Resurrection in Dark Times

These Covid-19 lockdown days are a rollercoaster of emotions, from the blackness of despair to fleeting moments of light and hope. Even though it’s only been a few weeks, the toll on our mental health, relationships and general well-being is very high. It’s especially hard on frontline workers, those bereaved or dealing with sickness, or those families cooped up in houses and flats. I have it easy in comparison. After a ‘honeymoon’ start to lockdown, recently I’ve had to abandon all my high-flying plans for reading, writing and exercise. The last few days in particular have been very tough, even though objectively it seems like the worst is over, often it feels like an endless nightmare. At this stage, it is a question of enduring and getting through, arriving alive at the other side. Whenever that comes.

The experience reminds me a lot of the 30-day silent retreat, the Spiritual Exercises (it also reminds me of my five-week Camino walk), that we do on entering the Jesuits. The first week begins with the joy and wonder of God’s grace, but very soon you hit the wall in the third week with the pain of the Passion of Christ and all seems lost. The wisdom of the retreat is such that you have to arrive to these very dark places of disintegration and loss to appreciate the resurrection; it is God’s world and in God’s time things swing around, our lives are merely an ‘on loan’ gift. The death-resurrection experience (a ‘U’ shaped curve) is a process of slowly coming back to life and recovering the joy of simply being again. The key to it is being grateful for small things. Being in the Passion, the trough or the dip though, robs you of the ‘feel-good’ factor, of the simple pleasures of good sleep, exercise, and being on top of things. The danger is losing perspective and motivation. You have to trust the process, only through arriving at your limits allows for a hard-earned breakthrough.

Some people have written about this Covid-19 crisis as a time of grief. It’s the loss of so many things, freedom, relationships and autonomy. Awful dread days and nights are interspersed with sudden flashes of light. Like the grief process (cf. Kubler-Ross’s 5 stages of grief, a ‘U’ shaped curve), there is isolation and the feeling of dying inside, in an endless night. But like a self-righting buoy, something always brings me back to the light. At the darkest hour the dawn arrives again anew, just like always, but I forget so easily. This pandemic world of sickness and death (watching the news is horrifying) is not the end. It’s not all of reality as it proposes to be but just a temporary place of growth and purification. Unexpectedly, I am redeemed, saved from the grave. I learn about humility, compassion and grace. A person, the Christ, has lifted me up. My true destiny is revealed, to be with the Light, breaking open the clouds of weary, isolated existence.

The life and death of Jesus is not something that happened years ago and no longer relevant. Rather it is the very essence of the lives we live, the dying and the rising is a continual process that marks our lives and especially shapes our Covid-19 world. The experience of the process of suffering and pain alternates with great joy and fulfilment. Especially the last few days when I began to hit the ‘wall’, reaching the limits of my strength and endurance (Richard Rohr calls this ‘liminal space’), I know to hang on. You begin to get down, life loses its meaning and things become grey. It is a suffering of tedium, awareness of limitation and mortality. Nothing seems to happen, move or motivate me… I begin to realise I am drifting away from the life and the source itself, I am deluded by pain and weariness to believe that there is no meaning, no God and no hope… This is the experience that Jesus himself passed through in the Garden of Gethsemane, the ‘why have you forsaken me’ moment which is chilling but inspiring in its raw humanity.

That’s where the radical prayer comes in, the prayer of the cross, imitating the same ‘U’ shaped process that Jesus has lived through. Reaching the limits and handing it all over to God, holding nothing back, stepping into that dangerous mysterious void. It means trusting the ‘passionate one’, the one who has been there before us in the depths, who has beaten the rap and taken the hit for us. To pray using the words of the psalms, as Jesus did in his darkest hour, has an extraordinary power:

Into your hands O Lord, I commend my spirit
Take away this cup
Why have you forsaken me

I begin to see a chink of light, I begin to pull out of the dive, I begin to rise again.

Then, before I know it, I see the spring outside. I hear the birds again, carried and inspired, the world seems all right, the pain drifts away, I can see a way, I walk towards the light, I am walking in faith, hope and love abound. The hardest thing is hanging on in the bottom of the dive and remembering that it’s not about me, that I am being carried and I need to let myself be lifted and freed. The biggest illusion is in the mind, that there is no meaning (the work of the ‘bad spirit’) and that I only deserve the worst. It is a seductive pattern of inviting me to give up… all lies of course.

This cycle can last a year, a month, or even a day. The challenge is to live every day like a resurrection day. To be so fully present, in the moment and living the paradoxical tragedy-wonder of life. It is all about gratitude: to see the absolute giftedness of every moment, the wonder of every encounter, the silver lining on every cloud. The mask of mundanity is pulled away and I see the wonder of things, fragility, and strength, the way we are held in being at each moment. The Gospel of today, the Road to Emmaus (Luke 24), mirrors this exact same process of desolation to hope, darkness to light, and 11th-hour rescue from despair.

-Brendan McManus SJ

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Fermanagh-born Brendan McManus SJ works in the area of spirituality and spiritual accompaniment. He is the author of Redemption Road: Grieving on the Camino, a highly-praised personal reflection on healing and recovery. It deals with Brendan’s experience on the Camino pilgrimage as part of his effort to come to terms with his brother’s suicide. (Shared with kind permission from his blogpost Jesuits in Ireland)

What does resurrection look like to you?

Recently, in an article in the Huffington Post, Otto Scharmer, an economist from MIT asked the provocative question, “Are we ready to rise?” I wonder if this is the real question of these Holy Week rituals we celebrate in the Christian tradition. Another way to say it might be, “Are we willing to rise?”

What is the face of resurrection today?

What does it actually look like?

• Each year in Rwanda there is a three month remembrance of the genocide that saw the death of 1,000,000 people. Each year a group of Sisters and other professionals devote themselves to the role of Listener. They listen to the pain of those whose relatives were killed. They listen to the pain of those who murdered their brothers and sisters of Rwanda. Their hope is to slowly, over generations, knit together again the fabric of their society. There is no quick fix. There is only the love that bears the stories of pain in the hope of healing. This is what resurrection looks like.

• Discovering within myself that my capacity to love is larger than I might have imagined. It stretches way beyond the limits of what I have thought. This is what resurrection looks like.

• Seeing in myself and others both a willingness and a passion to move beyond the boundaries of we\they to see the reality of “us.” This is what resurrection looks like.

• Noticing and being moved by the small kindness of another and knowing that our lives depend on these kindnesses. This is what resurrection looks like.

• Rising with others to make love real and practical. This is what resurrection looks like.

• Wanting to change so that our planet home can flourish. This is what resurrection looks like.

What does resurrection look like to you? Are you willing to rise?

Margo Ritchie, CSJ

Hope, Historical Perspective and "Sunny Ways"

As we face continuing low oil prices, a low dollar, rising food costs, and increased use of local Food Banks, hope, especially in Alberta, is low. Towards the end of January 2016 prices were especially low. Gloom and doom were almost tangible as we heard of more and more layoffs in the oil patch and in related industries.  There was a bad joke going around; even the comedian, who shared it, said it was bad. Then, the price of a barrel of oil was around $21 a barrel and cauliflower was seven dollars a head. The joke went like this: “Hey, did you hear the news? You can get three heads of cauliflower for a barrel of oil.” That joke described how bad things were. People were feeling down and depressed. Most people knew someone, a family member or friend, who was out of work or took a cut in pay and worked longer hours to keep their job. Some people were feeling hopeless. Media was playing a part too, day after day, by stating this was the lowest price for oil or the dollar since 2002, 2008 etc. Most reports were negative and in my opinion fostered even more gloom and doom. About this time the former Premier of Alberta, Don Getty, died; reports were that during his tenure oil prices were even lower than those we have just experienced. Premier Getty’s government rode out that bust and we went on to experience several more booms and busts in Alberta.

This got me thinking about historical perspective. If we know our history we can better deal with booms and busts. Depression, anxiety and fear paralyze. Those who know the past can better deal with the economic ups and downs of global economics. They can see the patterns and responses of the past and respond accordingly. They have hope and hope helps turn things around; it does not depress as do repeated gloom and doom scenarios. Constant negativity begets more negativity. A positive attitude even in the midst of difficult economic times can make a difference. I think of Sir Wilfred Laurier’s “sunny ways" that Prime Minister Trudeau has adopted. These “sunny ways”, not pollyanna ways, do foster hope. When we put things in perspective we can usually find hope and a positive way to move forward. Things may get worse especially as EI programs run down. However, recently we have seen oil prices and the dollar go up. As Christians prepare to celebrate the Paschal Mystery and the great feast of hope, the Resurrection of Jesus, we focus on hope in Jesus who through his passion, death and resurrection has overcome the power of sin and death. We look forward in joyful hope trusting that “all will be well” as we do our best in these difficult times and trust in the resiliency that is part of our humanity.

Lynn Rouleau, CSJ

Personal Resurrections and Empty Tombs

On occasion, my friends have commented that my mind sometimes has a way of seeing things with a unique twist. The subject of this blog might be a case in point. Thinking ahead on the Resurrection and the empty tomb, this thought came to me.

Perhaps the empty tomb is an apt symbol for that inner space within oneself which holds the memory of hurts now healed. There’s no denying the reality of painful experiences. In truth, the journey to healing is one’s own resurrection experience. Through healing, the painful memories are quieted but not forgotten. We are set free from their hold on us. We find ourselves more alive. Such is the Good News we can celebrate this Easter.

Nancy Wales CSJ

The resurrection to which Easter calls us....

The old news about Easter is that it is about resurrection. The new news may be that it is not so much about the resurrection of Jesus as it is about our own. Unfortunately, we so often miss it. Jesus, you see, is already gone from one tomb. The only question now is whether or not we are willing to abandon our own, leave the old trappings behind and live in the light of Jesus, the Christ, whom the religious establishment persecuted and politicians condemned. It is the greatest question of them all in a world that practices religion as an act of private devotion and sees law and government as an arm of God.

The resurrection to which Easter calls us — our own — requires that we prepare to find God where God is by opening ourselves to the world around us with a listening ear. This means that we must be prepared to be surprised by God in strange places, in ways we never thought we’d see and through the words of those we never thought we’d hear.

We must allow others — even those whom we have till now refused to consider — to open our hearts to things we do not want to hear. We must release the voice of God in everyone, everywhere. It means
putting down the social phobias that protect us from one another. It requires that we clean out from
our vocabulary our contempt for “liberals,” our frustration for “radicals” and our disdain for
“conservatives.” It presumes that we will reach out to all others — to the gays and the immigrants and
other races, to the strangers, the prisoners and the poor — in order to divine what visions to see with
them, what cries to cry for them, what stones to move from the front of their graves.

That will, of course, involve listening to women for a change, seeing angels where strangers are,
emptying tombs, contending with Pharisees and walking to Emmaus with strangers crying, “Hosanna” all the way.

Easter is not simply a day of celebration: It is, as well, a day of decision. What is really to be decided is
whether or not we ourselves will rise from the deadening grip of this world’s burnt-out systems to the
light-giving time of God’s coming again, this time in us.

Then the Easter Alleluia is true: God is surely “with us.”

“Ideas in Passing” from Joan Chittister:  Easter 2010

http://www.benetvision.org/Ideas_In_Passing/04_05_10.html