Following is an excerpt that particularly spoke to me. It’s accompanied by Indigenous Australian artwork. According to Andrew Harvey, such artwork reflects people and cultures aware of and living from their “divine identity as children of the Divine Mother and Father.” In many ways, these Indigenous cultures, Harvey writes, embody “that ancient, eternal, natural way of harmony, peace, adoration and reverence that underlines, permeates and subtly illumes some part of all the major religions, however far they have strayed from it.”
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The Divine exists. Humankind is being helped. There are realized [spiritual] masters on the earth. However, it is essential that we not be distracted from the real task ahead by a misunderstanding of the laws of the absolute reality, or spiritual diversion. The light can save us, but we must work with it.
. . . If we had only the external sciences to rely on, the game would already be lost. Fortunately, there exists another empiricism altogether, interrelated technologies of spiritual transformation developed by all the major mystical traditions and still, miraculously, intact and available to us. It is time that Westerners realize that mystics are scientists in their domain, that mystical union and transformation obey laws as inexorable as those of the physical universe. These laws are documented by systems of the most sublime sophistication which can help us take the journey into truth.
Vedanta is such a system, so are Sufism, Kabbala, Taoism, Theravāda and Mahāyāna Buddhism, and the disciplines of such highly evolved cultures as the Kogis and the [Australian] Aborigines. So is the system that could be developed in the Christian tradition from the meditation techniques of the Desert Fathers and the writings of, among others, Ruysbroeck, Eckhart, Teresa of Ávila, Hildegard of Bingen and St. John of the Cross. These technologies have in common the knowledge that the Divine Self is the one essential fact of the cosmos, the ways to reveal and realize it are known and have been charted. Maps of the most helpful accuracy exist and can be interpreted with the help of those who have taken the journey. Astonishing similarities in the laws that each of these great systems honor – laws of meditation and contemplation, faith and devotion, clarity, resignation, surrender and adoration – prove their legitimacy.
These are the laws of the only science that can reveal to us the essence of what we are and the essence of reality. If these laws are not widely known and respected and acted on, it seems obvious now that the human adventure will soon end.
. . . The chaos and tragedy we are surrounded by makes it clear that the patriarchy has failed, that scientific rationalism and the cult of technological progress taken to fanatic lengths are suicidal and that humankind dissociated from the wisdom of nature is doomed. Everything now depends on whether we as a race can restore ourselves to sacred balance and find again that ancient, eternal, natural way of harmony, peace, adoration and reverence for being that is still walked by the Kogis, Yamomamis, Native Americans and Aborigines and that underlines, permeates and subtly illumes some part of all the major religions, however far they have strayed from it. If we do not learn again our divine identity as children of the Divine Mother and Father, our inter-dependence with everything that lives and our responsibility for all our actions and for nature itself, we will destroy ourselves and our world.
“The Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem” by Zambian artist Emmanuel Nsama
This evening's post serves as my 2020 Holy Week offering. In previous years, as you'll see at the end of this post, I've shared whole series of posts to mark Holy Week. I want to keep things simpler this year, as I did last year.
And so I share this evening some Holy Week writings that I've long found to be especially meaningful. They are accompanied by the artwork of others and some of my own photography, mainly of the natural world around my home in south Minneapolis, close to the Mississippi River.
As I've said previously, I don't find it surprising that the Christian church chose to remember and celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus at what could be called an in-between time of the year, a time when (in the northern hemisphere, at least) the natural world is experiencing both loss and promise.
The stark beauty of the earth at this time reminds me of the deep and profound spiritual truths within which we all have our being; truths that continually invite us to embark on journeys of transformation towards wholeness.
My friend Phillip Clark puts it this way: “The promise of resurrection and transformation is nowhere more poignantly displayed than in the natural world. Death, transience, and impermanence always give way to the splendor of New Life. Life never truly ends, on a biological or spiritual level. Evolution is intrinsic to the universe and defines the trajectory of our souls, from the temporal limitations of mortality to the boundless expanses of cosmic Eternity.”
I like to think that my nature photography reflects such spiritual truths, as well as providing in these especially troubling times, a much-needed groundedness in the beauty and wisdom of the earth.
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When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, he was revealing that the reign of God is in stark contrast to the reign of Rome and every other political system that seeks triumphant victory by influencing people through violence and coercion.
The Gospel of Jesus subverts the politics of violence because the Gospels is the politics of humility, service, forgiveness, and a nonviolent love that embraces all people, but especially those we call our enemies.
Tragically, we tend to live by the politics of Rome, not the politics of Jesus. Whether we are Republicans or Democrats, American or Russian, whenever we seek to influence others through coercion and violence, we are following the politics of Rome.
Fortunately, Jesus revealed the alternative. He called it “The Kingdom of God.” It’s a political way of life based not on triumphant violence, but rather humble service. The politics of Jesus makes sure everyone has daily bread, it seeks to forgive debts and sins, it avoids the temptation to commit evil against our neighbors, and it calls us into a life of forgiveness.
But this is risky. We know that the politics of Jesus led him to Good Friday, where he suffered and died. And yet he stayed true to the Kingdom of God, speaking words of forgiveness even as he was murdered, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
Jesus, our Tortured Brother,
In this world, so many are
forced to walk your path today –
the suffering and pain, the
humiliation, sense of betrayal
and abandonment,
for those with power, the
Romans of today, continue to
condemn others to modern crosses.
You said that what was done to the least of these
was done to you and so each day,
You are tortured anew.
Jesus, our Guardian of the Wounded and Tortured,
Bid us to look into the secret prisons – the unmarked
graves – the hearts and minds of the torture survivors,
Bid us to wipe the tears of the families of those whose
decapitated bodies were cast into the open sea,
Bid us to embrace the open wounds of the tortured.
Jesus, Guiding Spirit,
Teach us to be in solidarity with those who hang
from these crosses,
Call out to those who torture,
“Know the evil you have done and repent.”
Call out to the rest of us, “What meaning does love have
if you allow torture to continue unopposed?”
In the name of all the tortured of the world,
give us the strength, give us the courage,
give us the will to bring this horror to an end,
in the name of love, justice,
and the God of us all.
On Good Friday we must challenge the notion that divine vengeance drove Jesus of Nazareth to the cross. Christ's passion for egalitarian fellowship, a world devoid of social stigma, and his invitation to discover the Reign of God, present within us, undermined the institutional and political authority of both the Temple religious establishment and the occupying presence of the Roman empire in first century Palestine.
Jesus died as a victim of capital punishment, at the hands of the state, subjected to unspeakable torture and brutality by soldiers charged with enforcing imperial domination.
Christ's life, death, and resurrection are profoundly political. Viewing the fate of Jesus as a cosmic transaction to satisfy God's retribution for humanity's sins dismisses the zealous passion for social justice that characterized his revolutionary ministry.
As our afflicted world yearns for healing, we would do well to contemplate the inequitable systems that perpetuate suffering by not allocating healthcare in comprehensively humane manner. The coronavirus pandemic is disproportionately affecting Black and Brown people, giving rise to contemporary casualties of injustice, mired in the anguish of a public health scheme that prizes pharmaceutical profits over expanding access to society's most vulnerable.
Christ's passion and death should spur us to radical action. If humanity need repent from anything, it is from neglecting to kindle solidarity and failing to conserve our shared planetary home.
The passion is really the mystery of all mysteries, the heart of the Christian faith experience. By the word “passion” here we mean the events which end Jesus’ earthly life: his betrayal, trial, execution on a cross, and death. Of course, for Christian believers the passion is immediately followed by the resurrection, Jesus’ mysterious return to fleshy life, and later by his ascension into heaven and his disappearance from the earthly realm. These six events together comprise the full gamut of the Christian Paschal Mystery.
. . .[T]he word “paschal” [. . .] comes from the Hebrew pasch, which means “pass over.” It's the same word the Jewish tradition uses to speak of its own most sacred religious festival commemorating the miraculous night when Yahweh “passed over” the houses of the Israelites but struck down the Egyptians’ firstborn. Pasch connotes the passage from death to life, and that is exactly what the earliest Christians celebrated in a single continuous ceremony.
. . . The passion has always had strong emotional charge, for obvious reasons. The spectacle of an innocent and good man destroyed by the powers of this world is an archetypal human experience. It elicits our deepest feelings of remorse and empathy (and if we’re honest, our deepest shadows as well). It has long been commemorated in all the artistic genres: in the great oil canvases of Renaissance masters, in the sculpture and stained glass of the medieval cathedrals, in the English mystery plays and the German passion plays, and in music, particularly that of Bach, who gave the world his sublime St. John and St. Matthew passion oratorios. The passion is also quite manipulable. It’s been used to stir anger and scapegoating. It’s been used to fuel anti-Semitism, to induce personal guilt – “Christ died for your sins” – and to arouse devotion in a sentimental and even fanatical way.
From a wisdom point of view, what can we say about the passion? So much bad, manipulative, guilt-inducing theology has been based on it that it’s fair to wonder whether there is any hope of starting afresh. I believe wisdom does open up that possibility. The idea lies in that idea [. . .] of reading Jesus’ life as a sacrament: a sacred mystery whose real purpose is not to arouse empathy but to create empowerment. In other words, Jesus is not particularly interested in increasing either your guilt or your devotion, but rather, in deepening your personal capacity to make the passage into unitive life. If you're willing to work with that wager, the passion begins to make sense in a whole new way.
I’ve long been struck by the question of why it should be that in Jesus’ relatively short human life certain events and experiences seemed to come to him while others did not. He certainly lived in a very intense way the ordeals of betrayal, abandonment, homelessness, and death. Did it have to be like that? If he were indeed here on a divine mission, it would seem that he could have been given an easier path: chief priest, political leader, the Messiah that people expected him to be. From any of these launching pads he would have been well positioned to “put his teachings out there” and impact the consciousness of his times in really a significant way. But none of these materialized. Why not? Because the path he did walk is precisely the one that would most fully unleash the transformative power of his teaching. It both modeled and consecrated the eye of the needle that each one of us must personally pass through in order to accomplish the “one thing necessary” here, according to his teaching: to die to self. I am not talking about literal crucifixion, of course, but I am talking about the literal laying down of our “life,” at least as we usually recognize it. Our only truly essential human task here, Jesus teaches, is to grow beyond the survival instincts of the animal brain and egoic operating system into the kenotic joy and generosity of full human personhood. His mission was to show us how to do this. It was a mission he freely accepted. And the energy of his freedom is what ultimately raises the passion above all the emotional trappings and reveals it as a sacred path of liberation.
Ev’ry time I look at you I don’t understand
Why you let the things you did get so out of hand
You’d have managed better if you’d had it planned
Now why’d you choose such a backward time
And such a strange land?
If you’d come today you could have reached a whole nation
Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication
Don’t you get me wrong, I only wanna know:
Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ
Who are you? What have you sacrificed?
Jesus Christ, Superstar
Do you think you’re what they say you are?
Tell me what you think about your friends at the top
Who'd you think, besides yourself, was the pick of the crop?
Buddha, was he where it's at? Is he where you are?
Could Mohamed move a mountain, or was that just PR?
Did you mean to die like that? Was that a mistake, or
Did you know your messy death would be a record-breaker?
Don’t you get me wrong, I only wanna know:
Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ
Who are you? What have you sacrificed?
Jesus Christ, Superstar
Do you think you’re what they say you are?
Jesus was executed with two others, the so-called robbers, who presumably were executed, like Jesus, for political reasons. Hence, we may assume, first, that all three were condemned in one and the same trial, and that, second, all three were buried in the same mass grave.
It is characteristic that according to all four Gospels, Jesus was buried neither by his family nor by his disciples (though in the Synoptics a few women witness his burial: Matt. 27:61; Mark 15:47; Luke 23:55). Instead, he was buried by a third party, a point that the description of the burial still clearly remembers. But it wasn’t two rich and pious men [Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus] who buried him – why should his family and his friends have stayed away from [such a] burial? It was the Romans who buried him in a mass grave. And with the large number of the graves, which were immediately flattened, no one could say anymore where it was.
There was no splendor and glory hovering over Jesus’ burial. There were no hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes. After the most wretched and ignominious of all deaths, it was presumably the most miserable and wretched of all burials.
Artist Diana Muñiz offers the following commentary on this powerful work:
[T]o enter into this image one must understand the Pietà as an artistic genre or representation of Mary's suffering – and Christ's humanity as suffering servant in the gospels. In this Pietà, Mary's suffering over the destroyed body of Christ after he is taken off the cross is reimagined and substituted as [the suffering and grief of] healthcare workers [in the midst of the current global coronavirus pandemic]. The Pietà invites us to join her in her grief because we can believe that we grieve as she grieved. In the stories about Jesus’s mother in John’s Gospel, we are not invited to participate in God’s story – that is Luke’s invitation – instead, we see that God comes to participate in our story.
Together, the appearance stories in the gospels make explicit what is promised in Mark: “You will see him.” They underline the parabolic meaning of Mark’s story of the empty tomb: Jesus is not among the dead, but among the living. Indeed, this is one of the central affirmations of Easter: Jesus lives. He is a figure of the present, not simply the past. The presence his followers had known in Jesus before his crucifixion continued to be experienced and to operate after it.
Jesus lives. He continues to be experienced after his death, though in a radically new way. He is no longer . . . confined to time and space, but [is] a reality who can enter locked rooms, journey with followers without being recognized, be experienced in both Galilee and Jerusalem, vanish in the moment of recognition, and abide with his followers always, “to the end of the age.”
In Jesus's life, you see what it actually means not only to realize the divinity of the heart of one's humanity, but to live it out. Jesus was not content only to realize he was divine at the core of his being. Realizing it made him very conscious of how to act as a divine being in the world, which simply means to act on behalf of everyone who is brokenhearted and destroyed and at a loss and humiliated in the culture, to serve the afflicted and to serve them with tremendous courage at the core of life.
I think this is Jesus's challenge to all of us, whatever path we're on. Do we love enough? Are we prepared to have not merely spiritual experiences and mystical awakenings, but actually to take responsibility for them and to work with their insights in the real, to transform the real into a clearer and clearer image of that love and justice that we discover to be the truth of God and the truth of ourselves.
This is Jesus's call to the world. He's saying, first of all, open up to the Divine within you. Really open up. Plunge into the divine part,
into the core of your being, open up your sacred heart, see the world radiate the fire of the sacred heart, see every being as utterly and totally holy, know nature as holy, know each animal as holy.
Then he's saying you have to take that knowledge into action in the world. You can't simply revel in it and enjoy it. You are responsible for it. You have to enact it, first in your inmost life as a soul, and then in the life of the heart, then in the mind, and then in the life of action within the world, which is to be nothing less than a completely divine, completely human being, working with the Divine in the human to transfigure the human more and more into an image of the Divine.
The Wild Reed's 2017 Holy Week series concludes with a third excerpt from "Resurrecting the Authentic Christ: Jesus as Guide to Mystical Love in Action," an interview with scholar and teacher Andrew Harvey published in the 2012 collection of Harvey's works entitled Radical Passion: Sacred Love and Wisdom in Action. (To start at the beginning of this series, click here.)
This year's series also includes images that seek to depict Jesus as the embodiment of the Cosmic Christ, which, says Harvey, is an expression in the West for the universal force of divine love, "the force of active, divine love that streams from the godhead to the creation."
In Jesus's life, you see what it actually means not only to realize the divinity of the heart of one's humanity, but to live it out. Jesus was not content only to realize he was divine at the core of his being. Realizing it made him very conscious of how to act as a divine being in the world, which simply means to act on behalf of everyone who is brokenhearted and destroyed and at a loss and humiliated in the culture, to serve the afflicted and to serve them with tremendous courage at the core of life.
I think this is Jesus's challenge to all of us, whatever path we're on. Do we love enough? Are we prepared to have not merely spiritual experiences and mystical awakenings, but actually to take responsibility for them and to work with their insights in the real, to transform the real into a clearer and clearer image of that love and justice that we discover to be the truth of God and the truth of ourselves.
This is Jesus's call to the world. He's saying, first of all, open up to the Divine within you. Really open up. Plunge into the divine part,
into the core of your being, open up your sacred heart, see the world radiate the fire of the sacred heart, see every being as utterly and totally holy, know nature as holy, know each animal as holy.
Then he's saying you have to take that knowledge into action in the world. You can't simply revel in it and enjoy it. You are responsible for it. You have to enact it, first in your inmost life as a soul, and then in the life of the heart, then in the mind, and then in the life of action within the world, which is to be nothing less than a completely divine, completely human being, working with the Divine in the human to transfigure the human more and more into an image of the Divine.
The Wild Reed's 2017 Holy Week series continues with a second excerpt from "Resurrecting the Authentic Christ: Jesus as Guide to Mystical Love in Action," an interview with scholar and teacher Andrew Harvey published in the 2012 collection of Harvey's works entitled Radical Passion: Sacred Love and Wisdom in Action. (For Part 1, click here.)
This year's series also includes images that seek to depict Jesus as the embodiment of the Cosmic Christ, which, says Harvey, is an expression in the West for the universal force of divine love, "the force of active, divine love that streams from the godhead to the creation."
One of the things that you discover in mystical experience is that the universe is alive in its ultimate depths. There's a very astonishing correspondence between the human consciousness and the divine consciousness. The whole that is the universe is both utterly impersonal and utterly and totally personal. In many mystical traditions the personal aspect is said to be a person. In Hinduism it's said to be the Purusha. In Sufism it's said to be the Friend or the Beloved; and in Christianity it's said to be the Cosmic Christ.
Everyone who's had a mystical experience has come into contact with what you could call the Cosmic Christ, but a very important way of connecting with the fullness of the Cosmic Christ is, I believe, looking at how the Cosmic Christ expressed his or her nature in the life of Jesus. Why this is important is, I believe, because Jesus brought a unique intensity of justice to the world's experience of God.
Other great liberators have helped us to see the nature of desire, to see how we must deal with our emotions, to see the nature of the illusion of the world, but I think Jesus, more than any of the great liberators, wanted to use this power of awakening to transform the existing conditions of the world, to create what he calls the Kingdom on earth. This Kingdom is the kingdom of justice, mercy, and radical equality. It's this kingdom that we need to create on the planet now if it's going to be preserved. We need a mystical awakening that's simultaneously an opening to the highest transcendent godhead and the mystical awakening that makes us aware that we are committed, through that awakening, to act responsibly at every level in society, to change society. We need an awakening, in other words, that's political and active and social and economic as well as purely personal. Jesus is a tremendous guide to the radical inclusiveness of such an awakening.
Images:Doyle Chappell. About Chappell's depictions of the Cosmic Christ, Kittredge Cherry of Jesus in Love Blogwrites:
A Cosmic Christ appears with subtle LGBT symbolism in the work of Chicago artist Doyle Chappell.
He has done variations on the Cosmic Christ theme for years – most recently in colorful windows dedicated Sept. 20, 2015 at A Church 4 Me Metropolitan Community Church where he is a member. The phrase “Cosmic Christ” refers to Christ who is continually incarnated in all creation.
“In the windows for A Church 4 Me in Chicago, the Christ wears a diamond earring on the left ear which for me is a bit of a gay reference,” Chappell told the Jesus in Love Blog.
Multiple intersecting and nested pink triangles within triangles repeat a symbol imposed on gay prisoners in Nazi Germany and later reclaimed by the LGBT community.
“The triangle is more than a gay symbol,” Chappell explained. “It is to me a symbol of ancient wisdom that points to a higher level of consciousness toward the ‘Omega Point’ as expressed by the philosopher and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, one of the first theologians to show interest in the ‘Cosmic Christ.’”
Ultimately Chappell used LGBT imagery to enhance his vision of a Cosmic Christ for everybody. “My main intent was to honor the idea that ‘The Cosmic Christ’ is in all that has been created since the Big Bang and beyond our concepts of Christianity . . . in all particles of creation and certainly all life and honors all who seek to connect with the sacred wisdom,” he said.
The Wild Reed's 2017 Holy Week series also includes images that seek to depict Jesus as the embodiment of the Cosmic Christ, which, as Harvey reminds us, is an expression in the West for the universal force of divine love, "the force of active, divine love that streams from the godhead to the creation."
The authentic Christ is a mystical revolutionary – an emotional, social, and political revolutionary. The force of the Cosmic Christ is one which [equips] us on all of these levels to make us capable of not only being directed to the Divine but of acting with that divine connection in the inferno of reality. This whole vision of mystical action is very important at a moment when [humanity is] so much in danger.
Resurrecting the authentic Christ [is therefore] the most important work at the moment, because what is essential is that the heart of the West be transformed. Western civilization must go through a very radical and very complete transformation, because, after all, it's the West that has the overwhelming power at the moment. The fate of the world depends, in a way, upon that power.
I believed once that the Eastern religions by themselves had enough mystical power and great tradition of understanding to be able to transform the West. Now I believe that the Western transformation can come through not only making available the great mystical practices of the East, but also through a restoration of the authentic Christ to the heart of the West.
The Cosmic Christ is the universal force of divine love, the force of active love that streams from the godhead to the creation. It is also the force of divine love that is incarnate in the human being. It's a transcendent and immanent force that is at once one with the divine love that's sustaining the universe at every level and also incarnate in every one of us, whether we're Christian, Buddhist, or whatever we call ourselves, at the very core of our being.
I established The Wild Reed in 2006 as a sign of solidarity with all who are dedicated to living lives of integrity – though, in particular, with gay people seeking to be true to both the gift of their sexuality and their Catholic faith. The Wild Reed's original by-line read, “Thoughts and reflections from a progressive, gay, Catholic perspective.” As you can see, it reads differently now. This is because my journey has, in many ways, taken me beyond, or perhaps better still, deeper into the realities that the words “progressive,” “gay,” and “Catholic” seek to describe.
Even though reeds can symbolize frailty, they may also represent the strength found in flexibility. Popular wisdom says that the green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm. Tall green reeds are associated with water, fertility, abundance, wealth, and rebirth. The sound of a reed pipe is often considered the voice of a soul pining for God or a lost love.
On September 24, 2012,Michael BaylyofCatholics for Marriage Equality MNwas interviewed by Suzanne Linton of Our World Today about same-sex relationships and why Catholics can vote 'no' on the proposed Minnesota anti-marriage equality amendment.
"I believe your blog to be of utmost importance for all people regardless of their orientation. . . . Thank you for your blog and the care and dedication that you give in bringing the TRUTH to everyone."– William
"Michael, if there is ever a moment in your day or in your life when you feel low and despondent and wonder whether what you are doing is anything worthwhile, think of this: thanks to your writing on the internet, a young man miles away is now willing to embrace life completely and use his talents and passions unashamedly to celebrate God and his creation. Any success I face in the future and any lives I touch would have been made possible thanks to you and your honesty and wisdom."– AB
"Since I discovered your blog I have felt so much more encouraged and inspired knowing that I'm not the only gay guy in the Catholic Church trying to balance my Faith and my sexuality. Continue being a beacon of hope and a guide to the future within our Church!"– Phillip
"Your posts about Catholic issues are always informative and well researched, and I especially appreciate your photography and the personal posts about your own experience. I'm very glad I found your blog and that I've had the chance to get to know you."– Crystal
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"I cannot claim to be an expert on Catholic blogs, but from what I've seen, The Wild Reed ranks among the very best."– Kevin
"Reading your blog leaves me with the consolation of knowing that the words Catholic, gay and progressive are not mutually exclusive.."– Patrick
"I grieve for the Roman institution’s betrayal of God’s invitation to change. I fear that somewhere in the midst of this denial is a great sin that rests on the shoulders of those who lead and those who passively follow. But knowing that there are voices, voices of the prophets out there gives me hope. Please keep up the good work."– Peter
"I ran across your blog the other day looking for something else. I stopped to look at it and then bookmarked it because you have written some excellent articles that I want to read. I find your writing to be insightful and interesting and I'm looking forward to reading more of it. Keep up the good work. We really, really need sane people with a voice these days."– Jane Gael
"Michael, your site is like water in the desert."– Jayden
