With Easter around the corner, we wanted to give some thought about what, how, and why we choose to celebrate.
I don’t remember where I first heard about Sasha Sagan’s book For Small Creatures Such as We, Finding Wonder and Meaning in Our Unlikely World, but I do remember it sitting in my online cart for months before I finally caved and bought a gently used second hand copy, somehow I ended up with an uncorrected proof for limited distribution, but that has not hampered my enjoyment.
In some ways, coming out of Christian Science, which is decidedly devoid of wonder and meaning, and working towards being a secular humanist (godless unchurched heathen), didn’t feel like much of a shift. I stopped going to church, but I wasn’t going all that often anyway. I had never gotten into the habit of attending Wednesday night services, and I certainly didn’t mark the books or read the lesson on a daily basis. The only notable service on the CS calendar is Thanksgiving, and aside from some truly spectacular testimonies, taking almost two hours of prep time out of your Thanksgiving day for an otherwise dull service really messes up the timing of the turkey.
Christian Science has no birth rituals, or concept of confession or atonement. There are no birthdays or anniversaries. No wedding celebrations, certainly no sex, and death is seen as a failing of the deceased. There are no feasts or fasts. There is the Lesson — you should read this daily, and there are The Books, and there is the Sunday Service and the Wednesday night Testimony Meeting and really, you should be there, what more do you need?
Leaving Christian Science opens the door to a world of possibilities for celebration and ritual. What do we want to celebrate, commemorate, or do and why?
Do we choose to celebrate Christmas as we did before, with the occasional Prin Holiday Sing, cookie-swap circuit for those church ladies who felt so inspired (we didn’t), and vague attempts at sharing the Nativity story and tying it in with CS? Or do we embrace secular-Christmas and celebrate family, togetherness, and add a bit of Solstice celebration in as well, with the return of light and warmth?
How do we celebrate Easter? What do we celebrate? Why? As children we would usually get new, often matching, outfits for church, having long outgrown the previous year’s floral abominations. My children still get new outfits, not for church, but because the seasonal shift usually needs new clothes. We celebrate with chocolate bunnies, an egg hunt, and brunch. Why? Why not? Because chocolate bunnies make me happy, and egg hunts are fun.
We celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, and some weeks we celebrate the simple fact it is finally the end of the week and work and school is done.
So why do we celebrate? I’ve struggled a bit with this, the children celebrate seasonal changes at school, and it made sense to acknowledge these events at home as well. Some things we celebrate out of a sense of tradition. We celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, a few calendar holidays – some with “religious“ origins. Does every celebration have a deeper meaning? No. Sometimes we celebrate because celebrations are fun, and people have celebrated for things for centuries, why stop now?
You can refer to so many posts on this page that share that “The Manual of The Mother Church” specifically states that we can have no special celebration for Easter.
I got to thinking about this last week. The religion proclaims to be Christian. And most Christians think that God gave us his “only begotten son.” And at some point along Christ Jesus’s journey, he died, laid in the tomb about 3 days, and then arose from the dead. This is a true miracle of a story. Christianity created a holiday from the Pagan tradition of Ostara, and named it Easter, to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the tomb.
And yet, Mary Baker Eddy said so clearly in “The Manual of The Mother Church” not to celebrate it.
My new journey and studies have taught me about narcissists. Eddy was clearly a narcissistic. My thoughts took me to the clear realization recently that she didn’t want any special days of devotion to Jesus; because she wanted every day to be about her. Continuing to think about this a bit more, I remember the Weekly Bible Lesson. Where we read the imperfect Holy Bible, and then have her to interpret it to us with her book, “Science and Health.” She gets the last word in. Every day, for every Christian Scientist.
I was once yelled at for daring to find a daycare center for the children of our Sunday School to have an Easter Egg hunt. It is so ingrained in the Christian Science mind set that we do NOT celebrate Easter.
Well, I am now decidedly OUT of the Christian Science mindset and church.
I got together for lunch a month or two ago with some Quaker girlfriends. One of them started talking about Easter baskets. It was clear that such a thing brings her so much joy. She has grown children, and she still makes baskets for herself and for her husband. I told her I have never in my life received an Easter basket.
Unphased, she told me to make my own. I have gone to the store in subsequent weeks, to pick up bread and basics. I see the Easter basket aisles at the store, and I just stand there and stare at the stuff on the shelf. None of it is appealing to me. Well, except maybe the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. I don’t care how those are wrapped, I like them.
I had to spend some time pondering what on earth I would want in my own Easter basket. Perhaps it’s not a stuffed animal bunny toy, or candy, or chocolate or PEZ dispensers. Or whatever else I have seen at the store. I wondered if I wanted candles or spa gift cards or shampoo or soap. Did I want a pair of fuzzy socks?
I have looked and looked at these items in the store. So many times over the week, and I just stare at it and it looks like junk to me. I don’t want a candle. I have candles. I don’t want fuzzy socks. I have fuzzy socks. I don’t need a new electronic device. I went to the spa to get my hair cut, so I am good with that. There is nothing that I want.
I was walking out of a major retailer yesterday, and saw yet another display devoted to Easter, of things they sell at the store. Easter lillies, Orchids and freshly cut flowers. They were beautiful – at least they weren’t junk. I stood there, took some photos of them, and enjoyed their beauty in the store. And I just know – I have plants and a beautiful orchid at home. I don’t need these plants in my Easter basket either.
It is interesting to me that this entire “tradition” of Easter is so devoted now to a culture of consumerism and spending money and junk that hurts the planet. Isn’t Easter supposed to be a time when the Earth is waking up, the way Jesus woke up from the tomb? Shouldn’t we be planting new things to enjoy for years to come — like native shade trees — instead of conusming the world’s resources — how much water and gasoline and deforestation and slave labor and shipping went in to making that toy or candy at the store, to sell it for $5 or less and become junk in some child’s room, so they have no room to dance or play with their imagination? Do we really need all this junk that surrounds us? Is that what Easter baskets are about?
These are the things I ponder as a Quaker who now thinks about the Quaker Testimonies – the SPICES:
S – Simplicity
P – Peace
I – Integrity
C – Community
E – Equality
S – Sustainability
Sustainability in my new Quaker Faith reminds me to think of George Fox saying to William Penn about his sword: “Use it as long as you can.
It reminds me not to acquire simply for the sake of acquiring. It reminds me to think and act responsibly in regards to my own consumerism. I recently learned the word “Resumerism,” which makes us think about “Reduce, Re-use, and Recycle.” Resumerism.
May all have a delightful Sunday and all future days.
Nothing, I believe, can really teach us the nature and meaning of inspiration but personal experience of it. That we may all have such experience if we will but attend to the divine influences in our own hearts …~ Caroline Stephen
This is part of an on-going series, for all posts in this series see the tag Chrystal’s Story.
A note from Chrystal: I was born a fourth-generation Christian Scientist, and finally left the religion when I was in my 40s. In this blog series, I will do my best to share with you my 40+ year journey. I have done my best to make the journey sequential, but it’s also themed to a large extent, and sometimes it has been necessary to take things out of sequence to share a theme.
The last straw for me to leave the second church, was this:
I had taught Sunday School there almost from the get-go. My sons were in Sunday School there. I had an intense strong belief that since the church proclaims they are a “Christian” church, that “The Holy Bible” should be taught every Sunday to the kids. I thought it made sense.
My older son had a teacher who would take photos and bring them to class. Random things. Frankly, none of the photos were worth a second glance to me. And this teacher would show photos to my son of random things and that was what Sunday School was like. He is a nice man, but I didn’t see any substance to the class.
My younger son’s teacher was a very good friend of mine – she was always one of my biggest supporters of all of my ideas to modernize our church. She is still a good friend to this day, and she has lovingly kept her mouth shut about me leaving CS, though I am certain it hurts her that I have left Christian Science. I remember her telling me how much it hurt her when her brother left. But she has been wonderfully lovingly supportive of me and never said how hurt she is by my leaving the religion. She taught my son’s class ½ time with another teacher; they alternated. My Sunday School class was the next grade up, and I sat right next to them so I knew what was going on the whole time. I remember the other teacher having the kids pray about what to draw, then draw, then cut the paper, then recycle the paper, then clean up the paper, and ok, let’s hold hands and now we will clean up. It was a moment of daycare. It wasn’t Sunday School. Neither teacher had a Bible-based education for the kids.
My final straw at that church was a Sunday School teacher’s meeting, and we all sat there and talked about rotating teachers for the new school year, and what would we like, and if you were a parent, what would you like. I spoke up and said, “I need my children to have The Bible taught to them; it’s a Christian church, teach The Bible. They aren’t stupid, they love the stories, teach The Bible. I need my kids to have teachers who teach The Bible.” A Christian Science Teacher was there and nodded along with me. She had previously taught my older son and said, “he knows his stuff.” She agreed with everything I said.
The classes were then arranged during the next few weeks, and my kids had been placed with the identical teachers. They had completely disregarded my input about my kids. I never went back to that branch church again. I honestly felt like it was a waste of my time.
I did try to attend yet another branch church, and it was my intention to join. (Apparently, “God” really had to clonk me on the head hard before I learned lessons. Or, I am fiercely loyal to a losing organization.) I walked in the door, knew people, they were so happy to see me, and there were no chairs for my kids. Their Sunday School was bursting at the seams. (They must be doing something right!) And they were too full and couldn’t find chairs for my kids. They did finally find chairs after a scramble. I think one got a rolling desk chair. That seemed kind of cool, to me, actually. But that was the first hint that we didn’t belong there – no physical room for my kids to be there.
The second clue I got was a long nasty email from one of the members there who said, “you didn’t even say ‘hi’ to me.” She went on and on. I hadn’t even seen her, and if I am the new one who walked in the door, shouldn’t she be the one to come over and greet me? A lot of the other people got that memo and caught me and talked to me and I couldn’t exactly walk around and go look at all the people. Her email was so long and so angry, that I said, “I’m not doing this again.” And I never went back to another branch church. I had finally gotten the memo that the Christian Science church experience really isn’t for me. My kids still loved Christian Science Sunday School, so I let them attend every now and then with my brothers at their church for about a year. We also started visiting other kinds of churches together. The changeable nature of all of this started to take a toll on my kids; I had also dragged them to other Christian Science churches when we were working on the VBS. It all added up and they got tired of the lack of stability. That was a rough patch, added on to the other rough patches.
Didn’t Jesus say in The Bible, “they will know you are my followers by how much you love one another” (John 13:35)? Clearly, this is a church that isn’t getting that memo.
I left branch church experience feeling completely burned out, depressed (though I didn’t have words for that because I had faithfully muted every commercial, and denied all of my “negative” emotions), disengaged, fried, and un-creative. They took the best of me and ground me completely under foot, and made sure every single door had hit me on the way out. I had successfully prayed away every single part of my personality, and I was now a walking zombie, barely able to take care of my kids. But I was blind to all of that. It took me 6 years to recognize that, because “denial is strong with our people.”
Now that I have been out of the church for a few years, I am starting to realize my ideas were NOT bad: they were just close minded people with a serious fear of any kind of change. The church is happily stuck in the 19th century, and they don’t want to budge. For a church that preaches, “Fear not, be not afraid” (Isaiah 44:8), they are the most fear-filled people I have ever known.
For about a year after leaving the Christian Science branch church experience, I knew that was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life. I considered this experience of leaving to be “my divorce experience.” My husband (who was never a Christian Scientist and has been completely supportive of me in my spiritual journey) told me, “I expect you will need to heal for a while after this.” He was right. I am now more than 5 years out of the branch church experience, and I am finally starting to feel better.
Notes from Chrystal:
Here is a resource about emotional abuse. It is painful stuff. Please read this and get out of any relationship where you are being emotionally abused. I am still recovering from this painful experience.
Unless you have formally withdrawn your membership, you are likely still counted as a member of the Mother Church, aka The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston.
A quick e-mail to the Office of the Clerk, can confirm if you are still a member. If you are still a member, you can formally withdraw your membership via e-mail, or write a letter. You can reach the Church Clerk at: [email protected]
More information about withdrawing from The Mother Church can be found in our Resource Index drop down menu.
This is part of an on-going series, for all posts in this series see the tag Chrystal’s Story.
A note from Chrystal: I was born a fourth-generation Christian Scientist, and finally left the religion when I was in my 40s. In this blog series, I will do my best to share with you my 40+ year journey. I have done my best to make the journey sequential, but it’s also themed to a large extent, and sometimes it has been necessary to take things out of sequence to share a theme.
The Last Straw (Part 1)
Leaving my first branch church
A gal who had been raised in a Bible Belt kind of church had a toddler son. It was coming up on Easter Sunday, and she wanted an Easter Egg hunt for her son, because her neighbors were elderly and she didn’t have anyone else she knew who had kids, so she thought it would be fun for the kids at church. I know “The Manual of The Mother Church” by Mary Baker Eddy specifically states, “no special celebrations at Easter,” and I knew the members would hate the idea. I thought really fast, because I was proceeding from a place of “let’s let our member who converted to Christian Science feel loved and accepted,” and I said, “let’s call the daycare place next door, and see if we can use their playground for our Easter Egg Hunt on Easter Sunday!” This gal loved the idea. I wasn’t going to be in town, but I arranged for all of it to happen. Then, I gave the announcement to the First Reader.
The Sunday before Easter, I had just finished teaching Sunday School, and the Second Reader came storming down the stairs to me in Sunday School — she was angry. Whew! My students hadn’t all been picked up yet by their parents. This church member started to berate me and tell me off, with complete disregard to my students. She couldn’t believe that as Second Reader, she had to hear about this from the announcement! How dare I come up with having an Easter Egg Hunt at church!
I couldn’t get a word in edgewise for at least 7 minutes. She knew how to talk without breathing and I couldn’t interrupt her to say, “it wasn’t my idea! It was this other person’s idea, and I moved it over to the daycare so it wouldn’t be on church grounds!” I couldn’t believe how furious she was with me for this thing that I had tried to arrange so our own member could feel loved. As this church member friend berated me in front of my Sunday School kids, I realized, “oh my gosh, she won’t let me speak to say ‘it’s not even my idea,’ and “it has come to this in the church: people think: ‘that idea is SO BAD, it MUST be Chrystal’s.’”
As it turned out, the parents had the Easter Egg hunt in our own parking lot (remember – I was out of town), and several moms griped to me about how terrible it was. I had arranged for the daycare playground next door, and they chose our own dirty parking lot with litter and gravel among the Easter Eggs. Way to celebrate Jesus Christ’s resurrection. (This church has a bus stop at the edge of the property, and I have seen cigarette butts in the parking lot too. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were also cigarette butts among the Easter Eggs!)
I remember lying awake in bed with that drama playing in my head over and over and over. It was the middle of the night, and I pictured the story of Daniel in the Lion’s Den. I got out of bed with my husband sleeping right there, and my boys sleeping in their rooms down the hall. I knelt down next to my bed and prayed. I had never knelt down on my knees, folded my hands and prayed. But I knelt down the way I thought Daniel might have done every day, and I prayed. I prayed as hard as I could pray. I cried and cried, and I prayed and prayed. I remember suddenly having a vision of “a new heaven and a new church,” (a clever variation on Revelation 21:1) and I knew everything would be ok.
I withdrew my name from membership 2 days later. (I had planned to withdraw 3 days later, but I got a phone call from another member berating me for something else, so I resigned immediately after that phone call. It had all gone on long enough.) Stupid me, I went to another branch church and joined them the following Sunday. (I told them “your branch is closer to my house, so I am just switching.” It was closer to my home, but that wasn’t completely why I was switching.)
Notes from Chrystal:
Here is a resource about emotional abuse. It is painful stuff. Please read this and get out of any relationship where you are being emotionally abused. I am still recovering from this painful experience.
Unless you have formally withdrawn your membership, you are likely still counted as a member of the Mother Church, aka The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston.
A quick e-mail to the Office of the Clerk, can confirm if you are still a member. If you are still a member, you can formally withdraw your membership via e-mail, or write a letter. You can reach the Church Clerk at: [email protected]
More information about withdrawing from The Mother Church can be found in our Resource Index drop down menu.
