As we come to the celebration of Beltaine, the Christians are having their Easter Sunday. The whole point of their faith hangs on the fact of Easter and the fact that their god's son, Yeshua Bar-Joseph, died and rose from the dead. It is an event which, as Pope Benedict XVI describes it, is not in disagreement with science, but is beyond science. And what can a Wiccan learn from the Christians' Easter?
Perhaps quite a bit, especially given that so much of what Christians believe originated with Jesus' story preceded him, often by centruies if not millenia. The Last Supper was in fact a Passover Seder, but other aspects of it call on other traditions. Most Jews would recognize the baptisms done by John The Baptist as being the Mikvah, a ritual bath not unlike what many Wiccans and Pagans do. The prophecy of Simeon in the Temple at Jesus's presentation (when he was nine days old) speaks of a phenomenon which was supposedly not supposed to happen until years later after the resurrection. And "justification by faith" can be found in Genesis in the story of Abram. Hey, even the resurrection wasn't the first one - rememebr the one whom Jesus resurrected?
So, what's the big deal? Well, all of them got packaged into one big "bing-bangitty-boom" with a mighty shock to one and all! And if these things were not new gifts, then they were brought together so that people would pay attention to them and use them. It meant that folks didn't have excuses not to use them anymore!
And that's what a lot of folks on many paths miss - the importance of finding out how much we already have and using it! And maybe, just maybe, this was their god's way of hitting them on the head with a spiritual baseball bat to get them to notice!
