Celtic Reflection
The Rev. David T. Anderson
November 14, 2010
This reflection is on resurrection. It is becoming clearer to me that Resurrection – New
Life – is about more than just life after death, and it is also not just about more life like
we have known it when it infuses our present life.
One very articulate – he’s a writer, and an instructor of writing at Duke, so I shouldn’t be
surprised – man had a stunningly cruel and severe battle with a cancer that attacked his
spine. Reynolds Price did battle with the cancer via traumatic treatments of radiation,
that left him alive, but never the same: paralyzed from the chest down. Who he was is
gone. When he finally ventures into giving a little advice, he poignantly says:
“But you are not that person now. Who’ll you be tomorrow? And who do you propose
to be from here to the grave, which may be hours or decades down the road? That
(former) person is dead… Have one good cry… then staunch the grief… Next, find your
way to be somebody else, the next viable you – a stripped down while other clear-eyed
person, realistic as a sawed-off shotgun and thankful for air, not to speak of the human
kindness you’ll meet if you get normal luck.” (A Whole New Life, 182-3)
His crucifixion opens him to testing Resurrection new life, creating a new person. The
impact of resurrection is not about just enduring the big and little deaths we die as we
journey through our human life so that we can get back to normalcy, to who we were. In
a conversation with a new dad, who loves his children tremendously and authentically,
but was exhausted with trying to get through the constant demands and sleeplessness of a
new born being added to an already busy young family, he said: “I just want it to get back
to normal in our house.” I only patted his shoulder and dared not say: “It never will; it’s
new life for you too.” But he spoke what most of us want when change/our little and big
deaths before dying come: how we want what is past, and how we shy away from
what/who to be when we are not in control, when the person we were is no longer.
Resurrection happens when deaths come, when brokenness crushes, when weight is too
heavy to bear; when a dead end is acknowledged; when the way forward isn’t the same
old same old. It comes in the calm after the torment, in the exhaustion after the suffering,
in the vulnerability of accurately realizing our creatureliness and transitoriness and
impotency. It comes even in the grasp of a new love, so strong you know you would die
for him/her. Resurrection also comes in the less dramatic, when we intentionally risk
testing whether God is real and with us, and so venture into more deeply trusting and
surrendering our life to allow God’s New Life to fill it, to live in us and through us.
Resurrection has a feeling. It is light, sometimes visually, sometimes emotionally and
always interiorly. It sometimes feels like Jesus’ eyes looking straight into our soul; its
sometimes tastes like a deliciously holy Spirit; it sometimes sounds like a song of Love
Unknown. It always brings transformation, into God knows what, and who. And it is
awesome.