E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO BREAK AN EGG AT EASTER Several major religions are observing solemn, important festivals this month - holy days, holy weeks. Eyewear's team will be taking some time off, to be with their families and friends, and reflect, in their various ways, on this time of returning light. Meanwhile, we have seen, in the past few days, inhumanity at the heart of our capitalist system (where it has been, hidden, for too long) - the decision to drag a doctor, bloodied and beaten, from a United Airlines plane he had lawfully bought a ticket for is yet another instance of the total decline in compassion and empathy rooting itself in a business-led model that ignores the value of life beneath the numbers. Publishing, too, is not immune. Too often, authors, agents, and publishers, seek to profit from relationships that would be better off pursued for higher aims, of art, solidarity and creativity. Sharing is not much part of this dog-eat-dog Darwinian world, that pushes...

MYSTERIUM PASCHALE It happens like this in writing, a man is brought to a hill to be raised to die in spring so that God's will be done. Never kill alone, use Romans when you can, and let care down by a kiss. I am born in words and reborn reading; when the ink from the black well spills. These trees here are torn between bliss and dismay, it is confusing how the world is making progress even as it staggers back on one bleakest Saturday; a chasm opens like a speech the monster of all creation makes but that is a volcanic belch instead; God is dead to live, the twisting snakery of organised deception at the tricked hinge of Easter, where the magic is love's risk of everything. But fixed. Stacked. A house that knows its odds. I never complain that Christ rises on the Sunday, it is good theatre and good news. It is truce with warring nature; why spar with Caesar forever? The people who said no become those who say yes, later. The mob is ju...

I wrote once of Christ swimming on the cross. A friend suggested I stop such things - and now I can't recall if the image was stolen, probably from Hill.  I wrote about Christ often when eighteen. I loved the spring. It came violently in Quebec, then. And I had been born on a Good Friday. If Christ swam on the cross, he didn't drown. He took the wood as a boat. Water was always good to Christ. God flooded the world easily. When the ferry overturned it took hundreds of kids into a place without breathing. They did not walk up out of there like Jesus. I don't blame God for disasters at sea. I do, though wonder at prayer, at praying, when it seems God rarely hears. But back to Christ on his oars, rowing his lungs back to crushing his own breathing down.  He drowned on the cross in the blue air of spring. But it would have felt like summer in the heat. He dove into his crucifixion like it was a lake clear as a promise to be kind. To be good. ...

The Eyes of April Eyewear wishes all of its readers a very happy holiday season - and, a wonderful Easter Holy Week, for those who follow such extraordinary time.  I'll be back with posts and reviews after April 8 - Easter Sunday and, my 46th birthday.  (I was born in 1966, on Good Friday.)  Much love and chocolates!

Happy Easter!  Today at Mass the priest reminded us of the classic song 'Staying Alive' - corny but apt.  Easter, for Christians, is about renewal, and the promise of resurrection.  I am personally assaying renewal, but still struggling with the idea of physical resurrection.  I can better get my head around the spirit of the Easter message, while the fine print makes me unsure.  Life and the world seems the place for love, and kindness, and tolerance, first.  What comes after, if and when it does, seems less groundbreaking (pun alert).  Still, the hope and promise of everlasting life is joyous.  For now, I will take family meals, friendship, some apple juice, and sun, and the turn to May, as my slice of rebirth.

Eyewear and Easter both start with E and end with R.  There are other links.  The blog will be on holiday during the holy week, and wishes all its readers a wonderful time with family and friends.  May your spring break be joyous and sunlit.  See you after Easter Monday, folks!  Or should that be yolks?

I was born on Good Friday, 44 years ago - and just barely survived, being exceptionally tiny, three months premature, the smallest baby on the ward, and one of the youngest at my size to ever survive in Canada - a "miracle baby" as they were called then - perhaps still are.  It was a fraught time for my parents, and of course, for me - and I am grateful to have struggled through.  Today, at a celebration of the Lord's Passion, I could not help but reflect on my good fortune, to have lived, at all. Eyewear will be back on April 12. In the meantime, fellow eyewearers, enjoy the various religious holidays with your families, the returning light, and the sense of renewal in the land. May you achieve physical and spiritual health. Or, if that is too much, enjoy some chocolate bunnies. Nothing like a good egg hunt. What's to look forward to in April at this blog? A few superb new poet features; reviews by Christopher Horton , Ian Brinton , Abigail Curtis , and others...

Philip Pullman is having a good time. His new book The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is out, and of course, launching it bang u p against Easter, the holiest week of the year for Christians, he is getting good press - which means sales. There's something tacky about that marketing stunt, like when Antichrist was launched on DVD at Christmas, which is not heroically atheist, but just capitalist-secular-shabby. Pullman, of course, is getting credit for shooting sacred cows (or fish) in a barrel . Surely, every theology student, and every teenager, has whimsically speculated on the possibility of a dark side to Jesus - a theme explored in The Last Temptation of Christ , for instance, to good effect. Nor is the idea that the Church wickedly betrayed the Jesus message new either - Dostoevsky made it the cornerstone of the Brothers Karamazov , one of the greatest of 19 th century novels. Only in the UK in the 21st century does it not seem anachronistic to have a donnish G...