4/3/02
The Spiritual Chicks^SM Get Real!
Reflections on Easter Sunday

The other day, right before bedtime, my three and a half year old daughter, Sophia, wanted to know about Easter.  She went over to her overstuffed bookshelf and pulled out two books.  One was a beautiful children’s book about Heaven; and the other was a book on the world’s religions.  She can’t read yet, but she’s a mini spiritual chick like all little girls, so I guess her intuition guided her to the books that would have the right information.  I told her it was too late to get into the subject but that we’d do it in the morning.  She protested, looked at the pictures for a few minutes, and then fell fast asleep.  I went into the living room and began reading the section in the religion book on Christianity and Easter.  Thank God I had stalled for time.  The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is about as scary a tale as I have ever read.  Sophia has a hard enough time with Snow White, just how was she going to handle hearing about a wonderful person like Jesus being nailed to a cross and tortured?   The resurrection wasn’t going to make sense to her either.  How was I going to explain this story when as a result of my Aunt Mary Ann’s death, Sophia was just beginning to understand that when you die you don’t come back?

Sophia doesn’t know that much about Jesus, but last Christmas Eve, her Italian grandmother picked her to carry the baby Jesus to his crib in the manger during a little traditional family pageant.  Since then, she thinks of Jesus as a sweet little baby, like one of her dolls.  I don’t think I could explain Jesus’ ministry and all the events that led up to the crucifixion in a way that would make any sense to a little girl who thinks of herself as his mother.  I figured that I’d find the right words, however, if Sophia insisted on knowing the story.  Thankfully, she forgot about the whole thing the next day.  She did, however, want to wear a little silver cross that she had received as a gift.  Sophia told me that a cross looks like an "X" and that this necklace was her "bunny cross." When I asked her what that was, she simply said that she was going to put her little toy bunny on the cross.  I said the toy was too big to fit on the cross, but that it sure was an interesting idea.  Sophia then began to play some imaginary game with her dolls and forgot all about the bunny and the cross, but I didn’t.

Children are so brilliant and intuitively understand symbolism.  In Concept-Therapy, we use the "X" to describe God or the Creator, because its nature is unknown.  The word "crucifixion" simply means, "fixed to a cross," so maybe Jesus was simply aligning himself completely with the "X," with God, in the story. Of course, making that decision would cause all of his old concepts and beliefs to attack him much like the Roman soldiers who were simply doing their job.  Interestingly enough, Easter takes its name from Ishtar, the ancient Babylonian and Assyrian goddess of love and fertility.   And, rabbits, as we all know, are very fertile and loveable as hell.  For Sophia, Jesus is a rabbit, which symbolizes the creative power of love (which is an eternal principle, not a finite being) fixed to the X.  Mathematically speaking, the creative power of love = X.  That’s the resurrection, becoming one with the creative power of love.  Thanks, Sophia.  I think I understand Easter, now.

Tami