Easter Sunday

Our Monarch After First Flight ~ Photo by Steve Magin

There is something new that is happening! There is a light that has broken through the darkness. The new dawn and new day of Easter bring good news. It has been affirmed that our troubles, worries and fears have been overcome with love. Loneliness and sadness are banished. There is something more than death. Life has been revitalized. We can no longer doubt the truth of our identities. Each of us is the beloved child of God.

We walked through gardens yesterday in Memphis that celebrate spring with a display of more than 20,000 tulips. The soil, mild winters and hot summers of the south do not allow the bulbs to live from year to year. People have gone to great lengths and made tremendous sacrifice to dig and plant these brilliant bulbs that are perennial in the north. They are just going to rot and die. Why would they bother when there are so many other blooming plants that are native to the area? They do it to provide beauty and happiness in greater measure than it could have been experienced otherwise. Their visitors, most of whom are complete strangers to them, will find the brilliant greeting of glorious flowers in a land that does not support them. What a gift!

Why would God go to all of the trouble to give us Easter in an empty tomb? Perhaps it is because we are regarded that deeply. Perhaps it was to demonstrate that there is nothing more important than our relationship with Him. It is even more. It is an eternal love letter for one and for all that has been signed, sealed and delivered. What a gift! What an amazing day!

All You Need Is Love

Spring is in the air and things are blooming everywhere.  There is no shortage of the evidence of God's timeless and unconditional love.  It was in this spirit that I found myself when “All You Need Is Love”, a song from The Magical Mystery Tour, came through my speakers this morning. The Beatles were asked by BBC to write something with a simple message that could be understood by everyone around the world. It could not be misinterpreted. Love is everything. The song went on to top the charts after being performed on the first global network link on June 25, 1967 (the beginning of The Summer of Love). 400 million people in 26 countries watched and listened. “All You Need Is Love” has been rated as one of the top 500 songs of all time. How incredible that this music would have such an impact. Why would that little phrase resound so clearly with so many people? Perhaps it is so important because it is the real defining truth of our existence.

Love is one message that is contained within all of the religions and spiritual practices throughout time. We are taught, asked and commanded by God to love one another. We are told to be compassionate above everything else. It is the way to heaven. Jesus is pressed by the lawyers of his day to define the most important law of scriptures. His response is taken from The Torah and The Shema when he says “You shall love The Lord your God will all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.” The Qur’an of Islam begins with a definition of God as “infinitely good” and “all merciful”. Love appears 69 times in the text. In Buddhism, the practice of universal loving kindness or mettà is called ' the Godly way of living ' or brahma-vihàra. It knows no revenge. It is one of four gradually upgraded qualities of love. Collectively they are also called 'sates of unbounded or magnanimous living'. Prema, or elevated love, in Hinduism is a sacrament. It is unfortunate and perhaps tragic that the caretakers and gatekeepers of many religions have seemingly lost sight of the great treasure that lies within our traditions. They have become fundamental, functional, fractional and extreme with an overriding sense of who gets out and who gets in to their religions and to eternity. They have discounted and diminished love.

The creation of a loving community was at the heart of the formation of Christianity. Symbols and stories of compassionate, unconditional love abound. Love is the central theme in the story of God, Mary, Joseph and the birth of Jesus. The gathering of apostles and multitudes of followers all speak to the path of spiritual redemption through non-judgmental acceptance. The Beatitudes tell us how to live in an abiding community of love. They ask for humility, comforting, gentleness, kindness, justice, mercy, purity of heart and peacemaking. It is hard to argue with those directives. Jesus’ radical concept does not create systems for power and money. There must be membership, exclusion, unforgiveable sin and fear in order to have institutions which yield great influence in those areas. I was cautioned by a minister not long ago that “love is the baby’s milk of our religion. The adult Christian cannot continue to live on milk alone. There is more to it than love you know.” I beg to differ.  “All You Need Is Love.”

Rejection and Acceptance

Photo from Sussex Musical Production Company, UK of "Oliver"

There is a spiritual movement that takes place when feelings of rejection are transformed into a realization of acceptance. The journey from rejection to acceptance is one that begins with the deep understanding that you are loved. That may be difficult to remember when the sting of rejection is fresh. Your opinion might have been dismissed or discounted. You might not have been chosen to participate in an important activity. Pain blocks out the light of love and it seems that you are unwanted, different and all alone.

It is useful to take time for some perspective building in the face of rejection. One of the most powerful methods of seeing the bigger picture is to recall a time when we were accepted. I will never forget being a freshman in college. It was a difficult transition from high school for me. All of the friends and successes that had been built over my adolescence were far away. Nothing was working out the way that I had planned. I was a little fish in a big pond. The decision to pledge a fraternity seemed like a good one but Rush Week was disappointing. None of the organizations seemed all that thrilled to have me as a brother. Then a wonderful thing happened. I had found a friend at a frat house across the street from my dorm. He asked me to join him on the practice field for a couple of beers one night. I quickly agreed. We sat on the ground with a six pack of Budweiser, talked and told some stories. His big brother and a few other guys came out from the shadows of a building. They had some more beer and joined us. All of a sudden they stood up, surrounded me and, led by Jay’s big brother, began singing “Consider yourself a friend; Consider yourself one of the family.” They were singing to me. I was accepted. The memory of this makes a tear come to my eye even now. We have all been accepted and welcomed in our lives. Remember those times and the incidents of rejection lose their power.

Whatever has caused us to feel rejected has little or nothing to do with us. It’s almost always a reflection of what is happening with someone else. The actions of other people toward us come from their own feelings. We do not cause or control their feelings any more than they can control ours. We can free ourselves from some of our fear and confusion when we fully understand this. We have been chosen and we are loved. Nobody can take that from us. When we embrace this truth, we can see what seems to be rejection as an open door with our freedom on the other side.

The Legacy of Love

It is Valentines Day 2010. My wife, Bonita, and I have plans to enjoy a brunch in Greenville, South Carolina at a favorite restaurant called High Cotton. Our celebrations are always warm and intimate. No fanfare for the most part. We live far from our relatives and children so it is usually just the two of us. We don’t require much (there is a bit of old fashioned Midwestern simplicity to us as we grow older). The love that we share is more than enough. It has been tested over the years, survived and flourished. There is rarely a day that goes by in which either of us takes it for granted. Love, in the final analysis is all that matters. It is all that endures. I have been blessed with one that will leave a legacy of forgiveness, patience, kindness and joy. My life will always resound with all that is my Bonita.

A woman wrote a historical piece which was published in a county history book about my grandfather’s sister, Miss Nelle Baum. Aunt Nelle was a person who lived much of her life in confinement with what must have been great physical suffering. An operation left her paralyzed in the prime of her life yet she radiated a quality of love and joy that lived long after her death in 1961 at age 75. She never married and left no great fortune behind. What she did was to endow her family, friends, caregivers and everyone she met with a feeling of specialness and unconditional love. She was dedicated to this from her days as a Sunday School superintendant at her Methodist Church in rural Illinois to her hospital bed in Danville. She inspired people to be gentle and compassionate. My Dad and I visited her almost every Sunday and she always acted as if we were the most important people in the world. There were always words about her faith in God. She was a deeply spiritual person. Even so, it amazed me when I re-read the article that this woman wrote about Aunt Nelle. She was not related to us at all. I never met her or heard of her. Yet, my great aunt left an indelible mark on her life. She wrote of her own difficulties and how this elderly invalid woman had given her strength and increased her devotion. This affirms my belief that true love endures and overcomes anything.

There is nothing that we carry away with us when we are done with this life. Our heartaches and troubles come to an end. Love is all that matters. With it anything is possible and everything is good. The legacy that it leaves is never-ending.

The Expectation of Easter

Renewal and new beginnings are among the promises offered by Easter. The most compelling mystery of the season for many of us is the truth of unconditional love. This is a difficult proposition for us to understand because of our continual criticism of self and of others. Even thornier is the challenge that Jesus proposes to "be compassionate as your Father is compassionate". We are forgiven for our transgressions and we are called to forgive in the same measure. Our experience of love from other people has often been conditional and transitory. God's love is neither of these. It is a gift freely given for one and for all. No questions asked.

Henri Nouwen writes: "I am beginning now to see how radically the character of my spiritual journey will change when I no longer think of God as hiding out and making it as difficult as possible for me to find him, but, instead, as the one who is looking for me while I am doing the hiding. When I look through God's eyes at my lost self and discover God's joy at my coming home, then my life may become less anguished and more trusting." (From The Return of The Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming)

The spiritual path leads us to a place in which we find ourselves worthy of God's love. It allows us to begin to see ourselves as His beloved child, unblemished as the day we were born. Easter is a time of anticipation and expectation. Not just our anticipation and expectation. We are being anticipated and expected by the Father. He longs to see us coming to Him.