Peeps

Marshmallow chicks, iconic, nearly tasteless, and fun to pull to bits.

I have mixed feelings about the confectionary industry in general and most especially when they high jack a religious holiday. Halloween, St. Valentine’s Day, Christmas and today, Easter.

From my window here at the RR Museum in Campo, I do see signs of rebirth, green green grass, with white calves running and bucking around their mothers. Tiny purple and yellow flowers, and rapturous birds, and best of all a frog chorus in the nights.

I was invited to go to church nearby, at a congregation of local Christians of all flavors. I am feeling perhaps shy to go, as I would only know one person, he has a girl friend and I sense thin ice if I were to turn up unattached. I think my sense of church is scattered and dispersed, I loved the great music filled high mass at St. Paul’s church in Cambridge, and was worn down by the local small church (with a drunken priest)where I raised my children. At St. Paul’s, the congregation is huge, and anonymous and mostly affiliated with Harvard. The congregation all sing with skill and gusto, and the world class mens and boys choirs are backed up by a superb pipe organ in a neo Romanesque church with good acoustics. It is really more concert than service. The sermons are erudite and topical. Partly due to decades of attendance, and partly due to some musical and intellectual snobbery, it is “church” to me, and most others are something else.

Church going is (or more properly was) an enormous piece of stable community life, where you are known, and prayed over and when bad things happen, a source of real and emotional support. Probably it is for some, but as a drifter, and a rather disenchanted Catholic, it is mostly a duty. Done to please someone else, done to conform, done a little in hopes of community and connection, but not a joy or much use to the muscles of my soul.

So, I am here, sitting in the sunshine, and eating Peeps. Instead of Sanctifying Grace, marshmallow. The official website, http://www.marshmallowpeeps.com/, will serve as an introduction to those who haven’t met a Peep, nor eaten one. Be prepared to be horrified. Then, if you dare, google Peeps, and you will find that the madness goes on and on. Folks delight in stop frame animation starring Peeps in costumes. Peeps can be seen in off color video clips, in various forms of massacres, and feeding frenzies. They are so vulnerable and so dumb looking, and so inert, that they incite people to all sorts of silliness. (Peeps jousting: arm two Peeps with tooth picks and set them in the microwave for about 25 seconds to see which one deflates the other. Note that they are not nummy after this and you may get burnt sugar. Google it for more.) For our Bunny Train, one child has a Peeps costume, and there is also a 3’ high inflatable Peep, and as you see, I was given an Easter Basket ( actually a Trader Joe’s reusable shopping bag) containing 4 different color Peeps, a Peeps lip balm (marshmallow scented cotton candy sic.) and Peeps bubbles. And a large stuffed Peep in blue which sort of resembles a large blue dollop of Cool Whip, or perhaps a blue cow plopper. I have finished the purple ones and am now happily working on the blue ones.

I note that an Australian paper has this headline: “Pope skirts paedophile scandal as Christians mark Easter.”

Yet another reason to sedate myself with marshmallow, enjoy the sunshine, and pray in my own quirky way that all those who read this, or who have met me or even seen me or just emailed me, will have a day of renewed hope, of renewed strength, and of peace.