Distillation

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other" doesn't make any sense.

mevlana jelaluddin rumi - 13th century

This is the first Holy Week that has impacted me in quite some time. The weeks leading up to this time have been weeks of growth and discovery. First, discovery about God; who God is and God's very nature. Next, discovery about me; what I believe and don't believe. It involves questions of identity and how that identity is expressed....lived.

This process involves much housecleaning. (Unfortunately not the literal kind.) As I move toward new understanding and new concepts I must make room for these discoveries by cleaning out the old or keeping only what is necessary. It has also led me to examine the heart of Holy Week and to wade through the hoopla to which a world of security seeking humans, such as myself, wish to cling.

Big flashy pageants full of high tech visual images that can, if gone unchecked, lead to emotional manipulation and dependence. Each hoopla laden offering must top the former and before one knows it they may end up more attached to the hoopla than the original tenet intended to be expressed.

My explorations and housecleaning these last weeks have led me to the heart of Holy Week...Love. Love in it's purest most distilled form. Love that transcends the finite while at the same time embraces it, heals it, transforms it. Love that is so complete nothing else holds credence. This love has the quiet power which compels one to both respond to its source and share with the world.

For me, that distillation of love is found in the person of Jesus Christ, who's very essence, very being, (fully human and fully divine) is reconciliation. Incarnation. God embracing humanity to God's Self and there by empowering humanity to become one. Ah....Holy family.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there...Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other" doesn't make any sense.

May this Holy Week and Eastertide be a time of reconciliation and transformation. I know it will be for me as I journey...All Around the Carpenter's Bench.