Easter

John 11:39
Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh:

King James Version. No, I don't think it's the best or the most holy. But, sometimes it gets to the root of it. "He Stinketh." Whew, that's rough. I can remember as a younger person getting tickled at that one. Sorry, but it's true. At a certain age everything seems funny. Then you get really serious and everything is urgent. Then one day you notice the lines on your hands and the gray in your hair, little crows feet at the corner of the eyes and all of a sudden you start to laugh at life again. Why so serious? It Stinketh at times. :-) But, ya gotta laugh and then you gotta cry so you might as well laugh more and cry less while you can.


 One toke over the line sweet Jesus
One toke over the line
Sittin' downtown in a railway station
One toke over the line...Brewer and Shipley

Now, I've done some things that I wouldn't do again. Some, I'd do again but in moderation. :-) I'm not one to sugar coat it at this late date. My mother had a lot of sayings. One went something like this: "God knows everything about me so why should I care what you think?"

 Me and Jesus we got our own things going
Me and Jesus, we got it all worked out
Me and Jesus, we got our own things going
We don't need anybody to tell us what it's all about....Tom T. Hall

I have a life long relationship with the source of my being. I don't feel the need to be in the club these days. I struggle with dogma and I don't look for a guru to tell me how to live or what to think or who to love or how to be kind.


There's times when I trembled
When my mind remembered
The days that just crumbled away
With nothing to show
But these lines that I know
Are beginning to show in my face

Oh Lord if you hear me
Touch me and hold me
And keep me from blowing away ....Linda Ronstadt


Lots of days gone by. I thought the road would seem longer by the time I reached this age. Instead it seems like yesterday and I wonder who that little old man is when I look in the mirror. Still, I think it's an eternal journey so I expect my spirit is still intact somehow in all these journeys and travels.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars....William Butler Yeats.

Still, I think love is eternal. We are all "Pilgrim Souls." But, I think we are going at our own rate of speed and discovery. 

“God says, "Sure, take away the safety net. And when that's gone, take away the tight rope too.” ...Stephen King "Desperation"

Feels like it's a free fall at times. I think about how it must have been for Jesus. 

First the Sunday School version: Get thee behind me Satan for My father owns all of this. 

Pow, Biff, Pop. Holy Messiah Batman, that's telling him.

However, it could have been closer to this...

I'm going to make it through and keep my hope. 

"What?" " are you crazy?" :"What hope?" 

Now that's a strange thought. What hope. Why the hope that God will provide.."Really?" "Kind of like he provided for John?" "I hear a certain king had his head on a platter." "Anyway, what if there is no god?" "You can't be sure ya know." "You might be crazy." "Wouldn't be the first poor deluded idiot to die and go out into oblivion with the name of god on their lips now would you?"

Life, even for those with hope and faith is rarely the clean sanitized Sunday school version. Still, he did keep going, kept hoping and looked the fear of oblivion in the eye and walked straight ahead. 

Name it Claim it...God wants me to have riches and you too. A jet and a mansion? Well, that's because I'm faithful....T.V. Evangelist (many of them.)

"You don't know what you are asking," Jesus said to them. "Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?" "We can," they answered...Matthew 20:22

Just be careful. I don't think the cup he's offering is quite the same cup the evangelist is talking about.

 My son is approaching 12 years old. I had him late in life and now I am 58 years old. I plan on writing a letter to him to be opened after I shuffle off this mortal coil. I think about what to put in the letter. I think the one thing I'd like to tell him is "It all counts." Everyday and everybody. Life isn't your own private movie and the people around you are not actors and stunt people or characters in a video game. So, treat people the way you would like to be treated. We are all manifestations of "I Am." I don't do religious dogma these days. I don't think God is so casual with the human soul as to "save" someone who happened to say the sinners prayer but to burn someone else for eternity for simply being a human. Trust. In the end that's all that you have. Trust that the love you feel and the love you have known isn't a myth. The universe isn't insane and at the center of your being you know this. 

 “Then came the march past the victims. The two men were no longer alive. Their tongues were hanging out,
swollen and bluish. But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing...
And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes.
And we were forced to look at him at close range. He was still alive when I passed him. His tongue was still
red, his eyes not yet extinguished.

Behind me, I heard the same man asking:
"For God's sake, where is God?"
And from within me, I heard a voice answer:
"Where He is? This is where--hanging here from this gallows..."

That night, the soup tasted of corpses.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

Here he is. Not way up in the sky being so pissy that he can't bear to look at you. No, that's the thing. He hangs on a cross. He suffers in the hold of a slave ship. She feels the sting of abuse and hopelessness. 

My grandparents on my mothers side were a product in many ways of the Great Depression. My grandmother would put water in a ketchup bottle and shake it before she would throw it away as empty. She was Southern of (as she told me once) Shanty Irish. My granddaddy was Dutch and Cherokee. She was religious and he was a hard drinking coal miner in the Etowah, Blount County area of North Alabama. They had a tough life in many ways. But, here's the thing:

I went to the graveyard in Altoona, Alabama some years ago. I stood there looking at the graves. As I stood there a single wonderful sentence came through my mind. "Happy Easter!" 

It didn't end at the grave yard or at cancers door. It didn't lead to oblivion. It led to Easter. It led to life.

 "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make."...The Beatles

“The feeling remains that God is on the journey, too.”...Saint Teresa of Avila

I get more holistic the older I get. I find more connections and less separation of people and creatures and nature. I think in many ways I am a little less afraid than I used to be. Not to say I'm fearless. But, I am headed for Easter Morning when this part of the journey is complete. 

Peace!