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saturday, 8 april 2023
rambling thoughts on Easter
when i was a child, there was no mistake that the feast's focus is the resurrection,
with the baby animals and candy baskets definitely rendered secondary, compensation for surviving
the mind-bending 4 days before Easter of long-kneeling, standing and sitting ritual (from a kid’s POV anyway) -
as i got older, the rituals i’d learned as a child spoke to the
emerging shaman me
without need of further interpretation,
and ultimately brought me to the understanding that, as a pre-Vatican II cradle Catholic (read: septuagenarian),
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 believe Jesus died to teach me how to live and die
for my own sins …
that’s what i’ve always believed,
even despite my teachers, the venerable
Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet
whose history dates back to the 1650s France
-
thankfully because their rule requires that each child be treated as if he/she were
the Christ child,
i was spared punishment for thinking freely – instead, i was required to dogmatically prove my beliefs …
to ensure that happened, i studied one on one with Mother Superior,
who sagely allowed for exploration of arcane concepts, such as,
why Catholic didn’t necessarily
mean Christian –
we both agreed that the first Christians were the Catholics,
but when i countered that Catholic then and Catholic now are two very
different animals,
Mother had to agree -
one reaction in particular of Mother Superior to something i said has stayed with
me all these years -
we were discussing the God vs man issue …
and i was feeling rather vindicated at a recent discovery that in fact,
Jesus consistently refers to himself as the ‘son of man’ and never as the ‘son of God’…
(that appellation was ascribed to him by later gospel writers) ...
i realized that if we look at Jesus the way he sees himself,
then his miracles
are something else again
and take on huge implications for the capabilities of humankind as a whole …
conversely when we chose to see Jesus as God
(isn’t that idolatry? i remember
asking Mother),
then we lose the truest, most intrinsic power in his miracles --
i mean, 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 10 -
but her thoughtful expression made me feel like my message had met its target
so it is that, Christian or not, every year on holy Saturday i consider the feast's meaning anew…
and while it is still about the resurrection it goes much deeper than that because truth be told
the resurrection plotline is not exclusive to Christians -
across the globe cultures share similar life/death myths and stories
which speak to the divine amongst us
wherein the soul superseded ego to manifest self-enlightenment …
maybe that’s what we really ought to celebrate tomorrow: divine manifestation -
heaven knows such universal alignment is muchly needed now more than ever
