Happy Holidays April 4, 2015

This Spring once again, we have the holidays of both Passover and Easter on the same weekend. Both the Jews and the Christians are grateful for being rescued by an Almighty power several millennia ago.

We are blessed to live in a country where we are free to worship and to rejoice in our own fashion. The theology may be different, but the celebrations are so very similar. We get together with friends and family and we eat!

We even eat some of the same ceremonial foods-- eggs-- which symbolize for us all the rebirth, the emergence of spring, the hope for the future. We all dedicate ourselves anew by initially depriving ourselves of something of value in order to heighten our awareness of the gifts of freedom we have received.

We invite our relatives and friends to gather together in the spirit of love and fellowship, to honor tradition in ways old and new. We plan what to wear, what to bring. We shop for new clothes, we prepare menus, we clean, we cook and look forward to and thoroughly enjoy the gathering.Right?

And then why,  the next day, do we talk about each other in ways familiar, time-honored and not always very nice."Did you hear how ..?" "Did you notice that..?" 

Familiar? Why? From where does this need come to bond with one person over the perceived faults of another? And then of course we wonder--what are the others saying about us?

Let's try this year to be kind to one another- while we are with them and afterwards too. Let's try to look for the good in each other, to really be aware of our blessings of family and friends, without whom, I, for one, would be so alone and bereft.