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BY KENDYL GIBBONS, SENIOR MINISTER, FIRST UNITARIAN SOCIETY OF MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA
There are some stories that you just know aren't going to end well. Kamunyak's story is like that. It is such a strange, improbable incident that it has the quality of myth, and, like any real Easter story, the tragedy is built in from the start. I was presented with this mythic vision by way of TV, on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. The program left me shaken to the core, wakened, transported, opened, filled with that wonder and sorrow which is not for one's own little life, but a response to the whole terrifying bargain of existence; weeping with what some have called lacrimae rerum: the tears of the universe, the tears that are in all things.
The episode of Wild Kingdom was about Kamunyak, a young lioness in the Samburu wildlife reserve in northern Kenya. It was both compelling and unbearable to watch, because from the very beginning, I said to myself, "This has to end badly," And yet, I could not bring myself to look away. The name "Kamunyak" means "the blessed one," a name given to the lioness by the local Samburu natives, who first noticed her.
Kamunyak was young—barely a teenager in lion terms, too immature to have had her own cub—and she was alone. Later there would be speculation that perhaps the other members of her pride might have been poisoned or killed by ranchers on the borders of the preserve, if the lions had been preying on their livestock. No one knew for sure, but clearly something traumatic had happened to separate this lone female from her community, and make her an isolated nomad.
What first caught the attention of the natives, and caused them to name Kamunyak, and to report her to the park rangers, was that she appeared to be caring for a baby oryx antelope. Together in perfect peace, the lioness and the oryx calf wandered the plains and grasslands of Samburu, resting together in the shade during the heat of the day, occasionally nuzzling one another, trusting and trusted, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. No one who had the barest acquaintance with the poetic prophecy of Hebrew scripture could fail to be reminded of Isaiah's lyrical description:
Then the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, And leopard shall lie down with the young goat, And the calf and the lion and the yearling fawn together; And a little child shall lead them.
Do you not believe me? I promise you, it is there on videotape, an impossible, mythic image from western religion's oldest scripture, captured by the incurious camera in living color. The park rangers came, the naturalists and wildlife experts came, eventually even the tourists came, and they all saw, and all who saw wondered, and were strangely moved. Do you still doubt the tale? Then let me tell you one thing more, that perhaps will make it more real: They were both, slowly but surely, starving to death. Preoccupied with her small companion, Kamunyak would not hunt, and too young to digest anything but mother's milk, the calf had no source of nutrition. There is no way this story ends well.
For sixteen excruciating days, the camera crews followed Isaiah's vision brought to life around Samburu park, as the principals in the drama grew progressively weaker. Lions often do not eat every day. Sometimes three or four days elapse between successful hunts, and that is built into their natures, but more than ten days with nothing but water is a dangerous hardship. Calves, of course, would be expected to nurse on their mothers' protein-rich milk every few hours in the wild. At last, even the disciplined naturalist observers could bear it no longer, and the park rangers left a piece of freshly killed meat within a few feet of Kamunyak. She ignored it.
Oryx antelopes are natural prey to lions; young calves, especially, are common meals on the plains of Samburu. Every once in a while, Kamunyak's nuzzling and licking of the little oryx would seem as if it might take on a sinister character, as if she had all this time been engaged in an elaborate game as a prelude to her instinctive kill. This underlying tension was never absent from the peaceful scene. At some point of hunger, would The Blessed One revert to the instinct of her kind, and fulfill the natural order by devouring her small companion? Or would some strange mutual devotion triumph, so that in a kind of reciprocal sacrifice, they would die of hunger together? There is no way this story ends well.
It never came to that. On the sixteenth night, with the cameras running, while Kamunyak stood only a few feet away from the little calf, a strange male lion bounded out of the darkness, seized the oryx, carried it away, and ate it. For one incredible moment, while the small creature yet lived in the male lion's jaws, it seemed as though Kamunyak might challenge him, try to rescue her friend. But weakened by her own long fast, she was no match for him, and she quickly realized it. Moments later, the calf was simply a strand in the web of survival that is the way of the natural world. The next day, Kamunyak killed and ate a warthog, ending her own semi-starvation.
What is there in this story that should so move us? Why should I have lain, sleepless, for hours afterwards, caught up in a profound alchemy of fathomless marveling and sorrow? I knew from the beginning that this story ends badly; not how, exactly, but badly for certain. It was fleeting, and altogether tragic, and quite literally unnatural. It was a sign: something momentarily holy, something recognized by all who witnessed it as briefly blessed.
I tried to come to some rational understanding of why these images were affecting me so strongly. "If I knew it ended badly," I thought, "then why am I weeping? I weep for the tragedy that is existence, for the way that the world is set up. That lions, by the necessity of their evolutionary structure, must have flesh to live. I am sorry for the oryx, but glad about the warthog—why should that be? Warthogs have lives and fears and young to care for too. Why should the warthog die that the lion may live? Yet why should the lion starve, or the wolf, or the shark, merely because nature has made them predators? I know the story ends badly; that is the truth of mortality, the way of the world. I weep because even though I know that, still in some deep, impossible, inescapable way, I want a different ending. I know there is no way the whole story doesn't end badly, and I want a different ending." And then the voice inside my head, that is sometimes wiser than my head, said distinctly, "It has another ending—in your heart." And that was when I thought that this is, oddly enough, an Easter story. For Easter is about the tragedy of the way the world works, and the stories that you know in heart-sick fascination from the beginning must inevitably end badly, and the different ending that we always want.
The story of Jesus is like that, if you read it first without the triumphal epilogue, but as it must have unfolded for the participants. This Blessed One, who seemed to offer a new possibility of human community founded upon compassionate kinship, who said that rules were meant to serve human beings, not human beings to serve rules, who advocated an ethic of mercy, forgiveness and love—for a moment, this man, this teacher and leader, seemed to be transforming the world. He seemed to be bringing to life the ancient images of prophecy that no one had ever seriously expected to see in the flesh. For one shining instant, he appeared to have the moral power to outface both religious corruption and political oppression. And yet, even in the midst of his palm-strewn entry into the city, acclaimed and honored by the multitudes, you think to yourself, "This ends badly, I just know it." As his closest friends assure him of their enduring love and commitment at dinner in the upper room, you can only despair, for him and for them. As the betrayals and the trials unfold, you know, even if you never heard the tale before, that there is no way this can end well. Yet every year the story is told again, and every year, as the poor, broken body is finally brought down from the cross, the human spirit protests. This is the way of the world, yes; this is how power always operates; this is the human condition, and if it were not, we would be some other kind of creature altogether. We know that, and yet we cannot help wanting the ending to be different, cannot escape the lacrimae rerum that arise out of the world's tragic inevitabilities. Indeed, so compelling is that wish for an alternate outcome that the centuries have offered one. After all, as I was assured, there is another ending, in your heart. And that promise, it seems to me, lies at the very heart of Easter.
Lions are so made that they must have meat; that is part of what it means to be a lion. Baby antelopes must have mother's milk; that is what it means to be a baby.
And human beings…human beings are the kind of creatures who have a different ending in our hearts—an ending that forever defies the way we know the world is. We have an impossible, unnatural vision in which care and justice, sympathy, compassion, and fellow-creaturehood transcend the structures of power and even the imperatives of evolution, to open a brief image of an utterly other sort of existence. No matter how unreal we know that world to be, it is a real vision, and the longing of the heart that sees it is real enough to bring us to tears. That is what it means to be a human being.
Dearly beloved, understand me; there is not a thing to be done about it. We are not called upon to set out for the plains of Samburu and strive, through modeling and instruction and conditioning, to persuade the species of lions to adopt Kamunyak as a patron saint and renounce its carnivorous heritage of violence. We didn't design this universe, and we are not running the show. We are participants perforce in a story where death has the final word—everywhere except in our hearts. When we live fully, we live both stories: the real world in which lions eat oryx calves at every opportunity, and the resisters of oppression end gasping upon the cross, and that other realm, the kingdom of the heart, where love and innocence arise from the tomb, and the lion lies down with the lamb.
I shall never hear that passage from the book of Isaiah in the same way again, for I have seen it brought to life with my own eyes, at least on videotape, and it has changed me. I do hope that some day the power of this vision will fade a little, and I shall be able at least to read the words without once more weeping. But I am glad for the transcendent power that has grasped and shaken me, if only for a moment. I am glad to have seen, even at second hand, Kamunyak and her baby antelope, lying down together in comfort and confidence, the unknowing fulfillment of a poetic imagination now dust for lo these thousands of years. I am glad that the story of the prophet from Nazareth still holds a place in the human imagination, forever demanding another ending from the all too familiar and frequent crushing cruelty that is the common fate of impertinent idealism. I am glad that the realm of the heart is as inescapably a part of our human heritage as our mortality is; that we necessarily live and move and have our being in both worlds.
And I am glad for the possibility that even among the creatures of wilderness and instinct, in some odd, impossible moment, where mercy, love and pity dwell, maybe even there, god is dwelling too.
BY HILARY LANDAU KRIVCHENIA, MINISTER, UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST CHURCH OF LAFAYETTE, INDIANA
Easter reminds me of going into Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois. You can't see the entrance from the main street but you enter on the west side. Walking forward, you then turn east and pass through the doors, then turn north toward the sanctuary and then choose a sharp west or east to pass through another set of glass doors and to find, along a dark, compressed passageway, staircases that will take you up and into the high-ceilinged, multilayered sanctuary. Frank Lloyd Wright designed that Unitarian Universalist Church in the first decade of the twentieth century to evoke a sense of moving more deeply into a place of meaning and truth—of entering into mystery.
Easter is a mystery. We can read the texts of Easter every year till Kingdom come, but the mystery's larger than that. It was a relief to me when a friend said, quite matter-of-factly, the other day: "We won't ever really know what happened after Jesus died." They returned to the cave and lo, the stone had been rolled away and the linen shroud with which he had been covered remained draped over the stone where he had lain and…? What we know is that, to the people who knew and loved Jesus the Easter event was an amazing moment in the midst of utter desolation. When the new world that they had awaited looked to be in shambles and the Messiah in which they'd believed was gone, hope emerged and the remnant felt a sense of purpose and life was among them again.
Jesus had died on the cross and disappeared in great mystery—but the living Jesus, the Word Everlasting, appeared to them. That's the story of Jesus. Scholars debate which texts are authentic and which ones aren't. They point to the book of Mark as the earliest and most authoritative, and claim that the story ends with: "And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulcher; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid." Or maybe the Greek word means "in awe." Certainly they had experienced mystery.
Should a mystery in the life or death of Jesus be a surprise? I think not. He'd lived his short span as a teacher of mystery; a great portion of his life was hidden in mystery; he'd preached the greatest mystery—which is love—and he'd died without resolving the persistent mystery about which his disciples had repeatedly questioned him—when will the Kingdom of Heaven be ours? When will the kingdom of heaven, the world to come, arrive?
We don't necessarily truck much with mystery here at the Unitarian Universalist Church, but life does toss us the odd mystery anyway. Peter Gomes, the minister at the Memorial Chapel at Harvard University, puts it well. He says:
Mystery has a bad reputation in religious language as an all-pervading, argument-proof cop-out when something cannot be explained; when there is a problem to which there appears to be no answer, the temptation is to call the entire thing a mystery. Mystery in this sense is the frontier between what we know and can explain and what we experience and cannot explain. Mystery can be seen in the American sense of a frontier, a…place that remains to be settled or conquered. [It's] merely an unsolved problem, and unsolved problems do not provoke awe or devotion but merely irritation, intrigue, and persistence.
Gomes and I agree on this—to call something a mystery in a religious sense must not be to cop out of an explanation because of sheer laziness. At the same time, "mystery" can't just be shorthand for anything for which we haven't yet found the proper equation. For a feeling of awe to exist, for poetry to be written, for love to be experienced, for the heart to be transformed—there are mysteries which can't be reduced to equations. Sometimes I'm overwhelmed by a feeling of love for someone in my family and I don't want to reduce it to words to express my appreciation for something they've brought into my life. I'll look at the person and say "You know…." Because I am at a loss for words. They're usually sharp enough to say, "Yes." Sometimes we'll hug and sometimes just finish the homework or cleaning out the garage or whatever. There are experiences which don't have to be reduced to words. And yet, we are creatures of symbol and story—we often attempt to capture mystery figuratively.
Gomes also quotes Diogenes Allen, a theologian:
When a problem is solved, it is over and done with. We go on to other problems …but a mystery once recognized is something we are never finished with. Instead, we return to it again and again and it unfolds new levels to us. Mysteries to be known must be entered into. We do not solve mysteries. The deeper we enter into them the more illumination we get. Still greater depths are revealed to us the further we go.
That is a way I can begin to enter into the mystery of the Easter story: to feel that time of despair, particularly with Mary Magdalene, who returned to the cave to anoint Jesus' body. I've handled corpses and it's not easy. But it was something that she could yet do for him out of love. I can feel sorrow with her—the despair that this exemplar was gone and the survivors were left alone with only his teachings. And what was left seemed—as it does for us all in times of loss—like such a small portion of what we wish we could hold onto. But in the midst of the shambles of their world and the loss of their beloved, hope emerged. This couldn't be cheap hope, one that comes with a sign that says: "Hope: this way. Answers: over here." Paul said, "For we are saved by Hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?" The mystery of Easter is the mystery of hope that emerges when hope is hard to find. That's the mystery that tormented the disciples, who were forever asking Jesus: "Where and when is the Kingdom of Heaven ?"
And Jesus would answer with mysterious parables and remind them that those who have ears will hear and those with eyes will see. My favorite Gospel isn't in the Bible we normally read. It's the Gospel of Thomas, which was written around the same time as the other gospels, but didn't get into the canon. But there's a difference. In the Bible you can pick up at any church, the Kingdom of Heaven is a place beyond this world—hope deferred to the afterlife. Whatever you suffer now, something better will come to you later in heaven. The place to which the body of Jesus rose. In the Gospel of Thomas, however, the Kingdom of Heaven is beneath your feet, in your heart, shining through your eyes.
In Hebrew the word for world is olam. There are sort of two worlds—Olam Hazeh, this world right here and now manifest before our eyes and to our touch—and Olam Ha-Ba—the world to come. I was wrangling this idea out with my friend Rabbi Pollock, and she said the world to come is not like heaven exactly—it's also here and now. That sounded familiar to me. The world here and now is a good world—it has birth, beauty, flowering and love. It is good. But there are also bitter things in this world. The world to come is not a later world—not in time—it's present right now if we see and we live by its light. It is the world to come, when God establishes peace and justice.
When Jesus said "the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand" it wasn't around the corner at hand—it wasn't come the millennium at hand. It was At Hand right here. People just lacked eyes to see and ears to hear.
Because we are humans—strong and vulnerable, divine and earthbound—we live in this world of the present, this precious world with all its beauty and all its struggle. Because you are human, the mystery that is celebrated at Easter is in you—it is hidden in the shadows of your sorrows, your pain, your mistakes, your Good Fridays, your moments of anger, your demons, your suffering, your losses. You have to live with those in the hope that cannot be seen. Inside the mystery that cannot be reduced to an equation. Inside that mystery there is still something new and sweet. Something good, creative, pure, and fine. It is in your being, in your Easter heart, in your mind of light, your velvet darkness, your fresh eyes. "Behold," said the prophet Isaiah—"I am doing something new." That something new is inside you, and together we can celebrate it at Easter.
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by Marti Keller, Social Justice Coordinator, Unitarian Universalist Church of Atlanta, Georgia and president, UUs for Jewish Awareness
Jews sit down to the Passover Seder, a sacred meal, to recall, celebrate, and dig deeper—if they dare—into the story of the Exodus and its meaning, not only for their own religious history, but also for all those who belong to the people Israel.
Which means, in the words of the later prophets, all people.
Even many of us who aren't Jewish are familiar with some portions of the Passover observance: the matzoh or unleavened bread, the lamb shank, the bitter herbs, the parsley symbolizing the possibilities for new life, new beginnings. What I want to talk about, however, is the song Dayenu, which sings of the recognition of and giving of blessings for life, whatever its trials. Whatever we have been given to work with.
It is after the telling of the parting of the Sea of Reeds and the Egyptian army being turned back, after Miriam, Moses' sister, dances as she crosses over the shallow river bed, that Dayenu is sung. The Dayenu is a blessing for all that led to the deliverance of the Jewish people. The traditional Dayenu has fifteen verses, shaped and modified over the centuries: fifteen different thanks and praises. That the first people were created in the image of God—that would have been enough. That the people were freed from slavery and brought to Mt. Sinai, that would have been enough. That there was manna—bland and tedious as it became—for nourishment, that would have been enough.
Dayenu. Dayenu. Dayenu.
After they escape from Egypt, the people sit around in an unfamiliar place and wait for instructions. But the Dayenu tells us that if Moses had never gone up on that mountain and brought down the Torah, it would have been enough.
Because it is in our conscious and grateful being and coming together that we can find Torah. We can find enduring love beyond our individual egos, and we can find compassion, seeing holiness in all others. All that, after all, is written in our own hearts.
The dead shall rise again.
Have you seen the trees? Have you seen the maple buds? The magnolias, swelling? Poplars, the first lacy, pale spray across the shoulder of the hills? The forsythia (or, as one child I know calls it, the three-sythia, the two-sythia), and those three small, flowering, perfect crabapple trees in the park, strong little trees begging children to climb them and get lost for a while in their magical, pink canopies?
Did you smell the rain this week, and the muddy, ready earth receiving it? Did you smell the musty, lusty, moldy pile of leaves all thawed now, and underneath, the moist and living earthworms, wide awake?
Is it safe, I wonder, to presume that we have all seen the dead resurrected? Can we presume, just quietly among us, this basic fact? Can we admit, however carefully at first, however foolish it may sound, that once or twice in our lives or perhaps over and over and tumbling over, we have seen events miraculous? Choose the words you will, whatever words you need. If "miracle" cloys, try "unexpected." "Surprising." "Unanticipated." "Lucky." "That which has been given us, that second chance, that second wind, by the grace of God knows what."
We know, because we've seen it.
We don't know, and never will, where the leaf's strength comes from in the spring. We don't know, and never will, entirely, where our own strength comes from. But we have known despair, some of us, and deep discouragement, some of us, and discord of the mind and heart, or disasters of the body or the spirit or in both. We have known dead hope, dead courage, dead caring, dead will, dead faith, dead vision, dead power, deep winter, and we have felt, perhaps when we least expected to feel anything at all, our own slow blood stir in the vein like maple sap, and something very small and tight within begin to swell and open up, urgent, imperceptible at first, then undeniable—love lives again that with the dead has been.
Did the sun come up this morning, no thanks to us and all for us, and did the earth awake again, or did it not?
We will testify to resurrection.
by Victoria Safford, minister, White Bear UU Church, St. Paul, Minnesota, from her 2003 Meditation Manual, Walking Toward Morning , published by Skinner House, and available from the CLF library (www.clfuu.org/library or 617-948-6150).
The CLF offers a variety of Shared Interest Groups—email lists for people who share a common life experience, theology, or identity. For instance, we have groups for people living outside the U.S., retirees, UU pagans, UU humanists, etc. We are, however, wondering if there are other Shared Interest Groups that CLF members were wishing we had available. Would you like a group for parents of teenagers? People of color (or for a particular racial or ethnic group)? UU Buddhists? Our Shared Interest Groups are led by member volunteers, so we are especially interested in hearing from anyone who might be interested in facilitating a group. Contact our minister for lifespan learning, Lynn Ungar, at lungar@clfuu.org with suggestions.
BY JANE RZEPKA, SENIOR MINISTER, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP
At the outset, I want to confess a big area of cluelessness, or maybe naivety, about the way Easter, Passover, and the coming of spring manifest in Unitarian Universalism. All my life I have heard that it's a challenging time for us, a confusing time, a time where we kind of dither around wondering what we're doing and why.
As far as I know, however, the news is good—has always been good—for Unitarian Universalists. UUs have, in fact, straightforward points of view regarding the spring holidays. This is not a time to wring our hands, throw up our hands, or sit on our hands.
How you relate to the spring holidays as a Unitarian Universalist is a matter of personal theology, personal taste, and personal circumstance.
Some Unitarian Universalists experience the territory as vast, perilous, unknowable. They worry that there are mistakes to be made—too much Jesus somehow or not enough, too many daffodils maybe at the expense of the Easter lilies, too much irreverence or then again, too much reverence. They're bound to get caught singing "Jesus Christ Is Risen Today" when they absolutely meant to go with "Lo, the Day of Days Is Here," and they are inclined to confuse the solstice with the equinox. If they are having a Seder they worry that the Haggadah is too traditional or too hip, and in either case, they just know they're going to misspell it.
Perhaps worst of all, word has it that this time of year is the spiritual apex for so many—resurrection, either literal or metaphorical, or the deeply meaningful celebration of freedom, or the enlivening season of rebirth. There's so much to the season, and some of us get a little concerned that the whole thing may get away from us before the spiritual impact hits, or maybe we know from experience that this just isn't going to be our season. We simply aren't up to all the symbolism, reflection, and spiritual complexity.
I once read a story about chickens in Quite a Year for Plums, by Bailey White. Of course there was some complexity to the chapter, and when all was said and done, it wasn't really about chickens. At the very least, it was a chicken-metaphor. For me, the piece quickly became a spring-holiday-chicken-metaphor-story.
Here's what happens: for a fancy "Birds in Art" exhibition, populated by renderings of roseate spoonbills and African fish eagles in dramatic, exotic poses, Della submits her painting of chickens. A chicken painting! And inexplicably, Della's submission is accepted.
Della has lunch with her friend Lou, to celebrate her triumph as a "wildlife painter."
"Chickens." Lou began tearing his roll into bite-size pieces and smearing butter on them with slashing strokes. "Your title is Chickens, but what are you really telling the viewer with this painting, Della? Is it about confinement? Man's dominance over avian life? Or is it simply a portrait of light? Which would be fine." He laid down his knife and the last bit of bread, crossed his arms on the edge of the table, and leaned across his plate earnestly. "But in the changing world of wildlife art you must have the courage of your convictions. You must have convictions Della….Do you?" He bit sharply into a piece of bread, cleaving it cleanly in two. It was almost a snap. "It's just a picture of chickens, Lou," Della said bravely.
"Chickens." Lou began tearing his roll into bite-size pieces and smearing butter on them with slashing strokes. "Your title is Chickens, but what are you really telling the viewer with this painting, Della? Is it about confinement? Man's dominance over avian life? Or is it simply a portrait of light? Which would be fine." He laid down his knife and the last bit of bread, crossed his arms on the edge of the table, and leaned across his plate earnestly. "But in the changing world of wildlife art you must have the courage of your convictions. You must have convictions Della….Do you?" He bit sharply into a piece of bread, cleaving it cleanly in two. It was almost a snap.
"It's just a picture of chickens, Lou," Della said bravely.
Della knows her approach. She knows what she loves, and chickens is what she loves. The chicken thing really does work for her, and even in the face of a lot of pressure from the culture around her, she bravely sticks with it. "It's just a picture of chickens, Lou."
Let's keep the spring holidays simple. You're a Unitarian Universalist. What do you care about at this time of year? What theology rings true for you? How will you make it manifest? It doesn't have to be complicated, and you really can't go wrong.
BY LYNN UNGAR, MINISTER FOR LIFESPAN LEARNING, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP
I think Passover has to be my favorite holiday. It has all the things a really good holiday needs: a story, a ritual, a game, lots of songs and, of course, terrific food, like matzoh-ball soup. Maybe you know the Passover story. If you don't, you might want to give my version a read in the April 2005 REsources column. To put it really, really quickly, the Passover story is about a group of people who escape from slavery and spend a heck of a long time wandering around in the desert before they finally (forty years later!) come around to a place they can call home. Of course, this super-quick version leaves out all the important parts, but, like I said, you can easily read the longer version. The short version gives you enough of an idea of how the story goes that I can tell you about my favorite part of the story—the whining.
I guess I just think it's funny. You would think that people in a holy book are going to be all holy and perfect and maybe kind of boring. But this ancient, ancient book talks about how, after God does a bunch of miracles to help them escape, the Hebrews (Jews) are excited, and sing and dance to celebrate their freedom. But as their wanderings go on, they get crankier and crankier, which is maybe what you're like on a really long car ride. "We're hun-gry!" they complain. So God makes this edible stuff called manna fall from the sky. And the Hebrews are happy and grateful for a couple of days, and then they start in whining again: "We're tired of manna. It's bor-ing. We should have stayed in Egypt where we were slaves, but at least we had onions to eat. Why don't we get any meat?" And God, whom I imagine to be doing some major eye-rolling, the way parents do on a long trip when they're as cranky as everyone else, sends quails for them to eat.
But it goes on. Moses, their leader, goes up on a mountain top to get instruction direct from God about this religion they're building. And do the people keep watch for him, praying? Do they try to repeat Moses' teachings to each other so they don't forget? Do they just keep the kids quiet by telling stories and drawing pictures in the sand? Nope. They decide that Moses' new take on religion just isn't working out, they scrap what he's told them about God being something that you really can't see or name or pin down to one time and place, and they make a statue of a golden calf so that they can have a god they can really get their hands on. Needless to say, when Moses comes back from the mountain he isn't the tiniest bit happy.
But me, I love it. The whiny, unfaithful Hebrews remind me that religion isn't about trying to be like some unreal, perfect people. It's about having stories that help us, as real people, to understand who we are and how we want to be in the world.
The Passover Haggadah, the book that tells you how to celebrate the ritual meal called the Passover Seder, is very clear that the most important part of the celebration is to tell the story. But more than that, there's a right and a wrong way to tell the story. The wrong way is to say: "This is what happened to the Hebrew people when they were slaves in Egypt." The right way is to say: "This is what happened to me when I was a slave in Egypt." The story matters because it is about us, our lives. Even though we aren't actually slaves in Egypt, if we're going to understand what the story means, we have to be willing to imagine ourselves in the middle of it. That's why there's a part of the Seder ritual where we open the door to welcome in the stranger—because we know what it was like being strangers in the land of Egypt. And I do mean actually open the door, so that if there's anybody outside who would like to come in, they can.
Somehow, when the people in the ancient story have the same kind of quirks and annoying habits that we do, it's easier to remember that our stories can be religious stories, too. The ancient Hebrews were not the only ones who had to wander around trying to figure out how they were going to lead a new kind of religious life as free people. Every time we ask a question or understand things a new way or move out of a stuck place then we are writing a new story about our journey to freedom. I think that's a pretty great thing to have a holiday about. Especially if it includes matzoh-ball soup.
Even the onions under the sink know it's spring. There in the dark, between the dish detergent and the dusting rags, they are reaching pale green fingers toward the sky.
Even in Chicago, where winter stretches out wider than the Great Lake, the onions' story is convincing. The calendar, with its marching regiment of days, is nothing but a clever con,
but onions know what it means to feel life stirring underneath your dry and cracking skin, that restlessness to reach outside your own dense self, the many-layered longing for a new shape.
Spring is coming. How could an onion lie? Witness the faith of the potatoes, who keep their Easter vigil with ever growing eyes.
Last updated April 1, 2007
Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF), 25 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02108-2823 Phone: (617) 948-6166 · Fax: (617) 523-4123 · E-mail: clf@clfuu.org
