'Rooted'

"I am rooted, but I flow" ~Virginia Woolf

I suspect the Easter services culminating with Easter Saturday's lighting of the new fire began hundreds of years ago when the general population were unable to read, and even if they could, print copies of the Bible didn't exist. And so the theatrics of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Saturday were there to tell the Easter story dramatically in both word and actions, along with some stage props.

What would it look like today, in Canada, for us to be waving the 'palm fronds' show our support of Jesus' message, I wonder. There are no answers. In fact the questions isn't even out there. When, today, do I find myself in the 'upper room' of Maundy Thursday? What is or have been the Good Friday's in my life? What opportunity for transformation was there? Did I take it? And if not, why didn't I? What got in the way? How did, or do, I celebrate the empty tomb [the transformations] in my life? What do the answers to all these questions have to do with how I understand Tillich's 'ground of all being'?

Don't get me wrong. I see the Easter stories as incredibly moving and life changing, as transformational. And I also see them as the gospel writers' attempt to get that idea of transformation across by the story they tell in the Gospels. I have heard too many sermons and lectures, read too many books, been part of too many wide-ranging discussions both in groups and with individuals, not to. I find trying to 'embrace' the literal is an annoying waste of time and I suspect I sam not to only one. When are these stories going to be reconfigured so that they actually speak to the people sitting in the pew in the context of today.

So I challenge you to join me in trying to answer some of the questions above for ourselves this Eastertide...

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NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

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