Crossing into Easter

. . . notes on love in a lovelessplace

Easter was rainy and cold. I walked a long time on familiar trails, remembering those who used to walk them with me. They will not be back, and in time I will leave as well.

Ego takes many forms in my experience. Sometimes it’s a judge passing sentence, sometimes a soldier with a gun. Sometimes its agenda is clear and other times it drags me into service without me even noticing. Egoic shape-shifting is a problem because it hurts people I love and because it helps sustain a collective permission structure for murder and war.

It’s hard to accept but the reason folks are being bombed in Iran and Lebanon is because we - you and I - are okay with it. The violence doesn’t disrupt us the way, say, a bomb would. We’re opposed to it, yes. But that’s a political posture with relatively mild costs. Ego adopts it because if we took it any more seriously, we’d actually realize the way we’re implicated in evil and we would change.

Because for all our brokenness - for all our duplicity and complicity, our ignorance and fear - we are beautiful children of God whose only function is to love in a loveless place (T-14.IV.4:10).

The scale of war disempowers me even as I decry it. There is nothing I can do about the horror unfolding and the horror yet to come. Ego sponsors that helplessness. That’s the trade it makes - I get to condemn the war but the war goes on. That’s the trade I agree to make.

And yet.

Resurrection disrupts my willingness to go along with evil. It denies my claim to ignorance of my complicity. It refuses the easy comfort of half-measures. The risen Christ is pure demand: don’t leave.

What does not leaving look like?

I’m writing at the bedroom window as night falls. The last robins scavenge matted grass, hostas and lilies push through cold soil. Lent was hard, and Easter harder. What will ego not consent to, even a little?

Because listen: ego loves righteous condemnation of violence. Ego loves the radical cry that we will change the world or die trying. Ego loves the moral seriousness of “this is all my fault.”

Remember when I talked about being powerless over separation? That’s an admission. It’s not a solution. It’s not even a diagnosis. It’s an admission of weakness and failure, an admission of limitation. I can’t do anything with my powerlessness.

Ego does not want me to admit my powerlessness. Theorize about it? Sure. Analyze its root structure? Absolutely. But just admit it?

No.

And Christ’s response to that is: don’t leave. Stay. Be here. Be present to this. This this.

When I admit my powerlessness over separation, I realize that I can’t outlaw crucifixion. I can’t destroy the empire. I can’t restore a single breath to one murdered body. I can’t even heal a crocus that I stepped on.

But what I can do is stay with it all. I can admit my powerlessness - I can witness its effects. I can refuse to look away. I can be present, even when being present doesn’t reward me. I can be present even when being present feels laughably inadequate.

And so I trim the raspberries and clear winter deadfall. I make beans and rice. I share less and listen more. Give thanks for the crocuses, thanks for the books, thanks for the poems.

Wake up and do it again. Indeed, waking up is doing it again. And again and again.

I’m not saying that trimming the raspberries means Donald Trump will stop bombing Iran. Or that every hungry child will suddenly be fed.

I’m saying that trimming the raspberries is what is possible right now in the life that is given to me. Really I’m saying that Christ’s “don’t leave” pushes me into those thorny tangles. It’s not optional anymore.

Yet I don’t trim it all down. In fact, I trim so little you might wonder why I bother at all. Trimming fruit bushes is good gardening practice, but I’m content to be less than that now. Chickadees and sparrows make homes and raise families in the bracken. They are safe in the bracken.

On my watch - on Christ’s behalf - these little ones will be home all spring and summer. Me, too.

Love,
Sean