Triangular Storytelling

In reading this resurrection appearance to the disciples (Lk. 24:13-35) we need first to orient ourselves to the Gospel of Luke. Last week we reflected upon a resurrection appearance account from the Gospel of John. This week we have moved into another account from a very different Gospel narrative. The resurrection events in John and Luke are not entirely parallel and the timelines differ. For instance, in Luke’s Gospel, all the resurrection appearances take place in a single day. Biblical commentator, John Shea, sees the disciples trek out of Jerusalem as theologically symbolic and quite significant. In his view, Cleopas and the other un-named disciple, are intentionally moving away, distancing, avoiding the traumatic events of recent days in Jerusalem. But, as Shea points out: “The whole Gospel is a journey toward Jerusalem, the revelation of the cross takes place in Jerusalem, and the story ends in Jerusalem. They are not travelers, but deserters, not a people on a mission, but people walking away from a cause….. If they walk through the gates of Emmaus…. [t]hen the real failure would not be the death of Jesus but [the disciples] inability to comprehend the spiritual truth hidden in his social and political suffering and dying.” (Shea, Matt. Yr A, p. 166-7) 

After spending the day with this man they perceive as a stranger Jesus’ identity is revealed only at the breaking and blessing of the bread. Upon this revelation, their eyes open, he departs from them. This wild revelation leads to a change of itinerary. They turn away from Emmaus and return to Jerusalem. There, when the eleven disciples were together, the risen Christ appears to them all, satisfies their disbelief, opens their eyes and minds to the scriptures, and names them as witnesses. Now they are a people with a story to tell. They are a small band, a remanent, but one with a Christ-centered identity. Communal identity that is borne from deep trauma is a powerful thing for shifting perspective and transforming whole cultures.

I thought about the effect deep trauma has on a community this week when I was reading Scott Momaday’s pulitzer prize winning book, House Made of Dawn. Momaday tells of the Bahkyula peoples who were saved from the brink of extinction by the generosity of a neighboring tribe. The story is almost biblical, certainly archetypal, in its telling. Though almost certainly fictional, it stands as a symbolic and important witness in its own right to the actual extinction of many hundreds of indigenous tribes as the one Momaday describes here.

“The Eagle Watchers Society was the sixth to go into the kiva [(a sacred place set apart for ceremony used by some indigenous tribes)] at the summer and autumn rain retreats. It was an important society, and it stood apart from the others in a certain way. This difference - this superiority - had come about a long time ago. Before the middle of the last century, there was received into the population of the town a small group of immigrants from the Tanoan city of Bahkyula, a distance of seventy or eighty miles to the east. These immigrants were a wretched people, for they had experienced great suffering. Their land bordered upon the Southern Plains, and for many years they had been an easy mark for marauding bands of buffalo hunters and thieves. They had endured every kind of persecution until one day they could stand no more and their spirit broke. They gave themselves up to despair and were then at the mercy of the first alien wind. But it was not a human enemy that overcame them at last; it was a plague. They were struck down by so deadly a disease that when the epidemic abated, there were fewer than twenty survivors in all. And this remainder, to, should surely have perished among the ruins of Bahkyula had it not been for these patrones, these distant relatives who took them in at the certain risk of their own lives and the lives of their children and grandchildren. It is said that the cacique himself went out to welcome and escort the visitors in. The people of the town must have looked narrowly at those stricken souls who walked slowly toward them, wild in their eyes with grief and desperation. The Bahkyula immigrants brought with them little more than the clothes on their backs, but even in this moment of deep hurt and humiliation they thought of themselves as a people. They carried four things that should serve thereafter to signal who they were: a sacred flute, the bull and horse masks of Pecos; and the little wooden statue of their patroness Maria de los Angeles, whom they called Porcingula. Now, after the intervening years and generations, the ancient blood of this forgotten tribe still ran in the veins of men. [All of the [Eagle] society’s] members were direct descendants of those old men and women who had made that journey along the edge of oblivion. There was a look about these men, even now. It was as if, conscious of having come so close to extinction, they had got a keener sense of humility than their benefactors, and paradoxically a greater sense of pride…. In their uttermost peril long ago, the Bahkyula had been fashioned into seers and soothsayers. They had acquired a tragic sense, which gave to them as a race so much dignity and bearing. They were medicine men; they were rainmakers and eagle hunters.”

In my mind I created a triangle joining three stories: on one point, the traumatized disciples having lost the hope of the promised messiah wandering along the road to Emmaus; on another point, the Bahkyula victimized by war and plague to the point of extinction; and on the final point, the global trauma of millions in this present pandemic. Each of the three points of the triangle informs the other even though one point is a story still in the telling. The small band of disciples and Bahkyula people carried forward their stories of despair, survival and hope moved to a transformative identity embedded with divine knowledge and grace. They weren’t just transformed in terms of their beliefs they were transformed in terms of their substance. The disciples, filled with the Holy Spirit, became powerful preachers, teachers, and healers. Through them, as recorded in Luke’s Book of Acts, a worldwide faith tradition would be born carrying Christ forward in the world in both word and deed, in symbol and in substance. As for the Bahkyula, they became powerful medicine men, rainmakers and eagle hunters.

On the third tip of the triangle our story is still unfolding. Using the stories on the other two points of the triangle as a ballast there come many questions and thoughtful ways to approach our situation. These questions provide a framework for being in and moving out of a global crisis that affects not just one tribe but all the peoples of the earth.

Will we take on a collective identity that is strong enough to propel us into a respectful way of co-existing with each other and all our relations?

Will a new collective identity draw from humility or from the hollow victory declared at a cease fire? 

How will social distancing affect how we view “our neighbor”?  What does it mean to be clean and unclean? 

Who are the people most open to victimization, stigmatization and brutalization? Who will shield them, protect them, shelter them? 

What will be the lasting effects of this traumatic cultural event that will mark this generation? What memories will inform the next generation? 

What symbols will carry us forward as a people? A video parody of “My Corona”? A t-shirt that says: “I survived Covid19”? or will some other symbols emerge that point to a deeper sense of transformation? 

Who are the heroes of this story and what heroic stories will be told?  How will those stories inform the history we are now making? 

What stories from our sacred texts will we, do we, as a global, multi-faith worldwide community tie to this event?  

Will our communal identity be symbolically relevant or are we undergoing a substantive change to our humanity? 

And, most importantly, Where is the guidance of the Spirit showing up in this story? Where is the Spirit showing up in your story?

The Peace of Unknowing

There really is no better reading we could have at this point in our common experience of a pandemic than the one appointed for this week on the second week of Eastertide. Like the disciples who were together behind locked doors for fear of the Jews, we know a bit about being shut up in our houses. We know a little about being afraid of what lies beyond the safety of our own homes. We are afraid of what could be.

And what is true for the disciples is also true for us: Peace cannot be found on either side of the door. Peace cannot come from being shut in for weeks on end. Peace cannot come from being worried about being sick. Peace cannot come from worrying about those who are sick or might become sick. Peace cannot come when we are worried about financial losses. Peace cannot come when we worry about what life will look like when the shutdown ends and we resume our everyday activities. Peace is not to be found in the world of forms; that is, in the physical world we call home: our bodies, our things, our relationships, our money and the things it can buy. Peace comes from somewhere else.

It is my pastoral instinct to want to reassure you that all will be well, that we will all get through this; that life will return to “normal.” I want you to have peace. But peace does not come from words, no matter how well-intended. Peace, as it turns out, isn’t rooted in beliefs either, which keep us tied to the temporal world, the world of forms. Rather, peace comes from faith, which requires far more courage. What is the difference between belief and faith. We shall see in a moment. 

When Jesus appeared to the disciples they were shut in behind locked doors and hemmed in by their fears. “[Jesus brought] peace in the midst of fear. His peace is the fulfillment of his promise. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” (Jn. 14:27). Jesus leaves them peace, and this giving of peace is contrasted with how the world gives…. the world gives and takes away. The security of one moment is replaced by the anxiety of the next moment. The world cannot sustain an abiding peaceful presence. Yet that is precisely how Jesus sees himself, an abiding presence that transcends the vagaries of the world. Jesus does not stop the chaos of the world. Rather he is present within it, calming and untroubling the heart, bringing peace.” (John Shea, Matthew, Yr. A, p.155-56) 

The strange thing here is that the peace Jesus offers comes in the form of an abrupt disruption of belief. Jesus undoes the standing beliefs held by the disciples about the finality of death. Let us recall that the women who met the resurrected Jesus were commanded by him to tell the disciples of his rising, and we can assume that none of them believed the women. They are fearfully locked together in a room after all. Their lack of confidence gives them away. That Jesus should appear there in his body, wounds intact, despite the locked doors is in such conflict with physical laws, that Thomas, who did not see the appearance, makes clear that he will not believe the verbal account of the other disciples but must first see Jesus for himself.  Upon a third appearance, for the benefit of Thomas, not only the women but now all of the disciples experience faith beyond mere belief. 

In 1951 Alan Watts (d. 1973) wrote a little book called The Wisdom of Insecurity during a turning point in his personal life. He had just lost his wife and vocation as an Episcopal priest to a divorce. Here he makes a distinction between belief and faith that is helpful.

“…. belief has come to mean a state of mind which is almost the opposite of faith. Belief, as I use the word here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would “lief” or wish it to be. The believer will open [their] mind to the truth on condition that it fits in with [their] preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go. In this sense of the word, faith is the essential virtue of science, and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception.

Most of us believe in order to feel secure, in order to make our individual lives seem valuable and meaningful. Belief has thus become an attempt to hang on to life, to grasp and keep it for one’s own. But you cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it. Indeed, you cannot grasp it, just as you cannot walk off with a river in a bucket. If you try to capture running water in bucket, it is clear that you do not understand it and that you will always be disappointed, for in the bucket the water does not run. To ‘have’ running water you must let go it and let it run. The same is true of life and of God.” (p.24)

What the disciples experienced in the appearances of Jesus was the dismantling of their deeply held beliefs replaced by an authentic faith. Paradoxically, there is far more peace in the unknowing of faith then the security of beliefs. Peace and faith, it would seem, are inextricably linked. The disciples, at peace and free from the preconceived ideas of religiosity and open to the leading of the Spirit emerged from their room to launch a new sect of Judaism which would morph into Christianity over the next 300 years and continues to this day, albeit in a great number of expressions and interpretations.

Watts continues: “To discover the ultimate Reality of Life – the Absolute, the eternal, God – you must cease to try to grasp it in the form of idols. These idols are not just crude images, such as the mental picture of God as an old gentleman on a golden throne. They are our beliefs, our cherished preconceptions of the truth, which block the unreserved opening of mind and heart to reality…. The principle has not been unknown to Christians, for it was implicit in the whole story and teaching of Christ. His life was from the beginning a complete acceptance and embracing of insecurity…. For the basic theme of the Christ-story is that this “express image” of God becomes the source of life in the very act of being destroyed. To the disciples who tried to cling to his divinity in the form of his human individuality he explained, “Unless a grain of corn fall into the ground and die, it remains alone. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit.” In the same vein he warned them, “It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away the Holy Spirit cannot come unto you.”

Appearing in front of them, mortal wounds intact, Jesus bestowed upon them the Holy Spirit, the wellspring of Peace that passes all understanding. Then they understood. Then they traded the security of belief for the uncertainty of faith. Then they did not cower in a room behind locked doors but emerged into the world empowered not with the assurance of a safe and secure life but with an experience of the truth – the Absolute, the eternal, God.

When the time is right, may we too emerge from the doors that now hold us apart from the world with new imaginings about the possibilities for our human family, our spiritual selves and our community of faith, willfully plunging into the unknown. Let us use this precious time we have been given in this brief pause as a bridge between what was and what will be. Let us claim the promise of peace that comes not in holding fast to what was before but comes rather with an openness to what will be, whatever that might be. 

From the Cross of Then to the Pandemic of Now

I stumbled across this lovely poem by Mary Oliver this week. It seems to me to be the perfect expression of what we Christians are trying to get at when we try to unpack the resurrection.

Everything That Was Broken

Everything that was broken has

forgotten its brokenness. I live

now in a sky house, through every

window the sun. Also your presence.

Our touching, our stories. Earthy,

and holy both. How can this be, but

it is. Every day has something in 

it whose name is Forever.

This poem is from Oliver's book, Felicity, a collection of love poems. Which is exactly why it can explain the work of the cross far better and far beyond any theological treatise. Jesus was born from Love, lived by Love and died into Love. The resurrection can only be spoken of from a place of Love.  

Today, in the midst of a global pandemic, with thousands dead and thousands dying, millions filing for unemployment benefits, state budgets in collapse, and untold numbers of small businesses on the brink of bankruptcy, can we say that everything that was broken has forgotten its brokenness? How does the Christian celebration of a risen Christ translate to present conditions? If it cannot it is truly salt that has lost its flavor.

The focus of all longtime, credible religious bodies through the centuries is on the inner world, our spiritual nature. Certainly, this is true for Christianity as well, though the emphasis in the west has skewed toward moralistic; right behavior; that is, a right frame of mind and right living puts the soul right with God. This is decidedly outer world focused. But the resurrection goes far beyond the boundaries of the world of forms (the physical world). It speaks directly to our inner self, the soul, while confounding the physical laws of the outer, physical world. If the resurrection seems beyond comprehension and is simply unbelievable, then we are seeing it through our worldly senses. But because the spiritual realm includes far more then physical forms the laws of the physical world do not apply. Jesus demonstrated this again and again. Water becomes wine. Angels appear. Jesus becomes invisible to a crowd bent on stoning him to death. He walks on water and still a storm, restores the sight of the man born blind, the lame walk, the sick become well, and the dead are raised, again and again. He knows things about people’s lives though he has never met them. He appears alive and well in full physical form to the women at the empty tomb though he’s been dead for three days. The veil between the world we move about in and the entirety of the universe is thin indeed. The sanskrit phrase for what Jesus has done in the resurrection is Sat Chit Ananda. It is the full revelation of all Wisdom, all Truth, all Love. 

Throughout the ages the lovers of God (including those not the least bit religious) who spent their time in meditation or contemplation, writing poetry, prose and hymnody were experiencing Sat Chit Ananda and leaving us the love notes of that experience; Mary Oliver’s poem being one example. The mystics, poets and sages have long understood that exploring the depths of consciousness and awakening to the limitless power of the universal Love of God was the way to enlightenment. Christians call this salvation. Salvation is an act of surrender. It is not a doing as much as a letting be. We experience salvation, or union with God, when we surrender the ego, the mind, and let go of all the myths that pass as truth when we are still asleep. 

In a timely interview this week, Michael Singer, author of the Untethered Soul, reminded thousands of his followers that nothing can disturb the inner self, no matter what the outer conditions. He makes a clear distinction between the inner and outer worlds. Singer repeats what has been known by religious people for centuries, that it is only the outer self that experiences anxiety, fear and separateness. He recommended that the best work we can do in the present moment of this global pandemic is to use this situation to move closer to God; to move inward even while the outer world is screaming for our attention. 

Well within reach is the Balm of Gilead. Just close your eyes and breath.

Another hymn from the Christian community of Taize, France, situates our spiritual condition rightly in these lyrics:

Nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten. Those who seek God shall never go wanting. 

Nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten. God alone fills us.

Eckert Tolle, author of The Power of Now, has also responded to his millions of followers in several videos over the last couple of weeks. He begins his teaching during these turbulent times by reading a parable from the bible, the story of the houses built on sand and rock. The point of the parable, of course, is that we should build our spiritual lives on firm foundation in preparation for the winds and flood. He pointed out, that, of course, we usually go about this the other way round:  It usually takes heavy rain and gale force wind before we begin to think about the foundation we’ve chosen to build upon. Nonetheless, when we’ve spent our time exploring and expanding into our inner world it eventually and inevitably outgrows the outer world. The mind becomes the master and no longer its servant. From the place of Sat Chit Ananda we live in the physical world and engage with it fully but it no longer rules us. It has lost its power. There is no virus that can defeat the knowledge of all Wisdom, all Truth, all Love. Death has lost its sting. Earthy and holy both. How can this be, but it is.  Is that a line from Mary Oliver’s poem or perhaps the words spoken by the two Mary’s who first encountered the risen Jesus as they kissed his feet? 

Sometimes Jesus would tell his followers that they needed to become like children to understand the kingdom of God, or, as it described in other traditions, to find union with God (yoga), become enlightened or experience Sat Chit Ananda. Until a child is taught otherwise all things are possible and everything is an adventure. Easter is the revelation that, in fact, all things are possible and everything under the sun is just another adventure, or just another season, as the case may be. The only thing that separates us from God is us, though we create many reasons why this cannot be so. It has been said that we are so free, we are free to choose bondage. To confess an “untethered soul” (to borrow from Michael Singer) as the rock upon which we build our spiritual house we will need to learn to see the world with the eyes of the children we used to be. We will need to follow Jesus with our hearts and not our heads; not with the “mature” eyes of those who understand the world and how it works, but with the wild imaginings of a child.

The Sat Chit Ananda, that is, the knowing of all Wisdom, all Truth, and all Love of the Resurrection, can be summed up succinctly with the final line of Mary Oliver’s love poem as we move from the cross of then to the pandemic of now:  

Every day has something in it whose name is Forever. 

A time to mourn, and a time to dance

In a clergy video chat this week my good friend and colleague, Dee, quoted one of her favorite poems, which happens to have been written by the accomplished poet and author of last week’s reflection, Judith Sornberger:

WHAT I HEARD THIS MORNING

FILLING THE BIRD FEEDER

You thought I said dominion?

Oh dear, Let’s backtrack 

here a little. As each bird

flew from my fingers,

each whale and finny thing

swam from my tongue,

each beast of the earth

crept into being, I remember

quite distinctly saying,

Welcome to your domus.

They all seemed to get it

and set out to find their rooms.

I greeted you with the same words.

Could it be that you misheard?

Or were you already

too big for your fig leaves?

Or did the error come

when I whispered your mission?

That’s always the trouble

with translation. Listen,

If I’d made one creature

king, wouldn’t I at least

have installed wings?

Dee says she thinks of the poem each day when she spreads birdseed and peanuts on the ground outside her cabin, hidden within a blanket of forest, for “the creatures,” as she calls them. Those feathered and furred critters spend their days scampering around, beaks and noses to the ground, filling their gullets and cheeks with her gifts of nuts and seeds. 

She has often recited this poem to me, but it has never sounded quite as poignant as it does under with most of the world sheltered in place, in lockdown or self-quarantined, as the case may be. 

In the face of a devastating pandemic, we begin to fully understand the delusion that we have entertained on multiple levels, consciously and unconsciously, that we individually and collectively hold dominion over anything in the created world.

With most every corner of the world increasingly affected by the global pandemic, we wonder, how did this happen? Whose fault is it? And increasingly, the language of battle. Perhaps, you too may be influenced by the politicians and the pundits and believe that we are at war.... with a virus. I’m sure that for the hospitals that have been the most impacted with overwhelming cases of illness and such a high death toll the wartime analogy is an easy reach. 

As of this writing, worldwide there are 1,076,017 confirmed cases of the Covid19 virus, with 73,858 added today; 58,004 deaths, 6519 added today. It seems the virus is out for us. Except that it doesn’t have it out for us; it isn’t even alive. It is just a bit of genetic code. That’s all a virus is. It isn’t thinking or plotting or planning. It hasn’t waged war on anyone. It’s just doing what viruses do. This particular one happens to do what it does very efficiently with very unfortunate impacts upon many who contract it. The truth is, we live in a world in which illness and death are a part – its built into the system. And when death happens, especially on the scale we are experiencing it, when we rub up against something, accidentally or otherwise, that causes cataclysmic consequences for the collective human population it feels devastating. When it upends our entire life and our collective way of living it is disorienting - for everyone. But it isn’t war. The language of war is the language of dominance. 

How then do we speak of a pandemic? How do we address with words the present circumstances?  How might we dip our buckets into the deep well of wisdom and not the hollow tribal language of victory over an enemy. Let us begin with these very old words:

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: 

a time to be born, and a time to die; 

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; 

a time to kill, and a time to heal; 

a time to break down, and a time to build up; 

a time to weep, and a time to laugh; 

a time to mourn, and a time to dance; 

a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together; 

a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; 

a time to seek, and a time to lose; 

a time to keep, and a time to throw away; 

a time to tear, and a time to sew; 

a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; 

a time to love, and a time to hate; 

a time for war, and a time for peace.  (Ecclesiastes 3:1-14)

We are in a season. It is a very different season then we were in just a few weeks ago. Many of the times noted in this sacred text are times we are living now. But the others times will come again as well.... a time to mourn and a time to dance. Knowing this; knowing deeply in our souls that all seasons come and go, that there is an ebb and flow to life that is part of the fabric of all life helps us to cope with the time we are in presently. Inevitably, this season will fold into the one to come.... and then another. It is the way of life on this planet.

Postscript:

Do you want to improve the world?

I don’t think it can be done.

The world is sacred.

It can’t be improved.

If you tamper with it, you’ll ruin it.

If you treat it like an object, you’ll lose it.

There is a time for being ahead,

a time for being behind;

a time for being in motion,

a time for being at rest;

a time for being vigorous,

a time for being exhausted;

a time for being safe,

a time for being in danger.

The Master sees things as they are,

without trying to control them.

She lets them go their own way, 

and resides at the centre of the circle.  (Tao the Ching: #29)

I do not subscribe to war speak. I am not at war with the creation or any single part of it, or by extension, the one who created it. 

I am saddened by the reports of illness and death each day.  My heart goes out to those who are separated from those they love and thankful for a compassionate medical staff who ministers to the dying. I pray with regularity that you and those you love may be safe and well. 

Like you, I am making the best of being homebound and adapting to challenges and blessings as I settle into a new routine. Each day I catch glimpses of the birds eating thistle and black oil sunflower seeds at the bird feeders outside the windows; the morning doves pecking the ground, the woodpeckers devastating the suet. I contemplate the folly of my illusion of dominion over anything. 

Sometimes this makes me feel anxious. 

Sometimes this comes as a relief. 

I put peanuts and corn in the squirrel feeder and try to avoid stepping on the delicate little purple flowers in the grass. Today the sun was more warm then the wind was cool and I sat outside to meditate. When I opened my eyes I saw the cat several feet in front of me eating a freshly killed chipmunk. 

I am not at war with the cat. 

This weekend the Trillium bore upright its sleepy head to greet the sun's spotty patches coloring white the dead brown leaves on the forest floor. Like the water in the creek running over the rocks on its way to where it is going, this season is moving toward its completion. Knowing this, I let things go their own way and find my way to the center of the circle.