This photo was taken on a sunny day in 2018 at the Coliseum in Rome. Charlene had gone off to find a bathroom and while I waited, sitting with my back against a stone wall, I looked out at this giant cross. A man crossed in front of me and, after admiring it for a few seconds, he raised his arms straight out and turned his face toward the sun.
I don’t know what kind of moment he was having. Maybe he was just stretching. But, as he stood there mirroring that cross, a thought came to me: the cross is literally buried in all of us – as a skeleton.
I’ve thought plenty about the concept of resurrection over the last decade. This notion of a divine human rising from the dead. I’m not a religious person. I’ve rarely gone to church. But I’ve come to understand the concept of resurrection as it relates to my own life story – of second chances – and that has given me an appreciation for the meaning of the Bible story.
I think the story of the resurrection of Jesus just opens the door for us to understand a bigger reality than we can see. It was not only confirmation that there is something that transcends death but also that there is no error or injustice – nothing so grievous that we as Divine humans can do – that can’t be rectified. It says that we are each more than we appear to be – greater than we imagine ourselves to be.
I think it’s true that Divine spirit flows through the hearts of each of us. And that we all have been, or will be, resurrected from something – pain, loss, loneliness, grief, disease, our own perceived mistakes – within our lifetimes. If we allow it. Resurrection – to begin again in a new way, with new understanding – is the gift that we too are offered in exchange for having suffered.
It begins in the shadows. And in the emptiness. It teaches us that difficulty can have a powerful and meaningful and transformative effect on us. It teaches us that we may not want something to happen – these losses, the loneliness, or the pain – but what’s happening is the universe’s way of getting you to where you must arrive – of making you who you must be. A string of small deaths and transformative resurrections that we each live, all along the way. Or maybe that’s too simple. I don’t know.
I do know that I pay more attention to the ways I see resurrection around us each day. In the way the seasons come around year after year – the universe’s way of showing us over and over again, the birth, life, death and resurrection. And that I’m grateful for my own second chances – deserved or undeserved, but truly given to me without reservation. But mostly, I’m grateful for the one I gave to myself.
MeaningMaker 