Not Quite an Easter Blog

Those of you who follow my blog with a devotion bordering on desperation will no doubt have noticed that I have not made an Easter blog entry.  Yes, for once the holiday has passed without my comments on Paschal the Lamb or the creative use of crucifixion to get a couple of days off work.  Just on that topic I would point out to those attempting to stretch the public holidays further than they should that although Jesus may have used his condemnation and hideous death to get out of a long Friday's carpentry he was back on the job again on Monday.

Frankly I think a career in carpentry is good preparation for being crucified.  Every time Jesus banged a nail into his hand he was inadvertently readying himself for the tough times to come.  He probably gave the Romans tips while they were doing it.  How to hold the nails, where to position them, possibly having a quiet chuckle to himself when the centurion accidentally hit his thumb with the hammer and muttering "amateur" under his breath.  Jesus seems like a glass half full kind of guy.

Now, a couple of thousand years later we (and by "we" I mean the notionally Christian, those who live in notionally Christian countries, agnostics and atheists who just want a holiday and the occasional genuinely religious person) commemorate this event by giving each other chocolate eggs, and diabetes.  Some of us go to church.  I would advise against that personally.  It isn't that I dislike churches per se, its just that they're always so crowded at Easter.  Churches are much more fun to walk through when there's nobody else around.  If the church is old enough its like being in a well directed horror movie.  And yes I realise its a little disturbing that that's my idea of a good time.  If the church is modern it gives you an opportunity to shake your head over the decline in religious standards in recent centuries.

Basically a religion can either be modern, relevant and useful to its believers.  Or it can be religious.  Nobody seems to have yet squared that particular circle.  The simple fact of the matter is that religious faith is old, incredibly old.  It's one of the oldest things that humans invented and is still one of our most spectacular creations.  It guided people through times when we had no science and we had no knowledge and we had no hope and somehow it persuaded enough of us to keep on going so that we got to somewhere better, ie; here.  What it isn't is modern.  When it tries it just becomes another semi useless social services organisation and frankly we've got enough of those already.

But all of this doesn't explain the lamentable absence of an Easter blog to entice my readers off the ledge they no doubt crawled out onto when they saw the absence of said blog entry and give them a reason to continue with their lives.  I could claim ill health or pressing business or sheer disinterest but the truth of the matter is I was just lazy.  While I sprawled in my armchair sneering at the television (but not prepared to go to the effort of reaching for the remote) it did occasionally occur to me that I should drag myself before the computer and bash out a few ill chosen words. But that would have involved getting up and moving a bit.  I decided against it.

Now, having been forced by the circumstances of employment to get up, wash, get dressed and actually leave my flat for several hours I find that I might as well complete the entire experience by sitting in a darkened room (the lights in here haven't worked in years) and typing some random nonsense in the hopes that people will accept the bare minimum of effort and keep reading said blog.  Since my readership numbers about three and I haven't managed to get rid of you yet I have high hopes for this approach.

It has been suggested that if I want more readers then I should select topics of broader interest.  Topics such as food, kittens and guns have been suggested as hooks to boost my readership numbers.  I would like to assure anyone still reading that I will not lower myself to such shameless pandering.  By pure coincidence my next blog entry will be entitled "Shooting Kittens for Food".