A POEM FOR A SUNDAY: 4/20/25

Easter and Passover and Marijuana and Empathy and Andy Warhol and Pittsburgh and The Grateful Dead ... and Everything Connects

I have always thought of the above work by Andy Warhol as a a bit of “Easter” art. It is from the collection of The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. It might even be my favorite art work that makes me think of this day. I like it better than the one below because I think the conflation of the images speaks more to the message - or the message I get from it whether it was intended by the devoutly Catholic Andy or not because art speaks to us individually in its visual silences once the creator has let it go. The conflation itself is what I hear from it, the moment the Creator let it all go and tried to understand humanity better and our lack of empathy even in the face of the suffering of others - especially that of “the other” - by becoming human in an act of empathy itself to understand our lack of it.

Jesus, to me, is an act of empathy from God - its manifestation - and this day which is set aside for us to believe that he was resurrected from the dead is an act of empathy from mankind that he was and is capable of that. A belief in God is the act of empathy that God was looking for in us and Christ was created to be its conduit if not, in another act of conflation, a paschal lamb with human limbs so, if for no other reason, they could be nailed to the cross by other human hands.

That is why it saddens me to see so many Christians today stuck in that cruelty of Good Friday and not freed by the conflation of empathy - the grace of it - that Easter offers. I certainly don’t believe that goodness and empathy and kindness are the results of being religious because we have too many examples of religion causing just the opposite of all those things, and nonreligious people being exemplars of kindness without the need to connect it to a command to be so. Being stuck in the cruelty of Good Friday so often has become, in fact, religion’s brand. But I do think all the narratives of all religions are about God coming to earth to try to understand us better. Empathy is at the heart of the ur-narrative of all religions. But the darkness at the ur-heart of humanity blurs its meaning, defiles it. Mankind gives religion a bad name, not God.

That image of Christ in the first Warhol above is prominent and in the foreground and the human figure in the background is seeing the imposed figure as if its imposition is an impish one dancing about with its own divinity. Or is it just a vision being interpreted as a reality, a conflation itself because in some way that is all the same thing. That image of Christ is both on the canvas and rising before us and being seen between the person behind him within the canvas and the person viewing him from here outside it. Christ floats in the liminal space where art can exist as it is being perceived just as it was reported that Christ was after he had been tortured to death by the human need for cruelty.

I do wonder sometimes - especially this year since Easter, yes, conflates with this date - if those who spotted his risen self were maybe having their own 4/20 moment after smoking some powerful doobies themselves back then to pass not only the time but also into the mysticism we read about in the Bible and the maybe-this-is-an-alternate-reality-right-beside-us reportage that we have come to call scripture. I mean, the dude had already reportedly walked on water and healed the sick and raised Lazarus from the dead after four days (not three) and turned water into wine and figured out a way to feed the throng of 5000 fans with a few fish and a loaf or two of bread. He’d been rehearsing for the big payoff of this conflation with humanity when he became gratefully dead because he was capable of rising from it and he needed death to be not the final stage of life but a stage itself to show us there was an everlasting one.

There is, in fact, a Deadhead quality to a lot of the Bible, especially when we try to wrap our heads around this day that is about the conquering of death itself. There is a loopy hope that, to me, has always been in concert with Easter that is not tie-dyed but instills in us the belief that when we die we are untied to death. We are all just a ripple in still water when there is no pebble tossed nor wind to blow. “Reach out your hand, if your cup be empty,” Jerry continues to sing, “ If your cup is full, may it be again. Let it be known there is a fountain that was not made by the hands of men …”

[Usually A POEM FOR A SUNDAY is sent in its entirety to paid subscribers only, but since it’s Easter and the last day of Passover I thought I’d send the beginning of this week’s installment to all of you. But in keeping with the weekly Sunday tradition, if you’d like to read the three poems I’ve curated for today that honor both holidays, please consider joining our paid subscriber community for only $5 a month or $50 a year. Thanks.]