Lama's log

When I was around 22 I had one of the worst years of my life. It kicked off with my Grandmother dying of a rather horrid cancer riddled death and I struggled with it. I recall not understanding the concept of death. What happened at four minutes past six that meant she was dead when at three minutes past six she was still alive. It made no sense to me at the time.

I went to church at the end of that day. It was a Sunday. I don't know what I expected, I just knew that things were now operating in a spiritual dimension for me and I needed some help with it. I told one or two people that knew me well and who I trusted. They seemed to feel the need to hug me. This didn't help. I realise this aspect of my personality puts me at odds but there it is. I didn't really want anyone to tell me, 'there there we care', I needed some insight of what on earth was happening and how I could speak Jesus into this and find a way through with some sense of God.

The year got worse from there and in the end I resigned from work bought a rucksack and headed off. As I was trogging through the Himalayas I picked up a book that everyone was raving about. 'The Tibetan Book Of Living and Dying'. It's a very long time ago now since I read it but I remember feeling like I could breath again. There were techniques to deal with suffering and death, stories to help with the spiritual conflict I was experiencing. I read it and took a whole heap of stuff on board.

I reflected after reading that book that the expression of Christianity I was involved in was stripped of serious engagement in the spiritual. Platitudes and niceties were all that were expressed ( heartfelt though I think they were). There was nowhere and no-one who could engage with me on the horror of what I just witnessed, her body ransacked with tumors from her armpit to her vulva. There was no one to help me place it in the Christian story.

I have been reflecting a lot on that time this lent. The Buddhist communities I have experience of, place a lot of stock in how you are when you die. The importance of being at peace and in a good state of mind. A lot of time is spent on freeing yourself from the erratic mood swings we often go through and the trivial attachments that we are often bogged down with.

Christianity has at the centre of it a saviour who died in agony. He was racked with pain. He was one of the despised and his body at the end was in tatters. I have a faith context which speaks of a God who dwelt directly in abject pain and is identified in brokenness. Other faiths turn their face away from Christ's crucifixion because it's too hard. It's not a reflection of the holy for them. I believe in a God who walked with the least and suffered in His humanity.

It should have been my Christian context that was able to ease the pain of that time. God Himself was tortured and racked with pain yet I felt unable to connect with that side of my history. I was living with a resurrection community and as such we often also turn our faces away from Christ crucified. We have our empty crucifixes with Easter morning skimming sweetly over Good Friday as if it didn't count. When we do this we run the risk of denying our spiritual reality and we also allow ourselves the possibility of turning our faces away from the despised and the suffering in our communities. It allows us to tell ourselves we are better and different to them. We may be a bit bad but they are on a different level. We separate ourselves from suffering so we are not reminded too forcibly about our own frailty, we forget we follow a despised and bloodied saviour. That we meet with this saviour on the cross as well as outside the empty tomb.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1:23-24:

23but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

There is a massive unacceptability in the crucifixion which I think I am starting to touch on again. I'm hoping to be able to understand it more deeply as the power and wisdom of God and display some of our innate spirituality through it.