The universe deals people some pretty bad hands. Whether it’s a physical affliction making life a living hell, or a heart so broken you can’t inhale, it almost doesn’t matter whether it’s happening to you or someone you love. When you love someone, their pain becomes yours. As anyone who’s watched their beloved person die will tell you, at some point they wished they could trade places with their suffering person. Even though watching it unfold—and enduring its aftermath in a daze—likely hurt worse.

Now that’s a dire way to start a column, especially one you’ve come to rely upon instead for laffs, seemingly unrelated topics woven together, questionable spellings, and general disregard for propriety. You shall have that, dear Reader. But if Holy Week and Passover aren’t about death and mayhem and baffled onlookers, I don’t know what is, so try to run with this. I  write on seasonal subjects and, well, here we are.

When it comes to religion, I pretty much believe all of it. Meaning I think that people at the time believed these things were happening, and whether they did or did not occur is not important to me. What matters to me is that humans today get together to honor those that were beacons of kindness a really long time ago, to give thanks to something bigger than we, to whisper wishes for those in need, and that there’s a place you can go where you can leave your purse unattended and probably no one will go through it. Our religious affiliation is typically decided by our parents; that a single religion is The Right One is to me as perverse as the notion that Christians were born sinners whose sometimes unbaptized children languish in Hell or Limbo eternally. I don’t believe there is a Hell outside of Earth proper. We have plenty of Hell right here at home.

Whether Jesus was a son of God who performed miracles and rose from the dead is, in my opinion, anyone’s guess. But I believe he was a real and good man and that, as with other religious figures, some things he said and did were accurately recorded. There could well be a God, as anyone who’s seen a live moose up close, smelled a lemon blossom, or shot a  hole-in-one will agree. I had to “block” an unruly scarf this week, and while the travel iron my boyfriend bought me in 1987 is adorable, it doesn’t have steam. I borrowed my neighbor’s. While blocking, I thought, “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind owning a steam iron.” An hour later at the dump I found on the FREE table a steam iron for the taking. Coincidence? Proof of God?

Or Gods! The pagans will surely have rocked Tuesday’s full moon by this column’s printing, what with the Blood Moon total eclipse. Having missed March’s Worm Moon (?) entirely, I’m paying closer attention. CNN Tech claims the moon will be red-orange like a “desert sunset”; one NASAn preferred “reddish, ugly-looking.” I’ll settle for dishwater gray, as we have been let down repeatedly by scientists promising a spectacular celestial event that turns out either a dud or obscured by clouds. Although, as with religious followers (which they kind of are), I do believe scientists think it to be true when they say it.

America, you’ve got another chance. On October 8, then April 4 and September 28 of 2015, there are three more Blood Moons visible from the entire US. Four in a row, according to effusive CNN, is “like drawing a rare lunar poker hand.” Which I didn’t read until an hour after starting this column’s first sentence. Coincidence? You decide.

One thing is certain: mud is upon us (lit. and fig.). As its mellifluous downhill oozings and the soft, sweet hum of cluster flies lull us to sleep at night, may we dream of ways to slog through mud and life with grace. God shows [its] face from time to time, seems like. If in fact real, God apparently lets us do whatever we want. Which a lot of the time is no good at all. So it’s up to us manage our relationships, communities, and planet with brains and respect. If there is a God, I do hope we haven’t been too much of a disappointment because I, for one, am trying my damnedest. And I see you out there, too, people. I see your deli slicer-sharp minds, strong hands, and big hearts at work. It hasn’t gone unnoticed. Good day.

Up Next Month Evidence of the Devil: Black flies, BP, and the Disgraceful Home Printer Ink Scandal of Modern Tymes