I was out on Twitter Easter Sunday afternoon. Sharon and I had participated in the morning in a beautiful, though un-normal, worship service online. Our pastor, the Reverend O’Grady, preached a heart-felt sermon, our reduced choir sang with beauty and power, Lisa Edwards and Peter Green played a magnificent piano and organ duet Postlude. There was a lot on our hearts as we came to our screens that morning, a lot of fear, anxiety, uncertainty, boredom, loneliness. We came to this unusual altar with deep yearning. And then, even from our isolation, we shouted out: Christ is risen, he is risen, indeed! And we meant it.
Yes, and then, later that day I turned to Twitter, checking in to see what might be happening. I was amazed, frankly stunned, that “Christ is risen” was flying all over the wires. I know it is purely anecdotal, but it felt like some new wave of spiritual awakening, born out of need, was sweeping the world. I know I am always a closet revivalist, but could it be possible that Twitter was signaling a groundswell?
I’ve been thinking a lot about what happens next? Peggy Noonan in her WSJ column on that Saturday was asking these kinds of questions: “There’s been a lot of pondering going on about deeper meanings and higher purposes. Is all this some kind of wake-up call? What is asked of us? Do we need to change, personally? Should our country change and in what ways? What should we learn from this?”
“We have all been humbled,” Noonan concludes, “as a nation of institutions and of individuals.” Noonan reports from social psychologist Jonathan Haidt: “This is a time for us to reflect,” he declares, a time we may be able to “choose a better story.”
That’s it? That’s what I want to imagine right now: What would a better story look like? And what if that new story was shaped by Easter? Noonan and Haidt didn’t go there, but that’s my question: What if “what’s next” could actually be seen through the lens of Easter?
Dale M. Coulter, from First Things online, suggests there is some evidence that the flowering of monastic mysticism in the mid-fourteenth century was in large measure caused by the ravages of the Black Death. People turned inward, dramatically. They turned earnestly to God for comfort, healing, solace. People turned to prayer, laying the groundwork for the deepest tradition of prayer ever to occur in the Christian church.
We too have been brought to our knees by a plague. But that may be the best place to examine who we have become, personally, and what kind of a society we have built. Surely we recognize now we are not in control of everything, powerful though the tools of science and rational thought may be. Surely we have come to see that our exceedingly self-centered, individualistic society does not satisfy the deepest longings of what it means to be human. Surely we have come to see that the intense hatred we witness daily is not the way to build flourishing communities.
What if we turned to a new story radically rewritten by the risen Christ? His story knows suffering through and through, and yet, he offers new life that conquers death and injustice and hatred and self-centeredness. His story could bring us together as never before.
What if we were able to shape our new story around the story that broke from the grave on Easter morning, a story of love and mercy, self-giving and gratitude, a story ultimately of joy instead of sorrow? That would be a better story, wouldn’t it? I want to imagine, that maybe, just maybe, Twitter was signaling something utterly new among the people, that yes, Christ is risen, he is risen, indeed. Maybe we could come out of this terrible scourge, announcing, and living, a better story.
Thanks, Phil! AMEN!
Thanks so much, Phil, for your wonderful testimony about the amazing and unexpected grace of the risen Christ who blesses us faithfully in the midst of crisis and suffering.
Thank you Phil for your thoughts on the meditation revolution you see coming into the post-coronavirus civilization. Thomas Merton’s books did so much for shaping the world after WWII.
May this time of isolation encourage us to see our union with the family in heaven and the family of humanity. A time to be with the Father of all.
CONTEMPLATION IS A SUPERNATURAL LOVE AND KNOWLEDGE OF GOD, SIMPLE AND OBSCURE, INFUSED BY HIM INTO THE SUMMIT OF THE SOUL, GIVING IT A DIRECT AND EXPERIMENTAL CONTACT WITH HIM.⁷
Excerpt from: “The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation” by Thomas Merton. Scribd.
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Thanks for this, Phil! Times like these call us to remember that our God is reluctant to explain why “bad things happen to good people” (or, for that matter, and equally problematically, why good things happen to bad people), but eager to redeem good and bad people alike from bad situations. We can’t get a straight answer to the question of WHY God has allowed this pandemic to befall the world at this time–but it’s not clear that a formulaic, theoretical answer is what we need anyway. Yes, we have a crying need to “make meaning” of the pandemic. But meaning-making under such conditions consists not in having an answer to the rather speculative WHY-question, but rather in opening ourselves to whatever answers God might wish to give us to the practical, down-to-earth question of WHAT NOW? And that is exactly the question your wonderful post drives us to ask, and bids us to listen to the answer for. Revival WILL happen in our time–and IS happening ALREADY in our time–precisely because people have been forced by the quarantine to abstain from many of their customary distractions and amusements, and to ask fundamental questions about the quality of their individual lives and the strength of the social fabric.
There is only one “logical” direction to look when you are down. “UP!” (Col. 3:1-4) Keep it UP, Phil.
I love the questions you have raised, Phil. The quasi/quarantine it seems we have been challenged to observe has given us more than the usual time for reflection. I hope some of our thoughts have taken us to options of living that may cause us to explore ancient Christian ways of living in stressful times. You have probably read Dreyer’s volume the Benedict Option. I have found it to be an interesting alternative to contemplative. It may not work for my family or community, but it offers a time tested way to structure one’s life that focuses on the monastic model that has worked well for several millenia. Blessings…..Loren
Thank you, Phil, for opening a new line of thought … and HOPE for me!
Easter is about hope and I think many of us feel hopeful.