Month: March 2019

Rabbit! Rabbit!

art, Easter, Faith, Family, generosity, Good Friday, Imagination, Love, nature, rabbits, renewal, Spirituality

Welcome to April!

Although we celebrated the vernal equinox on the 20th last month, the church counts March 21 as the equinox date in the ecclesiastical calendar, rather than the actual date, which can vary between March 19-21.

Vintage Easter Greetings

This is important because the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE established Easter would be held on the first Sunday after the first Full Moon occurring on or after the spring equinox. From then on, the church determined the full moon would be on March 21 for the vernal equinox. This means Easter can be as early as March 22nd, or as late as April 25th.

My dad loved to recite this bit of lore each year, just as much as he relished knowing the difference between first and second cousins and those kin who were once removed from us. If I live long enough, I may one day learn this arcane knowledge of relationships, but for now I’m doing well to keep the date of Easter in my head.

A boy and his pet rabbit

Easter is always a Sunday celebration, while Good Friday and the Passover are Friday events. Although the text says Jesus was taken down from the cross before sundown before the beginning of the Passover, the two celebrations don’t always coincide. The Christian calendar follows the sun, whereas the Hebrew calendar follows the moon. These two can get out of sync over time.

The two festivals do share a common theme, however. God works a miracle in the lives of the people. In the Passover, God spared the Hebrew families, but visited the plagues upon the Egyptians until Pharaoh freed the people. At Good Friday, God freed the people from bondage to sin and death and through the resurrection of Jesus on Easter, freed all who believe to live in freedom in love and life.

This is why we can say with Ellis Peters, “Every spring is the only spring—a perpetual astonishment.”  If we wear our new or best clothes in honor of the resurrection, it’s only because we want to share the experience of rebirth in our own lives. After a grim winter, or a rain filled March, the bright colors of the Easter resurrection feel more real than the few small bursts of colors we’ve seen in the garden to date.

Longfellow wrote in Kavanaugh: A Tale,
“If Spring came but once in a century, instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change!  But now the silent succession suggests nothing but necessity.  To most men only the cessation of the miracle would be miraculous and the perpetual exercise of God’s power seems less wonderful than its withdrawal would be.”

Enameled Egg

If we were only barely holding on to hope during the days of false spring, now as the days grow longer and warmer, we can feel hope taking hold in our hearts for certain. Maybe we feel better because of the longer days, or we can be outside more often. We don’t know, but we thank God for this blessing and the resurrection of hope in our hearts.

Perhaps it’s true: “The day the Lord created hope was probably the same day he created Spring.” —Bernard Williams

As a reminder, Time is infinite, even if we mark its passing in moments, minutes, hours, days, months, years, decades, centuries, and millennia. While we’re not infinite, the love of God is inexhaustible and steadfast, enduring forever. Where we see paucity, God provides abundance. The message of the eternal springtime and the resurrection is hope abounds in the most unlikely and darkest of days.

God’s Kairos Time is not our Chronological Time

May you have a blessed Easter and a new hope in your hearts and lives! My gift to you is a poem I’ve loved for nearly half a century.

Joy and Peace, Cornelia

Time XXI
A Poem by Khalil Gibran

And an astronomer said, “Master, what of Time?”
And he answered:

You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable.
You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons.
Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing.

Yet the timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness,
And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.
And that that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space.

Who among you does not feel that his power to love is boundless?
And yet who does not feel that very love, though boundless, encompassed within the centre of his being, and moving not from love thought to love thought, nor from love deeds to other love deeds?

And is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless?
But if in your thoughts you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the other seasons,
And let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/time-xxi/

Spring Flowers

adult learning, art, Creativity, Easter, Faith, flowers, garden, Garden of Gethsemane, Good Friday, Holy Spirit, Imagination, incarnation, Israel, Ministry, nature, Painting, picasso, Prayer, purpose, salvation, Spirituality, Stations of the Cross, Travel

How many colors exist in creation? Many more than we can buy in a tube at the art supply store and even more than the number of paint chips at our local building supply store. Recently I gave my adult art class an assignment to use their primary colors and white only to mix new colors, since I noticed they were not getting middle values in their paintings. I too enjoy the brightness of the primary colors, so this was also a challenge for me.

Power of the Cross

The following week I needed to do less geometry and more nature, but I came back to the cross theme once again, for these flowers are from a photo of the Easter “Living Cross” at my church. While we can’t see the arms of the cross, anymore than we can see Jesus today, we know the cross is there, just as we know Jesus is present for us in the power of the Holy Spirit.

This makes Christ alive, not only in our hearts, but also in the lives of all who suffer: the poor, the immigrant or stranger in our land, and the oppressed. Even the land itself, which suffers from human caused climate change, can be a place where we meet the living Christ.

Spring Flowers

The Garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem is a powerful place, for it was where Christ was handed over to his captors by a former friend. From there he went to death on the cross and resurrection for our salvation. This garden retains this energy of struggle: Jesus prayed to get his will in line with God’s will.

If the story ended here, we’d have no living crosses full of beautiful flowers on Easter Sunday. Out of pain and struggle comes great beauty. Most of us will avoid any challenge in our lives, thinking the easy way is the best way. Intentionally causing others to suffer pain isn’t acceptable for moral reasons: “do no harm” is a good adage, as is “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Setting achievable goals and challenges are different. These cause us to grow. They may also cause us discomfort, but this isn’t pain.

On this canvas, Spring Flowers, I had to overpaint and scumble to create the textured grays of the background. I even had to repaint the wispy border flowers several times to get their petals colored and straight, plus to get the ground varied enough to make them stand out.

One of the artists I most admire is Picasso, for he was always reinventing his style. Today artists pick a style and stick with it. Perhaps this is lucrative and makes economic sense. Still, I wonder what happens to the creative spirit when it’s not nurtured, challenged, and expressed. Of course, this may be the difference between a great artist and a good artist, and only the centuries will tell which among us now will be great.

Hope and Suffering

art, butterflies, Easter, Faith, Forgiveness, Good Friday, Icons, incarnation, Lent, Ministry, Prayer, salvation, Spirituality

“You totally (should) become his nature, deny his being apart from you; you should be he himself, not Christians, but Christ, otherwise you will be no use to the coming god.”
—C. G. Jung, The Red Book, p. 137.

“No one can be spared the way of Christ, since this way leads to what is to come. You should all become Christs, says C. G. Jung, in his Answer to Job. He goes on to explain in the divine indwelling of the Holy Spirit in humanity, “a christification of the many arises.” One of the great and simple prayers is “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle in them in them the fire of your love.” When we ask for the indwelling third person of the Trinity, we also ask for the rest of the “family,” for the three are fellow travelers. The Father and the Son aren’t separate entities, even when the Spirit proceeds from the two, just as the Father and the Spirit aren’t off somewhere distant when the Son is suffering on the cross.

In the season of Lent, many people begin with ashes on their forehead as a sign of repentance and fasting for the forty days before Easter. Some give up bacon, others give up alcohol, and some give up social media. Perhaps this is our idea of suffering today, since most of us have our needs for shelter, food, and security met. Modern people tend to suffer emotionally instead, so this may be why we fast from social media. Unfortunately, we don’t have much deep Christian teaching around suffering, mostly because it’s not a happy subject. Nobody likes a downer sermon. Bible studies on Job and the prophets are unpopular too. We don’t like seeing our faces in a BCE Mirror.

I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE

Who wants to suffer today? No one! Most of the Christian teaching around the cross concerns a variation on the substitution theory, or Jesus takes on our suffering so we no longer have to endure the agony ourselves. Of course, when we meet trouble in our daily life, we then call into question either the effectiveness of this work on the cross or our faith in his work on our behalf. Did Christ die for everyone else, but not for me? Are there other works besides my faith in Christ necessary for my salvation? Do I need to be a better person to earn my freedom from suffering?

If we understood the nature of the earthbound Christ life, rather than the resurrected Christ life, we’d grasp the essential nature of suffering bound up into this life of flesh and spirit. Christ knew hunger, thirst, loneliness, temptation, disappointments, weariness, rejection, and pain. Worst of all, he tasted the emptiness of death before he knew the fullness of the resurrection.

Should we protect our children from suffering? If we mean, should we do our best to feed, clothe, and shelter them, the answer is yes, of course! If we mean, do we protect them from the logical consequences of their acts, I’d say, most likely no. If a child won’t do their own homework, they should get the logical results for their refusal. Physical punishment isn’t a logical result. Poor grades, limits on sports or activities, or staying after school are consequences in line with the poor behavior. Small sufferings now will avoid larger sufferings later. (If they want to jump out of a third story window, that’s another matter. Put some locks on that, parents!)

Of course, to even call these “suffering” shows how far our modern world has moved from the ancient world. Sufferings once were the lot of slaves, who had no authority over their own lives, and could be bought and sold like cattle. They had no agency or control over their fortunes or lots in life. We modern folk are different, unless we buy into the idea we’re rudderless ships upon a stormy ocean. Then we’re merely chaff tossed about by external forces, so we might as well be slaves to our environment.

If we held the whole nature of Christ within us, we’d know both the Christ of suffering and the resurrected Christ of glory. While we ourselves have not yet ascended, we do hold fast to his promise,

“Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.” (1 John 3:2-3)

If we live with hope, we can rejoice, and be patient in suffering, while we persevere in prayer.
~~ Romans 12:12