my heart is a glorious machine;

It's Easter, which I always feel a bit odd about--partially because it makes me so angry and frustrated that the world at large keeps going on trying to force the holiest day in the Christian calendar into yet another frivolous show of commercialism, and partially because I don't know--how to honour the day, exactly. I wish I could manage to work out some way to make it very special and emotional--make it really mean something, you know, because the magic of Easter and the Resurrection is of an awfully stronger sort than the magic of Christmas and Christ's birth, but--the holiday is sort of shunted off to the side, especially in comparison, so you don't get this great anticipation, this joy and--well, I reckon some people do, and I wish I could find some way to make it so for myself. I rather fancy the Russian Orthodox tradition of not eating meat, and mourning on Friday and Saturday, and spending a vigil in the church all night with some ceremony having to do with the tomb (I'm foggy on the details) and then having a great joyous feast with friends and family on Easter Sunday because it brings sadness and joy a bit more into focus, but I can see that it would easily become just another holiday and just another set of traditions like Christmas is to many people, if their hearts weren't in the right place. (Of course, that's the danger with everything, including Christianity itself--lots of people have relegated it into a set of traditions and morals instead of--oh, I think we've got it all muggy, how it's supposed to be, but I imagine that the real way Christ-believing ought to be is a brilliant, wider sort of living--not all this separating into sects and factions of Catholic and Protestant and Christian and Secular and Baptist and Presbyterian and all that, but living the way we were meant to, without all the rubbish of worldly living and sin cluttering up our souls. It's hard to get into words. I don't know, I reckon I'm just a little frustrated with how a lot of Christians have sort of seperated themselves from Everybody Else, and quite a lot of others don't like that so they go and try to be just like Everybody Else instead of--well, it's a delicate balance, a tightrope walk, isn't it? Not being in some far-off Fortress of Christianity where the unbelievers can't get you or understand you, but not being of the world, either. I suppose I'm really messing things up; I can never seem to describe my feelings about things properly.)

I suppose the thing is that though I fully believe that Christ died for us and washed us clean of sins and opened the curtain to forgiveness and intimacy with God, I only believe it intellectually, with my mind. I haven't--quite--got it in my heart and feelings. I know he died for me, but I don't have this feeling like, oh, blimey, God died for me. Personally. I wasn't even born yet but he loved me that much and he died so that I wouldn't have to. It's like bits don't connect right in my head, or my emotions, but emotions are very silly things and we're not supposed to put too much stock in them anyway. (Unfortunately I am a writer, and we are particularly emotional creatures.) 

I suppose I'm not making a lot of sense, but then, I'm not making a lot of sense to myself, either. 

(I'm like Thomas doubting
fingers routing the scars
of Your wrists and sides
touching flesh will make my mind believe

but I want to be like David
throwing my clothes to the wind
to dance a jig, in my skin
and be remade by Your cleansing again

I give You myself, it's all that I have
broken and frail, I'm clay in Your hands
I'm spinning, unconcealed
dizzy on this wheel
for You my Love)