Category Archives: DeathandResurrection Should be One Word.
A Universal Christ
Christianity is the most radical of all world religions
Franciscan sister and scientist Ilia Delio focuses on the theology of the incarnation and the universal nature of the Christ mystery:
The Christian message is that God has become flesh [sarx in Greek or “matter”]—not a part of God or one aspect of God but the whole infinite, eternal God Creator has become matter. The claim—God has become flesh—is so radical that it is virtually unthinkable and illogical. Christianity is the most radical of all world religions because it takes matter seriously as the home of divinity. [1]
So does everyone have to become Christian to know the Christ? Absolutely not. Christ is more than Jesus. Christ is the communion of divine personal love expressed in every created form of reality—every star, leaf, bird, fish, tree, rabbit, and human person. Everything is christified because everything expresses divine love incarnate. However, Jesus Christ is the “thisness” of God, so what Jesus is by nature everything else is by grace (divine love). We are not God, but every single person is born out of the love of God, expresses this love in [their] unique personal form, and has the capacity to be united with God…. Because Jesus is the Christ, every human is already reconciled with every other human in the mystery of the divine, so that Christ is more than Jesus alone. Christ is the whole of reality bound in a union of love.
We are transformed by experiencing the presence of Christ in all things.
Eileen: (And all people.)
I believe this. But find expressing it difficult without it becoming so complex that only theologians can “get” it. In the fifty-eight years since I experienced the incredible unconditional Love of God fleshed out in Jesus, my view of Jesus and Christianity has been expanded, rather than changed, until I realized that we have mostly missed the point of Jesus. Our importance is as a part of the whole…..we are part of God with God’s Spirit within us, but we limit the Spirit because of fear. Fear is literally the root of all evil. It’s the root of Musk’s need for power and my need for pleasure as escapes from the reality of our human vulnerability. We are fragile physical beings in a huge universe beyond even our understanding, never-the-less, our control. Unconsciously, we are all aware that the possibility of heartbreaking disaster lurks in the next minute. We do all we can to make this life pain free……our idea of heaven. We miss the point of Jesus. We want Him to be a “get out of this life’s possibility of being hell free” card. And we consider Him our key to the spiritual country club of escape from it. And we miss the point of both His life journey and His death as the prototype for ours. He grew spiritually. He became aware of the need to balance achievement with simple kindness through his mom. He was literally pushed into the increased danger of becoming known for doing miracles by His mom’s caring about a family’s social embarrassment. He was challenged over and over to love the least of these (lepers, tax collectors, fallen women, Roman Soldiers, people unwilling to help themselves, cowardly best friends, and the leaders of His own religion who had Him tortured and killed) and even God when He felt God had abandoned Him.
This life is not meant to be heaven. It is school. It is the journey from Self as number one, to being willing to lay down our lives for not only those who are different from us, but those that would kill us. That takes Growth through Grace with a capital G! Ultimately it takes a willingness to die to what we value most in our lives and ourselves.
This may not sound like the “good news,” but it’s a letting go that ultimately frees us from the fear that controls and corrupts us, so that we can ultimately Love all others unconditionally.
The Broken Body of Christ
OUCH!
The Power of the Cross
Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and purpose.
Christ sends us to proclaim the gospel simply, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power.
For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.
Jesus died and rose for all, but many want a savior who is about power for this world, this life.
The power of the cross is the resurrection, which shows us that this life is not all there is.
The power of the cross is that it is the ultimate expression of unconditional love for us imperfect, unfinished people.
The power of the cross can free us to die to our self-centeredness, our self-righteousness, our false sense of superiority, our judgmental spirit, our delusion of infallibility. These are the mindsets that twist our belief that we belong to the people of God into the blinding sin of pride. The power of the love of God expressed in dying on the cross can free us from our blind spots of pride, so we can become peacemakers.
The Broken Body by Eileen
Reflecting on the Body
You, the hand, I, the foot
Christ, the head, perhaps the heart
Someone else, the hidden part,
I let the scriptures
Flood my mind with images.
Then suddenly one image
Is so harshly real,
I gasp aloud.
I see a person staggering
And stumbling toward me,
Arms flailing, head jerking
Back and forth in spasms,
Body parts all pulling
Different ways.
This then – reality
Christ’s earthly body now.
Forgive us! Eileen
OUCH!
The Call to Change
I am still reading Richard Rohr’s “Jesus’ Alternative Plan …The Sermon on the Mount.” It’s not a simple or easy read. I have to stop and reflect and sometimes write about the awareness he provokes. Part of my delight is his confirmation of so much of what I’ve had to learn the hard way, from experience. But I think that is the best way because it helps facilitate actual change, not just intellectual assent. As I get farther in the book, I am challenged to face the areas in my psyche that have not been transformed yet by appropriation, that are still just intellectual assent. The journey gets harder along the way and I’ve been on it a long time. I’m obviously a slow learner!
Rohr is a theologian, so sometimes his language gets beyond my everyday understanding and makes me feel stupid. Then I have to struggle with both Google and my feelings of intimidation, so I won’t skip over those parts.
I’m in a very challenging part of my journey and I’m really struggling with it. I use various escapes often and don’t deal with issues that involve so much hard, even painful, self-honesty. I really resist being willing to die to what I like about myself. Which is what we have to do to focus on the nitty-gritty areas in order to see what needs to be let go. And then the hardest work is giving up my emotional pain relievers that I hang on to that keep me from experiencing the growing pains.
One of my escapes is depression. At an unconscious level it’s a choice. My other escape is being around other people who are also letting themselves focus on the bad things in the world outside them, rather than the things within us that need changing. There are some things we can do to try to make the world our version of better. But the biggest challenge ultimately is ourself that with honesty and grace we are called to change for the better. For most of us the “Beatitudes” are a greater challenge on the spiritual journey than the ten commandments.
Ultimately our spiritual journey is the same as Oscar, the Grouch’s: admitting it’s our own attitude that needs changing and seeking the grace to do it.
And sometimes I have needed either a Spiritual Director or a group that is also seeking the grace to grow and change. Right now I don’t have either, but I am seeing and hearing God’s call to change. So, I am focusing on that part of the journey and Rohr’s book really focuses on that challenge. God is in the timing!
The Sign of Jonah
This is my paraphrase of today’s reflection by Richard Rohr: The Sign of Jonah
There is a flow to our spiritual journey. There are times of grace when we experience Love of God’s presence with joy. But for the journey to transform us we must, like Jonah, spend time in darkness. Our spiritual lives are journeys of deaths and resurrections as recurring stages of darkness, grace, growth and new life. This is the pattern Jesus promises us and we see it in other traditions as well. Native religions speak of winter and summer; mystical authors speak of darkness and light; Eastern religions speak of yin and yang or the Tao. Christians call it the paschal mystery: all point to the same necessity of descent and ascent. We are transformed through death and rising many times in our life.
Usually, it is a loss that takes us there. Sometimes the loss of a loved one, a relationship, a career setback, or sudden financial insecurity. The American dream of a steady ascent without failure or loss is a delusion spiritually. Mature religion teaches us how to enter with trust the difficult periods of life. Knowing we are not alone and that this is the crucible of transformation opens us to the grace for growth and transformation. These hard passages are good teachers.
Our first reaction is to try to change events so we can avoid changing ourselves. Learning to stay with the pain of life, without answers, even some days without meaning is the hidden path of contemplative prayer. Grace leads us to the state of emptiness, to a momentary sense of meaninglessness in which we ask, “What is it all for?” But this spaciousness within the question allows Love to fill and enliven us.
A quote from another priest, Father Powell : “ PassionDeathResurrection should be all one word” sums it up.
A personal experience may illustrate this. My husband made an ethical decision that caused us to have to start over in business. We lost our original investment in the company he and two others had started and in the following year a recession hit and our new business had almost no clients. I got a job as Associate Director of Religious Education for the Chaplains Division at Fort Campbell that helped us stay afloat, but we gradually had to sell all our investments and even our wedding silver. We had to learn how to heat with a wood burning stove and fireplace. We almost lost our home. Our children got jobs, scholarships based on ability, and did without the extras most of their contemporaries had at college. We even had to put plastic over our roof, since we couldn’t afford to repair leaks. We lived out in the country in the woods, so I hoped no one would notice. But since we were in a direct line to the local airport, I found out our plastic had become a direction sign for airplanes. We all learned new ways of being. Christmases brought out the best in all of us as we tried to make them good for our youngest child who still believed in Santa. Over and over small miracles in moments of crises reminded us that God was still with us. Every New Year’s Eve, we would say hopefully, “Well, next year is going to be better.” The seventh year on New Year’s Eve, we sighed and said, “Well, we’re getting a whole lot stronger!” That year things got better. Some of my best memories are from those seven years. I think they made all of us better people and they definitely increased my faith. I have a collection of stories of life challenges and spiritual transformations. And at eighty-five I expect to have more challenges to depend on grace to grow so I can become the person God created me to be.
Peace and Joy in the Dark Nights of our Souls
For me, this inner peace in the middle of sorrow and pain has become harder, because in my early spiritual journey, I could sense the presence of Jesus in the room even when I was in physical pain or emotional turmoil. And often joy came even in pain or heartbreak. But at least those memories help me know that even when I now feel alone, I am not.
Mirabai Starr finds inspiration in mystics Julian of Norwich (1343–c. 1416) and John of the Cross (1542–1591).
“Both endured profound suffering and yet discovered a deep and Divine love in its midst. What does a religious woman who dwelt in an anchor-hold during the Middle Ages have to do with you and me today? Julian endured a long and cruel pandemic. The disease ravaged her community and carried off the people that she loved. She learned to shelter in place, focusing on cultivating her interior landscape and sharing the fruits of her wisdom through the window that opened from her cell onto the busy streets of her city (think computer screen and Zoom), where she offered counsel to visitors . . . each day.
She found solace, not in the wrathful father-god of her childhood, but in an unconditionally loving Mother-God who could not help but forgive the transgressions of each one of her darling kids. She recognized that everything that is could be contained in a hazelnut in the palm of God’s hand, and that it all endures because God adores every particle of Her creation. She also realized that, even though the night feels impenetrable now, dawn is coming, when we will see with our own eyes that not only is every little thing going to be alright, but that it has been all along.
And how could a renegade monk, who survived the Spanish Inquisition despite the Jewish and Moorish blood that flowed through his veins, have anything to teach us about flourishing in our own dark nights? John of the Cross illumines the transformational power of radical unknowing. He rekindles our latent longing for union with the Beloved and, through sublime poetry and precise prose, blows on the flames so that they dance back to life in our beleaguered hearts.
He reminds us that when everything in us wants to rush out and fix the problem of our brokenness, both individual and collective, the wisest and most loving thing to do is to be still, letting go of our attachment to the way we thought the spiritual life was supposed to feel and the sense we assumed it should make. Once we step out of our own way, into the dark and empty vessel of the soul, “an ineffable sweetness” will begin to rise, permeating and nourishing the quiet earth, uncovering a resurrection we never dreamed possible: a dazzling darkness, a radiant night, a revolutionary newness of being.
But maybe not quite yet.
We are not alone. The wise ones who walked before us have left luminous footprints for us to follow in our own apocalyptic times.”
DeathandResurrection Should Be One Word
Dying is messy. Most people don’t manage to die with their hair styled or tidily in their best suit and tie. Looking good isn’t what death is about.
Dying is often painful, both emotionally and physically. Even those, who find peace from acceptance or joy from a sense of God’s loving presence, struggle before getting to that point. Dying isn’t comfortable.
Dying is not a social event. It sometimes brings feelings of rejection, because some of our family and friends aren’t ready to face the reality of death, so they may get very busy elsewhere.
Dying is scary and lonely. Only a few have lived to tell about it. And though our loved ones may hold our hand, we know we must go alone.
Dying is an experience of total helplessness. No matter how rich or competent or powerful we are in life, dying wipes out the last illusion that we are in control.
Dying is the final cross. Not one we carry, but one we hang on, suspended between heaven and earth wondering if we’ve been abandoned on both sides.
Yet dying is the doorway to life. It’s a very narrow gate and it’s the only gate out.
The true Christian life (not the insurance game or the private club versions) is a series of deaths and resurrections that prepare us for that final one.
Deaths and resurrections such as:
Letting go of our need to look good by hiding behind masks: becoming free to be our truest and fullest self.
Letting go of our illusion of security from belonging to the right group: finding brothers and sisters where we never thought to look.
Letting go of our anesthetic of choice; work, competition, television, twitter, legalism, consumerism, food, sex, alcohol: by allowing ourselves to feel deeply the fears and sorrows of our lives, becoming capable of joy and love.
Letting go of our dependency on others: parents, spouses, friends, or anyone else for validation; recognizing the Spirit of God within our own hearts.
Letting go of needing talents, ministries, and achievements to feel valuable: finding inner peace from the unconditional love of God expressed in Jesus.
Letting go of everything as Jesus did:
“Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also.” John 12:24-26
So, this is where it both ends and begins for us, on the cross with Jesus, being taken by Him through the doorway of death to eternal life.
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 