Spent a couple of weeks in LA.  My Mom is staying at a home in the Hollywood Hills next to P. Diddy's Playhouse, yes, Playhouse, and Malcom in the Middle's family home.

It is a beautiful home.  She is a great Mom.  Hot-tubbed my self to a wrinkled prune, and sat a "Jim Morrison's barstool" at Barney's Beanery.

Walked around the La Brea Tar Pits and made the methane rise as I walked by.  Kinda Freaked my Mom out. 

Got a little sun, had a little fun.

Did Moholland Drive and spent Easter Sunday with my Mom's "other family" in the Valley.

Beautiful home with The Masters playing in the background and children on a sugar high after finding all of the eggs and candy carefully laid by the Easter Bunny.

I still believe in the Easter Bunny, Santa, and yes, even Jesus.

Since it was also Passover that weekend, it was hard to know how to greet people in the most PC appropriate way in LA.

I decided that I would just say, "Happy Easter", and leave it at that, let everyone else sort it out.

Now, coming home to my home and family, I feel blessed, not in the Christian sense, but in a truly humble manner.

Yes, I have not indulged over the years in keeping up with the Joneses.  My husband and I were fortunate to get out of debt early and stay out.  But what I witnessed in California truly shook me to the core.

This beautiful family close to my mother.  The 93 year-old Matriarch presiding over Easter Sunday with her Children , Grand-children and Great-grandchildren. 

The family is warm, open and gracious.  The Geat-grandchildren beautifully behaved. A rarity. The Grandchildren loving and grateful to be parents. And and the Children of the Matriarch, in their sixties, living the last days in their home.  A garden of earthly delights, hummingbirds, wrens and ocassional butterflys at the water fountain in the backyard.

A perfect blue-bird sky. Every painted in Easter finery. The house sitting on the edge of forclosure.

On the outside, perfection, on the inside a deep and abiding sadness that everyone kept at bay.

Tea Bag parties can't help this family.

The money from Congress and other Stimulus inducements won't help this family.

A Lottery win would help.

But please, Jesus, Jump down in these hard days, and bring at least comfort to those who stand on the precipice of losing everything they have worked hard all of their lives to achieve.

The Lazarus Effect.  The only time in the New Testament where Jesus cried was over the death of Lazarus.  He was taking on all of the grief, sorrow and pain of humanity in his heart.

I cry as Jesus cried over Lazarus.  For all that are struggling and losing.  For the disinfranchised and the lost.  For the sons and daughters still dying in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Please, Jump Down Jesus Now, and give them some relief.