Ponderings

The long awaited “Hillary calendars”, at least most of them, have been released and after more than 24 hours of Hillary-hating scouring, the largest stone to hurl is that she was at home when Bill was misbehaving.

Shame on us. Shame on the “family values” advocates who discreetly turn away while Hillary is trashed for ‘standing by her man’. Shame on the politically correct liberals for snickering. Shame on all of us who think we could have, would have, should have done better. Utopia means no where. And perfect marriage, perfect relationship, perfect anything happens only in utopia. For the rest, we make due with what we have.

Shame isn’t a term or a concept with which I am terribly comfortable. I’ll tiptoe through it and the other dark emotions at the end of Holy Week, taking comfort only in that it is a brief sprint. Easter is on the horizon, the carrot that pulls me through.

But as I read the headlines, I wonder if we have danced too quickly through the minefield and are too cavalier with searing truth of our own shadow selves. I wonder if we’ve been too quick to gloss over our own choices and compromises, our own limitations and failures. The stones are less appealing when we’ve taken account of the glass that surrounds us.

In their book, “The Last Week”, Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan make the point that the horror and highlight belong together. An Easter celebration without the spiritual weight of the God’s Friday is meaningless fluff and a Passion narrative devoid of God’s cosmic presence is horrifying. In order to fully embrace our own lives, we must face both the best and the worst in the human condition. In Christianity, the Lenten pilgrimage, culminating in this Holy Week drama is our invitation.

Fully immersed in our participation in the human drama, we see the stones in our hands and feel their weight anew. With the fluff blown away, we recognize the compromises and shortcomings in our own relationships, a painful view that is redemptive only in the light of a new dawn.

This Holy Week opened with a public crucifixion of the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ and Barack Obama’s pastor. It is drawing to a close with a castigation of Hillary Clinton for exercising her choice to remain in a marriage even when the compromises are painfully public. In the interest of fairness, it must now be time to shred the humanity of Senator John McCain.

Blessedly, the week is coming to end and quickly. With Easter just a few short hours from now, I pray that we will drop the stones and get on with the work of Easter. If it is the risen Christ we seek, we needn’t read the latest smear campaign, we won’t find him there. Jesus told his friends he would meet them in Galilee, Galilee and the ministries of teaching, healing and feeding.