Jesus, chocolate bunnies and you

It's early Easter morning in Seattle and the sky is fluffy-gray with ridges and crests of ivory or cream painted within for highlight. The sun is beginning to break through, and soon patches of blue will melt the clouds into puffy islands roaming the atmosphere. On street level, the daffodils are blooming and the trees in the back yard are sprouting leaves. The foliage is expanding, covering up the patches of bare space that reveal the golf course on the other side of the ravine and treeline that make up our back yard. Soon, the yard will again be a formidable lush wall of green: a playground for squirrels, bugs, birds and the occasional mountain beaver.

Easter's also "the big day" for a lot of churches. As the story goes, Jesus, having been nailed to the cross, rose from the dead today. Well, not today as in April 20, but three days after being killed. The date itself is irrelevant, a point on the calendar derived from a formula more arcane than the college football playoffs and the KFC secret recipe combined. Parishioners far and wide will come dressed in their Sunday best to celebrate the big day, a kind of "yay for the home team" rally with Jesus filling his end of the bargain of life everlasting for all who believe.

Every once in a while, my mom or grandma would ask me if I was going to church (To her credit, my grandma is more subtle, just wondering if my wife and I have found a church yet). With Easter coming down the pipe, mom has been a bit more vocal on the topic. I always hem and haw, trying to deflect the conversation but it's always awkward. I don't want to just pick a church, and I don't want my mom to thinking she raised me wrong with her errant son skipping Sunday service. I try to explain but it doesn't work out. Voices get strained, humor fails and bitterness lingers on the phone line. So before I lose my diplomatic tai-chi and say just get over the church issue, I thought I'd take today to explain why I don't go to church in a format I'm far more eloquent in. I give good text, or as my friend Cori puts it about herself, "I don’t give good phone."

It's hard to write this without sounding like I'm on the defensive, pleading my case that it's perfectly normal to not go to church and I'm not a socially evil freak. I'm not going to quote the Bible, twisting verses like torturing a prisoner to my will in a bid to prove my own superiority. I don't go to church because I pretty much heard it all in my 20 years of regularly attending Catholic mass. Spend a couple years going to mass and you'll see what I mean. You'll hear the same passages read for Easter, for the Ascension, for Mary, for Good Friday, for the angel telling Mary she's pregnant by God, and for every other point on the Catholic celebratory timeline.

And it's not just the Catholic Church, but nearly every other denominational service I witnessed followed some sort of entrance-song-verse-song-donation-homily-prayer-song-exit routine. When there's little to inspire you, you start to notice the mundane. You fidget, your soul gets bored. You begin to look at church as an obligation, that place you have to get to for an hour after breakfast and before football. You have to wear itchy clothes and listen to some guy drone on and on, all a one-way street. You're supposed to be a supplicant, a silent patron and (what really got to me after a while, especially in the Catholic sphere) a unworthy vessel who always, always had to give voice to the mindless, bloodthirsty crowd who wanted Jesus dead during the Good Friday-Easter read-along of the Passion. Jesus may have died for my sins, but I didn't send him to the cross.

And then there's the rules. While the idea of order and hierarchy may be appealing to those looking to "put God in the driver's seat," I've seen it cut the other way to the point of exclusion. The Byzantine rules of the Catholic Church made my mom sit down during Holy Communion, since her divorce from my derelict father made her unworthy in the eyes of the church to take this token of the redeeming body of Christ. Getting up to take the wafer as my mom was forced to sit there was a disturbing image for me. Oh, my mom's not worthy? She's given years of faith and devotion to your order, and because of one asshole you won't let her take part in a ritual of spiritual unification? How can you love a church that forces your mom to be a lesser member?

Add to this the "extreme sport" quality of preaching coming from the types of satellite preachers like John Hagee, Jerry Falwell or Jack Van Impe, using the television to tell you all the marvelous ways you were going to hell. Sheesh, you committed sins you didn't even know about, and without total paranoid devotion to a mysterious hotheaded God, you're doomed. Repent your sins by buying my videotape and getting on our mailing list, because the devil is everywhere, you know...egging on people to listen to rock music, study godless art and science, to vote Democratic or to be lesbians. Sorry, but your talking about nearly everyone in my address book here. Good to know that hell will be filled with my friends. At least I won't be lonely.

So, a few years ago, after this charismatic and wonderfully humane priest left the parish where my wife and I lived, I stopped going to church. After his departure, there was little left to connect me to the assembly line Catholic mass, and in the vacuum that followed I figured out that it didn't matter if I was in church. What was more important is how you acted, how you treated your fellow humans. Planting your fat ass in some ornate building with crosses and candles meant nothing if you didn't take the lessons being handed out and made something with them. It was time to stop looking for wisdom in the rituals and incantations that I heard so much I know in my sleep.

I stopped listening to the TV preachers (which, okay, I should have done long ago) and began experience the world not through the "ever faithful or else" mindset, but seeing people as people, screwing up and doing good in no set order. I watched as non-Christians outshined their Christ-loving counterparts in kindness and love. I discovered the beauty and peace of nature, the wondrous moment of "now" where you feel more connected to God's mysterious plan than I ever did in the dusty pews of St. Mary's Church in my hometown. I learned that, deep down, people are mostly good, only turning rotten when they get any semblance of power or control…from your company’s CEO to the local parish priest who's been popped for decades of child molestation.

I don't believe God keeps score on the little things, ready to cast you into hell for skipping church when it isn't doing anything to inspire you to begin with. I don't believe it's a rigid path you have to stay on. I don't believe the End Times are upon us, and the world ends everyday only to have a new one begin in the morning. Faith is a garden that you tend on your own. Get your comfort on whatever divine patch you plant your seeds in. Act kind and wise and I get the feeling it'll all work out for you. It's a big world out there, and I believe the powers-that-be are gonna allow you to explore it so you grow into a bigger, better person more connection to the mystery of faith.

Today, my wife and I are going to have Easter dinner with her aunt and other relatives, a small gathering of family to celebrate the resurrection...or the return of spring...or chocolate bunnies. Whatever. What matters is the time you have together, what you share and learn. It's no big secret...just a spin on what Jesus mentioned once. Love each other as you want to be loved. How hard is that?

And somewhere, I bet Jesus is having a good laugh. At churches today, little children are rummaging on the grass looking for candy or plastic eggs while the message for the grownups is about the triumph over death and eternal life.

"Talk about marketing," Jesus would chuckle. "Something for everyone."