Life Goes On

Easter is coming, and I’m looking forward to being Martha. There are menus to plan and recipes to decide upon and shopping lists to collate and then recopy so that all of the items are listen in the order in which I will encounter them in the grocery store. There is cleaning to do and to delegate, tables to set, and bacon baskets to be crafted. No idle hands here.

I like entertaining – being able to delight loved ones with food, drink, and merriment. And I like planning/organizing; it’s comforting. It’s a thing that I’m good at and that creates artefacts and has no real stress attached. It’s low-risk, high-reward (at least to myself, because I’ll eat anything – might be a bit higher risk to my guests since I typically prepare the Easter feast while fasting and thus not taste-testing anything along the way).

Is it just distraction? Am I just trying to get myself through the Triduum? Am I trying to keep busy in the kitchen under the auspices of hospitality so that I don’t have to face the grey, bleak reality of Good Friday? No, I don’t think so. I think that would make for a nicer paragraph, if I could somehow turn this into an emotional admission of vulnerability and hard truths, and come out the other side with some sort of admonition to myself to be more Mary, more in-the-moment, and to not stay in the kitchen because I can’t stand the heat (of the Passion).

But that doesn’t ring true. There’s time to be Mary and to be Martha. I can experience Gethsemane, the betrayal, the crucifixion, and the resurrection – and still get dinner on the table. The Passion is draining, and people get hungry; one of the first acts of the resurrected Jesus was to ask the disciples for some fish. At the end of the day, life goes on – and that’s exactly why we celebrate.

— MeganPrestonMeyer