Atonement/Christianity/Religion

Palm Sunday at All Saints

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We gathered in the anteroom and were given palm fronds to hold. After a prayer of blessing we formed a line and entered the sanctuary, palm leaves in hand. Once around the sanctuary while singing “Ride on, Ride on in Majesty,” and then to our seats.

In the mean time Jesus had found a place at the front. Judas was in the back and Peter off to one side. Caiaphas and a few chief priests and elders were above us, up in the balcony. And Pilot was up there as well, standing off on his own.

Thus began the narration with the readers adopting their roles…and as well, a part for us, the crowd. We made our way through Matthew’s description of Judas’s sellout to Caiaphas, Jesus’ anguish in the garden, the betrayal of Peter, and the desertion of the disciples.

As a crowd, we found our voices during the trial. In response to Pilate’s question about who to release we said, “Barabbas.” And in reply to Pilate’s, “Then what should I do with Jesus who is called the Messiah?” We all said, “Let him be crucified!”

Of course there was no resemblance to the dusty, sweaty, bloody, event. No one was dressed for the part. And while we tried, “the crowd” was lacking conviction…and yet, in that cavernous sanctuary there was this second, one meteoric moment where I was placed in the swirling fomenting mood of the bloodthirsty crowd, calling, with everybody else, “Crucify him!”

Liturgy, this liturgy, was an iconic entrance into an event where symbol confronted me with the actual.

Freedom/Peace/Religion/Spirituality

Hopeful News stories

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Two stories from the Reuters news service, reprinted in today’s Edmonton Journal, should bring a measure of hope to our tattered world. (These are Grow Mercy news stories.)

Abdoulaye Wade The first story is about Senegal’s president, Abdoulaye Wade. His county is hosting the world’s biggest Islamic conference, the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). And in Abdoulaye Wade’s address to the Islamic organization he said believed the past antagonism between Islam and Christianity should be consigned to history, and not be allowed to trigger a clash of civilizations.  “The era of crusades and jihads is over and Muslims and Christians should strive to coexist and not allow extremists to drag the world into a war of religions.” Senegal practises a tolerant brand of Islam and Wade publicly opposes those who wage war in the name of Islam. It’s moderate leaders like Abdoulaye Wade that desperately need to be heard, and it’s a news story like this that needs airing on networks like CNN.

The second story is about “atheist China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs issuing a licence to the Taiwan Buddhist charity group Tzu Chi.The Buddhist group has been quietly conducting charity work in China for almost two decades. This is the stuff of history because Tzu Chi is the first foundation in China in which a non-mainland resident serves as the legal representative.

Of further interest to me is that the main reason China’s “atheist Communist rulers” have made the “landmark concession,” is so they can “use Buddhism to help curb rising social unrest and help fill an ideological vacuum which has spawned corruption and eroded ethics in the post-Mao era.”

Is this a recognition that atheism, without something like a humanist manifesto, without something that points beyond itself, without something like a transcendent view–something which according to Richard Dawkin’s et al, is not atheism–is in the end impoverished and socially debilitating? Or is this just China’s experience of imposed atheism?

But the real story remains the work of the Tzu Chi Foundation. For those of us who used to think Buddhist philosophy always mitigated against any real efforts of social compassion and practical relief, the Tzu Chi foundation should put us straight.

Tzu Chi relief

(Above: Tzu Chi relief team caring for maimed Palestinian refugee children.)

Christianity/Religion

Caught in the 1971 Saskatoon Revival

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In 1971 there was a Christian revival in Saskatchewan. I was caught in it, swept up in it like a broken straw in a prairie gust. My uncle, his two sons and I drove the 200 miles to Saskatoon to hear the “Sutera twins,” Ralph and Lou. My uncle had heard there was something going on at the crusade in Saskatoon and in a move to “save” his sons–one, a responsible son who I thought didn’t need saving, and a wild one, the one I hung out with, who probably did.

In Saskatoon the wild one and I slipped out of the auditorium after the first hymn. This was the big city. We wandered the nearby streets and checked out the neon lights and tall buildings. We became curious about the diagonal crosswalks the city had at the time and we crossed back and forth, controlling the traffic on all four sides.

sutera twins I was hoping that the revival meeting would be wrapping up when we returned, but the place was just getting electric, the twins were on the rheostat turning up the voltage. Or, as either Ralph or Lou said, “The Holy Spirit’s finger was pointing at people.” We made our way back, close to where we’d been. Soon one of the preacher twins, came to the precipice of his soul searing message: “Choose now or it may be too late.” Then came the “call.” Then the full-on piano and the rising tide of “Just as I am…without one plea…” Then the streaming eyes and the tributaries of people in pews moving to the aisles and forming rivers of penitent souls flowing to the front for prayer. My uncle and cousins were swept up in the current with me hanging on to some exposed root. I scrambled out of the heavy doors into the street. I waited and paced under a gas light. Shivering some.

In a few minutes my cousin, the wild one, now wilder, came to get me, said I needed to come back inside. He was not so much pleading but pulling me back through the high doors down a carpeted hall into a room torrid and moist by sweat and tears. No resolve left, I was on my knees from the weight of hands on my head and shoulders, upon which came a crescendo of intoned supplication. And with that I was up with an inexplicable smile, invaded by a brightness and a lightness. I was in fact quite high and vertiginous. Full, I supposed, of the Holy Ghost.

On the giddy ride back, we cousins planned the conversion of the rest of the “gang.” Which, naturally enough, didn’t quite work out.