"Sleep, those little slices of death; Oh how I loathe them."
so I turned on the TV to see if anything interesting, or more "uplifting," was on. Someone was talking about Queen Esther and then mentioned Easter and that some of the Christian traditions of Easter are from pagan origins. I knew that this was true, but when they mentioned red dyed Easter eggs, I hadn't heard of that before so I decided to look them up online. I found that they had a different meaning from their pagan origins, which included child sacrifice and shedding of blood. Dyed red Easter eggs are mostly significant within the Greek and Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition. I saw many interesting pictures of dyed red Easter eggs online, as well as pictures of icons of various saints. I also found stories I hadn't heard before within the Christian tradition about the history of red eggs. One story was about Mary Magdalene giving a red egg to the emperor of Rome to tell him about the Resurrection of Christ.
I finally fell asleep again, and this time I had a vivid (rather than morbid) dream: I'm in a grocery store (similar to the Walmart grocery store across from Lowe's near my home). I find a roll of bread and I realize I need to go outside to get my money to pay for the bread. As I am walking outside I am looking down at my cell phone, which in this dream is an I-phone with a touch screen. Many colorful photos of icons of saints are on the screen of the I-phone as I am scrolling through them, trying to get to my text messages. They are really colorful and beautiful images. Once outside, I look up and see a Greek restaurant in the same building, just next to Wal-mart's grocery store. As I look up, the owner comes out of the restaurant dressed in grey priest's robes and I seem to recognize him from being his customer. He was going to the parking lot, which as I look up, I see several saints from the icons and priests on motorcycles and they are all going to his church with him for services. He says, "Hello Theresa!" and they all start saying, "Hi Theresa!" I said "Hi!" and then I watch them as they drive away. Then I woke up. (My sister just bought a new Harley Sportster this week, so that could explain the motorcycles?)
While looking up information about red Easter eggs, I was also looking online to see if there were any Coptic Orthodox Christian churches in Oklahoma. I have always wanted to attend their liturgy service to hear the Coptic language. The closest one to me used to be in Dallas, TX. However, I found that there was now one in the Bixby/Tulsa area about 90 miles east of Oklahoma City. I looked up their website and saw that this week was their Holy Week and Easter celebration. This made me realize why I may have felt that Easter was not over yet! However, when I went back to look again at their website to call for information the next morning after my dream, I scrolled further down the page this time and saw that the Coptic Orthodox church has an Oklahoma City community that meets every month at St. George's Greek Orthodox Church! I thought I dreamed about the Greek priest and icons because I was looking at them online, but I didn't have any idea that the Coptic church was meeting at the Greek Orthodox church that very same morning after my dream for Lazarus Saturday (Feast of St. Lazarus)! I didn't see the announcement in time to attend the service, but I did call that day and speak to Father Andrew Kahlil about attending their next service, and I have been attending each service since April 2013.
The Greek Orthodox church had an Easter egg dying event after their service on Thursday this week, but I had to work so I tried a recipe for using red onion skins to dye them at home and decorated the eggs using leaves from my garden. (They are more red than they appear in the photos.) The eggs are a reminder of the saints from the Icons that visited me in my dream, first on the screen of an I-phone, and then in the parking lot on motorcycles on their way to their Lazarus Rising service, which led me to the Coptic Church in OKC that meets at St. George's Greek Orthodox Church in OKC every month.
The first thing I noticed when I attended my first Coptic Christian Orthodox service was the picture of St. George on a horse in armor, with a sword in each hand. He was a Christian martyr and in our day could have very well been riding a Harley.
http://oca.org/questions/liturgicalyear/red-easter-eggs
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