rambling thoughts on Easter
when i was a child, there was no mistaking
the feast's resurrection focus, or
that baby animals and candy baskets were but compensation
for surviving the 4 mind-bendingly long,
pre-Easter triduum days
of long-kneeling, long-standing, long-sitting rituals
(torturous to a kid) -
as i got older, though the childhood rituals began to speak
to the emerging shaman me
and ultimately led to a self-realization that,
as a pre-Vatican II cradle Catholic (read: septuagenarian),
raised by nuns, that in fact, i wasn’t Christian -
technically a Christian believes that Christ died for his/her sins –
and i just don’t believe that – i never have -
i believe Jesus died to teach us
how to die for our own sins …
my beliefs were put under a microscope by my teachers,
the venerable Sisters of St. Joseph of
Carondelet whose history dates to 1650s Jesuit France,
and whose rule requires that each child be treated as though the Christ child -
because of this rule i was spared punishment for thinking freely –
and instead, required to herein
dogmatically prove all my beliefs,
earning me the dubious ‘right’
to study religion one on one with Mother Superior,
so it was at great lengths that we explored the whole issue of Jesus’ divinity
vs humanity,
the greatest point of contention in my unique take on things--
to me it just makes sense that he is a man, and i have always seen him as a man -
and years later i would feel vindicated when i realized that biblically
Jesus consistently refers to himself as the ‘son of man’ - never as the ‘son of
God’…
the latter is an appellation ascribed to him by later gospel
writers
and the moniker’s popularity took off from there
(it’s much easier to have a scapegoat than to be accountable)
as i see it, here’s the dichotomy driving this dilemma:
if we look at Jesus the way he
sees himself,
then his miracles become something else; they become fully within each
individual’s reach …
seeing Jesus as he sees himself reveals manifestation capabilities available to humankind as a whole
…
conversely if we chose to see Jesus as God
(isn’t that idolatry? i remember asking Mother),
that’s when we bypass the truest, most intrinsic power in
the miracles of Jesus --
as he himself tells us in John 14:12-14 KJV (paraphrasing), ‘these things i do, thou shalt do
also’
i mean, it’s all very logical,
really - for God to do miracles, well, that’s no big deal, right?
but for man to do miracles, ah, now
that’s a whole other, empowering concept to consider …
of course i didn’t say it all
like that to Mother – i was in elementary school -
but at my question about idolatry, her thoughtful expression yet remains with me;
because by it she seemed to have validated my sense of being on the right path to God
so it is that, Christian or not, during
every triduum/Easter holiday,
remembering Mother, i inadvertently consider the feast's meaning anew …
and while in the end Easter may seem
to be about the resurrection,
its lesson goes much deeper than that because truth be told
the resurrection plotline is not exclusive to Christians -
cultures across the globe share
similar life/death myths, legends, histories
and they all speak to the divine
amongst us
wherein the human soul supersedes ego to manifest self-enlightenment …
i mean, after all, isn’t that the prime directive?
maybe that’s what we really ought to celebrate on Easter: divine
manifestation -
heaven knows such universal alignment is much needed these days more than ever
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