Easter Musings

The crucifixion of Christ God is upon us.  His death and resurrection miracles are reenacted annually. The message of love is everywhere this Holy Week.  God who taught us “love your enemy” died for our error and humanity.  God who incarnated in his son Jesus taught we are all children of God each and everyone of us capable of miracle.  Come and Follow Me, he said.  “I will make you fishers of men”.  For thousands of years God caught our imagination.  Distracting us from war and killing and the refinements of torture and the salience of sex.
“Come follow me.”  “Repent!”
This world is the surface of things.  We are shallow thinkers who fail to follow the greatest minds of our day, the Max Planck’s and Einsteins. They too taught us to look beneath the surface of things.  Heaven is within.  Our very ideas and presence individually and collectively define reality.  The Uncertainty Principle, String Theory, and Shroediger’s Cat all bring us back to a man dying on a cross who says,
“Forgive them for they know not what they do?"
“Father, why has thou forsaken me?"
“It is not I that turned away.” he says.
I am afraid.  I am so afraid.  I know anxiety is a measure of my distance from God.  I pray.  I meditate. I work and I do the next right thing.  I am forever standing as David before Goliath. But the nightmare recurs over and over again. I’m am shitting and pissing myself because I’ve forgotten my sling.  Somehow I know in the story I conquer the beast. Always in the end I’m the one who awakes to the light. In the nightmare I’m failing again and again, the Sisyphus of Kierkegaard Suffering Unto the End, caught in the existential angst of the Scream.  Hollow Men.  The Hollow Man.
I kneel before you accepting the transformation of wine into blood into god stuff.  There are no illusions.  It is real.  I joined the collective insanity preferable to the individual insanity of the one alone among the stupid people.  I too am pinned to a cross like a trophy in a child’s insect collection.  I sometimes imagine I hear Herod laugh.  In the Collective Unconscious of Carl Jung I become all those who are there at the drama of death. I’m the grieving mother, the crying lover and the callous hardened soldiers and the superior church and political leaders. I’m all of these august members killing God to keep the love out of the darkness we create to frighten children and hold onto our rank stupidity.  The reformer is the enemy of anyone who would challenge the status quo. As above, so below. As within, so without.
I am a fat cat  I despise  ready to eat the mouse or fight whatever and whoever would take my spot in the sun.  I am indifferent. This addiction to the passing fashion and past play of the false promise of escape or enlightenment is my undoing. I am here till the end, servant to the King.  Only the good die young. Each passing moment I am more and more aware of how deep evil is and how thoroughly it has eroded my faith.   I no longer fly in dreams, soaring as Jonathan Seagull, laughing.  I am heavy with sorrow. I’m waited down with  failure upon failure.  I have lost my way in the Maze and think only of the Minotaur.   I am not the resurrected Lazarus.  I am the forgotten..
It was only yesterday you died for my sins yet I’ve distanced you, placed you back in history somewhere after a Big Bang. I’ve made you a story and a myth.  I’ve reduced you to what I can grasp. I’ve reduced to infinite and sacred to bite size portions. I’ve cannibalized creation unable to open myself fully to the miracle that is you.   I’ve ignored the constant tapping on the door of you wanting to come in.  I have turned from the light.  I have crucified my Lord.  I have hated my fellow man. I have ignored the ten commandments. I’ve forgotten the Beatitudes. I have moped in self pity and focussed on myself. I have studied my naval and beheaded John the Baptist.  All the while my friends have said to me, “Get down off the cross, we can use the wood.”  I am not much but I am all I think of.
The paranoid always externalizes blame. The shame is always with the other.  So shame on you.
I want you God. I want you more than all creation. I want the relationship with my Lord that you had with yours.  The Father and Son are one.  I would be One in humility.  A servant king as you.
This weekend we celebrate with pomp and pageantry. The miracle of spring is upon us.  The terrible winter of darkness and sickness is past.  Tulips are exploding from the earth in psychedelic colours.  Blue skies are replacing the endless grey.  Snow is melting and warmth is replacing the cold.  There is again the miracle of hope. And we take all this for granted.
Soon we shall  shout. Altogether now! Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen Indeed.  I cannot wait God.  Each year I feel as if I am crawling to this finish line, more and more wrecked.  I am slithering really, snaking into the home plate.  The song Desperado comes to mind.  Really Lord I’ve been out riding fences for too long. I’ve lost my humanity in the rat race. I’ve let bits of importance fall from me in the struggle to stay up right in the hurricane.  I’ve have stayed to long in the valley  of corruption and greed.  I now wait for you to prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies.  My cup runneth over.  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me, all the days of my life.
Still I’ve warred with myself. I’ve not loved myself. I’ve not forgiven others and I’ve not forgiven myself. I’ve held onto all that fear and rage. I’ve been little minded, smug and shallow. I’ve been all the failings of man.  I’ve lost hope and faith and believed that pains would never end. I’ve been thankless and lacking in gratitude waking to blame others for my own refusal to believe.  I’ve let the end down and failed to do my best every minute of every day. I’ve been selfish and unkind and unclean.  I’ve barely made it to Easter this year Lord. I’ve hardly survived this winter.
But now I’m struggling to stand up right again. I want to greet you, standing.  I want to reach up and touch your finger.  I want to feel that moment when sparks fly both ways. I want to know you Lord. I really want to know you.
I love you Jesus, Son of God.  I am your follower, such as there is. Take me in all my brokeness and unworthiness.  I am one of those who killed God out of fear when God came to visit his creation.  I carry all of those who have gone before me in my DNA and in my mind.  I too am Son of Man, Son of God.  I remember Peter denying you. I remember Judas betraying you.  I am those.  But please God know me first as he who loved you.  Teach me to pray.  Help me. Guide me.
These days and nights of Holy Week I want to walk with you.  This Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and all the days of the year I want to  remember your sacrifice. I want to hear you saying,
“Forgive them for they know not what they do?”  “Love them.”  Love your neighbour as yourself.  But first of all, Love God.
Then I want to hear the horns and sing out with all the earth, “Christ has Risen!  Christ has Risen! Christ has Risen!"