Sunday

Easter is unrestrained, enthusiastic abundance.
It’s a basket of treats which never gets empty if you look hard enough,
Look by closing your eyes and feeling what’s there.

I love all of it, and that there’s a lot to love.

I love the lead up of Lent and Good Friday (good Catholic girl that I am), and
I love the glory of the day when Easter arrives.
I love that we expect that glory, and that wonder.

I love the pastel colors, and even the fake Easter grass.

I love seeing the Peeps in the market, and
I love getting that craving for marshmallow, and for
Cadbury malt.

I love the Easter Eggs, and everything we do about them, and with them.
I love the decorating with homemade dyes, and
I love making bunny footprints with flour.

I love our creativity, and even our indulgence.

I love all the chocolate and all the sugar.
I love that I will eat Easter’s treats without a shred of hesitation or guilt.

Oh! How I love the blooming.

I love the flowers — there are so many to love!

I love the greenery too, both lush and still tender,
The leafing (is that a word?) that is everywhere.

I love the art.

I love the playfulness that Easter critters inspire.

I love the chicks and bunnies, birds and butterflies.
I love them all showing us their softer sides,
All willing to become characters which are cartoons of themselves.

Even frogs wear Easter well.

I remember how we made Easter bonnets in kindergarten.
Do you?

I wish
we all
still wore
Easter bonnets
now.
Crepe paper, feathers, ribbons and all.
And no matter how old we have become.
We could still wear them well… silly grins included.
(Those red hat ladies are on to something.)

I love that Easter happens in the Spring.
(especially when it happens in April, and not in March).

I love that Easter day means Easter Sunday.
Sunday is elemental peacefulness.
Sunday is thankfulness and gratitude.
Sunday is Mālama time.

I love our reverence on Sunday, and our humility.
Our awe.
Our respect.
And Ha‘aha‘a as a value that looks like laughing no matter how you pronounce it.

I love the Palena ‘ole exuberance of Easter.
I love the joy of its Ka lā hiki ola flavored promises.

Easter renews us.
It’s vibrant.
It’s hopeful.
It’s a beauty which is very, very good for us.

It’s even beauty in that plastic, yet amazing Easter cellophane;
Purple, yellow, pink, and a green that isn’t really green at all,
But some kind of cool bluing. Prisms.

I love that Easter is about Faith.
I love that Easter is about Believing.

It’s amazing resilience, and Resurrection, I know, but you know what else?
Easter is a day to love your life, just as it is.

And yet,
Easter is also a day to think about flourishing in new ways.

So do that. Flourish.

Love Easter with me, and feel it love you back.

Normally Sunday mornings are glorious self-indulgent times, relaxing. I French press my coffee, drinking the whole pot for a double-shot caffeine high before it can get cold, while I read the online editions of Sunday papers all over the world. Works so well for me, yet this morning I foolishly broke rhythm and changed my routine, deciding to wade through my feed reader instead.

So now I have a headache. Good grief, no wonder it’s gotten so hard to get people to read blogs. It’s just too much work.

Really have to do something about that, including here.

What must bloggers do to get you back, away from the social media trivialities and shortness of breath and depth on Twitter, Facebook and the like? Or have we all simply decided that depth, and blogging relationships haven’t enough return on attention for us?

My own change in rhythm this morning was because I’d spent yesterday evening tweaking the sidebar (click in and take a look if I happen to be part of your reader” let me know if you love it, hate it, or just don’t care, for all feedback is welcomed). I had two main reasons for tackling it, and the process quickly led to all kinds of changes: I brought back my list of Hawaiian values, but with tags to keep it Talking Story contained. Second, it was getting to be too much work to keep rotating those RSS feeds I used to have as a suggested blogroll, and I suspected I was hurting people’s feelings when they got rotated off. If you’d been one of those people, I still kept you on my reader, and if it makes you feel better, my exit link stats showed that very few people used my sidebar blogroll. Mostly I did, and so I figured I may as well switch everyone in my reading rotations to my feed reader, for isn’t that what it’s for, and isn’t a blog for something else?

Enter the headache.

Google Reader is new for me. I just started using it after years on BlogLines for the simple reason of wanting to keep my new MacBookPro as spare as possible — believe it or not, I rarely use Firefox anymore finding that Safari works just fine. I can get to Google Reader through my Gmail navigation and so figured I could just start sparingly” it would be fun to build a new reader!

Yeah right. It got added to so, so quickly with all the blogs I read. Adding folders didn’t seem to help, so I’m asking for your help: How do you read blogs, reading them so you still love the reading?

I’ll commit to more soul-searching on the Talking Story reading experience: I know I can always improve things here. Use my contact form if you prefer to give me your likes and dislikes here privately. Next job I’m tackling is another streamlining of the categories.

And if you use Google Reader, do you have any tips for me?

Warm, strong, and great. Even when you put it in a kiddie mug.

Photo Credit: Modified RSS Podcast Logo by Colleen AF Venable on Flickr
More about my own RSS feeds: The Care and Feeding of your Talking Story Subscription

I love Easter

Sunday Reading, Feeds and Blogs — Help!