As a UU parent, I have a rule about holidays, especially religious ones that have become mainstream, particularly Christmas and Easter: If we’re going to celebrate it, we’re going to learn the history of it. So a couple weeks ago when my son let me know he wanted to celebrate Easter, he also let me know he was, “ready for the RE (religious education) lesson” whenever I was ready to give it.
I’ve worked with kids since I was one myself, which will be 16 years this summer. As the oldest of four kids and nine grandkids, I had plenty of practice before I was old enough to apply to be a camp counselor, and I had perfected my mom voice and my “don’t even try it” stare long before my son came on the scene.
As long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a mother. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t too freaked out when I became pregnant unexpectedly at 21. I’ve never once doubted my ability to care for and nurture a child. I never worried about taking care of my baby, but I worried about everything that could happen. Everything I couldn’t control.
I had a threatened miscarriage at about 11 weeks pregnant and I don’t think I’ve stopped bracing ever since.
My 39-week, 10 pound, 4 ounce NICU graduate has since been my teammate on a truly wild journey, each moment a beautiful story of its own right. Being a solo parent of an exceptional kid with exceptional needs is intense. I won’t say it’s easy, but I will say he keeps me on my toes. He is never satisfied with incomplete answers and sometimes his questions feel endless.
He turned 4 a month before the pandemic started, and we spent the next year in near-total isolation. I was just starting seminary and working as a religious educator for a UU congregation at the time, and I was suddenly tasked not only with facilitating online religious education and supporting online worship, but also with navigating lockdown myself and explaining to my own child what was going on.
I decided a few things early on:
- My goal was to be there for my kids and families, to use this opportunity to prove to them that church will always be there and be a safe place for them, and demonstrate the healing power of beloved community.
- I was going to be real. I didn’t have a choice – I didn’t have the energy to pretend I was coping any better than anyone else was, but I could model breathing into the discomfort we were all experiencing instead of pretending it didn’t exist.
- My kid lived and struggled through it as much as anyone else. He deserves honesty from me about things that impact him. There is always a way to tell a child the truth in a way that is both appropriate and comprehensible to them.
It feels vaguely like my colleagues and I have been through a battle – probably because so many of us have PTSD from pandemic ministry. There is a weariness now that wasn’t there before. So many more gray hairs and fine lines. We all look so much more tired. All the while the death rattles of “the way things used to be” echo in our memories and email inboxes as we comfort those who still mourn and try to make it all make sense.
So I’ll be honest that when my son told me he was ready for his “RE lesson,” I grumbled. It was my day off and I was solidly in weekend project mode. I wondered how long it would take me to find a YouTube video that wasn’t too evangelical. I considered chucking out my stupid fake woke rule entirely – we were on our way to pick up McDonald’s for his lunch after all, who was I fooling?
So I pulled up my big pastor pants, decided what was most important to me for him to know, and filled in the necessary details as we settled in for another car ride sermon he’ll surely talk about in therapy one day.
“Christians celebrate Easter to commemorate the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. We’ll talk about what all those words mean. The first thing you need to know is that Jesus was a Jewish Rabbi. He didn’t necessarily think he was starting a new religion, more likely he thought he was doing Judaism differently…”
I hit all the high points:
- He had some radical ideas, like helping people and resisting the government.
- That made some people mad, especially the government.
- He was a lot like MLK in that he inspired a lot of people, and that made him powerful as well as threatening to those already in power.
- It’s important to remember that Jesus was a Brown man, and that there are no white people in the Bible.
- Do you know what country he was from? We’ve been talking about it a lot lately. Right, Jesus was born in what’s now known as Palestine. Most of the people who live there now are Muslim.
- He was betrayed by a friend and sentenced to death by the government.
- He died by crucifixion, which was an especially brutal way to die
- He died right before shabbat and was buried quickly in a tomb.
This is the most important part, so pay attention:
The story goes that on Sunday morning, one of his most beloved students, Mary Magdalene, went to the tomb to tend to his body. Some people have historically said some unkind things about her, but it’s probably because she was special and people were jealous.
Mary Magdalene and another woman went to tend to his body and probably do rituals for his death. An angel announced that Jesus had risen from the dead and told them to share the good news, and then Jesus himself appeared and told them the same, so they did.
“And that,” I said, pausing for dramatic effect as we pulled into the parking lot, “is how women became the first preachers of the gospel.”
I paused to order his nuggets, then continued, “That’s important because women have been historically excluded from preaching and being ministers, but that’s silly, isn’t it, because women were the very first preachers of the resurrection.”
Later that night, as I sat fact-checking my earlier statements (as one does after a car sermon, since pausing to Google while driving is generally frowned upon) I stumbled upon some discourse about why Mary Magdalene would be visiting the tomb in the first place, why she would want to anoint his body.
One stance argued that it was a funeral ritual, likely with religious significance.
Another countered it would be a practical impossibility, (Quote Thomas Sheehan) : “…the completion of the burial rites on a Sunday morning after burial on Friday night is inconceivable in the Palestinian climate, in which decomposition would already have set in.”
There is no poetic or gentle segue – the next thing I thought was that over 30,000 Palestinians, including over 13,000 children, have been killed by Israel since October 2023. Many of their bodies will never be recovered, anointed, prayed over, laid to rest before they are reduced to dust.
This round of war that was inflamed in part by false claims about beheaded Israeli babies is continuing as real Palestinian children starve to death from famine manufactured by some of the richest countries in the world, who are simultaneously bombing them.
And we’re all scrolling past it on Instagram like it’s another ad for those damn leggings we don’t want to see.
If we’re being honest, I think the reason nobody seems to want to look too closely is the cognitive dissonance caused by realizing we are not acting in line with our values is just too uncomfortable to bear. Of course we don’t support what’s happening. Of course this is awful and we need to stop it. Somebody really should do something, shouldn’t they?
But if we pay attention to this – if we let this break us open the way that it threatens to, we know we can never go back. Remaining apathetic and neutral is less exhausting and soul-baring than speaking up for something difficult, especially when one runs the risk of being canceled for saying the wrong thing or admitting they’re not boycotting perfectly.
Beloveds, I don’t have all the answers. I have fossilized french fries in my back seat, bills to pay, emails to answer, and a to-do list as long as my arm. What I do know is this: I’ve been bracing for the last 9 years, ever since I was 11 weeks pregnant and praying to a God I wasn’t sure I believed in to not let me lose a baby that I wasn’t sure I was ready for.
That knowledge of the great, unspeakable grief so many parents live in fear of, that big what-if that is too scary to say out loud, that ultimate, horrible, worst-fear, heart-sinking, gut-punching, I can’t even fathom pain we are so often subconsciously bracing for – the parents of Palestine have suffered through it over thirty thousand times. How much more must they suffer before we believe them and do something about it?
Contrary to popular belief, the first sin recorded in Genesis is Cain’s jealousy of Abel, which ultimately motivated Cain’s murder of his brother. I would argue that ultimately, the first sin is killing a mother’s child.
Every single one of the over thirty thousand Palestinian martyrs killed since October was somebody’s child. Every single one was a journey and a beautiful story in their own right. Every single one had inherent worth and dignity, was made in the image of God, and deserved to live freely according to their own conscience and desires.
The thirteen thousand Palestinian children killed in the last five months deserved to grow up.
This aggression has cost the world ancient olive trees and holy sites, countless scholars, journalists, and storytellers, and it will rob us all of our humanity if we let it. There are no excuses when it is playing out for us in real-time from the palm of our hand – we cannot look away.
We must refuse to look away – our children are watching, and they will have questions.
“Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” Matthew 25:40
This is a direct personal challenge to mobilize in the ways you can.
If you can pray, pray.
If you can post, post.
If you can learn, learn.
If you can teach, teach.
If you can preach, preach.
If you can organize, organize.
Don’t stop talking about it, and don’t accept silence.
If you are involved in a congregation or or organization, connect with leadership about how you can support education and organization efforts in solidarity with Palestine and in support of a total ceasefire in your community. This is an opportunity to live our values.
Let us be the ones we’ve been waiting for.
Helen "HP" Rivers 
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