In the midst of this Easter weekend, I'm reminded of the family rituals that linger in spite of significant changes in my life. Since I am no longer a practicing Catholic, my Holy Week schedule is pretty light. No Palm Sunday procession. No stations of the cross each day. No Holy Thursday service where we imitate the washing of the disciples feet. No Good Friday services with the passion play and the congregants reading the parts of the mob (shouting "crucify him"). No snuffing of candles and stripping the altar of all decoration to honor the time of Jesus laying in the tomb. No Holy Saturday plans to go to church with our lamb cake and jelly beans, to be blessed by the priest, in preparation for our Easter celebration of Jesus' rising from the dead. So many things that aren't a part of my life or my spiritual practice anymore.
And yet today, I am thinking about all of these things. I am remembering the house rules of no electronics on Good Friday afternoon - my mother's way of observing the huge sacrifice that was done for us. Our home was silent, dark, and without the comforting hum of most everything except our refrigerator. I'm preparing for a big Easter dinner and gathering the ingredients for my lamb cake. Why? It's strange to me and also very comforting. Every Easter since I left my parents' home I have had lamb cake. A couple times it was mailed to me by my mom. Other times the cake was purchased at a chain store bakery. For the last decade, I have made my own, in my very own, lamb cake mold.
Anyone who has ever had Easter with me knows that eating the lamb cake is NOT my favorite thing. It doesn't really rank very high on the yummy cake chart. I make the cake and it sits on the table as a little Easter centerpiece, surrounded by jelly beans and green cellophane grass and I feel happy. I've never been sure why but I think it's because it was always the one "nice" activity of the otherwise scary and confusing holy week. All week long I would be told the litany of abuses and betrayals and outright torture that makes up the details of Jesus' last days. It was vivid and brutal and seemingly without end. On Saturday morning when we returned to church to have our cake blessed, there were no gruesome stories. There were prayers and holy water sprinkled about and there were wonderful smells. Other families brought their eggs, fancy breads, and even hams. I was never sure how it related to Jesus' death and resurrection but I was grateful for the reprieve.
Why have I let go of so much that was important to my family as a child and embrace other elements so fiercely? As I've gotten older, I realize how few people there are that share these holy week/lamb cake memories with me. Maybe the lamb cake is just one of the threads I'm not willing to cut -one of the threads that ties me to my unique family and keeps me a part of them no matter how much I change.
What's your lamb cake?
