Happy Easter

Happy Easter, however you’re celebrating it! I am spending my morning exactly the way I spent it last Easter: listening to The Time for Peace is Now: Gospel Music About Us, an amazing compilation of 1970s gospel music that is soul-drenched, both in the musical and spiritual senses of the word “soul”.

Easter used to be relatively easy, at least before I thought much about it. When I was a kid, we’d wake up and find out what the Easter Bunny brought us. We’d often be at my grandmother’s house in western Maryland, but sometimes we might be home.

Regardless of where we were, following the initial examination of our basket hauls, we’d head off to church, which at least wouldn’t be as long as the previous Sunday’s Mass. My memories of the rest of my youthful Easter Sundays are cloudy, but photos of me wearing a leisure suit were taken.

Because of my changing views – I am not the good Catholic altar boy I used to be -- and because of the timing of Mom’s passing two years ago, Easter feels complicated right now, and might always feel that way.  But I do love the general message of the gospel songs that are spinning around my turntable right now.

The time for peace is indeed now.

~217~