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Christ Risen, Women Rising

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In a metaphysical imagery workshop last Sunday, I allowed myself to be led into a sculptor’s workshop. Offered the tools to recreate myself, I shaped two hands from clay, a block beneath representing the cross and nails through the palms. Tears rolling down my cheeks, I chipped the first nail head away, then lifted the hand and melted it into my right. The second nail I pushed through the flesh before melting it into my left.

When I was done, I was invited to receive guidance from my Wise. I expected the Father, but instead my Lady came to me, easing my grief with this testimony:

You are everything that I ever desired.

When the tears of relief eased, she took my hands and offered:

It is time for you to rest. Let me do my Work.

Is this Mystery?

The feminine agency in salvation is obscure. Clearly the womb is a gateway, for it is through Woman that all virtue comes into the world. Surrendering that virtue to the sacred purpose appears to be among Woman’s challenges. Sarai resisted the faith of Abram, and Leah struggled mightily against the conception of Joseph. In desperation Jochebed surrendered Moses to the river. In Hannah we finally saw a woman offer a son gratefully to God, redeeming Israel with Samuel. But the Holy Mother herself resisted the ministry of Jesus. It is only at the wedding in Canaa that she surrendered to his warning that she would become merely “woman” if she commanded him to address the lack of wine. Later, Mary assembled the family and attempted to call Jesus home, to which he responded, “This is my family now.’

“Mary” (or Mariam) arises from “mry” in Egyptian, meaning “beloved,” and there are a great number of them in the New Testament: the Virgin, Mary Magdalene, Mary with Martha, and “the other Mary” heading to the tomb.

Women provide support for the ministry – financial as well as practical. While the men planned the administration of Jesus’ kingdom, despite their humble role it was from the women that social disobedience arose. They recognized the authority of Jesus’ love. The fallen woman used tears and hair to wash his feet at table.

But the most potent demonstration comes near the end. While the frightened men bickered in Jerusalem, it was left to a woman to play the role of the Old Testament priest, pouring oil over his head as he sat at table. Terrified, the Apostles objected to the waste of a valuable resource, for which Jesus chided them “She has done a beautiful thing for me.”

After Jesus was arrested, the Apostles scattered and Peter denied him. During Interrogation, both Pilate and Caiaphas demanded “Are you king of the Jews?” to which Jesus, foreseeing the disaster that would befall both Jerusalem and Rome, suggested gently: “You. Say I am.” Both feared that such testimony would incite the wrath of Herod, and so remained silent.

It is only right, then, that it was women bearing oil to the tomb who discovered the truth of the Resurrection. Even so they were shaken; both the angel and Jesus pled “Do not be afraid.”

I have private insight into the role of Mary Magdalene in the Passion. When I first encountered her spirit, we fell back through time to the Crucifixion, and as he struggled with the burden of our dependence on sin, an elder woman leaned over to whisper into the Magdalene’s ear: “He has need of you, child.” It was thus through the Magdalene’s devotion that time was opened to him, and to that devotion he returned. That yearning is evident when they reunited: she clasped him tightly – he responded obscurely:

Do not cling to me, for I have not yet returned to my Father in heaven.

Sera Beak documents the consequences of the Magdalene’s yearning in “Red, Hot and Holy.” Jesus was still rooted in the earth, and it was the Magdalene’s desire to continue his line that concerned him. No child should grow in a cauldron of suffering such as he experienced.

But what is a woman’s alternative? What other role does scripture offer her?

The answer is found in Revelation. In her first appearance, the Sacred Lady indeed manifested as a mother. But she remained after Christ was called back to heaven, bringing forth children to struggle against the dragon. To some, that tends naturally to the role of Mystery, the woman riding on the Red Beast. But in Revelation 20, a different outcome is foretold. The Bride steps forth, clothed in the works of the saints. It is not flesh that women should seek to gestate, but virtue.

While still suppressed, it is in Islamic history that women become active as facilitators of the sacred purpose. Khadija and Fatima are the avatars, and in Mohammad’s twelve wives we hear a strained echo of Israel’s twelve sons. In the great Muslim love poem, Yusuf and Zuleika, Potiphar’s spurned wife eventually reflects of her forbidden love:

Virtue was my beloved and thou
Had virtue’s impress on thy brow.

While walking Ventura’s March for Our Lives, I was touched more than once by Emma Gonzalez. I hold her most tenderly in my heart, her and all her friends. I offered that she could withdraw from her role – the feminine focus that holds her generation as it is led to wisdom. But she refused.

And in that endurance, strength and hope, I can indeed rest.

Hogg takes The Hill

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The death-lobby mouthpieces in the media continue to test the waters of public tolerance for attacks on the children trying to curtail the ever-increasing frequency of attacks in our public schools. Laura Ingraham on FOX News (the senility network) lost a number of advertisers when she took on Chris Hogg, the most vocal of the Parkland survivors. She was forced to retract her comments, citing “the spirit of Easter.”

But it doesn’t stop there. The Hill has published a criticism of Hogg’s exhortation for others to support the boycott of Ingraham. Saying that it “sets a dangerous precedent” in attempting to destroy Ingraham’s career, The Hill continues with assertions from a Parkland “2nd Amendment Rights” supporter that Hogg was being manipulated by the liberal media, and warns that Hogg’s continued advocacy makes him fair fodder for the kinds of destructive propaganda normally reserved to adults.

So first to Ingraham: there is a God. As evidenced in Jerusalem 2000 years ago, he strongly favors renunciation of violence. He sent me to Parkland to shower love upon the survivors. And if losing your fat paycheck (not at all equivalent to losing your career) is an unenviable prospect, in invoking “the spirit of Easter” to cover your toadying to Death and his minions, you are placing at risk your soul.

This extends to the rest of Death’s propaganda machine. You may be a distributed pustule uncontrolled by any political agenda or leader, but you are seen by God, and you will find yourself unable to enter heaven with those that fight for love.

And, again and again, as many times as it takes: you are beloved, my fair warriors for love. Hogg, Gonzalez: your courage in the face of evil is admirable, and will be rewarded.

Folding into Sorrow

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It some ways, it is getting easier. When the weight settles during the Agnus Dei, I’ve decided to simply go with it. With “takes away the sins of the world,” I raise my hands to my shoulders and push it away into the void. And with “grant us peace,” I motion for the powers to descend from heaven into the space prepared for them. I know that the gestures must seem odd to those around me, but at least I’m not weeping any more.

Still, there are these irrational and inexplicable waves of sorrow in response to the elements of the Easter story. It’s not the crucifixion that causes my throat to clench and my chest to lock against grief. Rather it’s in the middle of this verse from In Christ Alone, which I’ve been looping on the car stereo:

There in the ground His body lay
Light of the world by darkness slain
Then bursting forth in glorious Day
Up from the grave He rose again
And as He stands in victory
Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me

It’s in the declaration of victory that sorrow overwhelms me, accompanied by a sneering voice in the back of my head.

Having gained a certain sense of control over the experience, I am now able to stand back and analyze it. It’s not in the past that the grief lay, not on the Cross. It’s in the future.

And with that realization come to mind those mysterious promises. Of the Law [NIV Matt. 5:18], Jesus says (emphasis added):

For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

Only to announce the New Covenant in the Last Supper.

Of the End of the Age, Jesus promises [NIV Matt. 24:34] (emphasis added):

Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.

And on the cross to the repentant thief [NIV Luke 23:43]:

Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.

Finally surrendering life with [NIV John 19:30]:

It is finished.

In Tyranny Vanquished by Love, I explain that the dimming of the sun on Good Friday was not an eclipse, it was the sun pouring its power into the Savior. What was that power used for? The only way to reconcile these statements above with the iniquity of modern human existence is that Jesus was unbound from time. The power he was granted was guided into the future by his mercy and love, seeking relentlessly for an opportunity to realize the kingdom of peace.

So Easter was not two days later to him as it was to his followers. Rather, as Peter suggests [NIV 2 Peter 3:8-9]:

But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

So now I understand: the reason that I feel so much grief in the Resurrection is because we are at the turning point in his journey. The wall of pain stands right in front of us. The final resistance of sin, having consumed all the available resources, is flagging. It is ours to walk the narrow path, to pierce that veil with love, and bring him home to us.

And then send him back to rise from the grave and celebrate love’s victory with his dearest friends.

 

Oh Woman! Oh Beauty! Oh Life!

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One of the burdens of healing sin is to take it into yourself from those not yet strong enough to resist it. The selfish would hope simply to dispel it, but as sin is nothing but selfishness – the imposition of our image upon a spirit no less sacred than our own – to  cast out sin is an error. That would be to allow it the booty of its conquest. Rather, we must separate the essential from the vile, and return what was taken to the victim.

So for a long time I thought of my antagonists as my “supply chain.” But in every endeavor of grace, there is a time to heal, and a moment to inspire. I have suffered under the weakness of those that assail me for long enough. It is time to claim that which is good and strong.

So I found myself, at Good Friday services yesterday, focusing on the connection between the Cross and the future of love that arises upon his return. In that process, I found my hand guiding Christ around this era into that future. In considering that manifestation, I found myself excluded from it.

I am not disconsolate. In conserving its hold over us, sin has claimed much that is sacred. I have written about that elsewhere, how the loss of Eden was not limited to the breaking of trust with Unconditional Love, but the loss of trust between Man and Woman. Through that corruption, the Darwinian procreative urge reasserted itself. Rather than an act of loving spiritual connection that unleashes our shadowed glory upon the world, sex has been claimed for shame.

I recoiled from this fundamental misconception, so common in Christian teaching, in the sermon of the Lutheran minister during the interregnum in the reading of the Passion. We are creatures of sin, he claimed, and only Christ’s sacrifice redeems us. No, sir, we are not creatures of sin. We are creatures of choice, and even death on the Cross could not dispel the loving forgiveness that Christ brought to the world. In choosing to live wholly within it, every part of us will manifest the grace of God’s imagining of us. There is no aspect of our humanity that cannot be made sacred by love.

Yet I recall, now, the words I spoke from the pedestal in Oakland: “My name is Brian. I am from the future, reaching into the past. And I am an open heart.” It was a presaging of yesterday’s bypass.

My father was a prolifically sexual man. During our teen years, the boys had ready access to Playboy magazine. That instilled a perception of women as objects of pleasure, and a fascination with idealized feminine forms that covered the shallowness of their spiritual investment in the world.

My mother could not compete with this conditioning, and perhaps that is in part why she now decries the “patriarchal dominance” of our culture.

While I have not been a sexual libertine in this life, in my youth I explored vicariously many of its manifestations.  Over the years, that fed potent dreams that I realize now were participatory with women that were enamored of me. I understood this only late in my life: while some have dropped references to “porn star” in my hearing, I have never had my dreaming interrupted by other couples – except once when a pair in Africa peeked over the edge of their mattress to offer sympathy for my loneliness. I seem to be completely in control of my sexual imagination.

I see now, however, that my descent into the cesspool of corruption that men created for woman has left me vulnerable to the claim that my relationships with women are dominated by prurient interest. I see it differently, of course: over the last fifteen years, all of my dreaming has ended “Yes, but what about this part of you that you are ignoring?” Bliss was merely the method of achieving intimacy, with the goal of penetrating the lie that our carnality is a perversion that cannot be redeemed by love. Rather, like any other aspect of human nature, it is a tool, suitable to specific places and times, that allows us to reach Life in its most elemental level, and thereby to accomplish acts of healing and creation that are inaccessible through any other means. It has been my goal to propagate this understanding, to attempt to redeem woman’s self-esteem without insisting that they engage the world in the modality of men. It was to look deeply into them and offer them the paean that heads this post.

How long will it be before you assimilate it, before Mystery surrenders her resistance to the grace of feminine sexuality, and so allows loving couples to suffuse every particle of the world with Love in all its power?

For this is what I ask, and what they resist. Not simply bliss, but a reaching through into the world, and to command pleasure and consummation as an act of healing. It is this that Mystery seems to fear most, and whenever I come close to manifesting it with a woman, the most vile images and paranoid thoughts invade the relationship.

In this Easter’s meditations then, I gather that the hoped-for manifestation will not come in my lifetime. I have spent my manhood on my hopes for you, ladies. It is time for you to make them your own. For until one of you matches strength with Christ, his strength cannot be received by the world.

Sinning Through Love’s Eyes

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As Easter approaches, celebrants all around the world will extol the virtues of God’s sacrifice on the cross. While I accept the praise, I tend to cringe at the rationale.

The rationale is also offensive to critics of Christian theology. What kind of logic is to be found in the proposition of an all-loving God that creates fallible creatures that are punished eternally for their weakness? That is cruel and arbitrary to the core.

I’d like to offer another analogy: think of evil as a cell in the body. If we performed surgery to remove that cell, how many other cells would be destroyed in the process? Is it fair that those cells should suffer and die so that the single cell can be removed?

That is the problem facing God. Yes, s/he could do the surgery and destroy evil. But in the process innocent creatures would be harmed.

In human medicine, the alternative to surgery is to condition the immune system to locate and remove the malignant cell. That can take some time, but has the advantage that it establishes a memory in the immune system. Future malignancies are dealt with far more efficiently.

Humanity is the immune system. Unfortunately, we have an auto-immune disorder. It’s not something that happened in Eden, because the serpent existed before we did. No, it’s something that precedes even the creation of this reality.

So why did Jesus choose to die on the cross?

Because experience of the disease is required for diagnosis and treatment.

Because God failed to protect us from evil, and so bears responsibility for our suffering.

Because while there is no sufficient form of atonement for our suffering, to share it, at least, might inspire us to grasp the power that is tendered for our healing.

That is the beauty of the resurrection. Not even death is beyond that power, should we chose to have faith in the love that is offered to us.