Kirsten Mustain, Author

It is a blustery Easter Sunday here at Dragonback. The sky is gray, the rain is steady, and the wind whispers and howls at the eaves.
A most interesting time, Easter. A time when Christians engage, with frightful unawareness, in pagan egg rituals on a day named after the goddess of spring. I find this fact beautiful and somewhat amusing, though I imagine a good many Christians – particularly those who find fault with holidays such as Halloween, might be a tad horrified if they had any inkling. The information is not difficult to find. Very few who dress in their new pastel outfits, devour chocolate bunnies, and scamper through the grass after colored eggs have bothered to wonder why, apparently.
This is a good time to contemplate the story of Jesus, of course – the crucifixion and resurrection, which so many atheists find distasteful.
The other night on the Colbert Report, Stephen interviewed an author who had written a book about how the Bible contradicts itself. (Is this a revelation?)
I can't recall the author's name, but he pointed out that the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all have differing accounts of the same events. He apparently sees this as grounds for dismissing the whole story.
Colbert replied that maybe Jesus was like the elephant in the story of the blind men who fell in a pit and found an elephant and each felt a different part of the elephant and drew vastly different conclusions about what the elephant was. (It's an old story, I won't repeat it.) This comment, true to Colbert's brilliant wit, was a profound nugget of truth wrapped in an outrageously silly candy shell.
Beyond that observation, I think the author missed the whole point of the stories, which is not so much about the details, but about the underlying theme, which is present in all the gospels.
The story of the crucifixion and the resurrection is important because it contains an essential truth about existence. It humanizes the eternal creative cycle – the life/death/life pattern that permeates the universe we inhabit.
 The ancients celebrated Easter as the resurrection of the earth after the desolation and death of winter. Christians settled the same theme upon the person of Jesus Christ.
Literature at its best reveals certain truths within a codified frame we call a story. Truth can be made more evident by a good story.
It can also be understood by observing the natural world, which is an unending divine story within itself.
Scientists are finding the life/death/life cycle even at the atomic level represented by number – harmony precedes disharmony, which precedes creation, which is a new harmony.
The crucifixion and resurrection story works on every level to explain this fundamental fact of life.

Spiritually, psychologically, and physically, the most profound rebirths are preceded by the darkest pain and despair.
So today is the day we celebrate the resurrection of the eternal creative spirit – the evolution of the out-moded to something new and better.
Happy Easter!