Resurrection

The Female Rogue

Good Friday is the day of dying. The day the Mary’s stood at the foot of the cross dutifully bearing witness to the slow, wicked death of their beloved who had been hammered into wood, writhing in pain. Jesus was assassinated by hierarchical fear of human-held divine power-within. The dread enemy of all who worship at the altar of conquer and control.

Blunt iron nails were hammered into hands and feet. Blood must have been abundant, but his death would be stripped of the symbolism and metaphor that could save us all: What is within me that needs to die off?

Today, Saturday, is the day of not knowing. What is the world when divine loving presence, our embodied connection with nature and soul, has been drained dry of life force on a weathered wooden cross? The day after divinity was vacuumed out of human bodies to be held hostage for centuries by the powerful and elite. Will we ever get it back?

The author Samuel Beckett captured the empty horror of waiting, not knowing in his play Waiting for Godot. Vladimir and Estragon are stuck in the agony of waiting, not knowing. Mindless and endless. Throw the ball, Didi, Estragon implores. The nothingness of waiting for the god-like Godot too painful to bear. At least, throw the ball so I have something to catch and something to throw back, again and again.

Easter is resurrection. In truth, we all hold inside the agency to resurrect into lives enriched by soul and connection with nature. Instead, history has insisted Jesus’ return from death was literal. A carcass brought back to life. Not the spiritual or visionary wonder that Mary Magdalene saw first, but an actual body forced into the earthbound jail cell of three-dimensional existence.

The Gospel of Philip, which was rejected by the hierarchy who chose carefully the words that would be sealed into today’s Bible, shares a different way of knowing. The Bible builders selected only the stories that cemented in place hierarchy and power-over. They liked literal best and eagerly banished the power of metaphor and symbolism. Philip saw it differently.

The body never lies, Philip wrote in his Gospel, What you say, you say in a body. You can say nothing outside of this body. You must awaken while in the body, for everything exists in it: Resurrect in this life.

Awaken while in the body. That is what we all must and can do.

I was born into a female body that has for centuries — from Pandora’s Box to Eve’s bite of that apple — been labeled wicked and sinful. The outrageous irony of this takes my breath away. It is our female bodies that brilliantly spin egg and sperm into human form. What is more holy and wondrous than that? As if all of history has been written as a reaction formation to what men cannot do with their bodies. Instead we are deemed sinful, wicked taunters and tormentors of men.

Resurrection is rising above these lies of history. Resurrection is claiming the power and miraculous wonder of the human body: every ounce of instinct, intuition, imagination, compassion and love that exists in both males and females.

The balance between destruction and creation is profoundly skewed by the world’s thousand-years romance with destroy and conquer. Waiting, wishing and hoping balance returns is not an option.

In truth, divine connection and respect for life should never have been weighted down by male or female genitalia. We gotta quit tossing mindlessly back-and-forth fiery balls of death and destruction. A true world without end is only possible with non-gendered balance, respect and reverence for all of life in its many forms. Amen.