Easter Thoughts

As I pondered the resurrection story this year, I was struck by the relentless pursuit of a God who refuses to give us up, to let sin win. Surely a man pursuing a woman would soon move on if she gave him as little encouragement as we give God. And yet his passionate pursuit of humanity brought him to the cross…and his ultimate victory was gained when he rose from the dead.

Others have said it better than I can, so I will partially quote a couple poems here.

Holy Sonnet #14

John Donne

Batter my heart, three-person'd God ; for you

As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;

That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend

Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,

Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,

But am betroth'd unto your enemy ;

Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. 

The Hound of Heaven (lines 1-51, 151-182)

Francis Thompson

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;

  I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

    Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears

I hid from Him, and under running laughter.     

      Up vistaed hopes I sped;

      And shot, precipitated,

Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,

  From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.

      But with unhurrying chase,       

      And unperturbèd pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

      They beat—and a Voice beat

      More instant than the Feet—

‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’   

          I pleaded, outlaw-wise,

By many a hearted casement, curtained red,

  Trellised with intertwining charities;

(For, though I knew His love Who followèd,

        Yet was I sore adread   

Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside).

But, if one little casement parted wide,

  The gust of His approach would clash it to.

  Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.

Across the margent of the world I fled,

  And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,

  Smiting for shelter on their clangèd bars;

        Fretted to dulcet jars

And silvern chatter the pale ports o’ the moon.

I said to Dawn: Be sudden—to Eve: Be soon;      

  With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over

        From this tremendous Lover—

Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!

  I tempted all His servitors, but to find

My own betrayal in their constancy,

In faith to Him their fickleness to me,

  Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit.

To all swift things for swiftness did I sue;

  Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.

      But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,     

    The long savannahs of the blue;

        Or whether, Thunder-driven,

    They clanged his chariot ’thwart a heaven,

Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o’ their feet:—

  Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.       

      Still with unhurrying chase,

      And unperturbèd pace,

    Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

      Came on the following Feet,

      And a Voice above their beat—       

    ‘Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me.’

His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.

Whether man’s heart or life it be which yields

  Thee harvest, must Thy harvest-fields

  Be dunged with rotten death?

      Now of that long pursuit

    Comes on at hand the bruit;

  That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:

    ‘And is thy earth so marred,

    Shattered in shard on shard?

  Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!

  Strange, piteous, futile thing!

Wherefore should any set thee love apart?

Seeing none but I makes much of naught’ (He said),

‘And human love needs human meriting:

  How hast thou merited—

Of all man’s clotted clay the dingiest clot?

  Alack, thou knowest not

How little worthy of any love thou art!

Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,

  Save Me, save only Me?

All which I took from thee I did but take,

  Not for thy harms,

But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms.

  All which thy child’s mistake

Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:

  Rise, clasp My hand, and come!’

  Halts by me that footfall:

  Is my gloom, after all,

Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?

  ‘Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,

  I am He Whom thou seekest!

Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.’

A Weather Story

Today I met some friends for coffee around 3:30.  

(And yes, shockingly, I actually did drink coffee.)

It was a nice enough day - overcast, it had rained, but warm enough so one of my friends wore Capri type pants and the coffee shop propped its door open.  (Probably in the 50's, maybe low 60's, but no wind) 

I left there and went to Walmart.   When I entered Walmart around 5pm, it was still a pleasant day, though some of the clouds looked rather ominous.  I exited Walmart at 6pm, accompanied by driving sleet/hail and a cacophony of rolling thunder and flashing lightening.  (Pretty sure that's the first thunder of the year.)   

This picture doesn't do justice to the sheets of sleet you could see coming down.

At that point there was already an inch or two of white stuff covering everything and the roads were a bit treacherous.  

I thought to my self, "This can't last!  It will blow itself out soon."    

Clearly, I am not a prophet.  

The sleet didn't last, it's true, but it turned to snow.  I was running errands, so I would make a mad dash into the stores, slush soaking my pants up to my knees, white snow flakes obscuring the green of my coat.  After completing whatever purchases I had to make (rarely more than a few minutes at each stop) I would dash back out to my car where I would have to start the defroster and sweep snow off my car so I could attempt to see out the windows.  


Once I finally made it home, my car looked like this: 

 And outside the garage you could see where the wind had piled snow against the garage door.

 It even tried to block up my door.

It's now nearly 11pm and the snow storm is still going strong with several inches of snow accrued already.  

It's the traditional Easter Blizzard, just a few days early. 

This was the snow storm on Easter when I was probably about one and a half...just as evidence of how common this sort of occurrence is.  

 Bonus Picture (just because it was on the same page in the scrapbook):  I apparently really loved to sing with my dad. :)

Passion Week(s)

I have been sadly remiss in keeping you updated on the many events here in the land over the past week or so.  It's just there have been so many of them, and I've been so busy working on a paper in between times, that I haven't had time to write a complete blog.  I've started at times to write down my thoughts, but never somehow got them into a form I would be comfortable posting.  So, here and now I will try to give you an abridged update of my thoughts and experiences over the last week.

It started with Palm Sunday, a little over a week ago now.  I should specifiy.  It was Palm Sunday for the Western chruch.  Everything is celebrated a week later in the Eastern Orthodox church (at least this year).  

So for Palm Sunday a group of people gathered on the Mount of Olives, at the chruch where supposedly Jesus mounted the donkey or something like that.  They then proceded down the mount, waving palm branches and singing.  

Some JUC students joined them.  I personally watched the procession from the other side of the Kidron Valley and then joined them as they went inside Lion's Gate.  

(Actually, I also got to hang out before hand with some priests-in-training at St. Anne's.  That in itself was pretty interesting.)

One thing that I've thought about some since arriving in Israel is, well, I guess I'd call it the "emotional response" that people have to the land.  Not that emotion is all bad...I just wish sometimes that there would be a little less emotion and a little more truth and wisdom.  Holidays here seem to bring out a lot of emotion in people...which can lead to some very bad situations.  But perhaps I'll say more on that later.

At any rate, the procession was interesting and thought provoking.  

Wednesday, as I've already posted, we went on a hike.  Not really related to the holidays, but fun.  

On Thursday a group of us took the opportunity to go to the Samaritan Passover.  

Getting the lambs ready for slaughter:

This is a unique experience for many reasons.  For on thing, the Samaritans are the only group that still sacrifices lambs for passover as commanded in the Torah.  The Jews have replaced this practice with the seder meal.  I'm sure that the modern Samaritan practice is quite different from what was originated by Moses, but it's the closest thing we have.  

Preists praying and chanting before the sacrifice:

It's also an interesting experience because of the Samaritans themselves.  They consider themselves to be the real decendants of Abraham.  

Preparing the lambs:

While historically we are unsure of their exact origin, it seems likely that they are decended from the remnants of the northern kingdom of Israel, meaning that they have never been exiled from the land.  They follow the 5 books of Moses, and have done so continuously, in the land, for over 2000 years now.  Which is a better run in the land than the Jews have ever had.  Today there are about 750 Samaritains.  

About half of them live on Mt. Gerazim and speak Arabic, and the other half live in a suburb of Tel Aviv and speak Hebrew.  They are a rather unique ethinic group, with unique costoms.  All Biblical connections asside, it was a unique cultural experience.  

Hyssop dipped in blood:

We also got to see the remains of the Samaritan temple:

Friday the most interesting event was the triclinium meal we had in the evening.  

Some of the costumes:

A triclinium was sort of a Roman style dinning room with low tables set up in a U-shape and cushions for the guests to recline upon.  Probably the set up at the last supper would have been similar.   

Our Master Tecton performs some service for us, probably relighting a lamp:

There are some interesting implications to be found here, which I do not have the energy to repeat here.  Perhaps someday. :)  At any rate, we had fun attempting to recline and eat with our hands and not jostle the person next to us too much.  

Sunday was Resurrection Sunday.  By noon I had already been to two different church services at two different churches.  

At 6am I went to the sunrise service at St. Andrew's Scottish Presbyterian Church.  I was a little late.  Oops.  It was hard to get up after4.5 hours of sleep.  I think they were just finishing the first song when I arrived.  

We prayed and then moved from the garden to the front of the church where we watched the sunrise.  

We sang a little more, read some scripture, and the pastor gave a short message.  One of the things he said struck me.  He talked about John 20, when all the disciples had come together for a meeting, and most of them probably didn't even know why they had come.  There were wild rumors - the tomb was empty?  Accusations - did they know enough to go to the right tomb?  Stories of one angel, or was it two?  Mary Magdalen claimed to have seen Jesus himself, but "she was an unsteady soul, known to give in to wild exaggerations."  Then suddenly the tumult was stilled as Jesus himself stood among them.  We like to give ourselves airs today in the 21st century: of course these poor, ignorant Galileans were somehow mistaken in their beliefs.  As if any of the questions we raise today are not the exact questions they were asking that first night.  And their doubts were stilled in the presence of the risen Christ.  If any of those questions had still remained in their minds, how can we think that they would have go on to suffer and die as history tells us they did?  

I was back at school by 7 and then left for a service at Christ's Church at 9:00.  This time I didn't go by myself but tagged along with a friend, which I think was a good choice.  It seems that I usally end up going to church by myself and sitting by myself (though sometimes there are other people there that I know and talk to after the serice.)  I have been to Christ's Church a couple times before, though not this semester (other than Good Friday).  I always enjoyed it fairly well, but I think this time I enjoyed it more, and I think that I can partially attribute that to the company I was with.  I sat between Cameron and Matt, and Shan and Julia were in front of us.  I think perhaps that knowing I had friends around me, friends that I could hear and see as they sing and that could hear and see me, helped me to enter into the spirit of the songs a little more.  It was a good reminder that the Church is a body, and we need each other.  The sermon there was also good, stressing the importance of the ressurection.  

Then on the way home we saw another little parade.  And the Easter Bunny. :)  Oh Jerusalem!

To celebrate Easter on campus we had a BBQ that afternoon, which was a lovely break from paper writing and weird cultural experiences.   

A friend even started to teach me to throw a football.  :)

So basically, it's been a crazy week.  And the Orthodox Easter week is just starting, so there may be more to come.  And finals are looming, so please be patient as I probably post less. :)  

Oh, and while I'm thinking of it...I know there are people who read this...so if you ever feel like leaving a comment and saying hi, I'd love to hear from you. :)