Easter questions

This year I celebrated Easter on my own with a walk by the lake and a quick lunch at a café, where a super kind owner added a small table to a booked-out room to accommodate me. I also wandered into an open church and found myself lighting a candle and spending a few mindful minutes there in silence.

I’ve been in what I half-jokingly refer to as my "mystical crisis” for as long as I can remember. My dad was a Protestant who later converted to Buddhism, while my mom has always been an “on and off” Catholic. As a kid, I attended a mix of Protestant and Catholic masses, and after my dad’s conversion, we’d occasionally go to a Buddhist temple. He was also drawn to Native American culture, and I still remember a book of their poems that shaped my early sense of spirituality and connection with nature.

I was baptized Catholic when I was seven, but by then I was already grappling with questions. I vividly recall young ML trying to reconcile ideas of reincarnation with the concept of Paradise, and also trying to reconcile faith with science (our primary school science and religion teachers had presented very different stories about the creation of the universe!).

When people ask, I say I’m agnostic because it feels like the only honest answer. I don’t hold strong, clear beliefs, but I also feel (or want to feel) that we’re more than mere biological machines. I believe there’s a force and energy that connects us all in some way, and my yoga practice has reinforced this belief. And while I’m not discounting the atrocities organized religion has inflicted on humanity over the centuries, I can also see the value it has provided—including a sense of community that seems to be increasingly absent in modern life.

I was reminded of an interview I'd come across when the film Conclave came out. As Fiennes says, at the end of the day we’re all looking for answers and a sense of coherence because “Life is messy. Life is shitty. Life is unpredictable”. Mankind has always built churches and created gods “because the world is chaos”, as Tucci puts it. A completely godless society, to me, would feel hopeless. And as I sat in the church, I realized Easter might not need to mean more than this: a quiet reminder to hold onto hope.

There's no resolution in sight to my mystical crisis, but I still think entertaining these questions from time to time is worthwhile. As always, I enjoy hearing other people's perspectives and experiences, so feel free to share any insights or comments you might have, I'd love to read them.

PS A few pics from my walk.