Why Show Up?

When I returned to the church, I wrestled with the liturgy's language and the Creed, I couldn't say the parts I didn't agree with, but eventually I did, and do, say them as a practice of humility: I just might be, could possibly be, wrong about some things. It is possible that I don't have all the answers. There are days when I don't want to go. I may be depressed or tired. But sometime we just have to show-up. You never know wonderful little thing may occur, a smile from someone who never does, or a hug from someone who never does but just happened to need one more than me and was willing to give it a try. You just gotta show-up sometimes, you never know what may happen.

We Can Overcome

Who are you, or am I, to judge? We can overcome bad theology without resorting to the same belittling tactics and scapegoating used by extremists. In fact, we will only overcome the bad theology by first overcoming the bad rhetoric. There is no time for hyperventilated rhetoric. The time is now for options and solutions in our discourse. Even more, the time for discourse is fast passing, as we are now in a time for action in the care of those among us who are suffering in spirit, mind, body and economically: the actions that are God's justice and compassion. Jesus Compassionate calls us to act, not to judge.

This is a bittersweet time, yet full with emerging grace.

Doubts

Oh dear Thomas, the promise was always the promise of suffering, don't doubt it.

Unsure?

Put your fingers and hands into the risen one: the wounds remain. In a few days, the risen one will be the ascended one, and the wounds will remain.

What changed is the person around the wounds, the same person who, if we will, can by those same wounds, transform me around the wounds of mine.

Such is the mystery and power of love.

Easter 2012

Today from every dark place, every nook and cranny, every crevice and cave, from under every stone and rock, from even the rocks themselves, came the great cry of creation, of life's inability to be suppressed. The great shout goes up defying death's folly and self-indulgence, as it is the Cosmos' plan, the Living One's victory that life always returns, always rises up, again and again and again.

We know this whether we always see it or not. And more, today we know that we are made in God's image, their image, male and female, in their image too in our capacity to love as well. This is what's so special about us, we can choose to love, and the greater our willingness to suffer the exquisite pain of loving, the greater and deeper our love and being loved grows, growing ever, like the expanding Cosmos, which is hoping to be big enough to contain all the love we have to grow in God's promise, and each other.

This is the great shout coming from the depth of our being, the sorrows of our hell, into which the great love of Jesus enters into, pulling us out of the depth and dark of our suffering and into the light of his love, God's love. All I need to do is have the courage of my Lady Mary Magdalene, to go to and look into the tomb, see it empty of death and full of life's hope, and though like her, confused and terrified, I too can go running, shouting the joy of Love's victory!

We can know it. We can live it.

Happy Easter!