Fuck resurrection - let's love the flawed
Fuck Resurrection. No better day to clarify this than today: If I think I need anybody or anything to be resurrected to deserve my love, fuck my love. What's my love worth if I wait for the flawless to receive it? Waiting to love the flawless is not only immature but the best way to never love at all. In a world that is completely flawed sharing our love despite of all the flaws within us is the best thing we have. Loving Zombie Jesus after he returned from the grave is for lotus-eaters and sissies. It reminds me of someone waiting for someone else to prove them that magic works - before they start finding out themselves. Sometimes magic doesn't work at all, often times it is the best way to fuck things really up and very rarely it is the silver bullet to a problem that otherwise seemed unsolvable.
Let's not wait for resurrection to make the world live up to our foolish expectations. The world isn't here to do something for us, but we are here to do something for it. Every day that I've held back my love from someone, is a day lost. Every day I waited for someone to be proven wrong and thus change and get closer to the ideal that deserves my love, is another day wasted in vain. Love is the best thing I have to give. It is what heals. And if I am afraid to share it with what needs healing, it cannot do its job. Love belongs to any place where it cannot come to live on its own. Where it is sprouting already, there is no need to seed again.
Above all what we need these days is the ability to instantly reimagine, not the patience to wait for resurrection. What we need is rare quality to reinvent, to take out reality filters, to break down ideals and concepts and theories, to not cling on to traditions, but to take a new look at what could be if we only allow it to. I say reimagine, don't wait to resurrect.
Just in case you need some ritual help on breaking down existing confines, here is a nice place to go an visit... Last week my wife and I had the privilege to see Heidelberg and Speyer. In the Middle Ages Speyer used to be one of the most important Jewish centers in Europe before the Jewish community was wiped out in 1349 entirely. From these ancient days still remain the recently rediscovered remains of the synagogue as well as the fully intact ritual bath cave, Mikveh dating back to as early as 1126.
I have been to the crumbling remains of Crowley's Abbey in Cefalu, to vibrant churches in Krakow, to temples in India and watched the pillars of ancient Persepolis in Iran on the first sunrise in the year 2000. Yet I have to say - if you want to see a living ritual place that still breathes the power and spirit of a community lost long ago, this is the place to go.
You are taken down into the underground bath house on long stone stairs. At their end is a room with a small alcove to your left and a double-arch window in front of you allowing your view to enter the central chamber where daylight from above reaches down to the natural water-basin fed by groundwater. To your right opens another rolling staircase leading down to and disappearing in the natural stone water pond that fills the entire ground of the central chamber.
It was here that people went to regain the freedom to reimagine their lives and themselves. They walked down into this dark cold underground water and immersed themselves in it completely. They held their breath, allowed the coldness to pierce through their body, through their minds and to pervade them. What a strange feeling this must have been: to be in a stone cave in the middle of your ancient city, submersed in the cold dark water and allowing its love to take over every cell in your body. A cold dark water love, leaving nothing behind but stillness. When they reemerged, light coming down from above, reaching out to the stone stairs, finding their way back up, leaving wet stains on the stone they were ready for a new day. Certainly reimagined, maybe resurrected.
The difference between the two is: while I might need to wait for resurrection, I can reimagine anytime. Everything deserves my love. I might need a bath in a cold dark Mikveh to be ready for it... But what's holding me back is myself, nothing else. It's certainly not the flaws of the world around me. If it was for that, I'd have never experienced a moment of love myself. We all deserve being loved, being drowned in the cold dark water of acceptance. And reemerge, all memories gone, a new day.
Let's love the living, let's love the flawed.