Hope
It’s just been Easter, so naturally I’ve been thinking about death and resurrection. I realise Easter is a specifically Christian festival, but the themes and messages have much wider resonance.
To tackle the Christian message first, it has long been a central tenet of the faith that Christ was crucified, died, and rose again over the Easter weekend and that this was a cleansing moment as our failings and wrongdoings died with him, never to rise again. There have been arguments about this in more recent times with some theologians arguing that the rising again aspect was spiritual rather than actual – an argument which caused considerable angst among many Christians, not helped when the then Bishop of Durham referred to ‘conjuring tricks with bones’, and was inevitably quoted out of context, thus ensuring that outrage would drown out the point he was trying to make.
To me, the argument feels irrelevant – whether the resurrection was actual or spiritual, or even metaphorical, the message I take from it remains the same. There are a couple of aspects to this. First, we all get things wrong, do things we shouldn’t do (or omit to do what we should) and we can all wipe the slate clean and start afresh. That is central to the Christian message, but exists in Islam, Judaism and other religions as well, the defining element of Christianity being the person and role of Jesus. Second, for every death there is a resurrection. We see this in nature – not least around now as spring brings new life from dead ground - but also in restored relationships, in the rebuilding and burst of energy which follows an outbreak of peace. Which brings us to the world as we know it. The world we are experiencing now.
What to make of a world dominated by Trump and Putin? When will we know peace? The truth is that peace is never universal and all we can hope for is to increase the areas where there is peace by containing and resolving conflict wherever we can. This starts in out own back yard, and spreads outwards to wherever we can influence people and events. Daunting but worthwhile. As the supermarket chain has it, every little helps. The election of Trump may feel like the death of progress, of decency, and of a system which has sustained our lives but from this death can arise a better system, better relationships, more progress. All systems have their failings – as the saying goes “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others’ - but that does not preclude working for better and hoping for better. To live is to hope.
The bees are busy in my garden making quite a din to give up hope while they’re around would surely be a sin the world’s a mess, I can’t deny, but it would surely be a sin to give up hope while they’re around making quite a din The bees are busy in my garden
😊🐝🐝