How lovely it all was -- how fine the weather, finally, how sweet and beautiful the children. The choir sounded wonderful, and the sermons seem to have done no harm. The red velvet cake baked in the shape of a lamb was delicious, if a little ragged around the edges, and the molten chocolate cake was exactly the volcano of decadence it needed to be, marking the end of Q's forty-day chocolate fast. Not least wondrous of the many beauties of Easter Day was the final swoon into sleep at the end of it.
Why, then, was I Pontius Pilate and every last one of the chief priests in the evening on Easter Monday? Peevish and lazy? Snarling at Q about the cats, almost from the moment of walking in the door?
"Pray for me," I said to him this morning. "When you hear me coming up the steps tonight, pray that I will be a human being tonight and not a harpy."
"How should I pray?"
"Oh, it doesn't matter, really. Say anything you like. It's not like God doesn't know what's going on."
I don't know if he will remember to pray or not -- Q is not one to hold a grudge. He brushes off my apologies as if my offenses were inconsequential. Maybe they are. Still, I would like to progress toward something like Jesus' pithy summary of the law, and do a better job than I do of loving my neighbor as myself. I would like never to be a person who took those closest to me so for granted that I visited my one exhaustion upon them, as if it were somehow their fault. I would like to be as good as people who don't know me very well think I am.
"Okay," he said.
"Your prayer will change you, for sure," I said, although I'm not really sure what in him needs changing in this regard, since the fault is mine, "and it will change me, too, in ways we can't predict."
"Good."
I will pray, too. I have some things to say, but it won't matter if I forget what they are by the time all is said and done tonight. After all, its not like God doesn't know what's going on.
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