Happy Easter!

   I write this with "Chant of the Mystics" Divine Gregorian Chant playing in the background.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuK59jQ5bwU&t=2417s


 So I approach this season and this sanctuary as one who struggles with the concepts of my faith. No longer able to give credence to an angry old man in the sky who thirsts for the blood of the innocent to appease his vengeance towards the guilty. Yet I still find the communion of the saints and the thought of the Divine lover of my spirit and soul taking on flesh to be the most holy of acts ever conceived in the mind of God or man.

That one who walked and had compassion on those of a different race or class or status. That one who had pity even on the arrogant rich and prejudiced. The one who wept at the death of a friend not because he felt his friend was lost forever but because the pain of the loss was so great for his friend's loved ones who felt they had lost him forever. That one who calls to me even in my agnosticism and still come's up close to me in times of meditation and prayer and sends me the sanity to keep going and keep hoping in the face of materialist atheist and religious bigots and the hypocrisy of the "saved."

Even in this he draws me to think of their journey and the hurts and bruises that lead others who don't agree with me to their own path. The Hippie Jesus who loves his neighbor more than a nation or political system may be a naive and even an unsound theological construct to some evangelicals. It really doesn't matter. He still come's up close to me and says "don't give up yet."

I stood at my grandparents grave once in Altoona, Alabama. My very deout grandmother who came from what she called Shanty Irish but still that was her stubborn faith and her journey and she was one of the few people I knew who lived her faith. She would have been ostracized by the Trump evangelicals. Of that I have no doubt. She was a Roosevelt Democrat from the depression era. My Granddaddy of Black Dutch Heritage and the high cheekbones and red skin from his Cherokee heritage. Hard drinking but loved unconditionally. It's where I got it from or got the influence from. I stood there remembering my frustrations of youth and the way in which I had pushed both of them away in my youthful anger and struggles. The lines I may have helped add to their faces.

But, what I heard that day as I stood there was "Happy Easter." It wasn't a certain holiday or season and I knew what "Happy Easter" meant. They were not in the ground or stuck in a physically beaten down and aged body. That love was still with me. Not in a hypothetical "they will live in my heart" sense. But, in a very real objective existence. What looked to be lost wasn't lost. What looked broken was repaired. What was sick was healed.

So I still hold on to my faith. In my vulgarity and weakness and lack of faith in the letter of the law of the bible. In my agnosticism of creeds and just so Sunday School Stories. I still hold on to that hope of one who walked a road that was later told by devotees and later by priest with an agenda.

Still, as I walk my road and in my struggles I still hold on to the hope that such a life as the Rabbi from the Tribe of Judah lived. Even to death. I think he tried to say that we can be like him. That we are as much son's and daughter's of God as him. Even the chosen people of Israel who were maybe the first to try and understand an omnipotent God.

I had a dream once as a child. As I journey now in the early years of my sixth decade on earth I still remember it. There was a staircase and I heard "Everytime you make a mark on the stair you get closer to God." I started to climb and everytime I looked down I would see the footprint my step made. I remember getting to the very  top and at the top looking down and seeing the mark of my footprint. I belonged. I never forgot that dream.

So, let my heretical self say this. I understand some think God is exclusive to them. Some think we are "adopted" into the family by reciting a creed or a prayer. But, I know and I have never forgotten. I'm not adopted. I'm not grafted in. I was born belonging. And I believe you are too.

So, I don't miss the creeds or the dogma. I don't claim that you have to believe what I do or believe anything at all. Actually, I don't know that you should "believe" anything. It tends to cause you to stop thinking. But, I'm glad I haven't given up on my journey or on him. At least in the way that I have come to know. I'm still on the journey. So, I may not believe in virgin births or molecules and skin knitting back together and coming physically out of a tomb. I have no religion to try and convert anybody to. I don't think it matters. But, I still say and still proclaim Happy Easter. He has Risen. He is Risen indeed. So will I and I honestly feel that all will be regathered in time. But, that is my thoughts on this week. A week that I used to celebrate as a Born again Christian. A week that in my own way I still celebrate. I hope you find peace and whatever the direction you are going. Keep on Truckin.

You say I took the name in vain. I don't even know the name. But, if I did then really, what's it to you? There's a blaze of light in every word, It doesn't matter which you heard. The holy or the broken Hallelujah....Leonard Cohen

 I know some will find this heretical.  But, in my later years I've become adjusted to my hallelujah's being broken. All I can assure you is I'm not trying to start a new religion or tell you that I have some hidden knowledge that you can follow. I'm trying to express in this season. My own personal hope and a little of my own personal journey to where I presently am standing. But, I hope to keep moving. I kind of think that's what it's about. We have an eternity to learn and to "BE" and even then we are just starting out.

I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you.And even though it all went wrong. I'll stand before the Lord of Song. With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah...Leonard Cohen "Hallelujah."

Peace.