My eight year old daughter (I have five children at home) looked out at our willow tree three weeks ago when all the many other trees were still “dead” and cried out\u00c2\u00a0 excitedly, “Look Mama!\u00c2\u00a0 The willow tree came back to life!” She was so amazed, and my three year old with her.\u00c2\u00a0 Out the door they went to investigate.<\/p>\n
My children love that tree (we planted it after the baby was born last year) and were so sad it had “died” over the winter.\u00c2\u00a0 Her sudden lightbulb moment realization made me realize why the ancients loved spring so much.\u00c2\u00a0 It was\u00c2\u00a0thus vitally\u00c2\u00a0important\u00c2\u00a0for Jesus \/ Yeshua \/ Adonis \/ Tammuz \/ Osiris to “die” and then come back to life in the Spring.\u00c2\u00a0 Ancient people must have been very afraid all winter long that Nature was dead for good, and might not resurrect. Since Nature was feminine, it made sense that a male god would come and “fertilize” her with his “blood.”\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, there is the Greek Demeter\/Persephone story, where the annually\u00c2\u00a0resurrected one (comes up from her descent into hell) is a goddess.<\/p>\n
Anyway, that’s why we love Spring — and Easter!<\/p>\n
Went out yesterday hunting for palm branches or decorations.\u00c2\u00a0 I wanted to put up all the bunnies and eggs, yes, but also add some palms, lilys\u00c2\u00a0and white donkey colts, maybe some rolling tomb stones, etc.\u00c2\u00a0 No crosses, though.\u00c2\u00a0 Not going there yet, my girls don’t need to dwell on that symbol.\u00c2\u00a0 I just read yesterday how the early Christians despised the cross as a symbol and used the Ichthys “Jesus fish” and the anchor instead.\u00c2\u00a0 Then came the Chi Rho, and only 400 years later, the crucifix.\u00c2\u00a0 Yuck.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
But we\u00c2\u00a0didn’t find any of these “alternative” easter decorations.\u00c2\u00a0 Got a bunch of cling to the window bunnies, eggs and chicks.\u00c2\u00a0 Might have to hit the larger Christian bookstores in Fort Worth or Dallas\u00c2\u00a0for such non-pagan Easter decorations.\u00c2\u00a0 Our local\u00c2\u00a0shop didn’t have anything, although the florist will be getting real palm leaves and lily flowers the end of this week.\u00c2\u00a0 My little girls did find a God’s Little Princess Bible.\u00c2\u00a0 So cute.\u00c2\u00a0 Says all little girls are princesses because they are the daughter of a King.\u00c2\u00a0 “Who is the King?” they asked and I said Creator-God.\u00c2\u00a0 El aka Yah, aka God-the-Father.\u00c2\u00a0 Jesus being King of Kings notwithstanding.\u00c2\u00a0 I really think they mean God-the-Creator\/Father when they say all girls are daughters of the King.\u00c2\u00a0 The Princess Bible is full of charming activities of a princess-y nature and I look forward to using it in our home esoteric Sunday School.<\/p>\n
Official name is God’s Little Princess Devotional Bible<\/a> by Sheila Walsh.\u00c2\u00a0 Click above to see the cute hard-back cover and read about it — it’s only $11.<\/p>\n Katia<\/p>\n \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My eight year old daughter (I have five children at home) looked out at our willow tree three weeks ago when all the many other trees were still “dead” and cried out\u00c2\u00a0 excitedly, “Look Mama!\u00c2\u00a0 The willow tree came back to life!” She was so amazed, and my three year old with her.\u00c2\u00a0 Out the … Continue reading Easter: Christian Pagan Resurrection of Nature & God<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-what-sunday-school-wont-teach"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernway.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernway.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernway.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernway.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernway.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernway.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernway.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernway.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernway.org\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}