Brian’s Reflection: Monday, April 25, 2011

[ Monday in Easter Week ~ Christian ]

‎Resurrection is not an external event to be measured
for its historicity nor as fodder for theological invention
but an internal manifestation of what it means to be alive.

Jim Tarvid


I wish I could have said that that succinctly! But hey; I can always “buy in”.

So much of “religion” has become “Do you believe right”. Bottom line it comes down to, If you don’t believe what we believe, you are beyond the pale and will suffer for your obdurate ignorance. That stance is about Division, about Exclusiveness, about Power and Control. My experience of Jesus tells me that this is NOT what God has in mind for the human race. As usual, the “fringe people”, like Rumi in founding the Sufis, and the early Gnostics in the East and in the early development of the followers of Jesus, get it right. But the Constantines, and those who slaver for the power that affiliation with Power offers, so often ~ usually by violence and by perversion of the teachings of their founders ~ “win out”.

I have said this many times and I say it again: Jesus and the Bible are not essentially interpreted by the Church; rather Jesus defines the Bible and the Church. If the Church is not faithful to the “mind of Christ”, then the Church and all things related to it must be reformed.

We can talk all we want about the concept, the “how”, of Resurrection. It may be useful. We can use or misuse the metaphor of Resurrection to create “theologies” with which we try to bludgeon others.

But what Resurrection is, on whatever level one ponders it, is “an eternal manifestation of what it means to be alive”.

God is interested in Life. God IS Life. And “laying hold on Life” is what God desires for all of us.

Resurrection is an internal awakening, an internal transformation. I believe that, once one understands this, all Time and Space disappear. All things collapse into the one reality of the Present Moment. This IS Eternity. What came before and what shall come after is no longer relevant. There is nothing to redeem, no “Original Sin” to atone for either on one’s own or by an incarnate deity. The only reality is to be an Incarnation of God, in the particularity of one’s own uniqueness.

What a Journey!

Brian+