{"id":19024,"date":"2018-03-31T01:00:45","date_gmt":"2018-03-31T08:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/?p=19024"},"modified":"2023-04-08T06:49:33","modified_gmt":"2023-04-08T13:49:33","slug":"when-god-is-dead-a-zen-eflection-on-holy-saturday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/2018\/03\/when-god-is-dead-a-zen-eflection-on-holy-saturday.html","title":{"rendered":"When God is Dead. A Zen Reflection on Christianity’s Holy Saturday"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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When God is Dead
\nA Zen Reflection on Christianity\u2019s Holy Saturday<\/strong><\/h3>\n

James Ishmael Ford<\/a><\/p>\n

I guess this is one of those subjects that have captured my imagination. Some years ago I wrote a meditation on the Christian day before Easter, Holy Saturday. And, then, again last year.<\/p>\n

And. Well. It continues to haunt me. So, as the calendar has rolled around to another one, I thought I\u2019d give it another go, building just a little on those two earlier reflections.<\/p>\n

Holy Saturday. Jesus is dead. With that in the Christian story, God is dead.\u00a0Resurrection has not yet happened. Actually there\u2019s no good reason to even think of something like a resurrection. If you\u2019ve lived any time at all you really know that when someone dies, they stay dead.<\/p>\n

Yes, people tell stories of encounters with ghosts. And, well, I\u2019ve had my own encounters. But, there\u2019s always something vaguely dissatisfying about such things. They seem so open to easier non supernatural explanations. Most obviously they seem like projections of our hearts to old desires. And disconcertingly, they\u2019re almost always private, they come up painfully short on corroboration. Me, when I hear these stories they usually seem so sad. So turning away from a hard truth.<\/p>\n

This is that truth. We die. We all die. And we don\u2019t come back from dying.<\/p>\n

And with that let\u2019s think about Holy Saturday. Again. Jesus is dead. God is dead.<\/p>\n

A whole lot of questions bubble up. \u201cWhat is death\u201d is one. And we can continue to dig. \u201cWhat is time\u201d is another question deeply connected to this whole thing\u00a0is \u201cwhat is certainty?\u201d The closer we look, the more confusing and messy it seems. In fact question seem to pile upon questions.<\/p>\n

Now Zen likes questions. Particularly questions like these. In fact such questions often directly point toward the great matter, the deepest truth of our reality. Now, if a question is deep enough, if it touches the fundamental matter, like how we are isolated and following some strange trajectory, which sure looks like dissolution and death, it might be a koan.\u00a0And this is one for the record books. The great koan of our lives.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0koan \u2013 literally, \u201cpublic case,\u201d as in a legal document. A koan is an assertion about reality and an invitation to an intimate encounter. Or, as Robert Aitken Roshi said, a koan is a matter to be made clear. Not just any matter, not how to fix a toaster, but the deep matters of our lives. And, yes, of our deaths. Some look like they\u2019re about something else. \u201cCount the stars in heaven.\u201d \u201cAn Ox passes through a fence, all of it but its tail.\u201d \u201cWhy does Guanyin have all those hands and eyes?\u201d Even, \u201cShow me the sound of that single hand.\u201d\u00a0But, they\u2019re all about the fundamental matters of life, of love, of death. They invite us into our lives.<\/p>\n

In Japanese Zen, in both the Rinzai and the Soto reform koan curriculum developed by Daiun Sogaku Harada Roshi one begins through a minute investigation of one of the \u201cdharmakaya,\u201d or \u201cbreakthrough,\u201d or \u201cfirst\u201d koan, pick your term. After this within the Harada system within which I trained there is a short course called \u201cMiscellaneous Koan.\u201d<\/p>\n

This collection were once called \u201cMiscellaneous Koans Following Kensho,\u201d but for various reasons that usage has fallen away. That word kensho, which is generally understood as enlightenment was seen by many of our teachers to be a bit over the top, or redundant, or, probably, a little of both.<\/p>\n

However we call \u2018em, I love these miscellaneous koan. Unlike some of the cases we encounter later, they are all very brief. \u201cSave a Ghost,\u201d \u201cWalk straight on that road with ninety-nine curves,\u201d \u201cA young girl is walking toward you\u201d for instance, are both the title of the koan and the whole thing. Not only do they introduce us to the range of what we will encounter as we go forward in the discipline, here we learn the tropes and style of the koan way.\u00a0It is a rich time, with powerful and multifaceted pointers.<\/p>\n

\"Dead\"<\/a>Among these, one of my favorite is called the \u201cStone Crypt.\u201d It does contain\u00a0a bit more to it than the title, although not all that much more.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou find yourself in a stone crypt. There is no window and the door is locked from the outside. How are you free?\u201d<\/p>\n

A good question.\u00a0And, particularly, on this day, maybe the question. God is dead. You are dead. Resurrection? Really? Not here. Not now. Instead it is dead. Dead.\u00a0Dead. All the way down. Dead.<\/p>\n

In that place, inside the stone crypt, how are you free?<\/p>\n

Now, that\u2019s something for the human heart to break on.\u00a0I find myself thinking of my family members who are now dead. My father. My mother. My son. My first wife.\u00a0Dead. All of them.<\/p>\n

In a couple of months I\u2019ll turn seventy. And I feel my aches and pains and feel the world getting smaller, my options shrinking. And think how I need to exercise more. I need to continue to lose weight.\u00a0Knowing, of course, as important as these actions are for continuing quality of life and maybe even pushing out the parameters of the end of my life a bit, does not, will not, cannot prevent my death. And that\u2019s not some abstract, someone else\u2019s death. My death.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a small card I keep on the bookshelf in the living room of our little condo in Long Beach. It reads \u201cOne of these days you will be dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those who promise you will not die if you do this, or say that, or think whatever; they lie. Probably they\u2019re lying to themselves, as well. But very much they\u2019re lying to you. This is a hard truth. If the Christian story is nothing more, as some tell me it is, than a promise I will not die \u2013 this is a false promise. It is a vain denial of the inevitable. The universe bares witness to this lie. It just isn\u2019t the way things are. We die. You die. I die. Even time dies.<\/p>\n

But what if we\u2019re missing the pointer in the Easter story, one that includes Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter \u2013 not in a linear point \u201ca\u201d to point \u201cb,\u201d or, in this telling point \u201cd?\u201d What if each moment tells the whole story. And not the story of some ancient sage and his horrible death, but your story? My story? What if it is a call into intimacy, into the deepest intimacy?<\/p>\n

What if? What if the Eastertide story is an invitation into another way of seeing, into that deepest intimacy? Into that matter to be made clear? What if it is a story that invites us to see death in another perspective? A seeing that does not deny the reality of death, the inevitability of death? Then Holy Saturday in fact a pointer toward something, an invitation into something? Perhaps it is a koan? Perhaps a matter, a great and deep matter, to be made clear. And if that\u2019s true, what would koan of death and life mean? What does it mean when you\u2019re in that stone crypt? What does it mean when your body has been laid to rest and the worms begin to do their thing?<\/p>\n

\u201cYou find yourself in a stone crypt. There is no window and the door is locked from the outside. How are you free?\u201d\u00a0When resurrection is just a dream, how are you free?<\/p>\n

Right now. Knowing this precious moment contains all that was \u2013 and, all that will be \u2013 how, lying in that crypt how are you free? Without hoping for Easter how are you free?<\/p>\n

You.\u00a0Not someone else.\u00a0Me.\u00a0Not someone else.<\/p>\n

Today. On Holy Saturday.\u00a0When Jesus is dead.\u00a0When God is dead.\u00a0And so are you.\u00a0How are you free?<\/p>\n

Open your heart. Let it all be. Just let it be.<\/p>\n

And something will be revealed.<\/p>\n

I promise. And of course that promise doesn\u2019t matter. Open your heart. Open your consciousness. And know for yourself. Become like a person who has taken a sip of water and knows whether it is cool or warm.<\/p>\n

Free that person in the stone crypt.<\/p>\n