Easter was yesterday. Why didn’t it make a dent?
I noticed something that I found quite strange.
I live in a non-Christian culture. There are Christians in India, of course, a sizable minority, but they are not visible. Their priests do not walk the streets of northern India, at least, dressed in distinctive clothing. Their churches are few. Their holidays are official, but they are often crowded with more than 30 others from Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, and Islam. I have only a few Indian Christian friends; I do not seek out Christian rituals and communities. I am no longer seduced by the cultural trappings of religious Christianity, although I do from time to time feel what I can only describe as nostalgia.
Saturday was a difficult day for my small community. One of the families lost their only son, a bright, handsome young man, just 19 years old. He died on the back of a motorcycle coming home from the local Mela gathering; the driver, another young man, is still in a coma at the public hospital. Together with my friend Kumar, we went to the village ritual that accompanies death. The family was in a state of total shock. The women were gathered on the floor of a dark room with his mother, who sat silent and motionless. When I bowed to the father, the uncle, and brother of several of the men who work and do work for me, tears came to my eyes.
Later at home, I realized that it was Easter in the West. In Europe, a well-intentioned Pope was doing something and saying something, but it seemed that most people were focused on the senseless barbarism of Putin’s army in Ukraine, actions that cannot in any way be connected to the ethic of Christianity. In America, people were arguing, fighting about vegetables, murder, and sex, and somehow connecting that with the slogan ”he is risen.” There was a Twitter storm with a clip of some lanky guy proclaiming his faith with a guitar and some terrible hymns to a captive audience of passengers on a plane at 36,000 feet. I wouldn’t have requested a parachute unless it went on the length of the Orthodox mass, but really, his faith has no manners. It just seemed like self-serving arrogance coupled with a strong dose of narcissism.
At this point in my life, I can no longer properly call myself Christian. The stories about Jesus seem to me to be just that, stories that may or may not strike a chord about living a full life with the rest of humanity trying to live their lives as best they can. They spring the myths and rituals of the pagan world in which they were born; perhaps some of those myths provide deep access to the mystery of human life, but for the most part I find them a distraction, even misleading. If push comes to shove, I would have to classify them as the artifacts, the “bricolage” of the predominant mystery cult, the one that won.
In the past, perhaps just a few years ago, when I was living in a more Eurocentric culture, I might have found myself at least paying some attention to the actions of the Pope during Holy Week. There was even a time when I did go to Church on this occasion. But what I noticed this year was barely a blimp on my emotional register, neither positive nor negative (even the singing nun type on the plane merited just a chuckle, no outrage). But I did catch a glimpse of how it is culture, the artifacts of dress and ceremony, the words of religious people, the songs, the conversations of friends and family, that carry and perpetuate what we call religious faith. And I asked myself, without them, what is lost? I was still able to be with a grieving family and share their sorrow. I did not miss Easter or Holy Week.
