Two Worlds

[I’m late in submitting this Saturday Evening Post. I’m with my granddaughter in NYC this weekend, and didn’t have time to finish my post.]

Fiends,

At this time in history we seem to be  living between two worlds. One world is dying and another world is gestating and waiting to be born. It is thus an anxious and difficult time of uncertainty and uncomfortable anticipation. How are we do use this time seems to be a primary daily question for us. I cannot answer the question directly, of course, other than to offer a word of perspective.

The Jewish commemoration of the Passover now being celebrated represents the Jewish exodus from Egypt into a new life of forty interim years in the wilderness before fully claiming their freedom and a new moral foundation. They lived in two worlds of slavery and the freedom to now define a new spiritual and moral identity with a new sense of a freshly defined covenant with their understanding of God. God was no longer a tangible idol but a living presence in their lives. 

As we now enter the commemoration of Easter, we remember that, for  Christians, the celebration of Easter is a new course for living between the two worlds of Roman occupation and a spirituality dependent on maintaining a set of laws versus a world that was an invitation of practice compassion, cooperation, inclusion and a more personal relationship with God of gracious and abundant love. So those who aspire to follow the Christian faith must contend with an equally powerful draw into the world of scarcity and competition. So we, too, live in between these two worlds. 

We in the U.S. particularly are now thrust into another dramatic period of surviving two vastly different perspectives on morality and governance. The reality of authoritarianism (similar to the Hebrew’s oppression by Egypt or the Christian oppression of Rome) and fear of the loss of human sanctity vs. freedom characterized by the best of an egalitarian democracy. We live between those two worlds.

The challenge, then, is to choose, perhaps sacrificially and uncomfortably, as did the early Jews and Christians, to live into the new vision and create a world based on the values of a newly re-framed world. We do this by beginning with ourselves and then witnessing our vision to a wider community, a community, in the meantime which supports us in the difficulty and travail of the birthing process we are undergoing.

Passover and Easter blessings, dear friends,

Tom