Sunday, April 24, 2011

Get The Big Rock Out Of My Way

Easter. I understand the story. That's always been enough for me. Being true to one's self will take you beyond this life. Staying on the path is the challenge. Will you stay on it once you see what happens to those whose path was to show us this? And I'm just talking about those lives ended by the mercy of a bullet. There is a reason why those who are not governed by  kings, emperors or presidents are no longer paraded by us, beaten, asphyxiated, impaled and crucified. That just happens to celebrities. But it is us who are nailed to one place. There is no path. Our means of "travel" has been placed in our hands. How can you be true to yourself when you're staring at your cellphone, friends? That's just to distract you from the television. And that is it. There is no path. There is no beyond. Live with it. How does that sit with you? Hopefully, you're still reading.

The Jews did not kill Christ. It was the rabble. It was you and me. Galilee was a ghetto where people had to choose whether to feed their family or pay tax to the emperor. Sound familiar? Imagine an anti-authoritarian peasant telling the rabble that they have the power, not the emperor. That also means the onus of life is on them and not an old man in the sky. The king wants to kill you for saying youre the king and the religious want to kill you for saying you're God. Then you die and become the old man in the sky. Finally, one of our most beloved celebrity filmmakers decides to sink his personal fortune into telling a story that brings you back down to earth and runs you through the whole gamut again. Show the man that walks the path no matter what the cost!! Millions see it. Millions are made. What gets taken away? The violence. It's too violent. The story of the mother, Mary? The mother sees her son fall and rushes to his side like shes done countless times. The story of the love, Magdalene? He offers a hand to someone lynched and ostracized. The fate of so many other characters such as Judas, Peter, John, etc? Not a trace of these elements turn up in what is written and reported. Instead, we crucify the filmmaker and continue to do so with glee. In these times we raise them up and take them down with glee and efficiency that puts the Romans to shame.

Like children, we still don't know what we want and we're still waiting for someone else to do the heavy lifting for us.  In that Roman outpost, the rabble were expecting a magic king and got a carpenter's son. They destroyed him because he didnt do magic. Instead, he prayed for the forgiveness of those who visited inhuman amounts of pain and suffering upon him. I guess it's not extraordinary enough.

At some point, science rose to power and the skeptics found their own religion. The story comes under attack for being a story. The main character comes under attack for being too extraordinary. He's just not believable. Science doesn't see it but it creates the distraction from truth it so readily accuses the spiritual of being. If the kingdom of god and all of our answers lie in the present moment, we must remain distracted from it if we are to be governed and remain docile. You may not believe someone can die and return to life but I am sure you can imagine people experiencing something awesome enough to find their own path and create the extraordinary. The story remains perfect.