Forget the bunny, it's about resurrection

The column: 03.25.24

Easter is almost upon us when we Christians take a deep breath after Lent and relax and whoop it up a little. I mean, rising from the dead is no ordinary thing — if you were heading to the airport and passed a cemetery and saw people coming up out of the ground, wouldn’t you pull over and take a video with your iPhone even if your flight is boarding in an hour? Of course you would.

And what if it were a Unitarian cemetery, a mausoleum with a large silver question mark on the roof instead of a cross, and you saw clouds of ashes forming into friendly people nicely dressed and a couple of them are standing by the highway, hitchhiking, and you stop and they get in and the guy says, “Wow, you won’t believe what we’ve just seen.”?

I’m much older than you and I know more deceased people than you do, aunts and uncles plus all my teachers and a great many classmates, so the Resurrection Day would be more dramatic for me, more names to remember, more people wanting to tell me their afterlife experiences and there’d be name-dropping, of course, saints and apostles, authors, sports heroes. I’d listen politely.

Some Christians feel that the dead are looking down on us from above and that we’ll have explaining to do, but I don’t believe that. I don’t have any idea what death is like and I don’t sit and ponder that. I only hope that someone will hold my hand and if she is playing “Peace in the Valley” or “I’ll Fly Away,” I can speak and tell her to please stop.

I know that life is a one-way trip but if I went to my doctor and he shook his head and explained disseminated angiofibrosis of the fantods for which there is no cure, I imagine getting in the car, not fastening the seat belt, driving to the liquor store to buy a quart of gin and a carton of Luckies, and heading home to celebrate the end of sobriety and my career as a liberal Democrat worried about climate change; I’d cash in the bonds and get the penthouse suite on the Queen Mary 2 for a round-the-world cruise and plan to spend evenings in the casino.

Meanwhile, I’m feeling rather cheerful. The paper is full of suffering but I’m still thinking about the 93-year-old widow of a Wall Street financier who has donated $1 billion to a medical school in the Bronx to pay tuition for all the students. Dr. Ruth Gottesman.

There was a doctor named Ruth
Devoted to goodness and truth
Who donated a pile
To install a free stile
In place of the college tollbooth.

I read about a public opinion poll in Ukraine that showed 77% are optimistic about the country’s future. This, while rocket and drone attacks are an ordinary occurrence, six million have fled the country, half the people have trouble feeding and housing their families. This is optimism of a heroic order. Here in America, where the Canadian army is not launching missiles at Manhattan, 42% are optimistic. What’s wrong?

And the presidential candidate of a major party is out on the campaign trail telling Americans that we have become a third-world country. Where did he get this? Has he been to Mozambique or Myanmar lately?

There’s no end of bad news, of course. Cosmetic companies are targeting young children in advertising skin care products. The East Coast is sinking due to over-pumping of ground water by municipalities, meanwhile the sea is rising, so although our New York apartment is on the 12^th floor, someday we’ll be on the 11^th, the 10^th, 9^th, and eventually in a sub-basement flat along with snakes and turtles. And I grieve for the Florida billionaire unable to find a surety company to guarantee his bond. What is wrong with people?

It’s enough to keep a person awake at night, but then I found a method that works for me. I lie in the dark and imagine I’m in Stockholm, at the royal palace. I’ve won the Nobel Prize in Physics with a formula I discovered in a dream that unlocked several secrets of the Creation and there I am, ignorant of physics but surrounded by Swedish royalty, an honor guard, ranks of scholars in caps and gowns, cheering crowds, and there, risen from the dead, is Mr. Swenson who gave me a C-minus in 10^th grade Physics and even that was charitable. He is beaming, arrayed in shining white raiment, as we all shall be someday, or so I have heard.

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