Christ – Jane Tawel

What Small Part of Oneness Am I?

by Jane Tawel

What Small Part of Oneness Am I?

By Jane Tawel

The ray of light is from the Sun,

it is of the Sun,

but it is not the Sun.

The cloud is in the Sky,

it is of the Sky,

but it is not the Sky.

I am in Space,

I am of the Space,

but I am not Space.

I am in Life’s Ocean,

I am not the Ocean,

but I am a small wave.

I am in God,

I am of God,

but I am not God.

If I accept the wonderous mystery

of being blind to what lies beyond,

I will be the Light.

If I let go of my anxious need

to control the weather of my life,

I will be content with being now —

Floating, not digging in and dissipating.

If I release all my desires

To contain and to enlarge myself,

My Heart will open the cage of my mind

and I will be as One;

Spacious with All.

If I, with thanks, set learning aside,

And experience God

In the Unknowingness and Love

Of the God of All Creation and All

I will no longer play God —

I will be Christ.

“Each day, I am looking at my small self as dead

And yet I AM — more alive than ever.

The anxious, painful, over-thinking self is slowly decaying.

I realize the tiny me is no longer only who I AM.

But instead, Suffering becomes Love and Joy

in the small self that is not myself

But a resurrected Savior of Goodness and Peace”**

Choose the name you wish to be crucified with –

Be it Krishna, Buddha, or as was chosen for me —

The Christ.

Die to all that is in you that does not save.

Die to all that is within you that does not heal.

Die to all that is in you that does not forgive.

Die to all that is in you that is not at peace.

Live to all that is Love.

Live to only that which is Love.

Let the clouds disperse

and release into the vast mystery

of The Sky.

Let the ray of Light dissipate

as it touches the Earth

warming others

and new things will grow.

Let the wave resolve back into the Ocean

and come and go

We know not from where or where to

But always at one with the Ocean,

Alive forever in the One.

Live, and move and have your being

in God.

And be your True Spacious Self

Be the Light of “just as I AM”*

What small part am I

in the ever-moving parts

of this planet’s short life?

In Light of Eternity,

What is Yesterday? Tomorrow? Today?

I am, at heart,

as God — beyond understanding.

But God is even beyond words.

Let me not try to understand

myself or others;

Just as I can never theologize about God.

Let my peace pass my understanding, O God.

You know all my innermost parts.

Create in me a new heart, O God.***

Hold me in the palm of Your Fatherly Hand.

Cradle me in the Womb of Your Motherly Love.

Let me Be no longer a small part,

But Be at One with All Beings;

Be at One with all Beingness;

and Be at One with You.

**My paraphrase of Galatians 2:20

***Psalm 51:10

*”Just As I Am, without One Plea” by Charlotte Elliot

I Wanted to Write About Jesus, But…

“Homeless Jesus” by Nicola Barnett is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

I Wanted to Write About Jesus, But…

By Jane Tawel

August 7, 2023

I wanted to write about Jesus, but….

I wanted to write something about Jesus,

but then I kept asking myself, “Which Jesus would that be?”

I still think a lot about this person,

known to history only by the name “Yeshua”,

and maybe you have heard about him,

and later, people added on the title, “Christ”,

and I think about that,

even though I don’t think about him the same way I used to any more.

I no longer wanted to write about

the Jesus that people had invented from their need for a new god,

because they didn’t like the Jew’s God (or the Jews).

And I no longer wanted to write about a Jesus that died,

so that I never had to face what was expected of me,

by that same Jesus, expected of me in order to live the right way.

I didn’t want to write about a Jesus that wasn’t human at all,

but whose myth conspired and morphed

into weapons used by millennia of power-hungry people.

I didn’t want to write about a Jesus who came not to heal the broken,

but one who oppressed the very ones Jesus said he loved;

the weak, and poor, and judged, and hungry,

the very ones he said he came to save from oppression and greed.

I didn’t want to write about the Jesus who

supported gas chambers or inquisitions

or “detention centers” in places like Guantanamo Bay,

or greedy, polluting pipelines on sacred land.

And I didn’t want to write about the Jesus,

that was hidden away in people’s hearts,

without ever coming out to show me,

Christ’s hands, and feet, and mind, and smile.

So, I was left with nothing to write about Jesus.

Then I remembered that the man Jesus,

also had nothing to write about himself,

or others,

or his God.

He never wrote a single word to leave behind.

He once wrote something in the sand,

which saved a woman’s life,

but what he wrote there,

blew away with the next wind,

like dust to dust.

He simply lived,

and loved,

and shared some food, and wine, and conversation.

And maybe that is the miracle –

Maybe that is where the miracles came from —

that he simply lived and loved,

and shared.

And so that is what I decided to do.

A Meditation on The Man of the Hour

Homeless Jesus Statue and Homeless Person, Statue by Timothy Schmalz

A Meditation on The Man of the Hour

By Jane Tawel

December 24, 2022

Christ did not come to Earth,

for he has always come

to those who wait, and mourn, and hope,

in that which Love deigns True.

Christ will not come again someday,

for he is always coming now,

to those who wait, and suffer, and hope,

to those who seek and love,

in mysteries and all they can not see

but that which all do long for.

Christ was not born in Bethlehem,

except he is born in us.

Christ did not die on Calvary,

unless he dies today in me.

Christ did not rise to live again,

unless today he lives and loves and lives again

in life eternal starting Now!

in life eternal starting now in me.

Oh, do not worship temporal gods,

They have no hope for you.

And do not worship gods with names,

for you must find the name God has for you.

A name is written on a stone,

a white stone, pure and true,

and there you’ll find the name of Christ,

that God has given you.

Our hope is in The God of All,

The Great IAM, The One, Creator,

Parent of a man named Jesus,

who once did live to show The Way to God.

The Way of Christ is more than fairy dust,

and more than Santa Claus or even angels tell.

If you would follow Christ, the man,

then know his plan was to rebel,

against the tides of time and governments and yes,

even the surest shores of your religions –

all will turn to rust.

There is a truth in this dear season,

in which we gladly, foolishly give,

all of our treasures to the ones we love.

There is a way of hope and reason,

that’s imaged in the true myth of

a babe born once in history.

But Christ comes daily not to keep

our vision turned behind us or before.

He comes as someone that I see right now,

in persons struggling, lonely, fearful, lowly, poor.

Yes! There he is! Appearing as Star Light today,

in newborn, old man, woman, friend, and even enemy.

Christ’s coming! Yes, I see him there —

in you, in her, in them—

Oh, let me see The Christ in even me!

Christ breaks through as The Morning Star

that heralds God’s real presence,

in even those with empty hands, like Christ was born in Bethlehem.

Christ did not come and never will he come again someday.

The Christ is not alive at all unless I walk The Way.

Oh, Parent-Love-Creator-God, help this small child of Yours,

to be the Light, and walk upright,

and live the love and hope and faith

of All it means to come as Christ in me—

yes, please Dear One,

be born in me, today.

What in the Name of Christ Would We Know About That!?

by Jane Tawel

What in the Name of Christ Would We Know About That?!?!

By Jane Tawel

May 29, 2021

I see a lot of posts and hear,

a lot of folks who rage or fear,

about the suffering that they do,

and how they pray for me and you.

They don’t seem usually to reflect,

on how they’re getting what they get,

but think instead that God should bless,

them more than He should bless the rest.

And as we privileged ones complain,

I ask myself, (and them) again:

As we grow rich and we grow fat,

While others live their lives with scat;

We say our prayers like God’s spoiled brats,

Yet, claim to God, we’re working at,

Salvation like we’re in combat,

Republican or Democrat,

We choose a team and go to bat.

And when we pin them to the mat,

We prove again and again that,

We don’t know Christ worth diddly-squat.

What can we all be thinking of,

when we plead with some God above,

for healing, when we have a Doc,

while others don’t — oh, what a crock!

What makes us think that God is listening

to all our nationalist dissenting,

political — religious too —

muck up our prayer life’s point of view.

We don’t look at the systems which,

keep most folks poor, while few get rich.

Nor do we end the world’s sad squalor;

Our gods are Euros, Yen, and Dollars.

When Bibles are turned red, white blue,

we’ve really lost God’s Point of View.

I don’t know when to cry or laugh,

as we dance round the Golden Calf.

It wouldn’t otherwise be funny,

to see our gods have become money,

except we think we are more smart,

than Man and Woman at The Start.

The Tree of Knowledge has been gotten,

but at its roots, it still is rotten.

If only we could try to fathom,

the calling of The Second Adam.

For hoarding and for wanting more,

We bang on Heaven’s Silent Door.

And while the ones who have no voice,

take crumbs we give — (they have no choice);

we still think God can hear our prayers,

though we neglect to serve and care.

And as we grow more proud and fat,

and treat His grace like our doormat,

God turns His face and asks and asks:

“What in God’s Name would you know about that?”

I know lots of religious folks,

(who’ve sort of made God’s Love a joke).

And yet when I look at our life,

I don’t see too much lack or strife.

We pretty much have every thing

and so I keep on wondering,

“What kind of God do we believe in,

when we don’t see our own deep sin,

of only taking and not sharing,

of only praying and not caring?”

We use God as if He’s our Tool,

and use His Word like prideful fools.

Oh, please forgive me, God above,

for thinking that You only love,

the ones that look or speak like I,

or that my goal is in the Sky.

Forgive my treatment of the Earth.

Create in me a true Re-birth

that sees all others as Your Own,

and nurtures this world as Our Home.

I pray, Yahweh, O God on High:

Restore my faith, but crucify,

my selfish, foolish, sinful pride.

I’ll never know the Depths or Why’s,

of how You seek the weak and lost.

Help those who love, take up our cross,

and follow in the footsteps of,

the Son of Man, the Man of Love;

Who showed us how to live like Him,

if we will only just begin,

to give up what we think need,

and Love’s True Word, to trust and heed.

There once upon a space and time,

lived a Great One, who was divine.

Part prophet, rabbi, brother, friend,

He came to us to love and mend

the ways that we have lost our way.

He offers now to walk today,

beside us, and to live within,

and help us, over sin, to win.

He paid Love’s ultimate true price,

and we who follow in sacrifice,

will know what it means to Be Christ.

For in The Way, and only then,

will we be wholly born again,

into The Life, The Truth, The Way.

Now, let us pray,

“Give us today,

just what we need, and nothing more.”

Christ stands and knocks upon the door,

of every heart, and every soul,

and offers Love to make us whole.

The Truth, The Word, The Way, The Tao,

is not in history, but in The Now.

The Path of Christ is deep and slim,

and we who claim to honor Him,

must listen to His words by fearing,

just how far we have been veering,

from what The Teacher actually said;

not only claiming, now He’s dead,

that we can have eternity,

without our soul’s fraternity,

with what The Christ came here to do,

which was to change both me and you;

and get the whole World realigned,

with God’s Plan to make All, Divine.

The Way is open to all, but narrow.

Christ imparts worth, “more than a sparrow”.

The Earth is ours to daily cherish.

The Lie of Death will one day, perish.

Oh, Our Great Spirit and Creator,

Help me to change my wrong behavior.

Forgive us as we seek to forgive.

Help me to die, so I might live.

And live as One, and live apart,

and ask Christ into mind, will, heart.

Oh, Parent, Mother, Father, One,

when Christ said, “God, Your will be done”;

he didn’t mean by only him.

So, in this moment, help me begin,

to not treat life as some grand game;

but from The God Who Has No Name;

as gift and grace, help my small aim,

to follow You in all I do.

Create in me, God, through and through,

the Love that Christ has called me to.

Amen.

©Jane Tawel 2021

Commemoration and Belief

by Jane Tawel

https://unsplash.com/photos/oQC81OHcl4Q

Whatever one’s belief system, this is historically a good weekend to meditate on what makes a belief “true”. If I say I believe something, but don’t in fact, myself, act in accordance with it, what is the meaning and purpose of my belief? If I say I believe Someone loves me enough to suffer for me (and some believe die for me), but I accept that Someone’s love only to make myself feel better, and not in order to love those others in the world in need of a belief in A Love Without Strings Attached, what does that say about what I truly believe about the quality of a Higher Love?

As we look to what we say we believe, we often get stuck in the childish questions, like, “How has it changed me? How am I better a person? How does my future look brighter?” But the real questions to ask myself that the events commemorated in this weekend ask, the grown-up questions of The Christ are: “How does what I believe make me want to change the World? How does The Divine make me a better human being? How do I bring the future Kingdom of God to earth — now, today, here, for all — as The Christ did?”

If we aren’t suffering with others on Friday, and mourning for the whole world, the whole Earth on Saturday, we will never truly know what it is to celebrate life and resurrection on Sunday. No matter what one claims to believe, this is a good weekend to ponder as the philosopher might ask, What do we owe each other? And as the prophets or saints might ask, What would happen if some of us began to really believe in Love?

(c)Jane Tawel 2021

In Nature — A Poem

In Nature

By Jane Tawel

September 2019

In figs and pears

You oft appear,

And like the rose,

You rose

Despite the thorns.

What all I lack

In yon lilacs,

I find the glory;

As morning glories

Seek the same

Of the sun.

I too find rest,

Forever blessed

In The Son.

In bird and song

And honey bee throng

Like sparrows tended

By Your strong hand,

In sky and earth

In seas and land

You reign, You reign, You reign. . .

And like the rain

You fall on all

To grow the good

Among the weeds.

In winter mulch

Alive, all, much,

New life.

First, we die

Then rise to bloom.

Temporal as a weed,

But as The Rose of Sharon,

In death with You, Eternal.

Lent – a poem— by Jane Tawel

Lent

The First Day

By Jane Tawel

March 6, 2019

Lent, surprising season,

And for good reason,

One’s never sure when it draws near.

Each year its start

To ream our hearts,

Will suddenly appear.

This first of Lent,

Our souls should rent

With sobering contrition.

But like Succoth,

Lent fills our cups,

With God’s Chosen’s commission.

The change of date

Just like our fate

May throw us a curve ball.

For loving chaos

We suffer pathos

Ever since The Fall.

Today’s descent in

This season Lenten,

Requires of me a price.

But that is little

If only it’ll

Bring me closer to The Christ.

The Only Son of Only God,

When on this earth, Christ trod,

Took up our lent

When God’s will bent

To die upon a cross.

And so today

In some small way

I suffer by election,

To become like the only Man

Who sinless, Resurrected.

Each Lent’s first day surprises me

Like did Christ’s death upon that tree.

But suffering for our human doom,

In this dark season of Lent’s gloom,

Is the only way to be surprised,

In the same way at long past sunrise,

Those women who loved The Christ who died,

Saw Him Arise.

Surprise!

A Recipe for A True Taste of Christmas

By Jane Tawel

December 11, 2018

First, get poor. Literally. Wonder not only where your next meal will come, but be shunned by any group of so -called safety net groups. Be outcast by your religious institution for being sinful and “unclean”; and be considered an illegal alien by the country you have grown up in.

Next make sure if you are not yourself currently in labor with an expected child, that you are the spouse of a very pregnant woman. Decide to relocate with no job, no insurance and with no health care, no doctor, and no Douala around. If you can’t manage being pregnant or the spouse of someone pregnant by Christmas time, then, make sure you are really, really, really sick with something that could easily kill you and that makes it hard to walk or talk or even focus on anything other than how you feel physically which is in pain, afraid, and, well, in pain and afraid. Oh, and make sure you are of an ethnic religion that the entire world is prejudiced against. Like Jewish, maybe? Then…

Take a 90 mile (157 kilometer) trip by foot. In worn sandals or barefoot. On dusty dangerous dirt roads. Make sure as you travel (remember, very pregnant or very ill) that you are dependent on the kindness of strangers for the food and water you need on the 90 mile trip. Make sure that even if you arrive after about a week’s walk, that you have no where to stay and that you know no one when you arrive at your final destination. If you do arrive that is, considering the violence in the country in which you are currently living, where not only criminals and terrorists abound but even those who are meant to uphold the law have become lawless. I mean the police / soldiers, governors / senators, and priests / rabbis. Those lawless ones who can demand any thing of you or from you since you have no rights.

Since you are treated like an animal, decide to have your baby in a sheep shed. At least it is out of the elements and will be safe from the wild dogs. If you can not manage a pregnancy in a sheep shed, this Christmas, and have opted to merely be super, super sick to recreate the true experience, then simply leave your medications behind and after your 90 mile walk, find a little cage at the southern border of your country and snuggle in with all the other outcast, unwanted folks. This will help you feel like the parents of the Christ child felt on the day we celebrate his birth.

And as you contemplate this recipe for preparation of a true Christmas, remember that the angels, and kings , the God as Father and miracles –they are all part of a story that people told long after the Jewish parents, Mary and Joseph had to tell Jesus about the night He was born. That night, Mary and Joseph were just happy to be alive and that their kid was alive.

And as you prepare your recipes for a true Christmas, remember that Jesus loved being alive, just like we do. And that He didn’t want to die, just like we don’t. But that He believed that only in His death, could He have eternal life with God, just like we can.

So celebrate Christmas and celebrate the fact that today, you are alive. And being alive can feel like nothing or it can be every thing. And being alive means you can make choices today.

The recipe for my Christmas celebration should be the same as every day. Will I choose the ingredients for my life that the Jewish Messiah did? That the Jewish parents of Jesus did? Will I choose to walk the long, lonely, painful road not just to Bethlehem but to Calvary? Will I find joy in a sheep manger as easily as I find joy around a hearth with my well-fed and well-cared for loved ones? Will I be willing to care little for my own comforts in comparison to my great thirst to know and love Jehovah, the Lord? Will I look at others as my brothers and sisters on a planet we have mutually wrecked while mutually mutilating each other, body and soul, and try to heal rather than grab more before it all runs out? Will I believe that there is a future day of celebration when Jesus is the ruler of all humans – a ruler who serves as we serve Him? An eternal dawn where the planet is no longer just one big sheep shed and that the recipe for eternal peace, love and joy will be finally re-made by The Chef who created it in the first place?

Will I who claim the road to Calvary, take The Christ’s first baby steps on the road to Bethlehem?

What meals and snack ideas do I have for eating and making for others while traveling Life’s road? Jesus’ idea for a good meal on the road, was His body and blood. Messiah knew in His heart the truth of this Hebrew recipe: “Oh, taste and see that The Lord is good! Blessed is the one who takes refuge in Him.” (Psalm 34:8)

A Recipe/ Psalm for a Judeo-Christian Holiday

By Jane Tawel

Dear Creator,

First fill my cup with thirst.

May my hands kneed love in need of You.

Spice up my heart with passion for Your Word.

And let the Oil of my faith in Your Covenant

Never run out.

May a small teaspoon be the only portion

Of my earthly gain

So that my eternal fill will

Be only eaten in Your Forever

Feast of Body and Blood.

May I never turn away from my table

strangers and sojourners; and

Just as You have always fed

Both the good and bad

With sunshine and rain;

May I not stand in judgement

Over the meals that others make;

But instead look to the small

Morsel of my own small self.

May no matter how many times

I eat of You;

Or how much I am served of

Your words and Your Word,

May I hunger only more;

May I thirst only more deeply

For Your Approval,

For Your Love.

May I receive at Your mighty hands–Hands

That created all the ingredients and recipes for all living things—

A wee little Christmas star—

One star out of the billions of stars that rate the universal Creations—

May I get a little half star,

rating my life today

As worthy of You.

Please, Oh Lord of All,

Messiah, Christ-child,

God of the Ages,

I humbly offer today,

A morsel – an offering of my life,

Of my small snack of a soul.

May you multiply the ingredients of my life today,

As You always do increase

Our silly little

fish and loaves.

meal+and+snack+ideas+for+OTR+traveling

A Resurrection Acrostic

A Resurrection Acrostic

By Jane Tawel

March 31, 2018

Restored to original design

Eternally changed,

Savior and King– my Lord and my God.

Under the blood and over the grave

Righteousness of His, crucified my guilt, then

Rinsed and rolled it away.

Eternally with Our Father–

Can’t comprehend it; But…

Triumphed over death, He did!

In Him, By Him, Through His

Omnipotent Weakness

Now and Forever more, I AM remade.

the-empty-tomb

Happy Birthday, You Old Crone!

Jane: Do Not Go Gracefully Into That Good Night (Not that you even could if you tried you old dingbat!)

by Jane Tawel

March 10, 2018

photo-4

Who gave someone the creative license to come up with the idiom, “aging gracefully”? There ain’t much graceful about not being able to bend down without cringing and creaking to pick something up. I don’t connect gracefulness with the gait I now use to jog in the mornings. Grace is not one of those things people associate with my age when I drop things because my hands no longer grip as tightly as they should.

Tomorrow I greet another marker of the day of my birth. And I hurt all over. We, of my age, joke that being old means you never have a day without pain – somewhere – sometimes it seems every where. I remember a friend telling me about the medication he was on for some illness that had the side effect of removing all of his pains. He immediately understood why people get addicted to these drugs. It wasn’t until he started taking it that he realized that the difference between youth and age is that when you are young, you enjoy most days without any aches any where; while when you get older you always have an ache somewhere, sometimes you have an ache everywhere. This past week I was joking with other “of an age” teachers, that every day I wake up and am for some reason, shocked and surprised to find that things hurt. It is like being a little child again, except the opposite. Little children wake up every day to find new things they can do and are pleasantly surprised. Old folks wake up every day shocked anew to find old things they can’t do any more, and are unpleasantly resigned. My mom always says with a bit of sass, “but I don’t feel that old inside”.

Of the many wonderful things my ancestors passed down to me, arthritis is not one of the wonderful ones. Hands gnarling like claws and joints frozen in stiff excruciation; a back that believes it was only created to go forward and not turn without causing its owner to wince like a baby-I-see-a-baby. These devils of discomfort not only give me physical pain, but emotional as well. I am too young at heart to have my body do this. It just doesn’t suit my personality – which is immature.

And I sure can’t wear high heels any more. Not that any woman should subject herself to those tootsie torture chambers! My feet and knees were once the day’s darlings. My intrepid trotters trod tirelessly the heights and depths. My articulatio genu (so I love a good Google, so sue me!) — ran seven seven-minute miles seven days a week, in a godly perfection of physical fitness. Now, “at an age”, after a day in orthopedic looking Aerosols, my non-pedi-ed horn crowned hoofers cry out: “Help us! Save us! Do you not know that, We are but flesh and bone!”

Do I count my blessings daily? You betcha’! I do not (yet) have to go through the horrific things friends do when they get cancer. I have had a relatively healthy body since youth. The fruit of my womb are healthy and the Fruit of the Loom I wear is while no longer a size 4, a somewhat acceptable size 8. I have had a long life already and hope to trot-in-place this globe a few years more, God willing.

But it is interesting to teach Bible this year and stand in front of my students’ darling, perfect little selves, still sporting a bit of baby fat, or with limbs so childishly thin and muscle-less that you just want to hand them a raw steak and some cheesecake to wash it down.

My students come with prayer requests for colds and sniffles but also for ailing grandparents, and serious family illnesses. And I love to pray with them, but I also have to tell these budding believers in as gentle and childlike way as I can muster, the hard, sad facts of life; that although my own sin does not cause my infirmities, I have infirmities in this lifetime because of sin. In a nutshell, Paul says in Romans 5:12, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—“

I happened upon this quote by Karl Barth, “No cultural education, no art, no evolutionary development helps us beyond our sins. We must receive assistance from the ground up. Then the steep walls of our security are broken to bits, and we are forced to become humble, poor, and pleading. Thus we are driven more and more to surrender and give up all that we have, surrender and give up those things which we formerly used to protect and defend and hold to ourselves against the voice of the resurrection’s truth.”

I see a lot of people – and I am tempted – who try to protect something impossible to protect – their youthful selves The Baal of Botox beckons and I, too, sacrifice much moola on the altar of the Pandora of skin potions. But what does it profit an old girl if she gains a good mask for her wrinkles, but in the process loses about a trillion, gazillion dollars? The flip side is –Old age can be a great forceful stimulant to eradicate one’s pride and provide a needed tonic for a new sense of directed and peaceful humbleness.

My birthday always falls in the season of Lent. When I give up something like sweets, that either makes me sad or I break my Lenten promises to God. (Thank God, I only gave up newspapers this year – good for my soul and good for my poor old eyes.) Today I was thinking about aging and Lent. I can either sink into a depression about all the things that go wrong with my body (and don’t even get me started about what goes wrong with one’s mind! With one’s mind. With one’s mind. Wait, did I already say that?) Or during Lent I can reflect and rejoice.

If one’s season as a child is like Christmas, and as a young adult, like the Fourth of July, then this season of my life must be a season of Lent; and like Lent itself, it seems to be in some perverse way, one of the hardest times and yet one of my favorite times. It is a season of life when I have a long road behind me of so many wonderful years and people, and although I wish I had been better at living them, I was privileged to live them at all. It is a time when I don’t try so hard to be someone, and therefore, I can see others with more grace, and sit in the passenger seat more often, as they take the reins and drive this crazy cart called Life. It is time when I know more, but need to prove it less. It is a time when God seems closer and friendlier and Surer. It is a time when I can mourn with those who mourn and in that way, understand the silence and helplessness of our fallen-ness. And this season of life for me is a time when I recognize more the true simplicity of my daily needs and my joy in their provision by a good, good God.

Lent is a time to recognize our great need of a Savior. Jesus tells His disciples, not to fast while the Bridegroom is “in the house”. Jesus later tells His disciples that His resurrected body must, like Elvis leave the building. But unlike Elvis or any other human being, because Jesus accomplished with His “old body” what the Old Adam never could, we all have the opportunity to have a new body just as He did, through the Resurrection. Jesus also says that though he takes His housing with Him when He ascends, His Spirit will come to live in our “houses”.

My aging body is a great reminder that, we do not evolve, nor ever have. When we are young, we are all like that first Eve. And like the first created human, we will choose self again and again, and again. Getting older means I can not actually “fix” most of myself any more. And for me, that means I can either, as Barth says, “protect and defend myself against the voice of the resurrection’s truth” or I can submit to the God who sees beyond our infirmities to Christ’s potential. If I surrender all of me to the radical power of Christ’s cross, then I shall also experience the wholeness of Christ’s Resurrection self.

Oh, knobbly knees and crone-ish hands, thou hast no power over me. In arthritic joints, I claim my victory over viscous varicose vice! In boorish backs that swoon in fright over the endless stairs of this World, I laugh and use the handrail. Oh, twingy terrors of troubled sleep, I pray through your dark hours! You, oh flesh, may serve no king but Big Pharma, but I serve the King of New Life and that resurrection will include this poor old dishrag of dust, this shell of selfishness, this body of broken parts. The Great Physician lives for and in me! And in this body, with walls that decay, is the temple for His Eternal Spirit.

While I may not be aging gracefully, I am only aging because of Grace. And that same grace that has covered my sins in the blood and death of Jesus, The Christ, is also my insurance policy on this old body.

Because if I know anything about the Holy Spirit of Christ, it is that it doesn’t plan on living in this dump forever. Resurrection means a makeover, like this girl ain’t ever dreamed of!

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by Jane Tawel

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