Happy Easter!

I love Easter. I looked forward to it as a child and I still look forward to it now. Easter has always represented hope, rebirth, happiness, and life. In the past I tied those things to the Christian narrative of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Now that I'm no longer a Christian, how do I observe Easter?

This year I attended church for an Easter service - probably my first Easter service in three years. Since leaving Christianity I've had no desire to hear the gruesome details of a crucified Christ, nor have I had any desire to hear how the blood of Jesus is responsible for securing my place in heaven. At the Unitarian Universalist church I now attend with my family, none of those things came up. Jesus was mentioned, but in a way that was beautiful and healing to me. Everyone at church was excited about all the new beginnings occurring this Easter - new members were welcomed (including me!), a new baby and his parents were blessed, and Spring finally decided to show up. I was reminded of the cycle of life and found myself touched by this season of birth. The way my pregnancy coincides with the change of the seasons has helped me feel even more keenly the power of changing seasons (literally and symbolically).

Easter is Spring, the season of birth and new life. People have been celebrating this season for a very, very long time. Even the word Easter originates from ancient pre-Christian times,

Patriarchy: Saving the World or Destroying It?

Definition of PATRIARCHY (Merriam-Webster)
1: social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line; broadly : control by men of a disproportionately large share of power.


Current tenets of Christian patriarchy (Vision Forum): http://www.visionforumministries.org/home/about/biblical_patriarchy.aspx

Much of my recent reading has somehow involved patriarchy and, more specifically, how harmful it has been and still is to society. Many cultures around the world have traditionally held to patriarchy, but certainly not all of them. Both of the Abrahamic faiths - Christianity and Islam - have been promoting patriarchy for thousands of years, all while backing their misogyny with claims of divine endorsement. Burkas, virginity tests for women, giving and receiving women as if they were property, using them to breed massive families, requiring complete submission to men, barring women from offices of spiritual leadership, etc. are some of the obvious examples of the discrimination against women. The Bible, at least in the English translations I've read, mentions the concept of female equality VERY rarely, while throughout the many books, women are almost always in submission to men, raped, stoned, told not to speak in church, and not allowed to teach men. The Bible never comes right out and says women are inferior to men, but that is the message being conveyed by every aspect of patriarchy. Are men and women different in many ways? Yes. Do those differences make one gender superior to the other? No. 


I am so thankful that my father