There Never Was a Shadow
O, Easter…
meanings new and old
new life does bloom
in the garden of the soul
I didn’t know the desert
I was in before
or that the water pure and deep
never varied in it it’s flow
I did not know
so many things
that you have said to me
calling me from darkness into light
it’s peaceful in the lonely places
the bounty here
the pain erases
and I find you in the other faces too
perhaps the all of it surprised me
the encompassing of mercy
I’m not transplanted here
but ever sourced in Life herself
and it’s a happy ever after
in this season of the soul
for there never was a shadow
just a cloud that brought the rain
It’s the first Easter in my personal history, which I have had without the pomp and circumstance of religion’s perspective on celebrated events. I was a church musician for so long, I appreciated the liturgy and the tradition, the minor gloom of Good Friday, the major majestic tones of Sunday. The contrast between shame and love. The individualistic emotional response to the magnificent grace of a Saviour who took my punishment, and so could forgive if I chose it.
I suppose if one might so misread his life, one might also misinterpret his death. In Jesus, we see the Christ. The Image of the Invisible One. In whose Image we also are Made. In whose Being we are. Irrevocable Union since the dawn of time. And before that still, I was a thought. You were a thought. We are the manifestation of his many pleasant thoughts… of us. While he did die, and accomplish much in the process, his living then and now reminds us of his love. He pulled person after person out of their own living hell, a place the religion of the day had condemned them to, and would have had them die in, at its own hand. And in this, religion repeatedly violated its own commandments. Do not use the Name of the Lord in vain. Do not oppress. Do not condemn. Do not take life in My Name and call the act a holy one. He wanted to remove death from the picture, but we would not hear him. And so he made himself the very manifestation of our dark thoughts to give us the unerring picture of Life’s triumph over death. Even the veil in the temple was torn so humanity no longer had its own symbolic crutch to reinforce such separation.
We would not see ourselves forgiven and loved. Glory is a reflection, not a manufactured result. We do not make it anymore than we produce faith, hope or love. It is divinely bestowed identity, reflected back accurately in our horizontal treatment of others. We are reminded, and so we remind others. Of worth, of value, of specific intention, of beauty. We are an extension of the I AM.
Life in the I AM. Freedom. Religion’s treadmill unplugged. I no longer do to stay fit. I am drawn outside myself into the beauty of life itself and moved into a world asleep. My movement and being cause me to grow strong and flexible. My Source is not in a place, his place is in me. Where I am, he is. If He stops breathing, we all do. Simultaneously. If that does not make the picture of Lord of Glory on a cross breathing his last a significant and accurate rendering of the spiritual state of being of all humanity, as understood in the context of the Union of all of Creation, nothing shall. No wonder the sky went black in the daytime. All of Creation despaired of life.
And then He Rose. A stone, rolled heavy over the door of hope by disenchanted humanity buried deep in grief moved away as the perfect manifestation of Love walked again among us, promising to leave so we could fully embrace what it was he had revealed. The system humanity had constructed failed. His death proved it only knew how to take life. His resurrection proved it had no power. And he declared we would do greater things than these…
I think, in this, my first Easter Celebration no longer needing to embrace shame to grasp forgiveness, I shall live instead. Perhaps I shall have the honour of reminding someone else that they are yet among the living, and death itself is the illusion. Perhaps I shall bask in the knowledge that all living things long to be called forth as one in a grave sleep, into true Light, Life, and Love. Perhaps I shall embrace the storm, thank it for the rain, and speak peace into it that it may fall gently, and foster growth.
And perhaps I shall skip shame’s veil, for it too is an illusion. A human construct. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Absolutely breathtaking. A perfect manifestation of the Glory of the Maker. I shall abandon the tomb and walk bravely in the garden, because I belong there. I shall speak that which affirms life and draws out beauty. I shall bless and not curse. And I shall see the healing salvation of the the One who is worked out both in me and in those I touch with love. I shall not celebrate the resurrection this year, as an event in history, but rather I shall Live in its ever present result. I shall not wait for heaven to assume life in a resurrected body. I AM in the I AM. I AM.