Dolphins & Sharks

“Look, over there, there are dolphins in the water!”

Somebody shouted this to me as I began a several-mile run along a beach during a vacation. This stranger was absolutely right. Three dolphins playfully leapt up out of the water and, in tandem, we raced down the South Carolina shoreline for almost an hour. And most of that hour I reflected on that moment when the gracious abandon of a stranger, who might not otherwise have greeted me, alerted me to one of God’s wonders.

Running for me is a time to meditate. Like a Buddhist walking meditation, its rhythm gives me peace and a place for thought. And what I thought was that this stranger had played the preacher—that this is the purpose of any exhortation—to awaken us to such wonders.  Because I believe each one of us may serve as a minister, it occurred to me that this is our role, to shout,

“Look, over there, there are dolphins in the water!”

There’s something about the shore that gives us permission to talk to strangers. I think it’s the elation, even the ecstasy, that we experience in nature—whether manifest in shores or dolphins. It awakens the child in us that freely enters the commonwealth of God.

The stranger speaking to me about the dolphin was purely gratuitous, an occasion of grace. He had nothing to gain by it other than the thrill of sharing the experience. But I proclaimed his gospel to all I passed in my run along the beach,

 “Look, over there, there are dolphins in the water!”

The next day, our last full day along the shore, it rained. And instead of wading into the Atlantic, I waded into all those e-mails I had avoided all week. It was sobering, to get back to business. There’s nothing natural about sitting in front of a laptop, reading a screen and plucking keys on a keyboard.

And I had another thought. Earlier in the week on the beach we had met a couple who alerted us to a shark in the water. It occurred to me that our job as “ministers” (remember, all of us) is not only to point out the dolphins, but warn others about the sharks.

Many of us got too many sharks growing up in our churches and too few dolphins. Like the preacher in the novel and movie Pollyanna, egged on by Pollyanna’s stern and bitter aunt, we heard preachers who focused on the curses found in scriptures rather than its blessings. Pollyanna, the orphan of missionary parents, who herself had every right to be bitter, pointed out to this preacher that there are many more blessings than curses in the Bible, many more dolphins than sharks.

Progressive Christians recognize the sharks infesting the waters of our faith tradition: biblical literalism, fundamentalism, prejudice, exclusion, patriarchy, condemnation, and so on. It’s important that we warn others to stay out of these waters. But it’s equally vital—or all the more vital—that we point out the dolphins of our faith tradition: grace, mercy, justice, compassion, inclusion, blessing, wonder, storytelling, and spiritual truth.

“Look, there are dolphins in the baptismal water!”

 

This week marks the tenth anniversary of beginning my blog with this post from February 16, 2011.

There’s been nearly half-a-million visitors, not including an average of five-hundred free weekly subscribers.

Tax-deductible donations may be made safely in Chris Glaser’s name to the LGBTQ Religious Archives Network. Personal gifts may be made safely by clicking here.  Thank you!

Copyright © 2011 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

 

Contemplation in Science

Anthropologist Jeremy Narby’s book, Intelligence in Nature: An Inquiry into Knowledge, which I referred to two weeks ago, reminded me of the role of contemplation in the scientific quest.

I’ve written before about Einstein’s famous “thought experiments” by which he developed explanations for natural phenomena, comparing them to the imagination Saint Ignatius felt was needed in the contemplative life.

In a chapter entitled “Plants as Brains,” Narby reports the work of Anthony Trewavas, a biologist at the University of Edinburgh, which he summarizes:

Plants have intentions, make decisions, and compute complex aspects of their environment. … When attacked by herbivores, some plants signal for help, releasing chemicals that attract their assailants’ predators. … When a plant is damaged, its cells send one another electrical signals just like our own pain messages [p 83-4].

Trewavas prefers to use the word “compute” to “think” when applied to plants [p87] and disputes the long held scientific position that plants are passive because they do not move, explaining “it requires an equating of movement with intelligence. Movement is an expression of intelligence [p85]” speculating that “plant communication is likely to be as complex as within a brain [p93].”

I will leave all of that for scientists to hash out. What interests me as a contemplative wannabe is Trewavas’s process developing such thoughts, “I find it’s only by long periods of doing nothing but think that suddenly facts start coming into your mind [p90].”

Half of Narby’s book consists of detailed footnotes that undergirds or sometimes questions his text. I find these details occasionally hard to understand, as I am clearly not a scientist, but I can appreciate their gist. I’m not a footnote kind of guy, but I find these footnotes awesome and well worth the read. It’s there that I found these thoughts from W. I. B. Beveridge, written in 1950 under the title The Art of Scientific Investigation:

The most important prerequisite is prolonged contemplation of the problem and the data until the mind is saturated with it. … The mind must work consciously on the problem for days in order to get the subconscious mind working on it [p 206].

Diversions and distractions are to be avoided, but idle time can be useful and fertile. This made me think of Vincent van Gogh’s idle time after being dismissed from his pastoral position by church hierarchy dismayed at his lack of social distance from his parishioners. It was then van Gogh thought he might take up drawing and painting, hoping his paintings would have the same consoling effect the Christian faith once offered.

Beveridge continues:

Most people find intuitions are more likely to come during a period of apparent idleness and temporary abandonment of the problem following periods of intensive work. Light occupations requiring no mental effort, such as walking in the country, bathing, shaving, traveling to and from work, are said by some to be when intuitions most often appear… [p207].

That’s the way I work, by spending a little “idle” time that allows thoughts or feelings, patterns or analyses to “bubble up.” In college I read process philosopher Henri Bergson, who suggested that along with rational thought we needed intuitive thinking. Intuition may simply be the subconscious mind offering an insight or solution from its hidden depths.

To me, that’s the gift of contemplation in the spiritual life as well.

 

For Thanksgiving in the U.S. tomorrow, please see last week’s post: Thanksgivings

My friend and blog reader J. Barrie Shepherd is offering a holiday chapbook:

A Poetic Pandemic Christmas Pudding “a plump and spicy concoction of words, phrases and images to evoke the many flavors and aromas of the yuletide feast. P.S. Add brandy to ignite.

Proceeds go to food pantries in his area of Maine. $10 per copy plus $2 postage. Send check made out to J. Barrie Shepherd to 15 Piper Road – K325, Scarborough ME 04074. Copies will be signed and can be inscribed by request. Or order though his email: barrieshep@aol.com.

Donations to Progressive Christian Reflections may be given safely by clicking here and scrolling down to the donate link below its description. Thank you!

Copyright © 2020 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

In Memory of Trees

The tree that was (in spring)

A few days before Halloween, Wade and I were awakened one very dark and early morning by a loud swooshing sound followed by a thud that shook the house. A neighbor’s (and our pastor’s) very tall oak fell across the yard of the neighbor between us and into our backyard, taking out two fences (ours was brand new!) and a good portion of our only tree there, compliments of the winds and rain of Hurricane Zeta, which took down 350 trees in Atlanta.

The Bradford flowering pear, doomed eventually to split anyway by its very nature, was the sixth tree over 26 years that I have planted in the backyard. Each full-grown tree fell or was irreparably damaged due to a variety of natural circumstances, including drought, storms, and high winds: a maple, a cottonwood, a weeping willow, and two cypresses.

Our pastor's daughter and cat Luna

strolling toward our backyard in the distance.

Photo by Rev. Jenelle Holmes.

Probably related to the earlier storm, a very old and tall oak fell late afternoon on Halloween across our street to our front yard, demolishing our crepe myrtle and dogwood and burying our fountain and its flower bed. Thanks to the pandemic (how often do we get to use this phrase in a favorable way?), no trick-or-treaters were endangered.

In both cases, our yards got the top part of the trunk with all its branches, making quite a mess. Ironically, this season our lawns and yards had never looked so good, and now—! Where we live, where the tree lands is the landowner’s responsibility, and homeowner’s insurance doesn’t cover tree removal except at the very point it intersects with a structure.

Tree across Berne Street, our front yard on the right.

This event coinciding with the fearful pandemic and the contentious election, the biblical character Job came to mind. And, given how we were feeling about our yards, the phrase, “Pride goeth before a fall.”

Virtually all who saw our wreckage said it’s a blessing we were not injured and that our house was not damaged. A couple of passersby and several friends told us we must have had someone watching over us. One older black neighbor, Mary, cried to see the damage, grateful to find we were not hurt, and Wade realized she needed a masked-but-non-socially-distanced-yet-assuring hug.

Several neighbors/friends/members of Ormewood Church helped us clean up what we could before we brought in the “big guns” of a tree service to clean and remove the debris this week. One of them loaned us a generator to keep our fridge running during two periods without power. As Mister Rogers always said, in times of crisis, “look for the helpers.”

View from our front porch.

You know my penchant for observing synchronicity, what some call coincidence and others name miracle. When all of this happened I was finishing up reading Intelligence in Nature during my morning prayers, researched and written by anthropologist Jeremy Narby. He compares the wisdom of indigenous animist shamans in the Amazonian rainforest of Brazil with worldwide scientific research discovering intelligence in other animals (not just the human animal) and in plants and microscopic creatures.

God knows a virus can outwit much of our national leadership!

Another bit of synchronicity: friends recommended and we watched (and also recommend) a Netflix documentary entitled, My Octopus Teacher, about a relationship of an octopus with a South African diver. Narby reports that “Octopuses have the largest brains among invertebrates, and scientists have noted their intelligence (p73).”

Narby explains that “intelligence” comes from words meaning “choosing between (inter-legere) and implies the capacity to make decisions.”

Anthropologists have pointed out that some cultures have no concept for intelligence, while others define it in ways surprising to Westerners, for example in terms of good listening skills, or a strong sense of ethics, or the ability to observe, interpret, and negotiate the social and physical landscape (p44).

In my view, then, intelligence is what spirituality is all about, especially “good listening skills.” For me prayer and meditation require good listening, not just for God’s “still, small voice” but to ourselves and one another in our own decision-making.

I grieved for the lost trees. The one in back outside my office window especially served as my “axis mundi” during morning prayers, my center of the universe. Just as trees send chemical warnings to other trees of impending predators, I’ve wondered if these fallen trees were trying to warn us of how we are endangering our climate, we who are the most invasive predatory species.

Sitting on the back-deck seconds before the tree across the street came crashing down, something jumped on my sleeve, grabbing my arm. Startled by either its talons or claws, I jumped up, dislodging whatever it was, a bird or a chipmunk. I never saw it. Then I heard Wade shouting from inside the house as I heard a splintering groan.

I wonder if the creature on my arm was simply escaping the disaster or was flung over our roof.

Or was it trying to warn me?

Damaged tree from my office window.

Related post: I Live in a Forest Called Atlanta

Donations to Progressive Christian Reflections may be given safely by clicking here and scrolling down to the donate link below its description. Thank you!

Copyright © 2020 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

A Flower's Tears

The flowers I was contemplating.

I had a great idea (or so I egotistically thought) for a justice/politically-minded post last week that would have pleased many of you, but I decided “what the world needs now,” as the song goes, is Zen! Last Wednesday and today I am revisiting two posts that are Zen-like in orientation, one from 2018 and this one from 2016. I pray they bring peace to our troubled souls!

I had just read a quote from landscape artist Thomas Cole: “Nature has spread for us a rich and delightful banquet. Shall we turn from it? We are still in Eden; the wall that shuts us out of the garden is our own ignorance and folly.”

A woman on public radio announced Beethoven’s pastoral sonata, #15.

Then I heard something drop. I looked up from my tablet and realized the bouquet of flowers in front of me was losing petals. The before-dawn early morning was so quiet I could hear a petal fall.

This prompted me to compose this poem:

A flower’s tears

are the dewdrops

that drip, orb by orb,

as sun rises.

A flower’s tears

are the raindrops

that stream, string by string,

as storms rage.

A flower’s tears

are the petals

that drop, one by one,

as life renews.

I was sitting at our dining room table, a very solid oak sturdy-legged altar that once served as Wade’s grandfather’s butcher block. Long before we met, Wade had painstakingly sanded (and sanded) and refinished this table that seats four and can be extended by way of built-in leaves for eight just as comfortably. On all five windows of the pentagonal room hang patterned stained-glass, framed in various shapes in wood whose peeling white trim contrasted with the colors of their homes that no longer stand.

The morning I write this, I rose so early that my usual place for morning prayers was too dark to read, so I chose this alternate sanctuary.

And then I read: “Henri taught me that the characteristics I had identified with religion are just the outer circle. What really matters is a fundamental attitude of seeking to do something that is valuable to yourself and to the world.” Henri Nouwen’s nephew Marc van Campen wrote this in Befriending Life: Encounters with Henri Nouwen.

Moved by awe at this magical moment, I thanked God that life is filled with such opportunities to experience the world “as if for the first time” and then to express that mystery in writing, in art, in service.

“Nature has spread for us a rich and delightful banquet. Shall we turn from it? We are still in Eden; the wall that shuts us out of the garden is our own ignorance and folly.”

I will be leading a virtual, at-home retreat open to the public for Columbia Seminary’s Spiritual Formation Program September 17-19, 2020 entitled An Open Receptive Place: Henri Nouwen’s Spirituality. You are invited!

Donations to this blog ministry may be given by clicking here and scrolling down to the donate link below its description or by mailing to MCC, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232 USA, designating “Progressive Christian Reflections” in the memo area of your check or money order. Thank you!

Copyright © 2016 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

Parable of My Hydrangea Bush

You might consider this a belated Earth Day reflection.

The hydrangea bush inhabited another part of our yard here in Atlanta, but I moved it to a more prominent place so passersby could enjoy its blooms, between the sidewalk and the street. A rookie mistake.

I should have learned from the azaleas I had once planted in a similar location that disappeared, roots and all, the night before they were about to blossom. My optimism hoped, at least, as it was near Mother’s Day, that someone had taken them home to his mother.

I had just prepared our lunch when a knock at the door summoned me. A young man pleasantly complimented the hydrangea and asked if he and his wife might take a slip or two home to grow for themselves. “Sure,” I said, and trusted him to do this on his own without supervision.

But during lunch, my intuition or lack of trust kicked in and I went to check on my hydrangea just as the man grasped one last handful of stalks, tossing them in a bucket of water with others previously pruned and slamming the rear doors of his white truck as he jumped behind the steering wheel for a sheepish but quick getaway. To my dismay, I realized a florist had just made off with half of the hydrangea’s colorful blossoms. I shouted after him, but too late.

The following season, I called my mother one morning to proudly tell her how beautifully the hydrangea was blooming. She was pleased to hear of it, because we had one in the yard of the home I grew up in, and in which she still lived. My father had tended it, as he had all our plants and trees and lawns. Dad’s family had a farm, and she was pleased to think I had gotten his “farmer” genes.

Later that same morning, I came out on the front porch and noticed the hydrangea’s branches were drooping, dangerously low. I had earlier watered the lawn, so I inspected the plant to see if too much water had accumulated on the leaves, weighing it down. I saw a neighbor outside and asked if he had noticed anything unusual.

“Yeah,” he said, “A drunk guy collapsed on it a little while ago.” I had earlier noticed him stumbling near his truck, still parked nearby, broken down or out of gas in the middle of the street. Now he was nowhere to be found, presumably seeking help or buying fuel, but he had carefully dumped his used beer cans on the adjacent lot. Uncharitably I collected the cans and put them in the bed of his truck. My sense of justice was piqued!

I had other seasons when the hydrangea would return wonderfully from its winter dormancy, but the final insult came one winter when someone removed what he thought was a dead plant: my hydrangea! I was grieved and horrified, but I bit my lip and said nothing, because the person thought he was doing me a favor.

It reminded me of the time I saved a tree in front of my ground floor apartment’s picture window in West Hollywood. I enjoyed watching squirrels playing in it and birds nesting among the branches, like a Disney cartoon. Sometimes at night possums huddled near its trunk, pretending not to be there as I passed by. But one winter, the building’s maintenance guy came with saws and tools to take it down. I intervened, asking why. “Because it’s dead,” he declared, “It has no leaves.” I explained that the tree always lost leaves in the winter, and they grew back in the spring. “Oh,” he said, and was just as happy not to take it down.

Ok, so now I’m an old man rambling, but one more shrub story. I had a painfully prickly bush at the end of our driveway, again, here in Atlanta. A drunk apparently attacked that too, as I found tire marks in its garden bed and a major portion broken off, but carefully placed back in position as if nothing happened. I only discovered the subterfuge when that section turned a telltale brown. When it finally died, I decided, once and for all, to remove it. Big mistake! I had no idea how the bush had become my “North star,” guiding me as I backed out of our curved driveway. I’ve never been as good backing out onto the street since! Now I look like a drunk driver!

For all you biblical sharpies out there, you know that a “parable,” such as I have labelled this, is only supposed to have one point. The point being our relationship with nature.

But as many parables are interpreted allegorically, there’s more to the story. We exploit and even take credit for nature’s beauty. Our addictions plunder, pollute, displace, and even destroy it, and this includes coffee, sugar, cocaine, fossil fuels, urban sprawl, as well as a disproportionate distribution of fruits, vegetables, and flowers to the privileged. We fail to be mindful of its rhythms and we fail to fully understand and appreciate it.

And prickly, annoying shrubs, like prickly, annoying experiences and prickly, annoying people, may serve as guideposts to finding our way.

Related Link: My grandniece Elaine Sanders, interested in sustainable design, edited this brief recycling video for her campus paper: Beyond the Bin.

Progressive Christian Reflections is entirely supported by reader donations. To support this blog: https://mccchurch.org/ministries/progressive-christian-reflections/

Scroll down to the donate link below its description. Thank you!

Copyright © 2019 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

A Flower's Tears

I had just read a quote from landscape artist Thomas Cole: “Nature has spread for us a rich and delightful banquet. Shall we turn from it? We are still in Eden; the wall that shuts us out of the garden is our own ignorance and folly.”

A woman on public radio announced Beethoven’s Pastoral Sonata, #15.

Then I heard something drop. I looked up from my tablet and realized the bouquet of flowers in front of me was losing petals. The before-dawn early morning was so quiet I could hear a petal fall.

This prompted me to compose this poem: 

A flower’s tears

are the dewdrops

that drip, orb by orb,

as sun rises.

A flower’s tears

are the raindrops

that stream, string by string,

as storms rage.

A flower’s tears

are the petals

that drop, one by one,

as life renews.

I was sitting at our dining room table, a very solid oak sturdy-legged altar that once served as Wade’s grandfather’s butcher block. Long before we met, Wade had painstakingly sanded (and sanded) and refinished this table that seats four and can be extended by way of built-in leaves for eight  just as comfortably. On all five windows of the pentagonal room hang patterned stained-glass, framed in various shapes in wood whose peeling white trim contrasted with the colors of their homes that no longer stand.

The morning I write this, I rose so early that my usual place for morning prayers was too dark to read, so I chose this alternate sanctuary.

And then I read: “Henri taught me that the characteristics I had identified with religion are just the outer circle. What really matters is a fundamental attitude of seeking to do something that is valuable to yourself and to the world.” Henri Nouwen’s nephew Marc van Campen wrote this in Befriending Life: Encounters with Henri Nouwen.

Moved by awe at this magical moment, I thanked God that life is filled with such opportunities to experience the world “as if for the first time” and then to express that mystery in writing, in art, in service.

“Nature has spread for us a rich and delightful banquet. Shall we turn from it? We are still in Eden; the wall that shuts us out of the garden is our own ignorance and folly.”

A post for the 15^th anniversary of 9/11 on Sunday: 9/11: When We Were One

Donations to this blog ministry may be given by clicking here and scrolling down to the donate link below its description or by mailing to MCC, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232 USA, designating “Progressive Christian Reflections” in the memo area of your check or money order. Thank you!

Copyright © 2016 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Pets as Theophanies

Hobbes on the beach in South Carolina.

Welcome, Pope Francis, to the U.S.A! Click here for posts that mention the pope, including one written by our dog, Hobbes.

I’ve been contemplating the depth of my loss in the death of our beloved golden Labrador retriever mix, Hobbes, this summer. Those who read my earlier posts may tire of hearing about this, but my hope has been in each one to speak to our common experiences, not just of pets, but of grief, loss, and love.

I can see very few stars in our sky over Atlanta. I have no nearby shore to walk and watch the waves rise and fall. Buildings obstruct the horizon in every direction.  There are no mountains to climb in our neighborhood.

Hobbes was my touchstone for nature. Gazing at her I saw the artistry of God. Being with her I also witnessed—in Evelyn Underhill’s words—the “homeliness” of God, God’s everydayness, familiarity, and steadfast presence.

My “congregation” is largely invisible and silent and at a distance: the readers of my blog and of my books. Facebook, e-mails, and letters intermittently give me chances to hear from you.

But Hobbes was my constant companion, particularly needed during times of stress, grief, anxiety, and loneliness. And, at the time of her death, she was the longest intimate relationship I’d had as an adult.

During her walks, she led me beside “green pastures” under the canopy of trees that cover our city, thus “restoring my soul.” If walking with God through the Garden of Eden was denied me, Hobbes was a qualified representative. Wade and I are still taking her longer morning walks.

When Calvin, Hobbes, and I lived in San Francisco, where I served as interim pastor for a little over a year, they led me “beside still waters” of nearby Lake Merced (“mercy” lake) and we played on the shores of Sunset Beach and Fort Funston.

Hobbes and I walked together “through the valley of the shadow of death” with Calvin when he was euthanized in our home there. Early the following Sunday morning, Hobbes and I witnessed a kind of “resurrection appearance” when on our walk we were joined by a collar-free silver-haired Calvin look-alike bounding in adolescent energy, as if reborn. (For more on this story, see chapter 8 of The Final Deadline: What Death Has Taught Me about Life.)

At Fort Funston, a doggy-friendly beach, we once encountered a baby sea lion. Hobbes’s eyes widened with wonder, and I leashed her lest she get too close. Together we watched as it returned to the sea. I walked on down the shore, not knowing that Hobbes, now unleashed, was not with me. I looked back several hundred yards later, and realized Hobbes was awaiting the sea lion’s return, gazing out to sea at the spot we had watched it go back in the waves. She had witnessed dogs go in and out of the water, and I guess she assumed the same of the sea lion.

She never fetched outside like Calvin, but she did love to play fetch and keep-away indoors with her squeaky “mousey.” And she enjoyed it when I got down on all fours, challenging me to chase her by slapping her front paws on the floor while bending toward me, grinning and eyes sparkling with glee. So she also brought me the re-creation of play.

Hobbes would join me, usually on our deck, for my morning prayers, eventually expecting a belly rub on each side. At night and during naps, she often slept on our bed, turning to face the open doorway, our protector as well.

Calvin’s eyes were always happy, but Hobbes’s eyes ranged from happy to wistful to sad, with soulful expressions, and she sometimes watched me longingly, especially in her latter days. At times I wondered if she were my mother reincarnated, so attentive she was to my presence.

Every death of a person or of a relationship reminds me of how imperfectly I have loved, and her death was no different.  In these final years of my life, I understand how imperfectly I have loved people and pets, as well as congregations and the broader church. Thus I am all the more grateful for God’s grace.

Hobbes was a theophany for me, a living, breathing, furry icon of God’s wonder, grace, and love. As a blog reader comforted me, “She was God in Hobbes-clothing.” I will miss her. And she will always be in my heart.

Click here and scroll down for other posts that mention Hobbes, who even made it into The New York Times!

P.S. Since posting this, I discovered that Pope Francis, in his June 18^th encyclical on climate change, wrote, “Eternal life will be a shared experience of awe, in which each creature, resplendently transfigured, will take its rightful place and have something to give those poor men and women who will have been liberated once and for all.” He ends the encyclical with prayers, including, “Teach us to discover the worth of each thing, to be filled with awe and contemplation to recognize that we are profoundly united with every creature as we journey toward your infinite light.” Thanks to Nicholas Kristof for his column, “A Pope for All Species.”

Find out how to support this blog ministry by clicking here. Thank you!

Copyright © 2015 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

Resurrecting Jesus

Many of us have demythologized Jesus. Others have deconstructed Jesus. Now it’s time to give some thought to resurrecting Jesus!

I don’t mean we can assume divine power to restore life or create the eternal. But just as God is revealed in the sacraments only with our willing suspension of disbelief, the resurrected Jesus is said by scripture only to have appeared to believers. Some of those believers hesitated or doubted, but they showed up anyway. Many of us showed up this past Sunday for Easter celebrations of resurrection. Woody Allen once quipped that 90% of life is just showing up!

This train of thought began for me on Good Friday, in an afternoon conversation about “the empty tomb” with a friend from seminary days, Kim White, visiting us briefly in Atlanta en route home to Nashville. I asked him what difference the story of Jesus’ resurrection makes to his faith in the 21^st century. Like me, he’s more interested in Jesus than the appellations attached to him, like “the Christ.” 

As for me, I have discovered the ongoing presence of those closest to me after their deaths, continuing to offer me their joy and wisdom and strength. It’s easy then to imagine that those closest to Jesus felt the same, and this intimacy manifested itself in the stories of resurrection we have in the Bible, including what some scholars consider to be a misplaced resurrection story we call the Transfiguration, in which Peter, James, and John were given a mystical experience of Jesus’ spiritual intimacy with Moses the lawgiver, Elijah the prophet, and Yahweh, who proudly booms again about Jesus as a chosen child, just as Jesus heard at his baptism.

Literalists would say we have to take these stories as literal truth, not as mystical visions or explanatory mythology. But why? Even the early followers of Jesus differed on these manifestations of a risen Christ. Some biblical stories suggest a spiritual resurrection that allows Jesus to pass through locked doors or out of his burial garment, still in place. Others suggest a physical resurrection that allows Jesus to eat with disciples and permit them to touch his wounds. Some stories mix the two. And Mary Magdalene’s encounter and that of the disciples traveling to Emmaus indicate he is not immediately recognizable, and may be known in a garden (nature) as well as in sacrament (the breaking of bread), in grief as well as in hospitality to strangers.

For me, all of this is to say that we actively participate in Jesus’ resurrection by our own desire to see him, to experience his joy and wisdom and strength, to manifest his presence to those around us through  compassion for “the least of these” as well as our neighbors and opponents and sisters and brothers in faith.

I have always been fond of the concluding paragraph of Albert Schweitzer’s Quest for the Historical Jesus:

He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, he came to those who knew him not. He speaks to us the same word: “Follow thou me!” and sets us to the tasks which he has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey him, whether they be wise or simple, he will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in his fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who he is.

Copyright © 2013 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. Check out past posts in the right rail on the blogsite.

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Posts you may have missed:

In the Company of Birds

What God Did for Love