Show Me Your Resurrection!

Being a somewhat revised and updated version of a sermon preached on Easter Day, April 11, 2004, at St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church in Yarmouth, Maine.

In a recently published collection of radio talks, The Rev. Carl Scovel, minister emeritus of historic King's Chapel (Unitarian Universalist) in Boston, tells of a Zen Master from Japan who visited a Trappist monastery in the U.S for an extended stay. It was the Abbot's hope that his monks might learn something about meditation from their visitor. The master was so impressed by the devotion of the monks that he offered to conduct a sesshin--a traditional Zen retreat--for those who were interested. Several of the monks signed up for the retreat and, on the first day, they were given their koans.

My Zen teacher, James Ford, offers that the simplest definition of a koan is a 'problem' given by a Zen Master to a practitioner to lead him [or her] to self-awakening. His teacher, John Tarrant Roshi, further states: In koan work we are given a question that is impossible. This question is life. We are given instructions that are vague and inadequate by necessity, since they are intended to turn us inward. They support us not in belief but in discovery. After a koan has been assigned and some time has passed, the student is expected to make his or her response to the teacher in a one-on-one interview.

On the occasion of the retreat at the Trappist monastery, the first monk entered the master's room and found him seated between two copies of the New Testament, one in English and one in Japanese. The monk bowed before the master and sat down and waited. The master said in broken but clear English: You know, I like Christianity, but... He paused and glanced down at the books before him, then looked up again at the monk. But he said I would not like it without the resurrection. The master then leaned forward so that his face was quite close to the monk's. Show me your resurrection he said. That is your koan. Show me your resurrection.

As Scovel suggests, the Zen master might be speaking to all of us who presume to be Christian in life more than name. But for how many of us is belief in the resurrection yet one more item among our already cluttered collection of antique mental furniture, a kind of cozy but inert fixture in our minds, a relic of bygone days and of an essentially obsolete world view?

At first glance, belief in the resurrection seems to be a black or white, either/or proposition; either Jesus rose from the dead or he didn't, so make your choice. Which is to say, either we install yet another old piece of mental furniture in our minds or we reject it out of hand, without a moments further thought.

But the resurrection as koan doesn't let us off the hook quite so easily. It demands that we go deeper. It challenges us to come awake. It invites our response. Show me your resurrection!

The fact is that we don't really know what happened at early dawn when the women who followed Jesus from Galilee came to the tomb with spices to prepare the body for burial. Every gospel writer sees it somewhat differently. All are trying to imagine an event at which they themselves were not present.

Richard Holloway, retired former Bishop of Edinburgh and Anglican Primate of Scotland, likens the resurrection to the Big Bang. Scientists hypothesize that the Big Bang was the originating event of the universe and yet is not available to them except by theory and experimentation. Just as scientists attempt to explain an event that is hidden from them by reading backwards from the present reality that is before them, so the gospel writers attempted too imagine the resurrection by reading backwards from its effect on the disciples. Whatever the originating event was and however we interpret it, all that we see is its consequence in the lives of those who encountered it.

If the resurrection means anything at all to us today, those effects and those consequences must be made evident in our lives. As did those earlier disciples who encountered the Risen Christ, we must show our resurrection.

The people who deserted Jesus in fear and fled from his dying somehow found the courage to proclaim the meaning of his life; and that transformation, that turnaround, is what we mean by resurrection...It follows, therefore, that if we say we believe in the resurrection it only has meaning if we are people who believe in the possibility of transformed lives, transformed attitudes and transformed societies.

To believe in the resurrection is to dream God's dream of a world transformed. So let us dream and imagine a world transformed. And let us ourselves become that transformation.

And all the while that Zen master leans ever closer to us and says: Show me your resurrection!

Thomas Friedman, the foreign affairs correspondent for the New York Times, writes of Awakening to a Dream in a recent op-ed:

I have this routine. I get up every morning around 6 AM, fire up my computer, call up AOL's news page to see what outrage has happened in the world overnight. A massive bombing in Iraq or Madrid? More murderous violence in Israel? A hotel going up in flames in Bali or a synagogue in Istanbul? More US soldiers killed in Iraq?

I so hunger to wake up and be surprised with some really good news--by someone who totally steps out of himself or herself, imagines something different and thrusts out a hand.

I want to wake up and read that President Bush has decided to offer a real alternative to the stalled Kyoto Protocol to reduce global warming. I want to wake up and read that 10,000 Palestinian mothers marched on Hamas headquarters to demand that their sons and daughters never again be recruited for suicide bombers. I want to wake up and read that General Motors has decided it will no longer make gas-guzzling Hummers and the President has decided to replace his limousine with an armor-plated Toyota Prius...I want to wake up and read that the President has announced a Manhattan project to develop renewable energies that will end American addiction to crude oil by 2010. I want to wake up and read that Mel Gibson just announced that his next film will be called Moses and all the profits will be dedicated to the Holocaust Museum...

When we wake up in the morning and listen to the news, it still sounds like a Good Friday world out there. We hunger to wake up to an Easter world. We hunger to be surprised by the evidence of transformed lives and attitudes and societies.

And still that Zen master leans ever closer and says: Show me your resurrection!

What response will you make?

(DSH Photo: Easter Lily, 2009)

Holy Saturday

It's Holy Saturday, that strange, threshold day after Good Friday and before Easter Sunday. This morning, it is still overcast after a light rain in the night, yet with that sweet sense of something stirring, something coming to life. It is a day to be still and to watch.

(DSH Photo: Gilman Road Barn, Yarmouth, Maine)

The Beloved Disciple

My mother had called to let me know that my father had a part in their village church's reenactment of the Last Supper. Would I like to go? It was Holy Week of 1997 and Sukie and I were on sabbatical, so were free from parish duties for several months. 

I told my mother that I had planned on attending the liturgy for Maundy Thursday at the Episcopal Cathedral in Portland, so politely declined her offer. However, almost as soon as I had hung up the phone, it struck me what a rare and precious opportunity I had just passed up. I knew how committed my father was to his church and how much his participation in these reenactments had meant to him in the past. 

I called my mother back the next day and let her know I'd be coming. What time would she like to be picked up?

That Maundy Thursday, when we arrived at the church, candles were alight in the windows, flickering yellow. We entered the sanctuary lit solely by the candles placed around the windowsills as well as on a long table at the head of the church. The table was arrayed with goblets and plates of food. A recording of Gregorian Chant playing in the background further established the hushed, prayerful atmosphere.

The actors--the twelve disciples plus Jesus himself--were seated in the pews with the rest of us where, from their places, they in turn stood up and addressed the congregation, telling the tale of their having been called by Jesus. Each disciples' narrative ended with the question: "Is it I, Lord? Is it I?" referring to their anxious self-examination in light of Jesus having said that one who sat with him that night would betray him.

My father played the role of the apostle John. John also happened to be his given name. Earlier that day, he had borrowed my Birkenstock sandals to "authenticate" his role. He did a fine job with his lines, conveying them sincerely, at times passionately. I was moved at how fitting it was that my father should play this role of the Beloved Disciple--the disciple whom Jesus loved--as he had sought sincerely throughout his life to be a faithful follower of Christ. As he had aged, the grace of that devotion became daily more apparent, as he lived a life of love and service in his community, as he played with Bekah and Anna, then seven and fours years old.

After the play, the congregation was invited forward to receive communion at the table behind which the apostles stood or were seated, with the figure of Jesus at the center of them all. I took the bread and wine, then quietly congratulated my father. I was happy not to have lost the chance to be with him in that way. Surely, I thought to myself, because of my parish duties and my aging father, the opportunity would likely not come again. I was grateful for the grace that had opened the way for me to call my mother back and to accept her invitation.

I drove my mother home that night, back up the hill over the dirt road made muddy and rutted by the late March thaw. Leaving, I looked up at the sky and saw distinctly the Hale-Bopp comet with its milky white tail against the dark night sky. I turned off the car and parked by the side of the road to get a better view. Sitting in silence, I was amazed by that comet streaking across the heavens, some twenty-two million miles away. It would eventually be dubbed the Great Comet of 1997, one of the brightest to be seen in many decades.

It was true that I would not again see my father play a part in his church's reenactment of the Last Supper. Dad died of leukemia in February of the following year.

This year, his gentle and gracious spirit is alive in me. And I'll offer thanks for his life tonight when I go to the Cathedral for the liturgy of Maundy Thursday. 

Dawn Chorus

We had a soaking rain with high winds yesterday afternoon into the evening. The back yard is now an expanse of water and mud. I opened the window in my study this morning to hear the exuberant dawn chorus of the birds of early spring. Chief among that chorus is a song sparrow perched in some shrub along our fence. Among others I hear a robin, several juncos, cardinals, chickadee, white-breasted nuthatch, the incessant calls of crows, goldfinch, pine siskin, hairy woodpecker and a phoebe, newly arrived in the neighborhood, off in the distance. And another song--"brilliant and musical"--of a fox sparrow? Certainly not an oriole, it's too early yet.

(Photo from Google Image: Song Sparrow)

Olson's House

Over the years, my relationship with photography has been an intense, passionate affair. There have been long stretches when I have given myself to it heart and soul. At other times, my camera bag collects dust in a corner of my study, where I walk by it day after day. Almost always the camera within calls out to me and I feel that beckoning as a twinge of longing in my gut. As I mentioned in a previous post, the creative life is a weird thing. That which I love the most (and do most well) I often do the least.

The last few years, my favorite excuse for not picking up my camera is the advent of digital photography and all its associated software. Just as I was beginning to feel really comfortable working with film, the whole industry changed. My film of choice--Fujichrome Velvia--was relegated to the sidelines. I've never been particularly proficient at using a computer and whatever victories I've won on this front have been hard won--with great blood, sweat and tears. 

Yes, I've taken a course in Photoshop for Photographers at the Maine College of Art with a brilliant twenty-something nerd, who taught at the speed of light as he gulped down vast quantities of coffee. His jeans, festooned with chains upon which hung keys and other paraphernalia, slipped down low on his slim hips as he darted about the classroom gesticulating wildly and extolling the unfathomable wonders of Photoshop. Don't get me wrong, I loved the guy. I just couldn't understand most of what he was saying.

So, there's this pre-digital era of my photography, which I have come to dub the classical era. I pine for this long-lost period, now shrouded in the mists of time, when I was actually proficient with a camera and produced some good work. 

This period culminated in the summer of 2005 when I took a week-long class at the Maine Photographic Workshops in Rockport with Alison Shaw entitled The Colors of Maine. Imagine shooting every morning and evening at beautiful locales on the coast of Maine with an exceptionally gifted teacher at your side. In the afternoon, out of the hot sun, my classmates and I sat inside and critiqued each other's work. At the end of the week, there was a clambake. After the feast, with the wine still flowing freely, the whole school gathered in an open-air studio and had a slide show featuring the best work of every participant in every class. Oh, my...

With the help and encouragement of my friend Bill Curtsinger, of National Geographic underwater photography fame, I scanned a few of my best slides from that classical era. Over time, I'd like to share a few with my readers. Here's one of the Olson House, a saltwater farm in Cushing made famous by Andrew Wyeth's painting Christina's World. I publish it now as a fitting tribute to Wyeth, who died on January 16th.

 

A few weeks ago I downloaded Apple's photo software Aperture. Yesterday, I publicly vowed (to my brother, Geoff) that I was going to master it, come hell or high water. I went to bed last night with the User's Manual.  Pray for me. Maybe this time it will take.

The Night is for Stillness

Lord,

it is night.

The night is for stillness.

   Let us be still in the presence of God.

It is night after a long day.

    What has been done has been done;

    what has not be done has not been done;

    let it be.

The night is dark.

    Let our fears of the darkness of the world and of our own lives

    rest in you.

The night is quiet.

    Let the quietness of your peace enfold us,

    all dear to us,

    and all who have no peace.

The night heralds the dawn.

    Let us look expectantly to a new day,

    new joys,

    new possibilities.

In your name we pray.

Amen

From: Night Prayer: A New Zealand Prayer Book; 1989

(DSH Photo: Winter Solstice, December, 2007)

What I Wear is Pants

This is not a hermitage--it is a house. ("Who was that hermitage I seen you with last night?...") What I wear is pants. What I do is live. How I pray is breathe. Who said Zen? Wash out your mouth if you said Zen. If you see a meditation going by, shoot it. Who said "Love?" Love is in the movies. The spiritual life is something that people worry about when they are so busy with something else they think they ought to be spiritual. Spiritual life is guilt. Up here in the woods is seen the New Testament: that is to say, the wind comes through the trees and you breathe it. Is it supposed to be clear? I am not inviting anybody to try it. Or suggesting that one day the message will come saying NOW. That is none of my business. (Thomas Merton Day of a Stranger 1981)

What I wear is pants. What I do is live. How I pray is breathe. 

Merton teaches us that the spiritual life is nothing special. It is life itself. This life.  

I awake this morning before dawn and step out into the dim light of this spring day. My morning psalms are the what-cheer cheer cheer of the cardinal, the caw of crows calling off in the distance, the gentle fee-bee song of the chickadee. The yard is almost empty of snow. White pine branches broken off from the ice storm earlier this winter litter the ground. A mug of freshly brewed tea warms my hands.

(Photo by Thomas Merton of hermitage porch at Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky)