ACT ONE: Seeing the light...in the strangest of places...
These and other reflections can be pondered here:
[from this article] In conclusion, “Ballad Of Casey Jones” by The Grateful Dead is more than just a song – it is a narrative that explores themes of sacrifice, responsibility, and the transient nature of existence. The captivating storytelling, combined with the mesmerizing music, makes this track a timeless masterpiece that continues to captivate audiences to this day. (more in the above link)
ACT TWO: Let's move beyond the blame game...and start by facing the person in the mirror...
ACT THREE: "Forgive US/them...WE/they don't know what WE/they are doing"
Brian McLaren invites us to an imaginative experience of the painful reality of scapegoating that occurred on Good Friday:
Let’s imagine ourselves with the disciples just before three o’clock on this Friday afternoon. A few of us have come together to talk about what has happened over the last twenty-four hours….
Why was there no other way? Why did this good man—the best we have ever known, the best we have ever imagined—have to face torture and execution as if he were some evil monster?
As the hours drag on from noon to nearly three o’clock, we imagine many reasons….
Jesus has told us again and again that God is different from our assumptions. We’ve assumed that God was righteous and pure in a way that makes God hate the unrighteous and impure. But Jesus has told us that God is pure love, so overflowing in goodness that God pours out compassion on the pure and impure alike. He not only has told us of God’s unbounded compassion—he has embodied it every day as we have walked this road with him. In the way he has sat at table with everyone, in the way he has never been afraid to be called a “friend of sinners,” in the way he has touched untouchables and refused to condemn even the most notorious of sinners, he has embodied for us a very different vision of what God is like….
If Jesus is showing us something so radical about God, what is he telling us about ourselves—about human beings and our social and religious institutions? What does it mean when our political leaders and our religious leaders come together to mock and torture and kill God’s messenger?... Is this the only way religions and governments maintain order—by threatening us with pain, shame, and death if we don’t comply? And is this how they unify us—by turning us into a mob that comes together in its shared hatred of the latest failure, loser, rebel, criminal, outcast … or prophet?... What kind of world have we made? What kind of people have we become?...
In the middle of the afternoon … even from this distance, we can hear Jesus, “Father, forgive them!” he shouts. “For they don’t know what they are doing.”
Forgive them? Forgive us?
Our thoughts bring us again to the garden last night, when Jesus asked if there could be any other way. And now it seems clear. There could be no other way to show us what God is truly like. God is not revealed in killing and conquest … in violence and hate. God is revealed in this crucified man—giving of himself to the very last breath, giving and forgiving.
And there could be no other way to show us what we are truly like. We do not know what we are doing, indeed.
If God is like this, and if we are like this … everything must change.
ACT FOUR: More Franciscan Wisdom...
First the fall, and then the recovery from the fall, and both are the mercy of God. —Julian of Norwich
[from this meditation] Whenever we’re led out of normalcy into sacred, open space, it’s going to feel like suffering, because it is letting go of what we’re used to. This is always painful at some level. But part of us has to die if we are ever to grow larger (John 12:24). If we’re not willing to let go and die to our small, false self, we won’t enter into any new or sacred space...
Let’s think in terms of what I call “the three boxes”: order > disorder > reorder.
While We're Keeping Vigil...outside...or inside...the tombs of our lives and those of our loved ones...
Deserving of a separate post, I'm simply passing along these links, as I may not pass this way again...
--(a.k.a., "Conversations with the Dead")
And this from one of my other early and major influences...
