Life is hard for many right now. The cross and resurrection are inescapable; they come together.
People inspire and strengthen nevertheless with their lived love-truth and vulnerability.
What beautiful light!
I am thankful for the rhythms of wild grace. In relationships of integrity we have no choice but to not give up hope. To press into the Light, even when eclipsed. To live life as it meets us here.
“To live in the light of resurrection—that is what Easter means.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
By raising Christ God vindicated Jesus life and radical ethic of truth-love.
When you feel the darkness coming on claim the light, pray the light.
Last Thursday I heard a powerful talk by the writer Jonathan Eig on MLK Jr.’s work on nonviolent resistance and organizing for justice. On being good troublemakers in the struggle. Years ago I sent Eig (through Daniel Cattau) a pdf of Coleman Brown’s dissertation on MLK Jr. as he began researching his book.
https://www.youtube.com/live/q_uXn1zj6oo?si=cIIB69X34zp5tFF0
Earlier in the week a major change in medical insurance was introduced for Presbyterian church leaders. As one young pastor wrote, “What just happened: A few people making $200K+ (who enjoyed the benefit of family health coverage for the majority of their career) just told a whole lot of people making $40K-$70K that we need to pay $9K-$21K to cover our families so that those making $200K+ plus can pay less for healthcare.”
After the King lecture I remembered that as faith based organizers in Boston and Oklahoma we protested for justice outside large suburban homes of corporate executives and public officials. It’s called creative non-violence. A great living tradition.
Then on Friday a 4.8 magnitude earthquake trembled millions awake with the epicenter just forty miles north of us.
Afterwards I took a walk and saw brown deer come early out of the green April woods. They normally graze later, around dusk. But these are not normal times.
As one friend wrote, “Perhaps they thought it was the last supper.”
I felt released and connected—alive in the Spirit—come what May.
Then on Saturday at noon my daughter in Brooklyn and I listened to a powerful dialogue between Saleika Jaouad and Carmen Radley on survival and creativity.
Suleika wrote, “I’ve learned over the last decade that creative work comes in seasons. There is the season of ideating and researching, figuring out the form something should take. There’s the season of actually making the thing—the Anne Lamott butt-in-chair phase. (To quote her: “How to write: Butt in chair.”) Then there is the season of putting the work in the world, letting it fly so it can go out and find the person who needs it most at the moment they need it most…”
Certain people give us hope—through their honest truth and suffering. Through their courageous pressing into light. Christ meets us there.
On Sunday morning, yesterday, I was scheduled to speak at the Reformed Church in Peapack-Gladstone, located in horse country even closer to the epicenter of the earthquake.
Like the deer I was early into a green place—or sacred space— at 5 am and rewrote my talk with a new metaphor. When the Spirit beckons—I am learning to trust the wellsprings of new life.
As Stephen Ray wrote: “Where I had assumed familiarity with our ways and customs as church, now I imagine the future of our church to be largely among the unchurched. Teaching the practices and grammar of grace and God's love becomes the point…”
I told the story about the person who went into the wilderness to discover if there really is anyone up there.
For six days she fasted, meditated and asked the question, “Is anyone up there?”
She received no answer.
Finally on the seventh day she decided to climb a mountain in the wilderness and ask the question from the top. So, she climbed up and up—but right before she got to the top she slipped, and fell, and slid down, down to the edge of the abyss.
She grabbed hold of a shrub, and with her body dangling over
the edge she decided, well, this is a good time to ask the question.
“Is anyone up there?”
“Yes,” was the answer.
That’s a good start, she thought to herself.
“What must I do to be helped?”
“Let go… Let go,” was the reply.
Well, she looked down, and could not see bottom.
She looked up again.
“Is anyone else up there?”
Grace and faith. Questions.
Pressing into the wounds.
They come together.
A closing word on Mark 16:1-8 from Ruben Rosario:
“Each one of us has had an empty tomb experience. For me it was the day my son was diagnosed with leukemia. September 22, 2011. And when confronted by that empty tomb most of us react as the women in the gospel did—in terror and fear wanting to run away from the painful reality in front of us. The good news is not that God promises a life free from suffering and death. The good news of the empty tomb is that God has taken on our suffering and death. On that cross and in that tomb, it is God who died and was buried. The good news is that in Christ God conquers death and just as God raised Jesus, God will raise us too.
Even better news, God does not expect us to jump for joy amid our empty tomb experience. We can cry. We can despair. We can even doubt. After all, the disciples were so overcome with grief they refused to believe Jesus had risen from the dead. …Jesus had to show them in person that it was reason to hope.
The tomb is empty.
Do you accept that Jesus is risen and rejoice…
[Or not yet?]
Either way, we are assured of God’s grace and forgiveness because Jesus Christ is risen today.”
“I believe in God like I believe in the sun, not because I can see it, but because of it all things are seen.” (C. S. Lewis).
Thank you.