Shining Spirit

I just now looked back through the Archives of ShiningSpirit to the very first post, May 26, 2013. This nine-year experience began with a post called ‘Lean Toward The Light” and now, today, May 26, 2022, without any idea what I wrote years ago, I’m still captured by the idea of Light as Surrounding Presence. It’s a magnificent metaphor, but it is also our practical reality. Every new day is a Welcome The Light experience. No charge for the extra thought….

An eternal question: Is that true? Are you telling me the truth? Are you genuine? Truth. Truth is the foundation of relationships and societies. We are led to believe by very ancient sources that truth is the foundation for life. And yet in our politics, in the market place we don’t mind bending the truth, or even telling the lie in order to make personal gain.

Isn’t that a lovely bird in the photo above? I just happened to be in the right place when he flew in. Yes, what a pose. And the colors are striking. It’s a very fine photo, if you ask me. In my yard? Well, no. I didn’t take it there. While walking in the neighborhood? Ahh, no. Okay…truth be told. I took a picture of my television screen. He’s a bird on TV. He’s a bogus bird and I have to tell you the truth. I could make up a story about how I captured this photo and I could give you all the details, but that wouldn’t be true, would it.

You and I are offered the opportunity almost every day tell that “little white lie”, the one that really doesn’t matter. But truth does matter. It matters a lot. I believe that Jesus became such a threat to the Jewish religious leaders and to the Roman government that they had to get rid of him. Jesus told the truth in the face of lies and when he named the lie for what it was, he became an intolerable threat. Speaking truth can be costly, but to deny truth is to create chaos.

I still say the little bird is brilliant, even if the photo is a phony. And that’s no lie.

What a lovely way to spend an afternoon. There is so much in our world that distracts us from the basic, the simple. Complexity confuses. What you see is one smart bird. He knows that sitting quietly on the stone fountain and watching the droplets of water fall, one by one, then in long silver strings, is relaxing, refreshing and renewing. Smart birds make time to watch the water fall. Then they can rise with Strength in their wings. Then they can fly. Smart birds know that, and they do it.

It looks like the end of the road. No place to go. No options. But look carefully. Maybe there is a possibility. Maybe there is a turn that appears when we actually reach the apparent dead-end. Don’t throw in the towel too early. Stay alert. Sometimes it’s this way in a spiritual journey, too. When the obstacle looms large or the way seems dark, when old ways don’t make sense anymore and you long for a new word to feed a dry spirit, be alert to the unseen, the unexpected. A moment in time, a person, an event, a casual conversation and there it is! The road just turns, it doesn’t end. The journey continues! Did you see the sign? “New wine just ahead!”

It really wasn’t the stories and parables Jesus told that undermined the Roman Empire. Infuriated, maybe, but not undermined. And it wasn’t the miracles or healings. Those things got the Roman Emperor’s attention. But it was reported that other healers roamed the countryside. No, Jesus beat them at their own game. He disarmed the Empire’s greatest weapon. He brought power against power and his was stronger. The most terrifying instrument the Romans possessed was the cross, on which thousands of people lost their lives. These death instruments lined the Roman roads as a reminder to the average citizen to behave and do exactly as the Romans ordered. What better slap in the face than for Jesus to show the Romans how impotent they were, that their hold of terror had been broken. Jesus trusted himself and his God and he broke a Roman cross like a twig. He said that an alternative Kingdom existed, what he called The Kingdom of God, and he proved it. Life to death to life. Along the Via Dolorosa, up the hill, on the cross, in the tomb…and then the revealing of life in a way unimaginable. Resurrected life.

For the Romans, crosses were the end of the line. For Jesus, the cross was a vehicle to victory for a new way of being. He gave himself to a power greater than himself. And the world has never been the same since. Thanks be to God for life. We are people of a new Kingdom, but it doesn’t belong to the Romans.