Growing up my parents always celebrated the sacred and the secular.  Of course the sacred was what was truly important, but they also saw nothing wrong with creating a little earthly joy to celebrate along with the heavenly one.  For the past week (Holy Week, for Christians) I have tried to answer my five year old’s in depth questions about death, blood, and bones.  Of course I want her to understand Christ’s crucifixion, but I see nothing wrong with letting her delight in the joys of chocolate shaped animals, finding candy eggs, and having a small Easter gift or two.  I got an Easter basket from my mother until I left home.  I always looked forward to it and she loved to do it.  I want to continue that for my daughter, only I think I may always give her an Easter basket.  The first time my mother and I went back to Santa Fe after my father died was a tough one.  In one of our favorite stores on the plaza that year my mother saw a set of folk art cats she fell in love with.  Carved from wood, there was an orange mama cat with her four little kittens all in varying colors and they were nursing,  It was one of the cutest things we had ever seen.  She bought them and named the mother cat Molly.  When my mother passed I placed them carefully on her cedar chest that now resides in our loft where our daughter plays.  She has always loved the kittens, but I told her to please leave them because they were Nana’s and not toys.  I try to be a thoughtful gift giver and I am a big fan of catalogs.  A few months ago I discovered this cloth version of Molly and her kittens and I knew it would be the perfect gift for her Easter basket.  So I crept down in the early morning hours praying to avoid detection and assembled her Easter basket.  I made sure to be “asleep” when my little one went into the kitchen and discovered it.  I heard a high pitched squeal of shock and joy followed by thundering footsteps which became louder and more tremorous the closer she became.  “MAMA!  MAMA!  WAKE UP!” she shouted perilously close to my eardrum as she began tugging on my arm.  “What is it?” I asked.  “JUST COME SEE!!!  COME SEE!!!”  I gave Daddy a discreet poke in the ribs because I knew he would not want to sleep through this.  “Well, let’s wait for your father” I said as she raced to the other side of the bed to get him up.  Within minutes she had us dutifully following her down the steps.  Standing on her tiptoes, I realized bittersweetly she could already reach the kitchen light.  “LOOK!” she exclaimed as I watched Burk’s face genuinely light up:  part surprise and part predatory wolf eyeing the chocolate.  “It’s just like Nana’s!” she exclaimed, referring to the cats.  She hadn’t even touched her basket until we came down.  As she carefully took her cat family out I asked what she was going to name the mama.  “Sweetie,” she promptly declared.  The cutest part is that the kittens are magnetized as well as the mama cat’s “dinners.”  She came with six magnetized nipples so the kittens don’t get lost and they can nurse wherever they please.  We added four to our little family of three in church today and caused something of a small stir.  There was joy as we celebrated Christ’s resurrection on the cross and for the saving grace of life after death.  The Swiss theologian Karl Barth once said, “Joy is the simplest form of gratitude.”  Also present was simple gratitude … for Sweetie and her brood.