“Fresh Voices” is the title of the current NY Times Book section. The title captured my imagination. Perhaps, I thought, I’ll find something life sustaining in these pages. “Fresh voices” seems to pre-suppose ‘not so fresh’ or even gone from the scene. Sure enough, my hope is answered. Unexpectedly, it arrives in a excerpted quote from a review of the new book, “The Burgess Boys” written by Elizabeth Strout best known for “Olive Kitteridge” a wonder-filled story itself.
The reviewer says, “Strout “animates the ordinary with astonishing force.” What’s not to like about that phrase?
For me, its use of the words animation, ordinary, astonishing, and force are all words that point to bringing life out of death, a description of ‘resurrection.’ We take what we can get. It strikes me as a fresh statement of a very old and treasured understanding.
I use a lower case ‘r’ because we can only ever see Truth partially. Resurrection (upper case) is in the realm of the Wholly Other. Jesus is Resurrection. What we can experience is resurrection, that which is available us in our limitations.
Pontius Pilate’s question, “What is Truth?” could never be answered that could satisfy him. His life was a flat plane with no dimension of spirit. His encounter with the Truth in Jesus, however, could have been an ‘animation of the ordinary with astonishing force" if he were open to it.
I do see regular, common neighbors living this truth daily, revealing resurrection moments through film, art, books, plays, music, inventiveness, care for others, architecture, nature--'Resurrection' as resurrection flows from all human experience.
The story of a revived corpse may be interesting to some, scary to others. Zombie movies have a certain appeal, but the ‘resurrection’ is not about scientific proof (historical evidence) or things you have to make up.
The meaning of ‘resurrection?’ It means that this Word “animates the ordinary with astonishing force.” So called plain and common people no longer have to live in the shadows dominated by forces who have more strength, numbers or money. There is power in life that is not in the hands of the wealthy or the politicians or corporations or the church, or the pope, new or old, dead or alive.
History needs people whose beliefs and lives are rooted in values that don’t discriminate over who is the best. Who are those people who are willing to gather around a table to share different ideas of how we can live together in more healthy and productive ways? Who is open to the Truth?
There is nothing particularly noteworthy in connecting with the resurrection of Jesus if it does not relate the possibility of daily life resurrection. If resurrrection does not exist for everyone, it does not exist for anyone. This has nothing to do with convincing people you are right, defending your religion, or trying to get others to change their ways. It is the permission to approach life completely free of the shackles that keep us from acting and being in ways we deeply know are within us.
It is a difficult thing to recognize that resurrection flows from the brutality and horror of the death of man(sic). Thankfully our experience of that death is not always brutal and bloody. It is more often the ‘mini-deaths’ that occur all the time. These are more than the ‘paper cuts’ of life, but the invitation to die isn’t physical martyrdom.
A ‘resurrection’ approach to life may appear when we doubt that there is any meaning. We ‘curse the darkness’ as the poet says. We don’t see any path forward. We feel that we are at wit’s end. We have been abandoned or abused. We have gained some money or status, but vital living has escaped us.
But then we pick up the New York Times and see “Fresh Voices.” We follow that sign and discover again that life is stronger than death. Look everywhere and you may see what I’m talking about. Re-telling the Good Friday-Easter story reminds us that this is true.
Resurrection provides a whole new way of thinking. It is an entirely different approach to living life.
And that’s the ‘heart of the matter.’
**The thought of ‘how would I share my understanding of Christianity with my grandkids led to a two part entry on Christmas. I’ve realized since just how difficult it is to take the deepest understandings of life and put them in form for any of us, much less the very young. What is the age to deal forthrightly with death? I have friends who tell me now that their older kids resent the church stories that skirted the centrality of Jesus’ violent death. Is anyone hidden from our violent society? Can we talk with children about the violence that Christianity addresses without crossing a line that could hurt a child? I have no answers for that, so without avoiding or sugar-coating Jesus death, I’m not sure at what age we pull the curtain back. We have many songs and stories that may help, but not because children like them or it gets us off the hook. I’ve heard the cocoon to a butterfly metaphor a hundred times. It’s a simple, accessible and even beautiful metaphor, but I’m not convinced it gets at what Good Friday-Easter means.
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