melissa etheridge on faith

ok, so...i borrowed this from the washingtonpost.....i hope melissa can forgive me.....

Melissa Etheridge
Awakening at Easter

Easter.

The word brings up so many different memories. I am a child of the Midwest and I was raised with a little help from the United Methodist Church. My parents felt it was important to indoctrinate their children into some church even though it had long ago stopped being a place for worship for them on a personal level. I think they felt that they had better bring their kids to a church just in case all that heaven and hell stuff might be true. So, at the very least, on Christmas and Easter we would get out of bed early, get dressed up and go to church. There I would hear “Jesus was crucified on the cross and put into the tomb and rose from the dead three days later, now go find some eggs that a bunny left in the yard.” I never thought to question or even try to figure it out. Everyone was doing it and having so much fun, I thought that it must make sense to someone.

I am all grown up now with children of my own. My spiritual path has been an amazing and rewarding one for me. I have opened my heart and mind to the thought that we create our reality. I believe we are on a beautiful heavenly planet that is spinning in perfect balance with the rest of the universe. I believe we all have the capacity to open the Christ consciousness within each of us. I believe that the cancer inside my body reflected the cancer outside of my body, and I believe everyday I heal not only my body but also everything I see. I believe in choice. I believe as above so below. And I believe in the Easter bunny.

Yes, my children and my wife and I will be decorating eggs. See, I believe in traditions; and the tradition of the vernal equinox is the celebration of the earth coming into the newness and everlasting life of spring. It has been celebrated every year by every culture of people who have ever walked this earth. We seemed to have somehow lost sight of that. We have lost sight of our relationship to the earth. We need to be in contact with the earth and it’s seasons. I know that the Romans in the 4th century, grappling with how to control the masses, decided to make the Christian celebrations mirror the pagan ones. Then they hunted down, killed, tortured and burned any who tried to practice those seasonal celebrations of our most ancient ancestors. I know that the winter equinox is when the sun stands still on the horizon for three days and then is “resurrected” on the third. I also know that we are coming to the end of this Piscean age and rolling into the next one, the Aquarian. And I believe that we will all come together in our beautiful differences to discover we are all one. All of us gently spinning in this beautiful space, creating peace within ourselves and experiencing peace in our world. We will soon know that love is all there is.

So I am going to decorate a few eggs (I especially like the blue egg dye), and I will hide them in the yard. I will eat a little chocolate, and I will celebrate once again the earth coming back to life and bringing the warmth of the sun and the promise of salvation.

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.

Melissa Etheridge is an Academy Award-winning and two-time Grammy Award-winning American rock singer, songwriter and musician.