Unsold op-ed about Easter, presence, and a J.S. Bach oratorio

Sunday 4/20/25

I don't like to put these unmoved op-ed up on here, preferring not to include full pieces in this record. You can't just give it away and I have to believe the right time will come for everything that I have here with me and while I am still here. There's nothing I can really do with this piece for the near future, though. Eventually all of the opinion pieces--including the seventy-eight of which have thus far been published--will be in a book called, The Sage Writer: Opinion and Commentary Pieces from the Age of Stupidity.

Sage writing is an actual term--I'm not just applying an adjective to a noun. The definition is thus: "A type of creative nonfiction writing, particularly prominent in the Victorian era. It involves the writer using wisdom and insight to address social issues and offer guidance to the reader, often drawing on philosophy, history, politics, and economics in a non-technical way." 

This particular piece is about presence and J.S. Bach's Easter Oratorio. It didn't run for a number of reasons--bad luck, bad timing, plus the usual issues of incompetence and discrimination. Looked like it was going to appear in one of the half dozen highest circulation newspapers, but then they had a piece from the archbishop, and his title took precedent over me. Knowing when to send these things can be an issue as well.

Oftentimes, things will come together a day or two before the piece runs--sometimes in late afternoon of that day before. Send something two or three weeks in advance, and it's likely to be put aside and not seen again. In this instance, I had the piece on Monday, and it was already too late for some venues. A lot of work, energy, grinding away, all for nothing. This happened this Easter with three opinion pieces, actually, only one of which I can use in future (in the non-book sense, I mean).

Did make a couple of new contacts though, so there's that. Anyway, here's the piece.

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An Easter life lesson from a 300-year-old J.S. Bach piece.

 The way we discuss how we behave, you’d think that humans didn’t have agency. We’ll encounter post after post, article after article, study after study, about how short everyone’s attention span is. That we can’t read for longer than twenty seconds, and the videos that we’ve used for the replacement of words keeping becoming shorter, as if soon there will be nothing left, and even a blink will be too much for us.

People are less happy than at perhaps any time previously. Pain-dumping on social media is tantamount to the backbone of the enterprise. We are unwilling to be present and patient, to live within moments, to open ourselves up so that things of value may become a part of our lives and who we are.

Easter is the ideal holiday to reflect on what we could do but typically don’t, and the good that can come with changing our approach and our standards. Halloween and Christmas have a flashiness to them that Easter doesn’t. Boom: Scares! Vampires! Costumes! Boom: Lights! Santa! Presents!

Easter, though, may be the most potent holiday of all, because it’s about rising up. Coming back. Pressing on. And there isn’t anyone for whom those themes aren’t relevant at some time or other, and perhaps quite often—nay, more than they’d like or, perish the thought, be willing to admit.

But we must be with Easter. We can’t click out of the screen. The best things in life are this way, though it’s as if we’ve collectively taken it upon ourselves to become less happy by behaving like the opposite were true.

You can hang in with something. That’s a choice you have. To reap a payout. Have a richer life. Be less bored. Get amped up to wake up. Believing anything else to be true is both defeatist and self-defeating.

Sunday mornings for me are about writing and moving. I put the words down at the desk, and then I take to the street. Regularly, I end up at this church where the music of J.S. Bach is being performed.

In 1725, Bach wrote a work that was very important to him: a cantata for Easter which he would reused in the making of what became his Easter Oratorio.

There are pieces of music I listen to that I equate with the sound of the human soul, were the soul to have a sound, and who’s to say it doesn’t? Nick Drake’s Pink Moon. The 4/8/72 Wembley version of the Grateful Dead’s “Dark Star.” Bach’s musical offering for Easter.

Each of these works will add immeasurably to one’s life. To how we know ourselves, and, in turn, the world. We’re more aware after than we were prior. But only if we are fully present in our listening. You can’t be firing off that text, or making the Trader Joe’s run, or doom scrolling Threads.

But if you give yourself over to the experience, you will tap into the transcendent. We can do this, in theory, at will. Bach’s Easter cantata is what I call an extrapolation piece. That is, it’s not just about—or even mostly about—music. You can extrapolate it to be about life, relationships, the choices we make.

Easter is itself an extrapolation piece—the holiday variety. You talk about an anti-defeatist day! The foundational origin story of Easter involves a guy who was dead, who refused to be done. Who insisted on love. Empathy. Modeling these things by being them.

Take it literally if you wish. Read it as metaphor should you prefer. The power is in the extrapolation. All of which you will miss out on—without having a clue it’s there—by racing/clicking around and then complaining—be it outwardly or just to yourself—about your discontent.

At the core of Easter is an epiphany. But there is also an epiphany waiting to be had at the center of our own lives, the idea that we can decide this very minute to change that which holds us back. To stop being bound by these assorted shortcomings that are essentially a choice. And when we make that change individually, we’re helping to make life better in general collectively.

Think of all the lonely people who have no one—and what feels like no options, person-wise. What’s out there for them? But chances are, if they met themselves, they wouldn’t think that person possesses the requisite substance that they ironically say they require. 

Take a hand. Don’t stand behind the rock when you can walk around it. Agency, spirit, presence. Bach and extrapolation. As in Easter as in life.