Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones:
The Council Chamber, photogravure print
(1892)

"…resurrected again until sometime after next Christmas."

I realized again this week that I can no longer claim to be a Christian. I’m uncertain if I could ever declare myself such with conviction, even after full immersion baptism, I felt more conscript than convert. I had bowed to the peer pressure. Everyone else in my Sunday School class had enrolled in the special studying and showed up on that Sunday wearing white shirt and pants while carrying a change of clothes. We’d all stood waist-deep in the baptismal font with the pastor while the little window slid open to reveal the entire congregation watching. We’d each in turn accepted that folded handkerchief over our noses and allowed ourselves to be submerged, ruining our hairstyles for Jesus. We’d also slopped off to a changing room to towel off and change wardrobe, supposed to have been forever changed. I suspect that most of us feigned results as I had.

I still observe the Christian calendar, though. I acknowledge in passing a few of the more prominent religious holidays, but without personally participating in any public celebrations. I understand that backsliding Catholics attend only Easter and Christmas Mass. I don’t even consider doing those. I don’t go all druid on myself, though, and carouse myself through those days. The Muse makes Scalloped Potatoes on Easter and Roast Goose on Christmas, we open one of the better bottles of wine, and celebrate quietly, in our own way, not publicly.

It’s not that I’ve lost God or faith or, heaven forbid, grace; it’s more that I cannot face the congregation without holding something more than skepticism in my heart. I realized this week, when attending a memorial service in a local church, that a sanctuary can still bring me to tears. I don’t cry for my unforgiven sins, but for a context I once believed in but found false. I still want to believe in nonsense, and to consider myself somehow elevated by my faith, but I just cannot, not in good conscience. I can bow my head in wonder at the traditions being played out before me, but I no longer, if, indeed, I ever believed, that some Father in Heaven listens in.

The Muse and I no longer have grandchildren to color Easter eggs for, and we’re not quite deranged enough to successfully hide our own eggs from ourselves, so we must go searching for our Easter in other places. I spent a long day weeding out the back beds, the ones I enriched when I planted five lilac bushes there, five Springs ago, just after The Muse and I returned from exile. That soil had always seemed acidic, so I sweetened it with compost and peat. It’s now perfectly friable, and though the cheat grass still intrudes under the fence from our neighbor’s yard, I can easily dispense with it. The soil abandons those rhizomes with ease. I spent the entire afternoon on my knees, awakening those beds. I carted tub after tub of weeds to the yard debris container I’d moved in front of the garage. I found a palm-sized stone, a piece of bubbly red basalt, that looks every bit like a poisoned apple. I washed that treasure and set it aside for inclusion in my permanent collection. By the end of the afternoon, I’d successfully induced a resurrection, an especially restful one, a Restsurrection, if you will.

Hallelujah or something. My knees recall this morning my yesterday’s extended humility, as the day dawned into a picture-perfect Easter morning. In my youth, local churches would combine to produce a Sunrise Service, held either in the local football stadium or, if it rained, in one of the many large churches dotting downtown. I found those services to be distinctly unchurch-like, because they seemed so different. Even between the Protestant sects, those differences seemed glaring to me. These performances seemed more anthropological than ecclesiastical. I’d leave feeling grateful for my home church’s order of service, which seemed more reasonable. Our home church might host two services on Easter and even serve a breakfast. After six hours or more of fellowship, we’d head home after helping to clean up the church’s multipurpose room. There, we’d hide eggs for our little sisters, who’d spend the afternoon rehiding the eggs until most were cracked or discolored. We’d eat ham, scalloped potatoes, and fresh local asparagus, and Jesus would have been resurrected again until sometime after next Christmas.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #EndDays, #PureSchmaltz