Resurrection stories... continued

I remember hearing a story of a group of Christian monks in the modern US. They invited a Buddhist monk from the East to come and help them during a retreat they were planning.

Based on what he did, I assume this monk from the East was a Japanese Zen Buddhist. He read the bible, particularly the Gospels. And after that, he called each monk in to see him one by one.A koan is a particularly Zen Buddhist tradition... it's a question that has no rational answer. It's designed to task the intellectual mind to such an extent that, at some point... it just quits. What comes after this point is the "answer". A famous koan is, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"

So this monk brings in each Christian monk, one at a time, and explains to them that he's read parts of the bible, and was especially intrigued by the story of Jesus, and more particularly the story of the resurrection of Jesus. So he tells each monk, in turn, how interesting this all was to him as he read it, saying something like - "I've read the bible and the Gospels. It's very interesting. But the most interesting thing to me is his resurrection." But adds his koan, the riddle for them to solve... "Show me your resurrection."

Whether you see the story of Jesus as historically true or not, whether it's a "myth" or fact...

(BTW I use the word "Myth" in the truest sense, not in the magazine fashion - as in "5 myths about relationships" or something like that. The idea here being that a myth is a "falsehood" or a non-truth, as in "Myth versus Fact". As one of my professors at seminary said... "Myth is TRUTH irrespective of historicity". Myth is a deeper truth told in a story... that might or might not be historically true. Here's an example: the creation stories in Genesis - they might not be historically true.... but the story tells Truths about God... can you guess what these are?)

... where is the resurrection in your life? Have you ever experienced a "personal" resurrection?
Spiritual, physical, emotional?

Before I got to college I had a faith. It was very much like the faith I had when I was a kid. In college I lived on my own, learned to think on my own, began taking more and more responsibility for myself. I was changing.And part of this change was a change in my faith. To say my faith fell away doesn't do the experience justice. It was like having a part of myself stripped away. It was like losing a part of my body. If felt ripped away, like a limb torn off. Obviously it wasn't so much physical as emotional. I felt spiritually empty.

I remember I was looking for something, for a sign, for a light in the darkness I felt. I wanted a connection to God again. I would have taken anything at that point.As empty as I felt, I continued to go to church. But I don't remember really feeling anything. In fact I felt spiritually empty. It got to the point where I began to believe there was no God, there was nothing... just emptiness. Sounds pretty depressing, huh? You're getting the idea. It wasn't pretty.

This changed in a year or so. I began to "connect" again with the divine. As the years went by, I got more and more interested in the church world, more so than I'd ever had before. I became very interested in church doctrine. I had more and more "answers" to the questions of life. This was the way I began feeling more and more connected to God again.But then I went through another "change", only this one wasn't as desolate as the first one. This time I knew there was a God, only my experience of God was changing.

This is still a journey for me. I'm still changing. I've come to the place where I don't have as many "answers" as I once did. I don't have as many "answers" as I once had, but my belief in a Divine being, in a Sacred world and a "Supreme Being" is very deep... and my belief that we're all part of that world, is much deeper than I've ever felt in the past.

I believe I had to let my "old" faith die - the faith of my childhood - in order for my new faith to come to life in a new way.

This is one of my resurrection stories.

What's your resurrection story?