I have also pondered this. I suspect it is because the Jewish calendar is still lunar based, whereas the Christian liturgical calendar is based on the Gregorian calendar...
^^^ jewish calender actually has a leap month because of the lunar thing, and its important for certain holidays to be in certain points of the year, so every x amount of years (i forgot how many, ill have to look it up) we have a second month of adar, literally called adar2 :P this year passover and easter are really far apart because of that, but next year they should be back together side note: the reason that ramadan is always in different places during the year is because the muslim calender is also lunar-based but they don't do the leap month thing! :O
Went to Good Friday service, couldn't hear the sermon because my brain wouldn't shut up. (I have trouble listening to sermons ever since the priest at our last church, who had two settings: dramatisation of scripture, and explaining why we're better than all the other Christians, and much better than all the Democrats.) I only caught like three lines, among which was: Priest: ...so rather than just listening to, we have to experience the Passion. Me, very quietly, inside my head: I thought the point of the Passion was that we don't have to experience the Passion. Also, is it weird that I feel a little weird taking communion after we're read the Passion scripture on Good Friday? Because it ends with Jesus being buried, and it's supposed to be this kind of time-slip experience where you're united with the whole Church throughout history, but how can you be united with the whole Church when the Head of the Church is busy being dead? I mean I know he's not dead now but like ... liturgically speaking, he's dead until Sunday. I don't know. I just started wondering about it when I saw the communion entry in the bulletin. (I've been to Good Friday services before, at an Anglican church, but I don't think we had communion then.) EDIT: Also I just went rabbit-trailing on Wikipedia because I wanted to find out what happened to Pontius Pilate and wound up on his wife's page: 1. I wish I was there when this fascinating theological debate was going down, I bet it was hilarious. 2. I recognise Origen's name but all I remember is that he wrote theology and that once when he was a kid he tried to get martyred but his mom hid all his clothes so he couldn't leave the house.
He is risen indeed! Spoiler: My thoughts about this response (personal, not critical) I haven't been to church on Easter Sunday for several years, but how strange it is that words you learned as a kid stick in your head. Also, I went on Wikipedia to look up the Greek response and got distracted by how much I love Old English. Again. Crist aras! Crist soþlice aras!
Isn't it that holiday where Jesus comes out of the tomb, and if he sees his shadow and get back inside, we'll have six more weeks of winter?
Went to Easter Vigil with some friends of mine. At last. We've been wanting to do this for years but things have always come up. Finally managed it this time. Was a really lovely multi-lingual service. English, Spanish, and Tagalog. Catholic incense intrigued me the most because incense is a big thing for us too. Theirs is very different smelling. Very different.
General question for everyone who does the thing: how do you pray? I got irritated in the middle of a prayer at my brother's church Sunday night but on second thought I don't want to post a rant about them (they are nice people, they just differ from me theologically in ways that rub my fur the wrong way and make me madder than a cat in a bathtub) so I thought I'd initiate some general-discussion-of-prayer. Prayer is ... kind of hard for me because I cannot focus for anything, I almost always get distracted and start thinking about something else like, thirty seconds in. I have this problem a bit less with the congregational prayers - partly because they're out loud, partly because I'm focusing on getting the words right. Once I get anything memorised it's a problem again, though. Also I subscribe to an all-knowing omnipotent God so I get stuck thinking, what's the point praying when God already knows what you want and is going to do whatever needs to be done anyway? But Jesus says to pray, so I guess I should...? I know some of it is about maintaining a relationship with a person you can't see. It's not just asking for things, it's about becoming ... familiar, maybe? And I think I figured out a reason to pray to ask for things I want. It probably just applies to me, personally, though. I tend to bottle things up and hide how bad I'm feeling when I need help, because I don't trust people to be helpful so I don't want them getting involved at all ... and then I get mad at people for not helping me. So maybe praying, for me, can be a way to learn to just ask when I need help. And then if I get mad it can be about something legit like "I asked for help and you didn't help me and I don't understand". As it is, I hardly ever get upset when my prayers aren't answered, and part of the reason for that is that I never expected them to be. (The other part is something I'll post later when it's not time for me to go to sleep right now immediately.) Also tagging @Aondeug 'cause I bet you can say some interesting things about prayer. How do Buddhists do the thing? (If you talked about it before I forgot, sorry.)
Buddhists? That depends on the tradition from what I can tell. Praying styles seem to be picked up from the native cultures that any one tradition comes from. Basically we don't have a built in method of prayer and more just absorb native styles of it. Personally my thing is very much inspired by Chinese Buddhism and Thai Buddhism. The general gist of prayers there are for things like safety, health, help in some sort of endeavor. That sort of thing. Either for yourself or others. Basics of it involve kowtowing to an image of a god three times before approaching. Then an offering is given and prayers are made silently. I tend to burn incense when I make prayers to specifically Buddhist gods. The smoke carries the words to the heavenly realms. An entirely different sort of "prayer" I guess you could call it is paying homage to the god. These are short set little phrases and they are often accompanied by kowtowing. I personally do my homages and kowtows in sets of threes. Though again specifics vary a lot. I know prayer is different in terms of how it works with Sri Lankan folk Buddhism for example. Also a lot of people don't consider any of this prayer. It's certainly not in the way it is to Abrahamic God at any rate. Away from that more important to me is my praying to the Gaelic deities. Guanyin can go months without a status update or my asking for her help, but I have a more "familial" relationship with the Gaelic ones. I suppose you could say. This follows a simple format. First I prepare an offering, usually food or a libation. Then I take that offering, touch it to my forehead, and place it on the altar area. During or after this setting down I recite a homage prayer to whatever particular entity I am making the offering to. Usually this involves my listing of epithets of theirs followed by a statement of what the offering is and why it is being given and my stating that I honor them in general. If it isn't to anyone in particular I offer it to the gods and ungods, honored and just, and to the ancestors, beloved dead. Ungods being any and all of the Fair Folk who aren't god status. Sometimes this is where things end. Other times I set down and talk to them. Just talk. I let them know how I am doing. What I've been thinking about. Occasionally I'll ask for input. Though often times it's more just chatting at them. Like calling a relative on the phone basically. Sometimes I do this without the more formal, I suppose you can call it, structure too. One final sort of prayer type thing I do is divination? Basically talking to the gods and asking them for some sort of input. Depending on the situation I might provide offerings and do something more formal. Otherwise I just ask a question and then go on with my chosen divination method. However I am going about it there is never any kowtowing. There is however respect and hospitality. It's part of why I make the offerings. Not because I want to get something in return, but because I am inviting them into my home for a chat. Of course I'm going to share food or drink with them if I can. That's just polite and, furthermore, honorable. And honor is important. And yes just for clarification sometimes the prayers and offerings are about getting help. I'll pray and leave out offerings to Bríghid if someone I love is sick, for example. Or like when a friend of mine was traveling I prayed and left an offering to Manannán when she asked me to because he seems to like me. I find it rather easy to focus on both sorts of prayer. Though they are different sorts of focus. The more ritualistic ones are just that. A ritualistic air about my head. Just focused and clear on specific motions. The more conversational checking in thing is more...Focused on like having a conversation? It's very much like talking to someone. Granted I can't literally hear them, but sometimes I can "hear" them so to speak. I'll get weird feelings at times in me. Bríghid feels like a fireplace when she speaks. Manannán like the ebbing of the ocean and so on. Even if I don't get any of that I'm still pretty focused on things because well I am telling beings that are very dear to me what's been happening in my life and just talking with them. Final thing is that prayers to the Gaelic dudes I do out loud. All of it. If I need to be quiet I whisper. With the Buddhist fellows the homages are out loud and the requests are silent.
I got more comfortable with personal prayer when I stopped thinking about it as formulaic requests and praise, and started thinking about it as just communication. I wouldn't say I pray a lot - I have hella faith issues these days - but I do believe There's Someone There, so I have no issue saying "hey if You feel like giving me a hand that'd be great" or "thank you SO much for letting that bus be late" or even "what the FUCK why the FUCK are you letting this happen". I take a lot of solace in the Psalms and in the other places in scripture where it is shown to be Totally Okay to be mad at God. On the other hand, I take great comfort in the rituals of congregational litany prayer. That was Not a Thing when I was growing up (Canadian Baptist), where prayer was mostly extemporaneous. After spending several years away from extemporaneous prayer, I've found I roll my eyes less at it now and feel a little more nostalgic about it - and there is definitely a sense of deep personal devotion when someone you know to be profoundly religious prays extemporaneously, which is usually comforting and can sometimes be inspiring. On the other hand, back to litany, when I moved to the Anglican church I discovered the great beauty of written prayers. It's like a combination of faith and poetry, and I'm super down for that. I used to page through the Book of Alternative Services before bed, because the written prayers in there were so calming and peaceful.
Resurrecting this thread because I remembered a thing from when I was like 10 maybe, it's fuzzy Spoiler: the original sin. finger pointing and victim blaming I heard this on the radio, it was from a pastor or other and I can't remember the name. It talks about how God was upset about Adam and Eve eating off the Tree of Knowledge. God asked, why did you do this, Adam? Adam points behind him and says "Eve made me do it." Eve herself points back as well at the snake, and says "The snake made me do it." The snake would like to point behind itself, but there's no one there. So it points at Eve. "She didn't have to listen to me!" Eve in turn points at Adam and says "He didn't have to listen to me!" Adam stays silent for a while. He then says to God, "It's your fault, God, for you gave us the ability to sin." Leaving the part how Eve is just pointing fingers and not being allowed to contribute anything aside, two phrases really resonated with me and kind of still do -- "the snake would like to point behind itself, but there's no one there", and "It's your fault, God, for you gave us the ability to sin." I don't even know where I'm going with this, but.... finger pointing, blame shuffling
