Holy Saturday: A Time for Transformation

I grow weary of forcing a reasonable understanding. Let's be simple and honest: time, culture, and the desires of heart and mind have ceaselessly reconstructed an ancient narrative of Jesus' life, death and resurrection. Anything we do today is all the same. And I personally cannot entertain the circular logic that this descriptive fact is explained by divine will, because you could use such an explanation to explain absolutely anything whatsoever.

The Biblical account, so far as it goes, embodies a long history of the human search for meaning and direction, and we can ply these stories and their constructive histories in search of wisdom for our moment, as our human roots do run deep into the past. But I grow tired of reverse engineering our current moment and evolution, enslaved to the to the stories and traditions enshrined long ago.

Thus: I listen to the ancient story of Holy Week and Easter; I consider deeply the timeless themes of life, death, and resurrection; and I reimagine the meaning and direction for here and now. And if an ancient account or tradition loses relevance as we evolve through the ongoing unfolding of Creation, it is as it should be, and it is time to move on.

Thus: the meaning and direction that I find in the story of Holy Week is that Jesus taught an incredibly life affirming and new way of relating to one another, drawn from an intense spiritual life that reimagined and challenged the theological views of the times. This evolution threatened the way certain things were, and some with political power were none to happy about this development. It seems, then, they found a solution to their problem, and Jesus died the way he died because he lived the way he lived. Yet, so powerful was Jesus' social and spiritual evolution that it lived on, not in the physical resurrection of Jesus' body, but in the spiritual resurrection of a community that choose to spread the Good News of Jesus, despite the despair and fear they surely felt after seeing the brutal execution of their mentor and friend.

Here I find a deep Easter message powerful today: that this wonderful existence unfolds through tensions between light and dark; that we can be in tune with this sacred song; that there is always hope, no matter how despairing it may seem; and that we are all a part of the creative evolution, which may call us to do difficult things.

To me, this is the continuing journey that Jesus tread, that he - and others - so brilliantly and courageously direct the rest of us toward. As for "God": who, what, how or why God is I am quite hesitant to define. But the moment that calls all of us forth, the intense creative power that we experience all around us, the inspiring evolution toward better forms and relationships that unfolds undeterred, is something truly amazing to behold. Call it what you will.

That is the sacred story that I reimagine at this time of year. Whether it is Biblically accurate, dogmatically correct, academically cliche, historically true or scientifically relevant, I do not know, nor am I that concerned. That its construction considers all before me, and that its guiding principal is resonance with the life affirming creative spirit deep within me - I feel compelled to exclaim: life will overcome!

Journey of the Universe

Here I am, on the 16L bus, heading to work down Colfax Avenue - and I am ecstatic. At this moment, it feels like watching Bob Ross paint on PBS. For most of the episode, you enjoy the colors and forms taking shape, you enjoy the artistry and the unfolding image, but you are not entirely sure what you are looking at. Then suddenly, with a determined yet subtle stroke of his painting knife, it emerges, there before you. 

In my readings and thoughts and constructions and experiences, a spiritual-ecological-theological evolution has been accelerating over the last year or two, a process with roots deep in my entire journey. But today, the morning sun enlightens a new form, and my experience of this time and place looks and feels anew. Cosmos, becoming Cosmogenesis. Matter versus Spirit, becoming co-creative expressions of the same universal process. The world is beautiful. This morning is exciting. 

I have my contingent vocation, my calling in a smaller sense, the thoughts and activity of my life directed toward temporal and specific objectives that I value, the work I do to earn a living to support what I value and want to do in my life, in my time. But there too is a universal vocation, something greater, something on a larger scale, something more abstract and difficult to fully comprehend, something independent from any day to day concerns, separate from any individual time frame. As the universe emerges through expansion and attraction - the spiritual and the physical dancing in co-emergence - as its being and essence unfolds through the interplay and interaction and dialectic and evolution of its contingent realities and divine energies, so too does our universal vocation breathe and exhale in the smallest locality of our individual being in this individual moment, inextricably interconnected to the potential of the Whole that extends long before us, and will continue long after us. This is the voice, the calling, that is amplified today, the Cosmogenesis that is especially revealed by where the unfolding universe, Creation, has brought me to in this moment, this morning...here on the 16L.

Everything glows. And now, for the  moment at least, I see it. Where the Whole Earth, the Emerging Universe, the Sacred Spirit carries me from here, I do not know, but wherever I go, there I will be. And I get the sense that it is my universal vocation, my Work, to see the Story, anew. 

Loss

As a child, life's rhythmic simplicity
Was all that I needed:
Laughs and smiles that were true,
Autumn trees that shimmered,
And summer breezes that trickled through.
The beauty of each day,
Made my face glow;
Life's greatest failure:
The loss of what we know.

A Winter Stream of Memory

As I recall, the long night of the solstice brought us on a wintry drive across the plains. Around 3AM, Jenean and I bajaed across row upon row of snow drift on Interstate 90 as we headed north for the holiday. Christmas was very pleasant with a crisp chill in the air and sparkly snow on the ground. As always, we loved spending time with our family and friends back home. On the return west, we spent a day exploring the snow-dusted pinnacles of the Badlands and racing the sunset in search of bison roaming the Black Hills. Around this time, it started to snow more consistently in the high country of Colorado, so I took to skiing most every weekend. I have toured the Front Range backcountry with Kris and Todd, and also made an outing to Rocky Mountain NP with Jenean. I have enjoyed skiing a new mountain at Eldora, and Jenean and I had a great day in deep powder at Wolf Creek. I have also been on the Nordic skis a fair amount, with good days in Pagosa, Steamboat, and on South Table in Golden. With new snow moving in along the foothills, a blazing red sunrise greeted me to the east on an early morning tour last week. Sledding has been good, but limited so far. Jenean and I dragged our sleds into James Peak Wilderness for some camping. On a cold day in January, Savvy the Gerbil passed away, and we hiked up South Table that evening to bury her body. Savvy and Saucy introduced me to a joyful part of life I had been missing, and this can never be taken away. We also had some moments of disequilibrium mid-winter as we waited to hear if Jenean would land an assistant professor position at St. Scholastica. We were excited by the possibility of returning to Duluth, of moving on to something new, of putting down some roots and buying a house. But at the same time, we were not quite sure if the timing was right, if we wanted to leave our community we have developed in Colorado, if we wanted to move away from the mountains. As it were, the position did not present itself - I was disappointed but also a little relieved. The world is wide and beautiful, and people that we love are spread all about, so I imagine that such tension, now introduced, will always be with us as we decide where to live. My job has progressed swimmingly this winter. I finally produced a video on financial literacy - featuring time travel, a dragon, and some cameos by my colleagues - that I had been working on (and off) for over a year. I moved to a new office and have a window facing the foothills, with some interesting landscape/construction directly outside. This has proven an entertaining distraction at times, such as the sub-contractor this week who insists on hooting and hollering most of the morning. All in all, I find my work exciting and very meaningful, and I am in a great environment. What else? Jenean and I saw a great show at Winter on the Rocks (Red Rocks), featuring one of our current favorites, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. I have been rather busy serving on various church committees - of all things. I am sponsor for a number of new church members and I am dutifully working on a number of projects for the Whole Earth Ministry (environmental stuff), including a weekend retreat Jenean and I will lead in the fall. I have been writing a fair amount, though not publishing much on the blog, as I have a number of incomplete strains of thought in need of more time. I have been reading a fair amount, too - Beyond Environmentalism; The Great Work; The River of Doubt; Hiking in Wrangell St. Elias National Park; Falling in Love with Mystery; One Jesus, Many Christs; and probably some others. Lately I have especially enjoyed coming home from work and spending the majority of my evening preparing dinner, eating with Jenean, then doing dishes and wiping down the sinks. It is relaxing to get down to life's more simple tasks after spending a busy day advising students and working on the computer. There was a grand celebration at our place for Jenean's Birthday XXX. I wore an x-ray. We received pedometers at work as part of the Health and Wellness theme, and I am closing in on 17,000 steps today. I woke up this morning at 5:30 to go for a nice trail run on the mesa. It is no longer pitch dark and starry when I head out for my morning workout, though that will change again this weekend. We visited Rick and Mariah in Steamboat this weekend and spent some time soaking in the Strawberry Park Hot Springs, idyllically set in a wooded alpine amphitheater. I have taken to sweet potatoes, butternut squash, and eggplant this winter, though I still eat a bowl of cereal most every night before bed. Speaking of which, it is about that time. There is rumor of a large upslope Front Range snow storm this weekend, so we will see what comes about. I suppose winter officially ends in about two weeks, but the ski season is shaping up to last through at least mid-May. Let it snow.