Here he comes, there he ghosts again! Not Caspar the Friendly but Jesus the Holy! The Hungry! The Holy Ghost Dancing! Enchanted with ecstasy, emptied, exhausted, fainting and falling out, shaking and shouting; reviving to handkerchiefs, hand-fans, and smelling salts; partnering with Wounded Pasts.
"Ghost Dance, major inter-tribal cultural movement in later phases of military conquest, beginnings of reservation system, forced assimilation; helped peoples of various indigenous ethnicities craft identities . . ."
"The dead are to return . . . The white people will soon go away . . .
"All joined hands, and soon many collapsed, fell into trances. Now 'dead' and seeing their dear ones . . . a great encampment of all Dakotas who ever died, where all were related, thronging out with happy laughter to greet the newcomer . . .
"Waking to drab, wretched present after such glowing vision, little wonder they wailed as if their poor hearts would break in two with disillusionment. But at least they had seen! . . ." (David Raymond, citing 10-year-old at Pine Ridge, shortly before Wounded Knee)
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How long have we claimed to "destroy in order to save" -- Villages? Villagers? Victims? The only forgivers "victors" have left!
"Listen for the stilled voice of the one Who is no longer there . . . For the silent step of the dead one's invisible feet . . . Whose spirit walks through walls" (Edith Lovejoy Pierce)
Through armed borders, barred gates, locked rooms, into our very rooms, our spaces of fear, hiding out against all "religious authorities;" reordering us from asking, "Why was Jesus crucified? Who was to blame?" to asking, "Who do we crucify now? What do we do to stop it?"
This Jesus, all Jews, bearing "shalom" by our open wounds; offering first forgiveness of "friends," of "followers;" breathing in them breathing on us --
Breath Again! Spirit! Creating Beginnings! Rehearsing Pentecost! Jubilee! 50th Day! "For any whose sins you forgive" (Begging your pardon? WE forgive?) "For any whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven. For any whose sins you do not release, they are not released." Exclamation Point!!
What power! Above, beyond, beneath, around every other. Spreading forgiveness, as much, as far back, as painfully as we can -- as all we have been forgiven? "Past growing longer, future shorter?" (Hopi elder) No more excuses, with us or for us! Messiah, we say, has come! Overcome! How now to live messianically? We -- Church of "It Has Not Happened Yet!"?
Holocaust never exclusively problem of those to whom it was done; nor now of those who did it to them; or whoever mobilizes rabid fears of the moment; BUT OUR PROBLEM! Easter incorporating all that we are in identity with Every Victimized One, rising to reoccupied Life, our consciousness of "Them," internally, externally, eternally -- Presente!
Ours not to be blamed, but to be resurrectors, too! As drama A Single Woman resurrects Jeanette Rankin! If not from death, at least to new life!
Who calls on us now for their resurrection? Their vision, voice, vote -- anew or again. Jesus and Jews alike, surviving, enduring, witnessing, living to tell about it. Who's still up to keep stories alive? Jesus is up! Jesus is all up to us!
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