Duality Day

I'm not sure I have any credence as a religious scholar, but that doesn't prevent me from thinking about religious things. Religion is fascinating, and not least because of the following possible conversation:

"In our religion, we don't eat pork."
"Hah! In ours, we celebrate with a ham dinner, just to keep people like you out!"

Well, a conversation along those lines might have happened once.

I was raised Christian, specifically Lutheran, but I'm not too sure what that means and, in any case, it doesn't seem to have stuck. Most of the holidays in my family were secular ones, with bunnies replacing break-of-dawn trips to church and chocolate eggs taking the place of communion wafers. Mom and I once traveled to Forest Lawn, a decadent local cemetery, to see Da Vinci's Last Supper recreated in stained glass, but I don't think we were there for any religious reasons.

The point is, I wasn't raised as a Catholic, although I had as many Catholic friends growing up as I did Jewish ones. I know the names of some Catholic things, if not the reasoning behind them, and this year I followed some tradition by avoiding eggs for Lent just to see what it was like. The experience, in the end, was awkward, if not particularly religious.

Yesterday, the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, was also my niece's birthday, although she's of an age where her kid's birthdays are more of a big deal than her own is. The day, also, I think, falls into some religious Black Hole, by which I mean I have no idea if it has a special name or significance or not.

I pick "not," but I spent a good five minutes yesterday thinking about it. In the possible footsteps and manner of Jesus' followers, I went out for Chinese food yesterday, something I can envision them doing to deal with the grief I'm sure they felt. I know it's difficult for me to cook, or to be bothered with shopping, when I'm feeling down, and I have no reason to doubt such an emotional time calls for some Kung Pao chicken or, perhaps, a healthy portion of beef chow mein.

Then, it occurred to me. Like I said starting out this entry, I'm no scholar, but I think a case could be made for the day between Jesus' death and resurrection as being the only day since Christmas when there was no Trinity. I have no idea what the religious significance, if any, of Saturday is, but the way I see it, if the Trinity started with Jesus' birth and continues until this very day because he came back from the dead and is riding shotgun in heaven, Saturday he was well and truly dead.

So, after some thirty or forty years of there being a father, son, and holy ghost, for that one day only there was no son looking over the world and tsk-tsking at all the people in judgment. God was still there and the holy ghost, of course, was up to whatever holy ghosts do, but the son was dead and if that's true, there was no Trinity that day.

So, until the day I die, I'll give it it's special place, respect the two legs of the triangle, and call it Duality Day.