Easter:
Event
A
Super,
Natural
Recently, I heard biologist, Elisabet
Sahtouris, offer a great analogy that
helps me to interpret the Easter
story. Noting that physicists talk
about sound vibrations at various
frequencies as constitutive of the
universe, she employs the image of a
cosmic keyboard. Science deals with
the low and mid-range frequencies, matter and electro-magnetic
energy. Religion plays on the higher part of the keyboard in
the realm of Spirit. Spiritual folk tend to make sense of the
world by starting at the top end and working their way down,
while scientists tend to start at the low-end and work their
way up. But for decades science and religion got stuck,
playing only one part of the keyboard and making the claim
that only the music that came from their part of the keyboard
was legitimate. To dance well and sing on key, we need to hear
the music of the the whole keyboard.
But the “key” point is that there is only one cosmic keyboard.
Nature is One. Reality is a single-story universe of infinite
depth and height. The Easter story is not the story of a
supernatural God, who intervened in Jerusalem 2000 years,
suspending the laws of nature with a supernatural miracle.
Rather, it is a story that encapsulates and catalyzes the
story of a resurrection impulse that is active at all levels
of creation, cosmological, biological, social and spiritual.
Science is particularly focused on the first three. The
spiritual frequency is a dimension of Nature/Reality that
eludes easy measurement. If you intend to hear it, you need to
spend time training the ear of your heart.
G_d is the One, Encompassing, Enfolding, Inhabiting Heart,
Mind, and Will out of whom this wild diversity of creation is
born, and is in the process of Real-izing, that is making
real. The miracle is not so much “the” resurrection, but
rather this resurrection or Easter impulse that is
irrepressibly rising up and transcending existing forms in an
erotic yearning for this realization. Here’s my Prayer of
Opening for our Easter service.
Easter God,
persuade us that Easter
is not a once-upon-a-time story,
but rather a moment by moment leaning into,
a deep trust,
that your name and nature
is Resurrection.
This rising up
from the dead,
of life from matter,
and mind from life,
and a promised future
where we see nothing
but dead-ends and a darkened tomb,
is your M.O.
This is the only miracle,
that you are always rising up
in willing hearts and souls,
unafraid to hope,
and to be hope,
for a world entranced
by despair.
Amen.
Did Jesus rise up from the dead? I just finished Autobiography
of a Yogi, considered by many to be a
spiritual classic. ParamahansaYogananda
was a 20th century enlightened master. I
was intrigued by how relatively common (in
the vibrational frequency that he
inhabits) is resurrection, of gurus, in
the flesh, returning to their disciples in
order to facilitate their liberation and
help them in their mission. He loves
Jesus, and considers him to be an
enlightened master. In his worldview, the
enlightened ones are able to materialize
and dematerialize at will.
It’s an interesting story, as is the Easter story. Do I
believe that an iPhone camera pointed at Jesus on Easter
morning would have captured him rising up? I’ll answer it with
a line from poet, Mary Oliver: “There are many stories more
beautiful than answers”. With Thomas, until I actually
experience such a thing for myself, I remain agnostic. But
what I do know is that the story is beautiful, and that it
both encapsulates and catalyzes an experience that I do know
about. This Easter impulse is the most real, most natural,
most miraculous dynamic that I have known, and that when I say
“yes” to this sacred, irrepressible urge to fashion from my
life a future that is a blessing to our one, Earth community,
I know that Christ lives.