Faith and religious commitment can provide much comfort, healing and inspiration. In most major world religions, there are also teachings and scriptures that are challenging and hard to digest. In today’s Reflection, we wonder what to do with these, especially when the ‘real’ world is quite difficult enough!
Judgement, sin and world-endings are almost comically offputting topics for thought and discussion. In a time of pandemic, even those who consider themselves religious can be forgiven for looking to more comforting resources in the spiritual toolkit.
Today’s recommended bible readings are of tougher stuff. We might dare to stare into the mirror they offer us. There is no pressure to do so but … perhaps there is some hope to be found here, after all.
Readings
Revelation, the bible’s final book, is a weird and wonderful word painting of apocalypse. Few Sci Fi movies beat it for stark moods, complex narratives and showmanship. Here is an excerpt from today’s passage:
“So the one who sat on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth, and the earth was reaped”
Jesus did not shy away from elusive, mystical, dark poetry either. In the Gospel According to Luke, he says:
“As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down”
Phew! (If you want to read all three of today’s readings in full they are from Revelation 14; Luke 21 and Psalm 96.)
Reflect
Spend some time sitting with the quotes above - or the readings if you would like something longer. Rather than analysing their ‘true’ meaning (arguably impossible!) allow the feelings they bring up to take hold for a while.
Do you feel anxious; angry; hopeless; exhilarated; confused; overwhelmed; afraid? Something entirely different?
Do these feelings evoked by scripture chime with your experience of life, at the moment? Do they give you permission to ‘feel’ the harder aspects of it?
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A spiritual realm of ferocity, awfulness, Otherness and challenge is conjured in these parts of scripture.
We might feel relief. Here, the ultimate destination of our beautiful world is not ‘ours’ to bring about. That burden, ultimately, is held in Other hands.
We might feel reassured. There is a story playing out in the spiritual realm that accompanies our mortal challenges, ruptures and shocks. We may not see it … but we are in this thing called life together with the heavenly beings.
We might gain persective. However all-encompassing, our present troubles are fleeting.
Scripture can also reveal ourselves to us as we face it: a deep-seated belief that I am unsafe and worthy of punishment can make passages like these oppressive; a deep-seated belief that I am a loved, safe child can shoot them through with light, revealing that the Final Destination I face is trustworthy.
Music can conjure up other worlds, too. You might like to set aside half an hour to listen to Strauss’s beautiful Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration) or the darkly atmospheric Alice by Sunn O ))) as part of your meditation.