A friend of mine gave me a quart of matzo ball soup yesterday. I love matzo ball soup, and she had quite a lot left over from her Passover Seder. We started talking about Passover and Lent, because she's a little bit like I am, questioning aspects of her religion and essentially non-practicing. Still, though, she found that the traditions, including the restrictions, were pretty much hard wired. Even after deciding that some of the "rules" were arbitrary, she couldn't bring herself to break them.
I haven't been a practicing Catholic for about 15 years, and for the last several years I have actually thought about it sufficiently that I have to go beyond non-practicing to say, in all honesty, non-believing. I'm not sure what I do believe, but it's not the Nicene Creed. "One Church" is too limiting...
But I'm still hard wired for things like not eating meat on lenten Fridays, and I'm acutely aware that today, Good Friday, is the one day of the year I can't run back. (And I almost typed that as "run home" which tells me something...) There is no Eucharist.
The memorial service for my friend was non-denominational Christian. One of the prayers was Native American. I was struck, as usual, by how faith makes death easier to take, and I suspect pretty strongly that that's why I'm grasping for it...so I can feel more at peace with death...and since I'm selfish, I also suspect it's particularly my own that's got me worried.
Back to Good Friday. I considered going to see The Passion of the Christ tonight, but in the end I'm wimping out. I don't want to deal with the blood. I read St. John instead, and thought about what happened. Not being able to say whether Jesus was the Son of God or just some guy who thought he was, I still found a lot to think about, particularly in the betrayals by Judas and Peter. I like to think I could never sell out anybody like Judas did, but I can certainly see myself saying "Nope, don't know that guy. With him? Uh-uh, I was just walking by. Not a friend of mine..." until I heard the cock crow. I think about the times that I have not defended people, and things I've said about people, and I know I've been there.
And no one deserved what happened to Jesus. Without necessarily believing the resurrection part, without knowing if he was the son of God, he was a human and a creation of whatever force put this all in motion (that's the extent of the faith I know I have...there's something greater there). People don't deserve to be tortured and killed. I'll go out on a limb and say that torturing and killing anyone is torturing and killing a child of God. And for that matter, how I treat any child of God is a reflection of my respect for God. Or it may be how I'm treating God: Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that
you do unto me.
Finishing up Lent with some heavy thoughts, I am. I will come back tomorrow with something light, I promise.
Posted by Nic at April 9, 2004 05:52 PM | TrackBack