Easter

Coral Wilson Alleluia! Christ is risen! And that doesn't just mean he has thawed out, the Rev. Peter Haynes told the congregation of St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church in Corona del Mar on Easter morning. Haynes' challenge every Sunday is to get people's attention. "Especially on Easter, I try to give them the whole shot at once," he said. Incorporating the controversial subject of cryogenics into his sermon, Haynes warned his congregation not to fall into the "Christ on ice" trap.

Luis Pena Easter services typically begin at 9 or 10 a.m. inside a church, but a few early-rising souls brought their blankets and lawn chairs to hear sunrise services on the beach. As Christians made their way one by one onto the sand at 14th Street on the Balboa Peninsula, a tall wooden cross surrounded by lilies awaited them as Christ Church by the Sea United Methodist welcomed its own parishioners along with worshipers from other churches.

Beloveds in Christ, Easter is our defining moment as Christians and resurrection defines Easter. When you think of Jesus' resurrection, what comes to mind? A miracle? That after being executed, Jesus came to life in a resurrected body fully accessorized with supernatural powers? This is a fair, maintainable point of view. But at that time and place, accounts of "awakenings from death" were neither unknown nor uncommon. So the proclamation of Jesus rising from the dead would not have been new news.

DAVID SILVA Every Easter morning, at first light, my mother would wake up the kids and commence the difficult task of getting us ready for church. This required a lot of time and endless patience, neither of which my mother ever had. As long as she loomed over us, threatening and cajoling every step of the way, we would steadily dress ourselves to the point at which we could be seen in public. But the moment she turned her back, off we would run to do something entirely unrelated to the subject of salvation.

Let me start off by saying that if you ever get the chance to stay in Florence for Easter, do it! Granted, it's crowded and the hotels cost more, but the celebration on Easter morning is definitely worth the extra trouble. About 10 a.m. Sunday morning, I made my way to the Duomo (the cathedral) where the festivities take place. I thought, knowing there would be fireworks, that I had plenty of time to catch the big show. You know, fireworks happen at night. However, I was wrong and made it just in time.

Today is Easter, which commemorates the day Christians believe Jesus Christ was resurrected from the dead after being crucified on the cross. However, Easter can exist throughout everyone's lives, says the Rev. George Crisp of Christ Church by the Sea on Balboa Peninsula. On Thursday, Crisp, who leads his United Methodist congregation, sat down with Daily Pilot City Editor James Meier to discuss how important Easter is to Christians. Q: What should Easter mean to Christians?

"In your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it . . ." OK, what's the next line? Tick-tick-tick-tick. Buzzzz. "You'll be the grandest lady in the Easter parade." Irving Berlin, 1933, by the way. As holidays go, I like Easter. There's none of the stress of other holidays like, yikes, Christmas. No gifts, no decorations, no whirlwind of parties and events, etc. It's a nice, quiet time of rebirth, religious and otherwise. Glorious weather, spring flowers, trees bursting with life -- a season that anyone can love.

For Christians and Jews, all of our religious holidays divide us except for Passover and Easter. Passover and Easter divide us by bringing us closer together. Let me try to explain this exquisite spiritual contradiction. Passover and Easter are different in that Passover, as theologian Martin Buber has written, is celebrated by a meal eaten for God, while Easter is celebrated by a meal eaten of God. Passover celebrates a God who could not become visible, while Easter celebrates a God who had to become visible to save a sinful humanity.

1. A GOOD EGG: The Newport Dunes Resort offers a wide variety of Easter events this weekend. For starters, local children can participate in a bonnet-decorating contest at 1 p.m. today. At 2:30 p.m., the Easter Bunny will hide colored eggs on the shores of the Dunes. Then it's back to the tables at 4 p.m. to decorate Easter eggs. At 7 p.m., children can decorate Easter baskets. On Saturday, wake up the kids early so they can participate in an 8 a.m. Easter egg hunt along the sandy shores of the Dunes.

The Orange County Fairgrounds were covered in pastels Saturday as children and their parents hopped to the swap meet, many clutching brightly colored Easter baskets and donning springtime hats. Among the festivities was an Easter egg hunt, in which parents were given a pink treasure map with a list of vendors and their locations where eggs could be found. Although 6-year-old Aubrey got bored looking for eggs, she wore herself out on the inflatable bouncer, her mother Lynn Ungria, of Anaheim, said.

For Christians and Jews, all of our religious holidays divide us except for Passover and Easter. Passover and Easter divide us by bringing us closer together. Let me try to explain this exquisite spiritual contradiction. Passover and Easter are different in that Passover, as theologian Martin Buber has written, is celebrated by a meal eaten for God, while Easter is celebrated by a meal eaten of God. Passover celebrates a God who could not become visible, while Easter celebrates a God who had to become visible to save a sinful humanity.

I believe in the Easter bunny. No, not the hopped up and over-marketed Easter bunny, but the real one. When I was a little kid, I once woke up very early on Easter. I was up before the people going to Easter Sunrise. I was looking for the Easter basket. Ok, I was looking for chocolate. I searched the house in darkness, and found nothing. Nada. Zero. No basket. No eggs. No chocolate. I was traumatized. My tears woke up my parents. They took me into their room, and there was a pale green dump truck filled with chocolate.

This week some of us wore dark smudges on our foreheads. Maybe you were one of us. Smudge wearers grow less each decade. Even many of those who share Christ's name graciously decline to wear smudge marks. The smudge, of course, is ash from Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. Most of us are not really Lenten folks. We would just as soon skip from celebration to celebration, from Mardi Gras to Easter. Lent is the season of confession, of really looking at yourself in the mirror, of spring cleaning and of coming clean.

The Resurrection of Jesus is, for the Christian, the essential key for understanding just about everything, not only specifically "religious" matters. The Easter event announces that death and all the ways of death have been defeated. Jesus took death into the tomb. He was raised to life, and so death's grip on the world has been broken. Backing up, we must ask what it is that went so wretchedly wrong that the crowds who joyously welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, laying before him branches and their cloaks, would several days later cry out, "crucify Him. " Why do we call that day "Good" Friday?

I love the fact that that Passover and Easter, both being lunar holidays, usually overlap. This seems to me to be a sign from God that we're more the same than we are different. To be sure, the official theologies of Passover and Easter are fundamentally different. The Passover meal is eaten for God, and the Easter meal (the Eucharist) is eaten of God. In Easter, a man becomes God, and in Passover, a man leads an entire people to God at Mount Sinai. In Easter, atonement is made through the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus, while in Passover, the ancient biblical sacrifices offered at the Temple in Jerusalem remind us of how we still must sacrifice for our faith and seek atonement from God for our sins.

NEWPORT BEACH — With a 6-foot-tall white rabbit in front of her, 5-year-old Maya Graves leaned on her new friend for the day as she attempted to touch to his soft fur. Savannah Rogers, 17, helped the visually impaired Maya connect her hand with the Easter Bunny, but Maya quickly pulled back her hand. Yet the little one quickly wanted to try once more. "I want to shake his hand again," Maya said. Maya was one of about 30 students ages 3 to 7 from the Blind Children's Learning Center at the Newport Dunes Waterfront Resort on Friday for a special Easter event filled with activities that involve touch.

My neighborhood held its annual Easter egg hunt Sunday, just as it has for the 25 years I’ve lived here. The agenda was pretty much as it has always been, only the faces had changed. The hard-core veterans who have lived here as long or longer than I have still run the show. But young families are moving in and putting down roots and preparing for heavier duties. And a new generation of small people is learning how to get inside the heads of the people hiding the eggs — especially eggs with money in them.

About 40 local homeless children spent Saturday morning hunting for colorful Easter eggs, a tradition they would normally miss had it not been for Newport Dunes Resort and its work with the Orange Coast Interfaith Shelter in Costa Mesa. The kids joined about 600 to 700 other children and hunted for 6,000 eggs, all of which had some gifts, including 50 golden eggs with big prizes. “Newport Beach is one of the most affluent cities in the nation, and people don’t realize that there are many homeless people here in our backyard,” said Frank Groff, spokesman for Newport Dunes Resort, which began the Easter egg hunt and pancake breakfast 18 years ago. Seven years ago, Newport Beach Dunes partnered with Costa Mesa’s interfaith shelter, which provides families with homes, jobs and counseling.