Holy Week and DEATH

So today is Holy Thursday. The Triduum on Easter starts tonight with the gift of the Eucharist. I have been learning so much this year about the Easter celebration. For so long, in my mind, Easter was about only Christ's rising and that's it. (not that His rising is very insignificant... haha) I had completely missed the point of the 3 day liturgy.

Yesterday I went to a Wednesday night candlelight service at the church I belong to. Can I just add in really quick that I am actually an official member of the church now and even get newsletters in the mail along with a little collection envelope?! Haha as funny as it sounds, it's awesome to belong to a parish. Seriously.

Anyway, I was at this candlelight service and the Dominican celebrating the mass put it really well. He said that the Triduum (Holy Thursday through Easter Sunday) is 3 days of continuous liturgy NOT 3 separate liturgies spanning over 3 days. These next few days in the Catholic church invite us to strengthen our understanding and appreciation for Christ's suffering, passion if you will, His gory death, the people who loved Him's reaction, and, eventually, his resurrection. How's that for a run on sentence? Anyway I'm stoked. I can't wait to go to the service tonight even IF it means I have to skip out on night snowboarding with a good friend. No worries.

When I think about the Passion of Christ I think a lot about death. I'm going to dedicate this entry to what has been going on in my head when it comes to death as of late. Even though it's not the kind of death that people talk about during the Easter Triduum I'm going to talk about death all the same because I believe that there is more than one way to be "dead" in this "life". haha.

Oh yea one more thing before I dive into death (what a strange thing to say). Did you know that many other denominations of Christians do not have special days during the year that they pay special attention to events in Christ's life like the last supper and the washing of His disciple's feet, or Christ's agony in the garden? It's come to my attention that many other denominations (not all but quite a few) of Christians do not focus much on the Passion of Christ at all. This makes me want to cry because, to me, this is the pinnacle point of Christ's life and mission. This is WHY we are called to service, this is WHY we are Christians and WHY we are saved. Christ's passion, death, and resurrection are one of the main reasons Christianity is set apart from every other religion and many Christians don't devote any time to it. Interesting. I asked one friend of mine why they don't have a special service for the passover, the last supper, the washing of the feet, etc. One special service to focus on the meaning of the last supper and how the church was formed and her reply to me was something along the lines of "well we celebrate that every time we share communion". This is interesting to me because just sharing communion doesn't teach people about how Christ started the institution of the church. It's a great thing to remember the last supper through communion but there is so much more.


ON DEATH (for Mattie and anyone else interested)

Death comes in all shapes and forms. I meet dead people all of the time. People oppressed for whatever reason, people trapped, people slaves to whatever, people just moving through the motions living every day life. One of the women I live with, Jenee, always says the same thing when she catches me resorting to worry because of another friend's situation:

"You either have a pulse or you don't. If you have a pulse, you're ok. If you don't, then... eh."

Jenee's statement has helped me countless times since I've moved to SLC and have had to deal with a few emotional issues with some old friends. And Jenee, please don't take this the wrong way but just for the sake of thought-process, I'm going to talk about how, in many cases, that statement is not necessarily true.

Can a man be dead and walk among us?! duh. It's called a zombie.

Have you ever felt like a zombie? Like something happened that was so shocking or horrific in your life that you feel numb, wandering, life-less. Maybe you can not get your mind off of one thing that is bothering you and it starts to effect other parts of your life, your relationships change, your daily life changes, you stop eating or start smoking or just plain old loose your passion for everything. This is waking-death. This is depression at it's greatest. This is no way to live, in-fact it's not living at all... it's dying.

I have had so many friends talk to me about their depression. There is a difference, though, between depression and what I'm talking about here. This living in a state of constant death is much deeper than any depression. It's obsession, it's where you have gripped onto a steel rod and are holding so tight that your hands buckle into place, your knuckles are white, the muscles cold with a death grip on something that doesn't even help you in life. It's not letting go of a relationship that went bad, it's not getting over the opportunity you might have lost, it's not being clear on the correct course of action, it's being manipulated by someone you trusted. It's death and it's very real and very alive in many many people we encounter every day.

A man stuck where he shouldn't be, saying things like "i don't care", loosing weight, loosing his creative zeal for the art he sees around him every day. I think when people slip into this death-state they forget that there is any other way to live life. They begin to accept the pain they are going through as just part of life and for those who don't attempt to just kill themselves, they do something just as bad- they give up and just start submitting to whatever the antagonist is in their lives. "I don't care" is one of the saddest things I can hear. You've known people like this, maybe you know them right now- they just don't care anymore. Where there was excitement and passion, they just don't care. They are numb.

A few people I've known over the past few years who have awakened from this state of living-death have told me that they had gotten to the point that they were relying on everything else to be them, feel for them, decide for them, etc. Much of it was because of pain or fear (although I'm sure people go through this for any number of reasons). Self-loathing follows close by and they tell me that they just stopped feeling things. They would wish with all of their might that they could even just feel pain again but it wasn't there. I can't imagine what that would be like. How can you pull yourself off of the ground when you can't even feel yourself hitting the ground anymore? How?

Each one of those people at separate times and in separate places has told me a similar thing when it came to escaping the grip of such death. They said that they slowly started feeling the pain again and then were able to constructively deal with it through ACTION. ACTION ACTION ACTION ACTION. But I can't make you act and you can't make me act or even WANT to act. I think this is where God comes into play.

I think that just living everyday life is a dead weight that should not be something that Christians do. Christian people are called to be a LIGHT in the world... not just a dim bulb that is just like everybody else, wearing the same old thing, singing the same old thing, belonging to the same old thing, hanging with the same old folk, listening to the same old music that every single other person, even Christian, listens to. When someone meets a Christian they are supposed to know us by our LOVE right? Well what is LOVE? Just love for each-other? Noway jose! Love for what God his given us: each other, the earth, intellect, knowledge, free will, the ability to create, everything. For God so loved the Earth.... balblabla. This is what we are called to.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who was executed by the Nazis, wrote of the Cost of Discipleship and warned of "cheap grace" that did not take seriously either the gravity of sin or the radical call to servanthood: "When Jesus bids a man come, he bids him come and die." (Bratcher, Dennis. "The Days of Holy Week", http://www.crivoice.org/cyholyweek.html)

How do deal with living death? Love. As a Christian we are called to servanthood!!! This call is radical WHY? Because it's crazy! We are called to be stoked about life when the rest of the world is a zombie.. just going through the motions. We are called to be the ones wearing polka-dots just for the heck of it on casual friday, to be the ones who notice the robin outside of the hospital window and smile at it's stubborn yet delicate beauty, to be the ones cheering for the kid who just landed his first 360 off of a little kicker on the mountains. CHEERING. Do you hear me? CHEERING!


Ok to tie this up there is a really encouraging song by a band called The Normals called"Coming to Life" off of their album "Coming to Life". I REALLY suggest that everyone go log onto the itunes music store and buy it. It's only 99 cents. The Normals are a Christian band who sing very real songs about very real life struggles. This one is by far my all-time favorite and it goes right along with what I've been writing about.

Remember, only Christ can save somebody from the living-dead.. but we can help by loving each other and the world that the Lord has giving us. It's what the Lord is radically calling us to do ESPECIALLY during the Holy week. Make radical sacrifices (like not snowboarding for an evening) to better the kingdom of God and your own understanding of the Lord. Make radical decisions to live in LOVING JOY when nobody else is. Be happy and you won't become a zombie. haha

-Chelsea