Easter challenge remains

Buy it or not (and I do), the New Testament’s account of what occurred over what we call Easter, two millennia ago, is dramatic. It is at least as dramatic as the Christmas story with the baby, the crib and the procession of worshippers who came to greet the Christ child. Easter places the baby – now a guileless but powerful miracle-performing 33-year-old man – on the executioner’s cross, the the electric chair, or the hangman’s noose of the day.

There’s every element of drama in the brutal saga that unfolds. Love, betrayal and denial. Unprecedented cooperation between superpowers of government and temple.

This man, who says he is God’s son, is paraded before the rich and powerful, then mocked and scorned. At the zenith of his need, a friend walks away, claiming Jesus to be a stranger to him. 

Then, he who healed the masses and raised the dead is himself dragged through the city for public execution.

His death on “Good” Friday is grueling and gruesome. 

Yet, at the moment of his greatest pain, he considers his mother and makes plans for her care. He provides comfort to a common criminal also facing public execution. While fixed to the cross with nails through his limbs, he prays forgiveness upon his executioners, then yells out in pain because the God and Father he has loved since before the beginning of time is absent, has abandoned him. Then he breathes a final breath, and it is finished.

On the Saturday, his followers confront the reality of his death, the death of their dream and the end of a shared vision. Men and women who had ventured all on his behalf are now abandoned, leaderless. They have lost all. They who had forsaken all are now the forsaken. The leader of the sometimes unruly and diverse mob is dead, entombed with the door to the tomb sealed shut with a rock of considerable size.

Sunday comes and the tomb is open and empty. 

A crucified man is up and walking. 

He appears suddenly here and there presenting himself, sometimes in private to individuals and also to masses of people. Within days, he’s making breakfast on a beach, calling the one who ran away from him and denied him to join him for a meal that he has already prepared, having made the fire himself.

What landed Jesus in trouble was that he lived a life that supported and endorsed his claims. 

His life, not only his words and his teaching, challenged the ruling religious order. Few religions enjoy being challenged, let alone do they tolerate when a person making the challenge so completely “walks the talk.”

My faith doesn’t land me in hot water like Jesus’ faith did for him. This is not because I am not sometimes zealous about my faith, but because I am a hypocrite. I am not always who I say I am. I’m often not myself. I often fail to display integrity. 

Jesus was always who he claimed to be. 

He was thoroughly authentic, and it was this authenticity, this integrity, that angered people and upset governing powers. It rocked the status quo at places of worship and made him a sufficient threat so that his critics would take his life in the most barbaric manner their righteous minds could conceive.

The world can deal with my claims about myself. 

They are as fragile and empty as most people’s claims about themselves. 

Most of us, zealous or not, can tolerate the dreams of the guy next door. 

But it was not empty claims that got Jesus in trouble. Many had come claiming to know, be, or represent God. 

His life, his deeds gave profound evidence to the fact that he was who he said he was. 

It was this that authorities could not stomach.

At every Easter, we are each challenged to take the time to answer the question posed by Jesus to his outspoken friend: “Who do you say that I am?”

While there are so many factors over which none of has control, it is usually a good idea to have somewhat of a plan, a vision, of who you want to be.

Perhaps you want to be:

• An honest person, one who is able then to live with a clear conscience
• A growing person, one who learns from mistakes and does all that it possible to not repeat them
• A kind person, one who is at least aware of the needs of others and who tries to see the world from the perspective of others
• A loving person, one who loves without being possessive or jealous
• An educated person, one who is aware of the world and its fabulous beauty
• A forgiving person, one who initiates forgiveness even when it is not necessarily deserved
• An outgoing person, one for whom no one needs to remain a stranger
• A self-starting person, one who seizes opportunities, especially those that enhance the common good
• A reflective person, one who examines his of her life and makes necessary changes for the betterment of all
• A well-mannered person, one who knows how to treat others, even, and especially those who can do nothing in return.

What I believe some children are trying to say…..

Dear Parent,

Please. Relax. Let go.

Open your hand so I can grow.

I want the freedom all children deserve.

Please, emancipate me from the expectation of meeting your adult, ginormous needs.

Your need-to-succeed as a person, a parent, all centered on me, is a burden far too heavy for me to carry.

I am a child.

I cannot deliver you from the pain of the unfulfilled expectations of your own childhood.

My childhood is not a recovery act for yours.

When you regard me as proof that you, the adult, have made it, we get entangled in ways that trip both of us up, and confounds us both.

Such covert expectations kills the joy that can unite us.

We are separate people.

It’s been that way from the very beginning. I know it and I’ve known it almost from the very beginning.

How come you don’t?

Why is this so much more difficult for you than it is for me?

While you regard me as an attachment, an extension of yourself, a banner announcing your success or declaring your failure, things get rough for both of us.

I am your child. I am not a trophy. I am not a ticket to greater happiness – although I do want you to be happy. I am a child. I am not endowed with special powers to make your life meaningful.

Of course I am special, and I am special to you, uniquely gifted, endowed with a God-given calling – but I am also, in many ways, just like millions of other children.

We both must remember this. Please don’t make me into something I am not and cannot become.

I am as unique as a proverbial fingerprint, AND, as common as any child ever born — ALL AT THE SAME TIME. I am a unique painting, a loving product of the Divine Hand – and yet, and yet, I am baptized into human condition, and as much like all humans as any – ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

While you expect more than I am designed to deliver – we both feel the pressure and miss out on the real miracle we can know as parent and child.

With deep, appropriate love,

Your Child

The Mercury / Wednesday

My daily parenting challenge which I hope you will also adopt…

Be the adult you’d want your child to become.

Negotiate deals, resolve conflicts, compromise on disagreements, in exactly the manner you want your child to emulate when he or she is an adult. The most powerful learning happens by watching – and by much more than watching. Such living will transform you, and the transformation you undergo will transform your family.

Use money, save money, leverage all your resources in exactly the manner you hope your child will one day utilize resources. Attitudes leak. How you behave becomes the norm.

Treat your parents in exactly the manner you hope your children will treat you in your advancing years. Modeling endures.

Love and serve your brothers and sisters so your children will have absolutely no ambiguity about what love looks like in immediate and extended families. Authenticity prevails.

If you want your child to be a reader, be one yourself. It might not “take” in the immediate, but chances are it will in the future. Some things take time, not nagging.

If you want your child to be well-mannered, courageous and kind, allow your every interaction with lover, friend, or foe, to be well-mannered, courageous, and kind.

The Mercury / Tuesday

I stumbled upon a powerful cartoon some years ago.

Its message has stuck with me long after the cartoon has disappeared* into the mass of papers that occupy our home.

“If you’re ugly on the inside,” the character said, “eventually it shows on the outside.”

This helped me frame why some people are mean-spirited, foul-mouthed, and can’t seem to find good in the world no matter what their circumstances.

It helped me self-monitor. It helped me ask myself why harshness or sarcasm or bitterness appear to be my first options on a particular day.

“Rod, what’s going on inside you today that sarcasm is so near the surface when you could choose kindness in its stead?” asks the persistent inner-voice.

Sometimes addressing the question helps me be a better person.

The cartoon helps me filter what I write online. I manage my vocabulary because of it. I filter how I respond to gibes and jokes that turn some people or groups into victims.

I think the cartoon struck such a deep chord because it strongly echoed the sentiments of one who said that everything that comes out of a person’s mouth reflects what’s going on in the heart.

* found it.. …. all credit to the artist if I could read the name….. (perhaps someone can assist):

The Mercury, Monday

Living around the excessive use of alcohol…..

Every relationships feels temporary and threatened, if things are going poorly, or things are going well – it makes little or no difference since both conditions can switch in a heartbeat

All important relationships dwell under a cloud of anxiety, an ever-present sense that things are about to fall apart, a nagging thought that anything you do or may miss doing will jeopardize and begin the beginning of the end.

Any expressed conflict, even the slightest disagreements, feel like the relationship will fold or unravel.

Everything is a trade; nothing is as it seems or as it may appear. You have to look behind and beyond and beside all requests, all demands, and all pleas in order to see what it is that a person (any person) may REALLY want.

All love is to be held in suspicion and there is no such thing as unconditional love – there is always a price to pay.

Even if you are repeatedly told that an issue, any issue, like causing someone to be drunk or trying to get someone to be sober, or feeling responsible for the lack of money in the house, or being the cause of the conflict in the house, is not your responsibility, or yours to monitor or to fix, or that it is not your fault, you nonetheless feel the pressure of all of it upon your shoulders.

What would like me to do more or do less? What have I not done so well today as far as you know? Is there anything you would like to tell me about your day or is there anything you would like to know about mine? Is there anything about my life you would like to know? What is the hardest or toughest question you would like to ask me? There are some things I know I did not do well today. Would you like to know about them? Was there anyone you really wanted to thank today but didn’t? I want you to know it is really important to me when you express appreciation for the things I do for you and for our family. Tell me about a time you were really proud of yourself. When do things seem really unfair to you? What do you see other families do that you wish we could or would do?

My sons usually avoid “deep” talk but it does occasionally occur – which is why I keep these prompts in the back of my head in the event of an unexpected vulnerable moment – and they do, but not as often as I’d like!

“I have a questions that I was curious what your opinion would be. In my practice, I often work with individuals who have had an affair but have not told their wife/husband about it. I usually advise them to come clean because I believe that it will in some way or another affect the relationship even if the other person never learns of it. Of course, many of my clients think this is crazy because they believe if they tell their partner this will be the end of the relationship. What is your practice when it comes to this?” (Family Therapist, Krakau, Poland.)   

I too believe it is better for couples to “come clean” but I have to respect that it is the client who sets the pace and the degrees of detail divulged. I have seen such confessions further destroy an already tenuous marriage and aggrieved spouses become obsessed with the details and who then cannot rest until all arising questions are answered. When intimate details are shared the knowledge can further seduce the married couple away from reconciliation. I have seen it be helpful (full disclosure) and I have seen in further destroy. I encourage the client to determine what the mariage can endure.