Easter Sunday
Photo by Nico Benedickt
on Unsplash
Today I sat and spoke the words below into my little Zoom recorder.
I'm looking across at a little chapel that probably holds 4 or 6 people at most. In a narrow valley, forested on both sides, but with a green lawn and two houses A few dead trees, a babbling brook, cliffs up and around. High alps visible in the distance.
You know, people used to make places of worship. Can you believe, that in Europe at one time, people put energy into making a place to go and sit and pray? Who would do this today?
Today, if you got a little patch of land, you'd put a tiny house on it. Your kitchen would be really nice. Like, Danish. Wood. You wouldn't waste energy making a chapel, or something like that. Unless you'd already left the world in some way.
But there aren't many of those people, there really aren't. I've barely met one.
I think it's amazing.
I'm sitting here, meditating. I thought about Jesus. That this was the day he made himself seen again. By his friends. So that they would know that there is life after apparent death. Of course nobody believes these stories any more.
They're not taking them in the right way. You're not supposed to just believe a historical thing happened. That would be boring. It's always about the possibility of something happening.
Why are you so sure there's no possibility of your dead friend sitting beside you and smiling? Why is it important for you to deny that this could ever happen? Does that make you feel more sane? Smarter? What good is that, really? In what store can you exchange that currency?
I felt the joy of just sitting. My body finally realized I wasn't going to ask it to do anything. My mind realized I wasn't going to ask it to think any thoughts. The whole system...the system of this body-mind entered into it's pleasure, like a cat stretching. It entered its natural state.
I never let it have this natural state. I'm always twisting it.
Still looking at this chapel.
I mean, today, we think of them as social places. That is where you go for the christening of the child. That is where you go for the wedding. That is where you go, because grandma thinks it's a big deal to go there on this day.
All terrible stuff. Dreadful.
If that's all it meant they wouldn't bother building it. They would have a bier garten. And they have one over here, behind me. Now I'm looking at that. You can do all the parties there.
No, at some point in time some one or two or three or four people were serious Christians and they used that chapel and they found their Lord Jesus there. They found God, they found Mary. They found all of those movements of the spirit which are covered up by the bright day of our civilization.
Stars are miracles, but you can't see them in the day. If you've seen the Milky Way you remember it. But, you know, everything is so loud. Everything is here, vying for our attention. We have no chance to see these things.
Strange, isn't it? That we have a Milky Way in which we can just get lost. But, other things are closer, and, I guess, more interesting.
Spirit is a little boring, I guess.
Until it fills you. Even after it fills you, you forget. And you go back to the bright day. However. Some part of you, once filled, has made a promise to return. Some part of you said:
"I knew this was here, and I lost it. And I can't believe I did. But it is here again. And I am here, just to feel it. And I will return. And I am sorry I was away."
This is what building the chapel was about. When they chopped these logs, and mortared the stone, this is what they were thinking.
They were thinking: I knew God once. I must honor God by knowing Him again. And this building makes it possible for me to do so.
Hell yeah, those were good people. They kept their promise.