“We are the Easter People and Hallelujah is our song

Embrace the Light. It may not have the sort of cookies that the Dark Side has, but it does offer love, hope, direction, and salvation. Thank you Jesus. Embrace the Light “We are the Easter People and Hallelujah is our song!”—Pope John Paul II (1920-2005) “Rejoice!” Jesus’s first statement after His torture, crucifixion, and death.—Matthew 28:9 NKJV “Rejoice in the Lord always: again I will say, Rejoice!”—Philippians 4:4 “Then God said, ‘Let there be light:’ and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good…” —Genesis 1:3, 4 “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of Light.”—Ephesians 5:8 “This then is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all.”—1 John 1:5 “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” —John 1:4, 5 “All these fifty years of conscious brooding have brought me no nearer to the answer to the question, ‘What are light quanta?’ Nowadays every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks he knows it, but he is mistaken.”—Albert Einstein (1879-1955) John Paul II spoke for all Christians when he made the above pronouncement. Christians are indeed “the Easter people,” and our song is, or at least should be, one of joy and jubilation. As the apostle Paul admonished us, we should rejoice in the Lord always, not just on religious holidays such as Christmas and Easter, not just on Sundays, but always. For in truth every day is the Lord’s day, and every location a potential place of worship. As Elizabeth Barrett Browning observed some time ago (referencing Exodus 3:5), for those who have eyes to see—that is, for those with a sufficiently elevated level of consciousness—everything is imbued with the sacred. There is naught that is not holy: Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes, The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries…. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) It has ever been thus—the ever-present glory around us, and our ignorance of it. Jesus knew all too well about our blindness, and forgave us our ignorance. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” applies to all of us, not just the ones who crucified Him. When it comes to spiritual matters we are all dumb as a box of doorknobs most of the time. There is a side of us that is…quite at odds with our spiritual side. I have long enjoyed the way the poet Carl Sandberg likened our various proclivities to the way different animals act: There is a wolf in me ... There is a fox in me ... There is a hog in me ... There is a fish in me ... There is a baboon in me ... There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird ... O, I got a zoo…I came from the wilderness.—Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) “Wilderness” Indeed, we all come from the “wilderness,” but as Jesus taught in the parable of “The Prodigal Son,” it is past time we came to our senses and stopped having “fun” in the pig sty and headed home—where our Father awaits to welcome us with love and open arms. I acknowledge the light and the dark in me. I do not deny my feet of clay, my humanity, my faults and foibles—but neither do I celebrate them, nor permit them to run roughshod over my “better nature.” That “better nature” is the spark of divinity we all have in us—a “chip off the old block” you might say. I consider it my job and privilege to cultivate and nurture that spark until it flares into the clear spiritual light of Truth. Then I shall be released. In the meantime I play the old balancing act between right and wrong, good and evil, God and ego. And as I practice my balancing act, I am wending my way “home,” however haltingly and slow. My spiritual progress is often of the “three steps forward, two steps back” variety, but nevertheless it is progress—and that’s key. It is not a case of my being either a saint, or a sinner—I am both a saint and a sinner. And so it is with most of us. The important thing; the key thing, is that we not be content with our spiritual status quo, but strive to reach the light, to release what Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s husband Robert called our “imprisoned splendor.” As we sit here on “spaceship earth,” zooming through outer space at 67,062 mph, and wondering if we will be able to find a good parking spot at the mall and other such weighty matters, we would do well to occasionally broaden our horizons and elevate our consciousness a bit by contemplating just how very…strange and marvelous reality truly is. One of my favorite snippets of poetry by Conrad Aiken touches on this sense of wonder: There are houses hanging above the stars And stars hung under a sea… And a sun far off in a shell of silence Dapples my walls for me…. —Conrad Aiken (1889-1973) The Bible tells us that a feeling of respectful awe toward the Creator (and His creation) is the beginning of wisdom, and so it is. (Although “fear of the Lord” is how the Bible expresses the “respectful awe” I mention, it should be noted that the word “fear” as used in the Bible is very “context sensitive.” That is, its meaning depends on the words surrounding it. In this case a “respectful awe” is what is meant, as opposed to “fear” as it is commonly understood). “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” 2 Tim. 1:7 As the above scripture points out, God does not want timid fearful supplicants, but powerful, joyous, courageous devotees. When confronted with the dim, dark, unenlightened areas of this material world, Jesus did not back away and say “that is the way of the world,” or kismet, or fate. No, He courageously changed things. Where there was illness he cured it, where there was arrogance and vanity He exposed it, where there was religious stupidity He ridiculed it, and where there was darkness he brought Light. He brought Love. Not love as the world knows it, but the radiant undiluted light of God’s unconditional Love. And for that He was beaten and crucified, and for that He died. But He did so much more than that, didn’t He? ...when you get down to it, His death was not that remarkable; horrible, yes; but there have been many horrible deaths, and many crucifixions. The one absolutely singular event involving Jesus Christ was His resurrection from the dead. No one before or since has ever done that. Forget all your near death experiences; there was nothing near about the death of our Lord. Everyone recognized that He was dead. There was no question about that. Vic Biorseth “Thoughts on the Easter Rising” And let’s have no talk of “his followers made up the whole story” shall we? “For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” 2 Peter 1:16 People 2,000 years ago were no doubt technologically ignorant, but they were far from stupid. The intelligence of Saul of Tarsus (St. Paul), or a bit later Augustine of Hippo (St. Augustine) shine across the years undiminished. Folks today are no smarter than the people were 2,000 years ago simply because we have all these “gadgets and gizmos” made possible by the knowledge slowly accumulated over the centuries. Jesus’s followers were not country bumpkins who packed up and left home for all points of the compass, and reportedly suffered painful martyrdom, just for grins. Like Saul on the road to Damascus they had all experienced something that shook their world to the bone—something worth dying for, something worth living for. They did not just believe, they knew. Jesus had died and then come back from the dead, and they knew it. Now that’s something worth writing home about. That’s something worth celebrating and shouting from the roof tops. Death had demonstrably been proven to be a fraud, a phony, an ephemeral boogie-man that disappeared when the Light was turned on. “Where, Odeath, is your victory? Where, Odeath, is your sting?” (Sidebar: Permit me a brief aside—it is “off message” a bit from this article’s subject, but it does tie in with its theme. I wish to underline the fact that we are not our bodies. This may sound like utter foolishness to most folks, but nonetheless it is true—my body is mine, but it is not me. There is nothing especially mysterious or spiritual about my observation, it is simply the way things are—as a little thought will prove. We cannot be that which we observe—simple as that. Or to put it another way, we cannot be that which we are aware of. We must “step back” from something in order to observe it, in order to be aware of it. If you were to, say look at a flower, you would not claim that you are that flower. You would say that you (the subject) were observing that flower (the object). It is not rocket science then to extrapolate that truth to a more personal level and say that you (the subject) are not your body (the object). If we are aware of something then we are obviously not the thing that we are aware of. I am aware of my body, hence I am not my body. As I say, it is mine but it is not me. The same goes for my intellect and thoughts—I am aware of them, therefore they cannot be me. So what are they? They are my most immediate environment. But where’s that leave me? As pure awareness. There is nothing spooky, or mystical, or especially difficult to grasp about any of this [experiencing the truth of it, as opposed to grasping it intellectually is a different matter altogether]. I mention all this by way of introducing the idea that humanity is still very much asleep to reality, and in an almost hypnotic state of denial about what is true. The truths that Jesus brought to the world 2,000 years ago are just as valid, true, and vital as when He first brought then to our attention. Given our still woeful state of ignorance, coupled with the two-edged sword of our technological cleverness, His teachings are more needed today than ever. “Awake thou that sleepest.”) Many of us will celebrate Jesus’s Resurrection this Easter Sunday, as well we should. Permit me to suggest that we take the opportunity to commit, or re-commit ourselves to the reality of being “children of light.” Embrace the Light. As Shakespeare wrote, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Yes, and there are more things than science has dreamt of, whatever is said to the contrary. I love science; it is a marvelous tool for delving into material things—but it has its limits, which are unfortunately glossed over for the most part by those intent on pushing a secular humanist agenda. Science can tell us much that is useful, helpful, and even essential, but it cannot tell us why we exist. It cannot weigh and measure love, nor can it calibrate joy. It has no empirical way of “proving” happiness. At best it can observe the effects of such things, but not the reality of the thing itself. In short, science has its limits of usefulness and value, and to say otherwise is myopic foolishness. Just as Newtonian physics is incorporated into and enfolded within the larger context of quantum mechanics, science too is enfolded within the larger context of spirituality. In a recent article Andrew Ferguson wrote “A materialist who lived his life according to his professed convictions—understanding himself to have no moral agency, seeing his friends and family as genetically determined robots—wouldn’t just be a materialist: He’d be a psychopath.” Ferguson goes on to say that materialists generally do not practice what they preach, and are not in the least psychopathic. To which the obvious question is, then why preach such things? Why disseminate a philosophy that when followed to the “T” leads inexorably to a bizarrely barren life, if not an actively psychotic one? The answer seems to be that the people who expound such views suffer from a sort of “godphobia,” or more to the point, “Godphobia,” which makes anything remotely spiritual anathema to them. The current impasse between science and spirituality really needs to end. It is parochial, limiting, and asinine. Science and spirituality should be complementing each other, not ignoring or fighting with one another. As I have mentioned before in my articles, I have every sympathy for a person who has turned away from “God” because of faulty religious teachings, or an erroneous concept of what God is or isn’t—but I have no time for someone who uses such excuses as a beard for their self-centered wish to grant carte blanche to their ego’s endless list of desires. Daniel Greenfield recently wrote an article about radical environmentalism (”Night Falls on Civilization”) in which among other things he describes “Earth Hour”—a staged event in which the power is turned off for an hour to a house, or a village, or a city. As Greenfield explains it: Environmentalism has degenerated into a conviction that all human activity is destructive because the species of man is the greatest threat to the planet and all life on it. Each death, each act of undoing and unmaking, each darkness that is brought about by the cessation of humanity becomes a profoundly environmentalist activity. Greenfield uses a short, one sentence paragraph to describe the philosophy behind “Earth Hour”—“Embrace the darkness.” I thought when I read that, “Good God, that pretty much sums up the radical left’s philosophy doesn’t it?” Abortion, euthanasia, population reduction, and all the rest of their misanthropic, misandric, misogynistic collection of nay-saying nihilistic clap-trap—all fit in nicely with the sentiment “Embrace the darkness.” Besides, it sounds snappier than “Come to the Dark Side—we have cookies.” I’ll go Daniel one better—I can sum up the Left’s position in one word—“No!” No life, no birth, no family, no country, no freedom, no guns, no borders, no gas, no property, no industry, no cars, no rights, no lights, no meaning, and no point. And that’s just for starters. It is worth noting that the very word itself tends to make one shrink inside, and feel diminished and small. Oh, and no Jesus. “No” can be good sometimes though. A student in Florida (Ryan Rotela) recently told a teacher “No” when the teacher told the class to “Stomp on Jesus”—or specifically, to stomp on the word “Jesus” written on a piece of paper. It says something about the state of our educational system and culture that Ryan was the only student who refused to comply with the teacher’s demand. Mr. Rotela was suspended from this class for his “rebellious” attitude. I’m surprised he wasn’t sent to a re-education camp. (Can you imagine the hue and cry that would have exploded from the media if the name written on that piece of paper had been “Muhammad?” Can you imagine!? Do you need any more proof that Christianity is targeted for extinction by the Left. Do you need any more proof that Islam has “most favored status” among the intelligentsia and academics)? As opposed to the contracting, restrictive feel of the word “no,” the word “yes” has an expansive, freeing, uplifting effect. Jesus returned from the dead in order to give us all one big YES! “...as God is faithful, our word to you was not Yes and No. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us…was not Yes and No, but in Him was Yes. For all the promises of God in Him are Yes…” Embrace the Light. It may not have the sort of cookies that the Dark Side has, but it does offer love, hope, direction, and salvation. Thank you Jesus.