What lives Always and Forever?

Immortality – What lives forever and always?

With Valentine’s Day just past, I have heard the words – ALWAYS and FOREVER – used quite a bit.  Also, the nihilistic notion of always & forever are being bandied about in pop-culture through the immortality of vampires, zombies, and characters that die and return endlessly.  Always & forever is an irregular long time that stretches on and on and on.

I thought of these words, and the notion of immortality, again yesterday in the context of my tradition’s Lent.  While vampires and zombies have endless life, it is a grim and seeming hopeless existence. Futile in life and death.  Valentine’s Day is about the hope of always and forever love. Lent is a journey to the certainty of an always and forever love.

Christianity’s period Lent is an annual 40 days of preparation and cleansing before the celebration of life eternal at Easter. Easter celebrates that death has lost its sting. Easter is about life forever with God. Most Christians recognize Lent as the opportunity to shed all that holds us back from real life, not forever life.

Some people hold that Christianity, perhaps religion of any kind, is a fool’s paradise, or as Karl Marx said, “The opiate of the masses.” Perhaps this idea of life eternal is too unbelievable or undesirable for some, while others want to hold on to life with all they have.

My notion of religion and Lent run as a partnership.  While I do believe that life eternal does exist with God, I do not strive to hold on to this life forever and a day. I know that all things change and transform and evolve. And most often move from good to better to best to penultimate. We need to be able to let go to move forward. And I am not a fool or on any opiate.

Lent is actually the time to return to God, to repent. In the book, Worship as Repentance, Walter Sundberg says that this period is to strip all “illusions away so we know who we are and how short we fall standing before God and holy things.”

Lent begins with Ash Wednesday and reminds us not of our immortality but our mortality.  People are marked with ashes, the sign of our mortality. We hear the words, “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” Reminiscent of words often heard at funerals, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” Lent is the journey to the cross, where Jesus the Christ dies so that all might have real life. He defeats death once and for all – for all!  Lent concludes at the feast of Easter, when this life in fullness rises.  

Lent is an opportunity to let go of all that is unreal.  It shows us again and again that we are finite creatures who need each other and God. Lent calls us to the hope and promise of Easter, where God’s love wins always and forever. The finite creatures that we are fall away to who we were meant to be – creatures not made to live forever, but to love always and forever. The real immortals in this world come in the relationships we build and the love we leave.  

What will your forever and always legacy look like? 

Fruit in a World of Doubt

"So today I ate a mango like a savage. I bet if anyone saw me they would have thought there was a zombie in disguise living across the street"  - from the web

 “The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control.”  (Galatians 5: 22-23).

In a few weeks, I’ll return to serve in parish ministry. There are amazing wondrous things about parish ministry and serving God’s people.  It is sweet and ripe with compassion and love. It often flourishes with people sharing tender care for each other, and seeking service first. Genuine generosity blossoms from many hearts with unmatched fragrant grace.

And occasionally there is that pit. People are people and ministry can be tough and hard-hearted. Ministers pray for their people to be tender-hearted, but sometimes the pastor herself has a heart of stone. Human frailty deceives wearing the skin of beauty. It is peeled back to reveal a less than appealing core. No fruit bearing there.

“Don’t be [hardhearted] as your ancestors were. Clasp God’s outstretched hand. Come to his Temple of holy worship, consecrated for all time. Serve God, your God.” 2 Chronicles 30:8

Let Us Talents and Tongues Employ V3

                           Jesus calls us in, sends us out             

                         bearing fruit in a world of doubt,                      

                           gives us love to tell, bread to share:                

                        God (Immanuel) ev'rywhere!         

                                                                  Jesus lives again, earth can breathe again

                                                                  pass the word around; loaves abound.

                                                                  Jesus lives again, earth can breathe again

                                                                  pass the Word around; loaves abound!

                  

   One of the most perfect fruit is a mango. Over 1000 varieties worldwide, it is a sensuous and tempting fruit, with a dizzying fruity, piney perfume . And a taste that is a temptation hard to resist.  It has even been pondered, that given its semi-tropical location, the Garden of Eden’s tempting fruit was really a mango.

 

Incidentally, in Eastern religions, the mango is a symbol of love. The mango leaves and blossoms are used in the worship of Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge, arts (music of love), creativity, eloquence and power. The symbol of the mango is in many eastern arts – a paisley shape. Mangos are mostly self-perpetuating. Only 15% are male and the rest both.

 

For our wedding shower, my husband and I got a mango slicer. One of the best inventions since blogs. I love the sweet fruity taste and the piney smell of a ripe mango. They are amazing and heavenly. Prior to this great gift, I would drool over mango from afar. They were too tough to figure out how to slice on my own to remove that huge stone pit, and too costly to buy the sliced up ones with any regularity from the store.

 

 Now it is regularly Mango Mondays at our house, and other days to boot. On those days, I actually sing a little song as I am preparing the mango for our enjoyment. First, I use the fantastic slicer to remove the big pit, then I lovingly cultivate the fruit.  (Oh, actually something to thank George Bush for -  The nuclear deal Bush signed with India allowed for the US to import mangoes and develop a love for them that showed imports triple in ten years! Mangos were imported more scarcely prior.)

 

The dark side of this fruit. Incredibly, mangos are related to poison ivy and you can get a rash from their skin and sap resin. The mango pits{Endocarp – a gross word in itself] are large, and sometimes the fruit does not yield that much.

Contemplating mangos, that is how I sometimes feel.  A hopeful depiction of beauty and goodness with this large pit of anger and madness inside. The love and compassion one needs for God’s service gives way to reveal a hardhearted core. Maybe there is only a zombie in disguise.

The hardness I fear  that can be in my heart feels like it leaves little room for the extraordinary love and kindness required in ministry.  God, send me a mango-type slicer to prune away the hardness in my heart so as to get to the tender, juicy loving-kindness of servant mango magic ministry.

One way can be learned by starting to see the magic in everything. Sometimes it seems to be hiding but it is always there. The more we can see the magic in one thing, a tiny flower, a mango, someone we love, then the more we are able to see the magic in everything and in everyone. Where does the mango stop and the sky begin? 

 Joshua Kadison, musician and author of “17 Ways To Eat A Mango: A Discovered Journal of Life on an Island of Miracles”, Hyperion, 1999

Thank you God for answered prayer and helping me to see more magic and the Spirit of a Mango Ministry.