It's the day before Buy a Lot of Cadbury Eggs Monday

Otherwise known as Easter.

My point here is not to put down Easter, any day on which a clucking bunny lays chocolate eggs filled with cream is clearly a wondrous day indeed.  And snide comments about commercialism and religious holidays aside some people that I respect a lot are Christians and I'm not big on looking down on anyone's religion or lack there of.

That said, I am into recognizing that others exist.  Which is why I'm writing this post that is mostly lacking in content.  On a site where I can waste time playing stupid mindless games someone decided it was appropriate to announce to everyone that our lord is resurrected and such and... what is this "our" Kemosabe?

Site for mindless games on the internet, what makes you think everyone is Christian?  "My lord is risen," I'd have no problem with, but to assume all the readers have the same religion as you is less than cool.

The construction "is risen" is, I think, attempting to bring a tense we don't quite have in English.  Ancient Greek had a perfect tense that is different from our own which was about actions in the past with definite repercussions in the present.  Sort of like how, "I've opened the door," implies that the door is still open if not augmented by something else (I've opened the door many times in the past.)  So I read "is risen" which is technically present tense (risen is an adjective here) as an attempt to describe a past event with consequences reaching all the way into the here and now.  Thus an attempt to have a tense that includes past and present to show a causal relationship between a past event and the present situation.  Sort of a shorthand for, "has risen and is still in the resulting state."

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Just to have some content, here's an excerpt from a thing on trying to explain Easter in a French class:

Nothing we said was of any help to the Moroccan student. A dead man with long hair supposedly living with her father, a leg of lamb served with palm fronds and chocolate; equally confused and disgusted, she shrugged her massive shoulders and turned her attention to the comic book she kept hidden beneath her binder. 

I wondered then if, without the language barrier, my classmates and I could have done a better job making sense of Christianity, an idea that sounds pretty far-fetched to begin with. 

In communicating any religious belief, the operative word is faith, a concept illustrated by our very presence in that classroom. Why bother struggling with the grammar lessons of a six-year-old if each of us didn't believe that, against all reason, we might eventually improve? If I could hope to one day carry on a fluent conversation, it was a relatively short leap to believing that a rabbit might visit my home in the middle of the night, leaving behind a handful of chocolate kisses and a carton of menthol cigarettes. So why stop there? If I could believe in myself, why not give other improbabilities the benefit of the doubt? I told myself that despite her past behavior, my teacher was a kind and loving person who had only my best interests at heart. I accepted the idea that an omniscient God had cast me in his own image and that he watched over me and guided me from one place to the next. The Virgin Birth, the Resurrection  and countless miracles -- my heart expanded to encompass all the wonders and possibilities of the universe. 

A bell, though -- that's fucked up.

Audio of a shorter version here.  It should at least explain what the bell comment is about.