Colored Pickled Easter Eggs

April 4, 2010

Good Morning,

Today is Easter Sunday.  A time for Easter Bunnies, Baby Chicks, Candy Baskets, Easter Bonnets and Lilies and of course, Pickled Easter Eggs.  Well, ok, they are a little different admittedly, but frankly I get a little tired of those plain old colored hard boiled eggs when you can have something the will put a little zip in your palette and color on your tongue.  These are the same recipe as the non-colored ones, except, well they are colored.  Sometimes you just have to step outside of the box… or the basket in this case.

Now picture the jar as our world and the eggs as different religions.  Now that being said…

Being raised Christian… to be precise, “Lutheran” it has always been a significant holiday for me.  I will be the first to admit that I am curious about other forms of religions and what makes them more acceptable to other people than the one I was raised with.  Even if they don’t celebrate Easter the way we do or for at least the same reasons.   I am left to ponder…with so many variations of the belief in a God (supreme entity) in this world, which one… is it that… is the one… true belief?  Ask anyone from the hundreds of other variations and they most likely will tell you “it is theirs” and even explain to you why theirs is “best”, sometimes without even asking.

As anyone coming from the seemingly unlimited variations of Christianity alone, I am given pause to wonder if I was born into the right one.  After all, if I was born in Utah I could have easily been Mormon (LDS), South Carolina possibly Southern Baptist, Mexico likely Catholic, Greece maybe Greek Orthodox. What if I was born in Israel, would I very likely be Jewish or New Delhi, would I now be Hindu or Northern India Sikh and China, possibly a Buddhist or even Pakistan and be a Muslim?  These are just a very few possibilities where my soul could have emerged.  So why Portland Oregon, born to Caucasian, German Lutheran parents… why?  Why there and not Kwekwe, Zimbabwe and sporting a dark pigment to my skin?  Is it just the luck of the draw?  Are there souls just waiting in line to catch a body in that esoteric world where we can only see and understand after we are free of the physical?  Do they have a choice or is it like the D.M.V. where you take a number and take your chances?

I don’t have to look very far to know that fortune or whom ever it was, smiled on me when my number came up and I was plopped down in Portland.  I know my life could be much different right now and for that I am grateful.  Hopefully my kids are too.  Maybe some would say I shouldn’t question things like this, but I do.  What about the others that did emerge in these other places?  Are they that much different than I am.  They also did not choose to be born where they were.  They were raised with the belief system of their parents as well.  Who is right and who is wrong and is there really such a thing when it comes to theology?  Like most humans, I tend to resist change and will probably die clinging to what beliefs were instilled in me at an early age.  Unless of course, I have some grand epiphany that changes all of that.

To my friends of the Christian faithful, I wish you a very Happy Easter in celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  To my Pagan friends, I wish you a joyous festival for the return of the Springtime Goddess Eastre.  To my Jewish friends I wish a fulfilling Passover.  To my Muslim and Hindu friends, I wish peace.  I don’t think I know of any Buddhists, but peace to you as well.  May we all have chosen the right spiritual path for each of us and with a good degree of luck end up in a happy place.

I was going to have rabbit for Easter dinner, but the grandkids are coming over and they probably would never forgive me for that.  Especially if I told them after the fact, so we are having ham.  I guess it isn’t so bad being a Gentile; we do eat a broader range of food, good or bad it is all in the theology I suppose.

Happy Easter.

Love, Dad

Photo: My eggs