Kierkegaard was right when he said we are lucky we don’t have to understand what we believe.

Easter is the most profound of Christian holidays, but also the most difficult.

Nothing in life is more exasperating and frustrating than the simple reality that nobody can prove what happens after death. All we know is this life, which, by faith, we place in the context of our most cherished and elaborate frameworks.

We are souls, spiritual beings having this physical experience, physical beings having this spiritual experience. But the soul predates the body, and will survive it, to inhabit a glorified body in the afterlife.

Easter gives us the resurrected Christ, but the Bible doesn’t give us much detail.

“What did He look like?” would be the first question many of us would have asked Mary Magdalene. The Bible doesn’t tell us what Jesus looked like before or after the resurrection. I know the explanations of why those details weren’t included, but I maintain that the narrative suffers from the lack of details.

I figure, once the Messiah appears, that’s an indication that humanity has evolved about as much as it ever will, so it’s hard to say those writers were simple fellows with crude literary technique. We assume the scriptures were guided by the Holy Spirit, and that what we have is what’s best suited to the intent and purpose.

Who knows? We spend our lives wondering about these things, figuring, if we ask these questions, everybody must, but is everybody the same as us nowadays? No. We are an argumentative and contentious people, quick to pick a hole in an inconsistent argument, quick to question the authority, credibility, and arrogance of bossy know-it-alls.

The Biblical authors lived in a much smaller world. Why describe Jesus when eveybody back then would have had a really good idea of what He looked like, given the scarcity of ethnic types?

I wish sometimes Christians were more reluctant to depict Jesus. Where did the long hair come from? The perfect beard and skin? I have a “photo” of the image on the Shroud of Turin. That person looks, not classically handsome, but strong and charismatic, as I would hope.

Easter is a frustration. The idea is mesmerizing that this singular event in history took place as simply as a man would awake, sit up, take off his pajamas, stand up, get the stone blocking the tomb’s entrance out of the way, and go for a walk in the predawn twilight. There might have been angels, and terrified guards running away. Maybe Jesus had a flag, or a stick, for a prop. Maybe there were only a few women on their way to the tomb, and they thought they met Jesus, then knew they really had when they got to the tomb and He wasn’t there.

What happened to his burial clothes? What happened to the cross?

It’s hard to imagine that we don’t know these things. That we don’t know what happens after we die.

What happened to Mom and Dad after they died.

Were their guardian angels there to lead them to Heaven? Did they see their parents, brothers and sisters? Did they see God, and Mary, and Jesus? Were they threatened by demons? Are they in Purgatory, and what is that like? Are their souls residing in other persons, other beings, another multiverse? Did their souls get just that one chance, and Jesus has already judged them?

Don’t know. Don’t know. Don’t know. Don’t know. Don’t know. Don’t know. Don’t know.

Good thing we don’t really have to!

Who decides the official “Worst Day Of The Year?” Hallmark. If a panel of Nobel Prize physicists decided that, I would be skeptical, and if Hallmark declared on what really happened with the Big Bang, I would guffaw. But when Hallmark declared, several years ago, that my birthday is the worst day of the year, I had to bow to them.

I have an anniversary in July of a worst day in my life, and the anniversary of my father’s shocking death suckerpunches me every year. I know it’s coming, and it happened 42 years ago, but it kicks me in the stomach every year.

So does Good Friday. A Catholic church is a morbid place during the Triduum, with Jesus on the cross and all the saints covered in red robes, as if to spare them the trauma of the events recounted during these days.

A Zen story tells of an eminent monk who was accused of fathering the child of a young girl. “Is that so?” he replied to his accusers. “So des ka” is a Japanese phrase for that, which is a favorite of mine, acquired watching Japanese TV shows. Humiliated and despised, the Zen monk’s reply was simply a bemused, “Is that so?” After the truth came out and the child was taken from him, his final response was the same: “Is that so?” Throughout the Passion narratives, I like to imagine Jesus not saying, “You say so,” or, “You have said it,” but, “So des ka.”

What really happened? I see my son and think, “This guy is capable of greatness.” God must have felt the same about Jesus, that He would accomplish great things. But when did Jesus read those Suffering Servant prophecies and realize He was destined to be crucified?

Hindsight is 20-20, and it’s easy to say that anyone could have seen where Jesus was headed, given the ruthlessness of His enemies. One of my hard lessons of Lent is to gain some insight into how much and how often I am overwhelmed and defeated by the corruption entwined with my every thought and impulse. To recount how Jesus was done in by cold blood, hard hearts, and politics, is to appreciate Jesus’ knowledge that His executioners didn’t know what they were doing. Maybe they thought they knew, but do we ever? Donald Rumsfeld could have told the Sanhedrin about “unknown unknowns,” and Pilate could have rephrased his famous rhetoric: “What is that?”

I imagine God witnessing it all, saying, “That’s my Son. As some have said, ‘He has done all things well.'”

Life is terribly hard and difficult.

I’ve grown up and aged with Lent and the Passion Scriptures as an integral part of most of my springtimes. The Gospel accounts of the apocalyptic drama of the death of Jesus endure as the most pivotal texts I’ve ever read. The ol’ heart breaks over and over as Jesus breaks the bread and says, “This is My Body,” this common, nothing-special loaf of bread people use and abuse and discard without a second thought, and “This is My Blood,” this ordinary glass of wine. A glass of wine– big deal. A strife-sowing Jew– big deal. “One of you is going to betray me, and it would be better for you if you had never been born.” It must have taken Jesus a long time to compose Himself before He could even get all those terrible words out of His Throat.

“Ecce homo.” “Behold, the man.”

Yesterday I saw a homeless man, wrapped in a blanket, with long, dirty hair and blank eyes walking along Denny Way by the Seattle Center. The everyday news has plenty of stories about the innocents of the world, near and far, crushed and annihilated by life in the cruelest ways.

Every day a heart beats, and breaks, and there is no hiding from it.

Jesus is Lord and Messiah, we say– difficult, abstract concepts, with lots of theological baggage, and that’s fine.

Better still, Jesus is my friend, my hero, my brother. He has made us all sisters and brothers, and children of the eternal Father of us all. About that, on this Friday before Easter, I feel good!

You have one of those things, don’t you? You’re minding your own business, and it whacks you upside the head.

Again. And again. Just a small thing, but it keeps getting the better of you. You don’t want to make a big deal out of it. Who really cares if people ask, “How are you?” but don’t answer the question when you ask it back. Rationalize it any way you can, but still, you brood over this. You rehearse scenarios in which you will somehow alter the conversation in such a way that your antagonist suddenly understands his faux pas, and gains insight into why “HAY” is actually sort of a rude question in the first place, especially when it’s asked of someone who is at work, which is the opposite time and place of the time and place when one can honestly answer the question.

“This person,” I say, “is an emotional fascist. He demands that I answer the question, but refuses to answer it himself. And what a fool I am not to have a better set of stock responses to that question. Fool I am that I take the question personally. Fool! Blasted out of my hard-gained equilibrium by the same little thing time and again.”

Fast forward 100 years. “He endured great and grievous, dark and dangerous spiritual trials,” says His Holiness. “Only a genuine saint such as he could have borne up under the countless interrogations directed at him so many times, for so many years. ‘How are you?’ they persisted. Our saint smiled, in his heart prayed, ‘Father! Forgive them!’ and said, ‘I’m okay!'”

“That is a great spiritual trial?” some would laugh. “How the great saints will laugh!”

The great spiritual trials of the saints have been the fiercest affairs. Our age has been blessed with outstanding examples of bravery, courage, fortitude, and faith: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. faced trials I don’t know how anyone could have faced.

“The dark night of the soul” has the romantic appeal one isn’t surprised at, coming from Carmelite poet St. John Of The Cross.

Mother Teresa underwent a lengthy dark night, a period of aridity, of doubt. She persevered throughout this great spiritual trial.

“Where are my great spiritual trials?” I have asked. What experiences have I had that outside observers would find impressive? In my mind, there have been some, but I hesitate to compare them to the tangible and intangible tortures inflicted upon others, saints and otherwise.

But that’s what the spiritual trials want– underestimation. The occasional burst of ugly profanity– not a big deal! It happens involuntarily, and would take an effort to eradicate that you’re not quite willing to undertake, so it’s a spiritual trial you haven’t the will to engage and overcome. You laugh to hear it described as a “great spiritual trial,” because if it was that momentuous, you would join the battle and prevail.

After you defeat it, you might think, “That wasn’t such a great spiritual trial after all,” but no matter. You honestly faced an issue that was compromising your better self, and defeated it.

Along the road, we are beset by plenty of these trials, these opportunities, all this baggage that weighs us down. Better to defeat a “great spiritual trial” and wonder how great it really was than to be defeated by a spiritual trial I allow to become greater than me because I refuse to take it seriously!

That starry sky at night, all those stars, galaxies: God is something like that. The rolling ocean: that too. Mountains a few can climb, but most can’t: those also work.

A group of beautiful, glowing orbs? Oh yes– the Sephirot!

We naturally back our way into the most authentic “religious practices” without a thought. In the right lane on the highway, cars merge from the onramp, and a driver naturally adjusts his speed to accommodate the onramp’s merging traffic. People usually do that for you, and you do it for them. If someone doesn’t, he probably had a good reason. You do unto others as you like them to do unto you, and you do not condemn the innocent.

The Sephirot, as representative of God, includes some divine characteristics, some of which can seem to conflict. Martin Buber’s “Tales Of The Hasidim” is full of stories relevant to that.

One such set of characteristics pairs “rigor” and “mercy.” Characteristics we all possess and sometimes struggle to balance.

These old musical groups from as far back as the ’60s still go out on the road and perform, as long as there’s an audience, and as long as there’s a semblance of the group. The so-called Somethin’-Somethin’s, say, had a #1 hit in 1964, which was recently used in a commercial for a fantastically popular shoe somewhere, and now that group has an audience there. Thanks to record company lawyers, the great-great-great grandson of the guy who played drums during the group’s only recording session now has the rights to the name. Four other guys are recruited, and these are the Somethin’-Somethin’s! Some obscure musicians get a gig, and lots of happy people enjoy the concerts.

At a kitchen table, sits a grandson of someone who bought the group’s only album when it was first released. He stumbled across it in his grampa’s house, and it touched him in a way little had, before or since. He youtubes this group’s shows, filled with disdain for the entire concept at work in this promotion.

Now they’re coming to his town, but there is no way he will go, because not only are they not the Somethin’-Somethin’s, they are the Anything But The Somethin’-Somethin’s. Had they changed the name a bit to acknowledge the reality of the situation, maybe he would go, but the artifice is deeply offensive.

This is understandable to anyone who has seen a favorite group replace a member and then act as if nothing had happened.

A group is coming to my town for maybe the first time ever, a favorite old group I’ve never seen. Research has revealed that only one of the four members is from the classic line-up that recorded those old albums.

Rigor kicks in. It’s not really them!

But a band can’t always hold onto members, whose careers can end for any number of reasons.  Can a fan say, “The new guys aren’t as good as the old guys, nor do they have their vision?” No. The new guys might be superior musicians, in the sense of combining technical ability and musical inspiration. The band as is might actually be better than before, although there’s no way of knowing that, the previous musicians being no longer around for comparison purposes. Do I know how long the “old” musicians had been in the band? No. Do I know how long the “new” musicians have been in the band? No. Do I know why the “old” musicians had been in the band? No. Do I know why the “new” musicians are in the band? No.

Rigor insists that reality be respected. This is not the same group of musicians one came to love so long ago, and those musicians will always hold first place in one’s affections for that group. That can’t be ignored.

But “mercy” also has a place. One decides fairness dictates that one give the “new” group a chance. It’s probably nobody’s fault that it isn’t the old group. And, as with all the things one loves,  some things can be understood, accepted, and charitably overlooked.