By David Fortier
Come Sunday morning, Easter Sunday at the Fortier household, we will have gone to Mass at 8 a.m. and then hit the road for our Easter dinner this year being held at one of the kid’s places. Mary and I will have Uncle Charlie in tow, and we will be traveling light.
Typically, we have a main course with us, but this year we will be bringing a batch of Jay’s Italian Ricotta Cookies, compliments of my late friend Jay Trelli and a tiny cookbook of his favorite recipes that his partner, Mary Lou, put together as a kind of memory book.
It’s one way of keeping Jay’s memory alive, and a good day to remember a good friend, among others who have passed recently, the most recent being Vito Hernandez. There have been others.
During the week, Mary and I spent lots of our time organizing the household. We are getting some work done—finally, after all these years of raising kids—and packing up the things that have accumulated over all those years. Well, it’s a lot. We are managing to have some laughs and do the heavy lifting, too.
It is not lost on me that we have a confluence of religious observances this time of the year—Ramadan has been going on for a while, Passover began Friday and ends this coming Saturday, and of course, today this is Easter Sunday.
A quick note: A local day of prayer to coincide with the National Day of Prayer on May 5 will be held at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, Stafford Ave., at 4 p.m. For more information, contact Laura Minor, of the Bristol Interfaith Coalition, at bristolinterfaith@gmail.com.
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With this in mind, a momentary meditation: Earlier in the week, while I was eating dinner alone, since Mary was out for an event, I paused to think that here I was at home at my dinner table, finishing off some leftover pasta, and I was slowly overwhelmed by the thought that half a globe away a war was raging and some people would not be eating much, if anything.
I paused for a moment to think about the people who would not be able to eat since the war would be cutting off one of the bread baskets of the world, and that meant that around the globe others would not be eating much, if anything. Yes, gas prices are spiraling upwards; yes, groceries are more expensive; yes, inflation is on the rise. These are small things in comparison to what is happening in a war zone and what will be happening in famine zones.
And somehow, I did not stop here. My thoughts traveled over to Yemen, back to Sudan, and then around the corner to United States, where despite our many advantages, there are people on every street with concerns that, relatively speaking, cry out for justice.
And for one moment, I paused to simply be aware of these people, across time and space, as it were, and allowed myself to not forget them in their pain and suffering. This reminds me that we are in this together, and that forgetting this reality and our connection diminishes us all.
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With that in mind, I hope it helps when I suggest some reading or listening. We all have our limits, when it comes to information overload, and yet, I persist in pointing at least one or two items that might give us time enough to pause and gather our thoughts. If we bump into each other—I will be the guy with the mask on—we might even exchange notes.
Try this one in small bites–a diary from Kyiv by a writer who started the diary the day the war broke out and wrote through early April. Click here for the Atlantic’s introduction to the diary project, and click here for the diary entries.
Enjoy your week.
“Come Sunday morning” is intended to be a weekly review, a recounting of the past week and an anticipation of week to come. Among its features will be reviews of old and new books, sharing of favorite podcasts, some family news, Bristol events and happenings and issues surrounding education, work and community journalism. He can be reached at dfortier@bristoledition.org.