Sometimes it is not until after the event that you see the power of it
The resurrection story asks us to keep an open mind to possibilities
As I come to the end of the week there is a part of Sunday’s ‘Meeting for Worship’ which remains with me. It relates back to the friend who spoke of the difficulty they had with believing in a physical resurrection. The good thing with the Quaker community that I am a part is there is a wide range of views when we break the silence. The silence is what unifies us.
I utterly value that people are free to think and feel for themselves. I find it liberating in that I can be authentic with my story as no one is expecting me to ‘toe a party line’ or a theological view. The difference of others helps bring out the difference in me, what do I think, believe, feel?
At one time I would have believed the physical resurrection of Jesus. I say, ‘I would have believed’ but really it was an assumed belief. Assumed in that as part of the Northern Irish Protestant (NIP) community it was part of what made a NIP. Of course, not every NIP believed in God never mind the resurrection but where I lived it was the assumption. If you didn't believe it you didn't voice it. But did I actually believe it?
I would say now that we hold many assumptions that we never interrogate or until we do we don’t know whether we have just absorbed beliefs or whether we actually believe what we think we believe.
It is true that as I grew into teenagehood and certainly aged 17 when I put back on my coat of faith I believed in the resurrection. Well I mean to believe in a supernatural God makes everything else possible, doesn’t it?
In the last 15 years, I have probably questioned every belief I hold whether religious, spiritual or other. In that, I found that not every belief I hold is rational. Some of them I have to challenge as they are neither helpful to others or myself others are more benign and inform how I behave.
I think it was when I had what I describe as a mystical experience in 2008 that most things fell away as I fell into love. I was sitting in the library as I often do though at that particular time I was using the library to pray each day for maybe 20 minutes. I was following a 9-month programme of daily contemplation. It was near the end of the period. I had been contemplating the love of God when in a moment it was as if I was united in it. There was no separation between me, God or anything, it was a unity of all things. In that moment all theology disappeared like the cocoon of the caterpillar it had served its purpose but it was now time to fly.
So I am not bothered as I once was when people don’t believe in the resurrection for when I burst forth from my cocoon it didn’t matter what I believed I was flying.
That said what I had heard and been taught did serve a purpose just as the cocoon but the cocoon was a stage not the end. The resurrection story from where I now fly ( as opposed to stand ) tells me to remain open. To remain open to possibilities. For it is as we remain open to the possible that something continues to happen. We are brought deeper as we suspend our senses into something beyond. Many use the word transform or transcend. Who knows it is happening until one day you are in the air and looking at the cocoon from which you came.
Best day,
g
