Category Archives: Religion

Holy Friday, Not Good

Posted on 6 April 2012 | Leave a comment

When I was little, I would always ask people why today is called Good Friday, because there didn’t seem to be anything good about it to me. Of course, I was reassured that it was good because it’s the day where Jesus is hanged on a cross and dies for our sins, and without that one event in history we’d still be offering sacrifices or all be damned to hell. I was told by my Sunday School teachers plain and simple: Jesus died to save me, not even us, just me. I caused God to die.

Crucifixion of Christ by Salvador Dali
from http://i.telegraph.co.uk/

My understanding of what happens (happened) today on Holy Friday has since become much more complicated, and I still don’t think it’s necessarily “good.” Holy? Yes. Good? No. A woman watching her son die because he spoke out against a corrupt civil culture, a corrupt government is not “good,” but holy. Men watching their teacher and friend die because he taught them a new way of thinking is not “good,” but holy. Women, who had spent hours with a man who treated them well and didn’t take them for granted, waiting to dress the body of this same man upon the finality of his death is not “good,” but holy. Yes, the miracle that occurs in the act of Jesus death is amazing, however you interpret it. But the actual death cannot be, in humanly terms, felt as anything less than excruciating and agonizing. For all of those who watch the Messiah, Jesus the Son of the Living God, die a slow and painful death on a cross again and again each year to remember this sacrifice, this obedience, this redemptive act it is not “good,” but holy. This tragically beautiful death is human and real to us. It’s not “good.” In fact, it’s horrible, but it isa holy mystery.

Easter is good. Eternal life is good. Sometimes during Lent clinging to that hope is the only thing that gets me from Maundy Thursday through to Jesus’ glorious resurrection and triumph over death at Easter. For now, though, the world rests in the damp, darkness of the tomb with the stone firmly in place.

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Posted in Christianity, Lent, Religion, Spirituality

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“Come alive, come truly alive!”

Posted on 3 April 2012 | 3 comments

I’ve just started reading Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh. The introduction is written by Elaine Pagels, whose book about “Revelation” is also on my to read list. In the introduction of Living, she discusses some of the gnostic gospels and their similarities to Buddhist thought. Most striking for me are the words of “The Teaching of Silvanus”

Knock upon yourself as upon a door, and walk upon yourself as on a straight road. For if you walk on that path, you cannot go astray; and when you knock on that door, what you open for yourself shall open.

Pagels argues that the gnostic gospels point not simply to faith, but also to a “path of solitary searching”  for understanding (xxv). For obvious reasons, many early church leaders condemned the gnostic gospels and the alternate salvific paths they taught, but these same books advocate similar theological teachings, such as compassion. Pagels writes that in the “Gospel of Thomas” Jesus says, “Love your brother as the apple of your eye.” Isn’t that the same thing as recognizing the spark of the divine in everyone or loving your neighbor as yourself?

In the first chapter “Be Still and Know,” Nhat Hanh advocates a similar idea to Paul’s in the biblical text. Paul writes in Acts: “‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’” We also learn throughout the Christian scriptures that every good thing comes from God. Take the first chapter of James for example: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” St. Thomas Aquinas, in his ginormous text Summa Theologica, even extrapolates the idea that all good is of God. Nhat Hanh agrees with this long line of Christian theological thought, but spins it little when he writes about his own encounters with Jesus: “We have to allow what is good, beautiful, and meaningful in the other’s tradition transform us” (9). Nhat Hanh and early Christian writers of all threads, I think, want us to realize this singular spirit of love, beauty, and grace.

I like the last section of this first chapter quite a bit. Nhat Hanh advocates that we should look deeply, which means that “the distinction between observer and observed disappears” (11). Do you suppose this is what Jesus meant when he said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing”? Are we to look into Jesus so intently that we become indistinguishable from him? Is that how we can learn to change the world?

Peace.

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Posted in Buddhism, Christianity, Lent, Religion, Spirituality

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Palm Sunday and Mounds State Park

Posted on 1 April 2012 | 5 comments

Today is Palm Sunday. I love Palm Sunday because it means that Lent is almost over. While I love the season of Lent, I love its end as much as, if not more than, its duration. I enjoy thinking about serious things, but I also enjoy the excitement that comes with Easter and realizing that all the suffering and sadness comes to an end with the risen Christ. Though I am not silly enough to think that all of our earthly suffering comes to an end. I know that very real pain exists in this world, and I know that even remembering the resurrection of the Messiah is not enough to assuage some pain.

Palm Sunday is also one of my favorite Sundays because, for many churches, it is one of very few high holy days where children are encouraged to play a part in the service. Too often, I think, churches don’t have children participate in the service (they might totally mess things up, right?) unless it’s a special service, like a Christmas play or something. Children and youth seem to always be an afterthought in the Church, but we’d be well off to listen to their voices and learn from them, like a reciprocal relationship, instead of always putting them off to the side, in Children’s Church or the Nursery or the Alternative Youth Service. I love Palm Sunday, because it almost always involves small children, and any willing youth, waving palm branches and shouting, “Hosanna! Hosanna in the highest!”

I remember how special I felt when I was a child and I got to be one of the Christians who proclaimed the coming of the Messiah. I (probably over-zealously) shouted my Hosannahs and waved my palm branch before (possibly not so) delicately laying it on the pile of branches on the altar of the church. I had a little extra spunk when I was younger. After Sunday School we got to go collect a branch apiece to take home with us, and I would always take it home and press some of the individual leaflets in my little white leather-bound KJV bible with Jesus’ words in red letters. That bible was so cool because it was a children’s bible, but it was a real translation (if you can call the KJV a real translation), and it had these strange watercolor type pictures in every book. I remember the one for Genesis was Joseph in his amazing rainbow coat. The Preface to the Christian Scriptures had this picture:

I remember getting in so much trouble in Sunday School over this exact picture. One of the adults was explaining to us, “See there is no door knob on the door, which means that you have to open the door to let Jesus inside. He can’t just open it himself. You have to let him in.” Then I said, “Um, the side of the door you can see has the hinges. The hinges are never on the same side of the door as the knob. Jesus is standing in front of the knob, so we can’t see it.” Let me just say, it doesn’t pay to be an observant little kid in a conservative evangelical denomination (Nazarene). I am sure my punishment by my Sunday School teacher for this event is one of reasons we ended up becoming Methodist. For all their faults, at least Methodists use their brains! But back to Palm Sunday.

I am not sure that I’ve ever missed a Palm Sunday service before in my life, but today we chose to sleep in and then go for a walk at Mounds State Park. Going to Mounds was a great choice since all the wild flowers were bloomed out and the weather was a little drizzly but perfect for hiking. We walked the opposite direction that we usually do, and it’s the way I like better, because I notice more beauty coming around that way. I’m not sure why I notice more, but I do. And today was no exception. The park was absolutely beautiful. Breathtakingly so. I didn’t wave any palm fronds, and I didn’t shout Hosannah, but I was able to worship in a way I don’t usually worship in a building called Church.

So this week, as I look forward to Easter, I plan to do several things to remind me of what is coming.I am going to play more, run more, and swim more. I am going to fast, eating only one meal (dinner) each day. And, I am going to pray more and be more mindful of the beauty all around me.

Peace.

*

I have found that writing here (nearly) every day during Lent has done wonders for my mental health. Paying attention to the things around me and reflecting in a spiritual way always makes me feel better, more connected to my surroundings. I don’t know why I don’t keep this up. One entry a day isn’t too much to ask, right? Also, I just cut my hair; it’s pretty crazy, but so am I.

Crazy Hair. Woot. Woot.

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Posted in Art, Children, Christianity, Easter, Goals, Grace, Hair, Lent, Mental Health, Play, Religion, Running, Spirituality, Swimming, Writing

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Tomorrow is Palm Sunday

Posted on 31 March 2012 | Leave a comment

Holy Week begins tomorrow on Palm Sunday with that triumphal act of Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem.

A Mosaic of the Triumphal Entry
Taken from http://murraycreek.net/higher/chapter4.htm

Holy Week is by far my favorite week of the Christian calendar. Why? I can’t really tell you. Maybe it’s the fact that I love the whole glorious mystery of the death and resurrection. Maybe it’s the anticipation of the forty-some days of contemplation an denial leading up to Easter. Maybe it the intense focus on the death of Jesus Christ on Holy Friday. Maybe it’s just that I know soon and very soon the heartache of this forty days of wilderness will be over. There are a lot of maybes leading up to Easter, but somehow Holy Week always succeeds in stopping me right in my tracks and making face mortality in this life. It’s a beautifully tragic week with a most fantastic end: Jesus comes back from the dead and we rejoice. We get to live forever with Jesus, because we get immortality in the next life. That, my friends, is a pretty spectacular promise.

 

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Too Many Days of Lent: I’ve Been Revelling in the Weather

Posted on 30 March 2012 | 2 comments

How much of a blessing has this weather been?! The trees are bloomed out with leaves and assorted flowers, the wild flowers are brightly colored and diverse, the grass is growing and growing and growing, and the birds wake me up every morning with their anger or sexual desire, whichever is worse I am unsure. They scream and chatter and occasionally whistle and chirp outside our bedroom window at the bird feeders. They are my natural alarm clock, beautiful and harsh.

Every time I look out the window at the beauty of the day, I want school to be over so I can play outside. I want to go swimming, biking, running, disc golfing, kayaking, and I want to do every other activity that someone can do outside! I want to roll down a hill and make myself sick. I want to be free. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again here: God wants us to play. There is a whole theology of play that helps us to better relate to the divine through spontaneous acts of creative play.

Part of play for me is recognizing who I am in Christ and being free from societal constraints. In other words, I feel free to play when I realize that my identity lies in Christ and not in what other people think of me. And, I play with reckless abandon, which means I have a few people in my life that don’t quite understand me. My greatest desire is to be unencumbered by those things that other people see as necessary. My mom always says to other people, “I think she just wants to be poor.” Yeah, I do. I don’t want to be tied down by earthly possessions or monetary things. I never intended to buy a house. I would love to get rid of all my stuff until everything I own or everything I need could fit in my camping backpack. I’m pretty sure that would make me perfect for monastic life, which is still a kind of dream of mine. I’m not sure I want to be monastic in the “I’m celibate and live in a cold cell with a hair shirt” kind of monastic, but more in the new monastic, communal living sort of way where I share things with my community members.

When I am having these thoughts, my morning prayers typically confirm my thoughts or dissuade me from them. Today they confirm with this quote from Peter Maruin, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement: “The world would be better off if -people tried to become better. And -people would become better if they stopped trying to become better off.” I think living in a self-sustaining community and trying to be better and more compassionate is definitely a way for me to be better off. I think of communities like Simple Way and the way they intertwine work and play in all aspects of their lives.

I would be able to work hard and play hard without trying to conform to some arbitrary economic constraints.

I would only have to please God and provide for my “family.”

I would have plenty of time to revel in the beauty of God’s world and word.

I could play.

Peace.

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Posted in Art, Capitalism, Christianity, CNF, Disc golf, Ethics, Goals, Homelessness, Lent, Mental Health, Play, Politics, Poverty, Relationships, Religion, Social Justice, Spirituality

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