"Arise, all women who have hearts! Whether your baptism be of waters or of tears. Say firmly . . . Our husbands will not come to us reeking of carnage for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: Disarm! Disarm!" (Julia Ward Howe, Mothers Day Proclamation)
All mothers' grief is the same, no matter how children suffer and die; so when mothers, others, say "no" to grief by any cause, world rocks with works of resurrection, culminating in "death of death itself."
"They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in morning. We shall remember them . . ." ("For the Fallen," WW I)
Jesus, onliving by powers of memory, created these weeks of appearances, utterances; withholding nothing now; getting out of our way, making room for us to reenact in midst of whole world, his, and even greater works than his --
Do not hold onto me, just let me go! Let me set you free, even from me.
What an unusal leader! "Running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments," and doing it even through us! Forgiveness, healing of nations, death of death itself. We shall remember them . . .
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Knowing "God," going through Jesus; knowing "Jesus," going through us?
Where there is selfishness, where there is greed, let us be Jesus. Where there are undue privilege, unfair power, let us be Jesus. Where there are arrogance, ignorance, among authorities, let us be Jesus. Where there is indifference toward grossly impoverished, let us be Jesus.
Where there are abused, exploited, women, children, let us be Jesus. Where walls divide, conquer us from, immigrants, imprisoned, occupied, detained, let us be Jesus. In other words, where there are sin and death, let us be Jesus. If not us, who? If not here, where? If not now, when? When . . .
"Well, maybe like Casy says, a fella ain't got a soul of his own, but on'y a piece of a big one -- and then -- Then what, Tom? Then it don't matter! Then I'll be all around in the dark. I'll be ever'where, wherever you look. Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy,
I'll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an' -- I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build -- why, I'll be there! See? God, I'm talkin' like Casy. Comes of thinkin' of him so much. Seems like I can see him sometimes. I don' un'erstan', Ma said, I don' really know. "Me neither," said Tom. (John Steinbeck)
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Us neither. We don't know. We live by faith. We don't understand, we don't know, we trust, we risk, in memory, in power, of Jesus, of Casy, of all the Jesuses, Spirit and spirits, all around us in every dark.
What if we are the extent Jesus has to show for his life, to leave to his work? Our failures his only plans, A through Z? Whole being, whole doing, on us? Not to be found "up there" anymore, but forever "on the way down?" To rise again only in and through us?
For we who have leapt to the Moon, snapped the photos, need no return trips, believing what we already have glimpsed for ourselves: Earth loving, shaping, nurturing for hundreds of billions of years! Nothing, no one, beyond Earth's urgings -- no escapees!
How blue, how small, how round, how fragile, how free-floating, how misty, mysterious, how only home; nothing inherent to separate us, nothing to bomb about ever again . . . Moon's eye view of Jesus' Ascension: Everything under the sun looking new? Surely a new world possible; new apprehending the used world we are . . . .
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