Literally my neighbors are walking around the neighborhood giving and cracking eggs. The traditions connected with this practice are tough to talk about in the context of Christ’s death and resurrection . . . so let me explain some of the thinking behind this practice. People get these eggs blessed by the priest and then the blessed egg is buried in the vineyard to have God’s protection from hailstorms and to try to get God to bring a good harvest . . . some even claim that the egg is still good to eat a year later? In Serbia the first colored egg is kept until next Easter as a guarantee that the family will be healthy and secure. The rest of the eggs are used for Egg Dumping. It is an egg hitting tradition, where you hit everyone else’s egg and try to break theirs and preserve your own from cracking. I always lose at this game as you can see my effort in this picture.
According to the internet a 100 million eggs will be colored in Bulgaria, they will have special paint and designs in Croatia, and in Greece they will mostly just be red . . . signifying the tradition that Mary, the mother of Christ placed a full basket of eggs at the feet of the crucified Jesus and they all turned red from His blood.
As you can see, there is some truth mingled here with lots of fantasy and tradition. My coffee drinking neighbor (read post here) came and gave me four eggs . . . one for each member of my family that is at home at the moment. I just finally point blank asked him, “why the eggs, what is the significance for you?” To which he replied, “I don’t know, you need to ask the women folk.” We chuckled and then on impulse I said to him a standard Christian phrase for this part of the world, “Christ is risen!” and he answered me back, “He is risen indeed!” So in the middle of swapping eggs, we can still spout good solid theology and significant theology at that.
What does all this mean? Well it means that the reason for missional work in Orthodox countries is valid (and difficult) work. A different sort of egg dumping has occurred, in that eggs of Truth have been placed in a basket - eggs of fantasy, magic and culture, and then the whole basket was dropped (dumped). Now try to sort the Truth-egg from the other eggs and see what a quagmire you find yourself in. That is a pretty solid picture of what Truth faces in this part of the world. Sorting it out takes years . . . maybe a lifetime.
4 comments:
And I was worried about how many days in a row we can eat egg-salad sandwiches before we have to dispose of the remainder!
In all truth, we still have St. Joseph issues here, and I'm not talking the aspirin. You bury a statue of the saint upside-down in the ground to sell your house. Actually, the most questions we have received lately at the prison have to do with Catholicism-is there a purgatory, what really is baptism, etc. It's become a good starting place to explain the truth! Minus eggs, thank God. I hate them, the boiled kind, anyhoo.
p.s. whoops, maybe it's St. Anthony you bury, or as folks around here say, St. Ant'ny! Some poor guy gets buried...I'll never get it right.
Thanks for another analogy with regards to the mixing of truth with everything else here. It's a really good illustration to help explain the mix here. Honestly, my fruit-salad analogy was getting old (you know, the wonderful amazing fruit salad my mom was making.. and then she added about a cup of Miracle Whip before serving it... now there's a mix of truth and other). Still true, but time for a new illustration. :) C.
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