Now is the season for changing

Wednesday marks 40 days to Easter. Shall we celebrate in sackcloth and ashes? Or could we think of the transformation which is our destiny, to shine like stars for ever and ever.

Changing the ritual would be simple enough. Instead of a messy grey mark of ash on the forehead, we could hold out our hands and have someone pour a little stream of starry glitter into our palms. The words could be along these lines:

"Remember, sister/brother, that you are a fractal of God, a being of light, clothed in stardust, and you will return as light to the One Source, God, the fullness of love."

 

Six Steps to Easter 

"Let your Spirit, a fractal of God, be nourished again with challenging insights to rise again to Christ Consciousness."

'to rise again to Christ consciousness'. Ah, of course, that's what our resurrection is about. His resurrection in the body is a symbol, as everything bodily is, of the new awareness we wake up to as down the years we retake this journey to Jerusalem. I wanted to call this post: 'Six Steps to Enlightenment' for that's what Lent is.

I found an isssue of ThinkingFaith, a Jesuit publication in Britain, that has many articles about Lent. Having already planned to map out the journey's six steps I was taken aback to find the lead article did just that. Another experience of a thought being picked out of the air. Many times I've found what was an original thought in me to be already spreading widely around the world. Yet I did not read anything about it before. Enough of this digression.

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Six Sundays marking six steps on our journey. Three gospels from Matthew (1,2 and 6) while the other three are from John and chosen for their teaching. We can each investigate what each step means to us as week by week we journey onwards. I will simply list them and suggest a word or two.

1. In the Desert: there's a testing occurs out in the bush. You even find Auto Testing Grounds where they used to drive a new car design non-stop for days on end. In some places the atomic bomb testing site is still fenced off. Anyone lost in the bush, even for a moment, knows how their self-possession is tested as panic threatens. Having proven his own ability to survive, at the end Jeshua was tempted in three ways: tempted to take the DIY path - the DO IT YOURSELF way to make an impact, to make life on earth more comfortable so ignorance and pain are further eliminated and people are free to grow. If only we can solve the inequallity problem... It's not just social justice...

So what about fame and glory: jump off the highest place to show the Father will care for you. That will make people take you for real and listen to your message. But again it is not for us to take the initiative, to be setting up tests for God. There's the matter of obedience; not blind doing what you're told, but willing attentive listening. See first and second readings.

And then the ultimate, and it seems to be rampant in the world today - or always was. Power unlimited "if only you will bow down and worship me", worship the spirit of this world, sucess, growth, survival of the fittest, dog eat dog. It's our right to defend our nation at any price. Does that include the price paid by the helpless who wait in terror month after month and then finally die alone in pain and despair? But that too is an aside. For me personally, in my domestic situation at home, do I live by patriarchal right, imposing my will, setting boundaries for the others, lording it over everyone? It's amazing how male chauvinism continues its subtle influence on the thinking and on the heart. To give others respect and freedom is to worship the Divine in them. Namaste. To bully them is sacrilege.

So there's a sketch for Week 1. We move on to list the next five steps:

2. Transfiguration on the mountain. What's it doing here, in Lent? Is it the goal anticipated, and including heavy reference to the final trials? Is it to establish hope and determination in us?

3. At Jacob's well we include the non-chosen, the heretics, without a word of condemnatin on that score. They too need to draw water, and yet the woman balks at the Jew asking help from her. It ain't done! There are things that those on the lowest rung need to get straight, and one is to not make a boast of your protest stance. Our need for the water of life is the same.

4. At the pool of Siloam, a popular spot in the city, a blind man goes to wash and sight is restored. The authorities are incensed; the parents cowed; the healed man quietly determined to give credit where it's due, and Jeshua giving no quarter.

5. At the tomb of Lazarus, the most problematic of all John's signs but don't let that distract us. John's purpose is in the spoken words: I am the resurrection... Do you believe this? Read the story as you would have at the end of the first century and know that, even if it were a fable, the lesson is the thing. Do you believe that life is in the Christos?

6. Riding a donkey into the holy city to make fun of the pretentious. You'll pay your price for that insolence, but down the ages you will inspire millions to be likewise bold. So we fight the devil in his very citadel.


Coming from nowhere in particular; going to nowhere at all.

The first two Sundays of Lent are like the two covers of a book. The front cover in this case is dull brown, a lone figure wearily trudging across a desert, head down, shoulders bent, feet dragging tracks across the sand. And as it is for many, coming from nowhere in particular; going to nowhere at all.

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As you leaf through the book of life you find the pages are diaphanous. Light can shine through, though there seems to be little of it, until as you go the light does glow more and more strongly. In the last pages an image of beauty is discerned. You'd love to turn that last page and see, but somehow you are held back.

So you close the book and turn it over to see the back cover; the image of a man glows off the board, clothes bright as sun, face radiating waves of light. So that's the goal! That figure of clay who left the garden or the desert is transformed in glory after all.

Being human, as Marian says. The first step of Lent brings us to consider what it is to be human. The desert represents not one week or forty days, but the darker side of life, the setbacks, the disappoiintments, the betrayals, and our own failures dwarfing all the rest. The promise in faith's hope draws us on towards something beyond anything you imagine.

Imagine you find a beautiful rose in the garden. It is perfect in shape, most delicate in colour, and full blown - as its best. You go and get the camera. When first you print the image you find it dull. Nothing like that garden glory. So you bring it up on the screen, make a few adjustments to lightness and contrast and clarity, enlarge it to fill the screen, and there it is in all its radiance, more than doing justice to the original already drooping, coming to an inglorious end. This image will fill the room with light as long as light lasts.

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From drifting sand to glory, this is the metanoia that we would escape. Isn't it too good to be true? Of course it is, but there's nothing new in that. Religion is old hat; been around forever; time to move on and get involved in the present dynamic of a world getting always better.

Yes, we know the escape clauses well enough. But can we believe in the promise? That's the question. And if we find it hard, why? We feel more at home in that wilderness than with angels in the Father's home.

Turn back, old man. Forsake thy wilful ways...
Bring out the fatted calf. Let's have a party for the return, the change of heart, the metanoia of this least one who dares to hope...