I've spoken with fellow Christians this week who feel disoriented and sad at being unable to attend Holy Week services. I watched the Pope saying mass in a nearly deserted Saint Peter's Basilica. This was unthinkable three months ago. Yet, I think it's time we lived an Easter like this one.
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At its heart, Easter week takes us into the dead center of complete, black despair. We walk through darkness, with unspeakable sorrow as our companion, in order to reach something on the other side, something we have not yet dreamed, much less predicted. All we know is to keep moving, keep moving. The only impardonable sin, I tell myself, is giving up--not to be confused with letting go.
For centuries now, Christians have celebrated Easter, ¨knowing¨the end to the story. During this time of isolation, we have a great opportunity to experience a Good Friday and Easter Sunday much closer to what the first one must have been like. We are stripped of our hymns, stained glass, grand organs or even our soft guitar music, left alone with the story of death and resurrection. It's an appropriate time to live the experience, rather than simply recount the story.
How terrified the witnesses to Jesus' resurrection must have been. What courage it must have taken to go to the tomb, then to live on, with his spirit, but without him, the beloved teacher. It's a good time to remember that, unlike us, Jesus and his disciples had no church, no membership committees, no architecture, and didn't call themselves Christian. The term didn't even exist. Can we get back to the germ of this event? Can we peel back the sense of victory that the church has understandably celebrated and go back into some corner of the true, terrifying, mystifying, and transformational experience? I think we can. In a way, during this time of isolation, we have to.
Many people are troubled by the concept of a physical resurrection. As one of my ministers said, "It's true that the resurrection cannot be proved." Then he smiled and said, "And it has yet to be disproved."
The concept of resurrection is alive throughout mankind, sacred literature, and even nature. At its core, the Easter story in and of itself is the experience of resurrection. The key is to know that resurrection does not mean a return; it does not go backward in any sense, to the way things were. It means we move forward in a new form, with a new way of life, as we will have to do as we move on with this virus in our midst, something that could be called a crucifying force. I have experienced the force of a resurrection several times in my life, never pleasant, but certainly life affirming. We don't have need of pleasantries now. We need real help, real saving grace, real hope. We need a resurrection, in all its paradox, confusion, and glory.
Today is Good Friday, labeled "good" after the fact by people who were not physically present. Those who lived through it did not name it. The poem below is dedicated to anyone reading this blog who has endured suffering so great that they couldn't find words for it, or have witnessed a loved one, or even their own community, endure that suffering.
This very Friday is good, yes, but it is also dark. As it should be. Let us begin, now, to move through it, on our way to something new, perhaps something we have never dreamed of, something even too good for us to have predicted. Blessings, all.
CROSSES
AND LOSSES
There
is but one cross, one
born
in greater stead than mine.
There
is but one loss that leads to life divine.
There
is but one death, ever dying.
There
is but one truth, born of time.
When
the pain inside grows sharper than
I
want to bear, I can see the arm of the Lord,
nailed
and hanging there, his hand deprived of holding, touch,
his
fractured feet robbed of earth, sand.
I
am not relieved or rescued by His pain,
but
galvanized within, assured that the eternal choice is
to
begin the crossing next within,
to
leave Many behind and travel without Much
on
the way to becoming One.
I
know that One once moved
from
straw to thorns to broken bones,
from
birth through death to life.
In
the mystery of Joy, in the riddle that is glory,
our
path was cleared by One becoming
one
with us, ahead of us, one with us.
Here
am I, unable to span the cross or
to
limit the loss that comes with life and learning,
but
certain of my privilege, granted and secure,
to
begin to rise to walk
to ever
begin.
_____________________________________________________________
Photos and text, copyright 2020, Ysabel de la Rosa. All rights reserved.
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