This one got away from me as I was putting this together. There’s a few ideas with sub-ideas branching from them. Inspired by texts with friends and conversations with my wife leading up to and on the day-of Easter Sunday.
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Spiritually-charged-memorialized- moments are like tattoos on the Soul. They are Ebenezers, to borrow from the Christian tradition and hymn “Come Thou Fount”. Like an immovable rock in your memory. It weighs on your life, sometimes in a good way, if you let it be. These defining experiences can withstand and endure growth. As someone naturally allows their faith and beliefs to unfold into seeing and allowing for greater moments of beauty and mystery, they’ll see these disparate events and experiences as Teachers.
Like a tapestry of moments that compound to create your current incarnation. You come to have compassion for and honor the moments that you feel more unacquainted with. You can fold in the difficult and painful parts of your particular story to be included in the bigger Picture. It all can and does belong. Each stage paves a way for the next, no one phase/mode/season more important than the other. All necessary and flowing into and from the others.
This Easter:
You may need to re-imagine this ancient Story in a new way. A way that goes beyond.
You may need to actually go back. Re-visit old ways you’ve engaged with this ancient Story in the past but with fresh eyes — re-purposing old ways you used to relate to Jesus, the cross, etc.
I was baptized outside in an inflatable mini-pool during a warm April morning with the coastal breeze filling the outdoor amphitheater. An event put on by the evangelical church I attended for the last 5 months or so. I invited my divorced parents to witness to my baptism. Something I’d described as “an outward act of an inward transformation”. I still like that phrase. It’s actually more true today than it was 12 years ago. My experiences of God have only gotten wider and bigger. I still feel like I’m encountering external mysteries that sync up with what I know to be true internally. I’m still dying to old ways of being externally that match my internal struggles and resistance to change.
What’s changed most over these 12 or so Easter Sundays since that baptism day has less to do with how my “beliefs” have shifted and more to do with how I incarnate and enact the three movements of the story : death, burial/rest/liminality, and resurrection/rebirth.
The archetypal framework has always been the same (even before the Jesus/Easter story), but the way we interact with it should change year over year. We may even come back to past ways of interacting with a certain interpretation of this pattern and that’s more than alright. Most of the time I think we cringe at former ways we related to God/others/ourselves.
What if we could compassionately embrace and welcome new revisions of those incarnations to return like an old friend? Like holy ghosts that come back to help us along in our current stage.
We can do this with a lightness and joy if we are able to grow unattached to any one form of embracing the Story. If you stay open and curious to all the ways old patterns might emerge as new mysteries in years to come while, and this is crucial, remaining present to the current experience, you’ll come to see that the Divine has a funny way of re-energizing this ancient story.
Every year I find myself recaptured by and thrown into the center of a new image or metaphor. A new way to relate to this message.
What continues to compound and build over time and with each year is a growing conviction to “be” with whatever particular part of the Easter story most connects with me that year and to be present to it. There’s something to embracing a beginners mind this time of year. A holy forgetfulness. Giving the story room to disturb and arouse our ego’s desire to smugly protest “I know this already”.
Forget it. There are a million and a half ways Spirit wants to show you death, rest and resurrection again. There are infinitely more ways Spirit wants you to experience the Easter rhythms. Because that’s what this is about. Not believing in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. But recognizing that Jesus’ death, sabbath, and rebirth are a mirror held up to your body in pastels, exclaiming,
“see death as part of the deal, not the enemy of resurrection. Be here with Saturday and don’t be in such a rush to drown yourself in the guilt of Friday or anticipated excitement of Sunday. And lastly, see Jesus’ resurrection as your own and that of every one/thing else.”
We believe in Easter when we are able to make peace with all the ways we’re still opposing death rather than expecting it. We live in an extremely death denial/avoidant culture. Culprits include religious and non religious communities alike. Anything related to decay or loss of life is repressed and prayed away or deemed the last enemy of science and tech. We’re pushing to extend the lifespan of humans to avoid the reality of what is. And in so doing, we’re completely cutting ourselves off from one half of the Juice. Death is not the enemy, but the doorway. For years I feared dying. Feared slipping out of everything familiar and into a bottomless void.
But emotional/spiritual/psychological/ego death is the prerequisite to true life. Christians have a strange obsession with death which cheapens and stresses life. It’s consumed with the future state of things beyond this world and in so doing, there is a repression of emotions related to depression, sadness and grief in many of these communities. Death and death-dealing illnesses, diseases, and the like are best dealt with by praying them away. Death must be conquered. Death’s intertwining with sin makes for a negative view of death.
It’s after Jesus has died, has surrendered, has allowed death to pass through that he initiates the process of Christ Consciousness. The giving up everything, the death to control, the surrender to unknowing must happen. This death must occur before something new can begin. And you can’t game the system by sacrificing/dying the type of death you’d wish for yourself. Deaths will be dealt to you according to the personal journey of the individual working out their unique life/karma/path. It’s theirs to learn and grow with. If you keep hitting brick walls with grief and pain, you might consider asking “what does this have to teach me in this current form?”. If something feels familiar, something continues to annoyingly make itself noticed or you grow discontent from a reoccurring person/activity/etc, perhaps the root of this happening is occurring to teach you something. To reveal something. To open you up to something. Of course there will always be those (I know this because I am one) who mistake this practice to mean I’m encouraging those who are victims/being mistreated/in toxic circles not of their own creation to believe they are the problem and reason for their “karma”. I’m not saying that at all. You know this, so just don’t. All I’m getting at is this: death and dying are not the enemy, you not dealing with death and dying and allowing it to be part of the LIFE is.
We are re-incarnational. Regardless of what you believe about literal reincarnation or literal resurrection, we are constantly evolving physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. These changes occur so that we can hopefully grow — become better, and think differently than we did when we were younger and without the knowledge we currently possess.
Your previous incarnation once loved and needed the gospel of “Jesus dying instead of you on a cross for your sin” — because you owed a debt to God. This relationship and way of interacting with God and self, it created a sense of love and appreciation for the sacrifice of Jesus. It’s good. But if left in this stage too long, something of a codependent relationship will start to make its way through. It’s incomplete. Because things get more complex, more beautiful, more disastrous.
Then some will make their way to include more of a posture of believing (still believing in the head) that Jesus died for you.
But then
It turned into dying for you. It was a gift. All you have to do is receive it. And it still is a gift. Again, it’s pure and good, but what else?
Then “with”. God is with us. Jesus died on the cross historically but there’s also a death we must endure. We die and are resurrected with Christ. I loved and still appreciate this mode of belief.
Another one to ponder is this:
Jesus dies as you
so that he may be resurrected and
Raised as you.
And you live the resurrection in and as the Christ with every act of Easter — sacrificial love for another.
Double points if you do this for “your enemy”
The only two non-negotiable, prerequisites for Resurrection/ Rebirth are
death and waiting.
But once you’re in on the joke, that death is part of it, that waiting isn’t designed to torture you, you can be with it all — whatever it “all” might be, in a non-anxious way. Why?
Because your resurrection is at hand. And you won’t raise yourself. You’ll BE RAISED.
If you’re lucky, this will happen multiple times in your lifetime and you’ll experience something of a shift of consciousness and perspective. From: “my life is so different than it used to be”/ “I wish I could go back”/ “I hope ______ happens/doesn’t happen”
To: observing the life that IS right now
Don’t like the current state of your life and being? Hang tight. Another one is on the way faster than you can imagine.
We get stuck in these stories of how life ought to be while forgetting that there’s been a multi-millennium framework laid out to comfort, disturb, and provoke us to continually shed what is old/not working/was good for a time…
Rest in what is. Be here now. Sabbath. Whatever word or phrase you want to use for leaning into Mystery and silence before you fling yourself into the next thing where you think the life is.
And
Die. Wait. Be born again. Be raised from the dead. Be given new eyes to see.
Reincarnate. Allow the re-incarnation of Jesus to be with you. In the help of friend while you’re struggling financially (I’ve met Christ in friends this way). In the help of loved ones and nurses when you’re in rough shape medically (I’ve kissed the Divine here, too). In generous grace when you’ve fucked it all up (This has only happened once or twice… or five thousand times. My wife is Christ with me every day).
I’ve touched/offended/loved/seen my share of Christs too. In church, college, restaurants, bars, trips, at home, with family, friends.
Even with frustrating situations, non-Christlike encounters, you may be witnessing God playing hide-and-seek with you. Exclaiming “You’re it! You get to be me to this one right in front of you”. How else would someone experience grace? How else would someone touch Mystery but by looking into the physical eyes of someone made in God’s image?
What I’m basically getting at and asking is this:
Where do you locate God?
What’s the address of the Divine?
If not here, then where? If not “Now”, then when?
I just encountered Christ one last time before this post when my son had a giant blowout in his diaper, oozing poop everywhere, and my wife screamed from the other room “Babe! I need help with this blowout!”
Groovy. Another chance to join in on where God is. A chance to both become Christ in person for Beau and Kirsten. And, the kicker, to receive and be loved by Jesus myself in Kirsten and Beau.
What will this help me see?
Where’s that mirror?
It’s in Beau’s hands in the tub after I scrubbed his butt and the mirror is reflecting back God’s own image to me.
You’re It!
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