It sounds counterintuitive

*If you don’t want to read religious stuff, go ahead and skip to the last line.

We should not only give thanks for the Good Things we experience and receive; we ought also to give thanks for adversity and hardship, because it is in enduring hardship and adversity that we grow and learn. Nobody prays for Bad Things to befall them, and we all pray/hope/wish for the strength to persevere through Hard Times and Bad Things. Sometimes, we pray for understanding, acceptance, patience.

When Christ was crucified, he bore the hardships and suffering of those who would follow him, both before and after the crucifixion. It is through the suffering and death of Christ we gain an understanding of how our own actions cause pain. Lots of folks understand this without the necessity of the Christ, or of any religion. This speaks, in my opinion, of the interconnectedness of all things. We are all the same.

The question many people have is “If Christ was crucified on this day, why is it called GOOD Friday? You’d think that whole crucifixion thing would be kind of horrid.”

It was.

And probably, sometime around the same time people got tired of saying “Great and Holy Friday”, they shrugged their shoulders and said, “wouldn’t ‘Great’ be just as good? IT’s certainly more economical than ‘Great and Holy’.” In fact, it’s only in the western church we say “Good Friday”. Most orthodox churches still call it “Great and Holy Friday”. But really, it *is* a good day, because it is the day we, and, in fact, all of creation, was forgiven for effing everything up. We were redeemed and forgiven on this day. That’s pretty good, right? We have a sacrificial lamb.

Passover has been celebrated, since long before Christ, to celebrate freedom, the deliverance of the Hebrew peoples out of Egypt. And this is also a time for many other people to celebrate the renewal of (if not Faith, as the Jewish and Christian people do at this time) life and the return to bloom of the long-dormant plants. It is the time when Persephone returns from the Underworld to walk with her mother Demeter among the fields and pastures and so end the long ache of winter.

Eostre is celebrated as the land again becomes fertile, and the animals begin their reproductive cycle. This is a time of birth and rebirth, and is truly the beginning of the New Year (we talk about it in the religious cycle as happening during the Paschal season, and really, it follows the spring Equinox.

So. Sweep off your deck, grab your book, and sit and read in the sun. You are loved.

This is the last line: Zombie Jesus Day isn’t until Sunday, when He comes back from the dead.