from church as a matter of principle, and paid for it by attending a brunch which thoroughly compromised my principles. I suppose it’s easier to say no to god than to my family.
Even so, I can smell the scent of renewal in the air. I sense the early intimations of a principled life emerging after a long winter of waffling. If I really mean what I write, then I have to translate my convictions into an ethic. I have to prevent myself from being subtly conscripted as a co—conspirator in a ploy that hurls men onto the streets while others, like me, go on eating our sumptuous meals. The world is not fallen because there are poor in it. The world is fallen because there are those who eat and eat and watch as the poor beg in their squalor. And Easter gives pause to those of us who eat, reminding us that the resurrection is not a hand from the sky pulling us up; it is us, right here, choosing to become instruments of healing.
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