Baby Steps and Easter

Soon after creating this blog, I crashed against the realization that maintaining it current was a lot of work, and sort of gave up on it. Then recently I reflected upon the myriad of things that remain undone because of a near-universal urge for instant gratification, perniciously widespread in these days of sound bytes and information overload when sleep sometimes seems a crime.

So here's a resolution to proceed in this and other endeavors with baby steps. I'll make one blog post per week. This is my commitment. If I get in the mood for more, fine, but this I will do, if only to say what a boring, work-drenched, innovation-sapping, procrastination-inducing week I had.

Which I didn't. Work was interesting, and now my wife and I are preparing for Easter tomorrow. We're both reluctant atheists--convinced on an intellectual level of the vanishingly low probability of an actual deity, but having warm and fuzzy memories of religious and traditional celebrations from our Eastern Orthodox (mine Greek, hers Russian) childhood. Sea of candles, the light spreading from the priest at midnight like an exploding nova. Mageiritsa soup, red eggs battling for supremacy, lamb roasting on the skewer, egg bread and halvah. For her, growing up in communism, it was less the actual experience as the stories, in books and poems, and small little touches like happy faces on eggs and the defiant faithful whispering Christos Voskrece.

So we'll recreate a bit of this tomorrow. We're going to St. Sophia, the beautiful Greek Church in Los Angeles, for the Agape service, then we're filling up the car with food from the Greek restaurant across the street: wine, Agiorgitiko and Xinomavro, then all kinds of pies, tyropites, spanakopites, kreatopites. Lamb of course, and cheeses, myzithra, feta, kefalotyri, kasseri, names that make my mouth water still. And last but not least the desserts: Galaktoboureko, kataifi, loukoumades, melomakarona.

Hungry yet? ;-)

Then at home we'll set up the table, and wait for our friend to arrive, because that's the great fun of Easter, the joy, the sharing, the hope. Does it matter for what? Perhaps if we could generate our own inner fun without always needing a reason, then the light of Easter or what Easter means--hope--would shine more than one day a year.