40 Days

Easter marks for me (and many other folks, I'm sure) new beginnings. Spring, blooming flowers and trees and of course, Christ's rising.

This weekend, I watched a History Channel show about Jesus' Crucifixion and his subsequent rise from the dead. The story is told that he appeared for 40 days to various individuals and then ascended. 40 days is a long time. During that time and those appearances, what Jesus actually said to those he appeared to can be summed up in one line: "Jesus said a lot of stuff."

Great. My thought is this: If a man who inspired so many with his teachings is murdered ; rises from the dead three days later and then spends the next 40 days appearing to his followers, don't you think that no matter WHAT he said you'd write it down?!? If he said, "I'm going to the bathroom", I'd have recorded it. Seriously! It's not every day that something like that happens. 

I gave this some thought as we went about our weekend. We stopped to put together furniture and install a light fixture for Ken's mom. Then we helped a friend hang a door. I thought to myself, this is in the spirit of what Jesus was getting at, be a good Samaritan. Lend your talent, skills and time to others to lighten their load and make their lives better. Take care of each other. Leave joy in your path. Jesus was all about honoring the Divine in others. What you see in your world and in others is a reflection of who you are and what you've created. You are not removed from that process or a victim of it.

Which begs the question. Why would a man with so much insight into the human spirit and  subsequently the celestial heavens bother to come back to say so seemingly little? The short answer, at least as I see it, is that he didn't. 

I suspect, Jesus had a lot to say. He probably talked about how at the end of the day, we are all one spirit. We are all Divine. Famous for saying,"God is within you", Jesus probably got to experience what that meant first hand. He probably told the disciples that everyone is in effect his/her own version of God. Being made in the image is a metaphor, how could we not be a part of that life force? We are all 1% away from being physically identical. Why would we be so different metaphysically? The biggest thing that I bet Jesus said was that if we honor the Divinity in each other and the Divinity in ourselves, we don't need regulators like war, religion and law. We would not do anything to harm the Divine if we could see it for what it really was. A spark of God in all of us.

I suspect that though Jesus may have relayed these truths in great detail, they weren't what worked well with the human motives of the time. There was a need for the larger populous to feel inferior to God so that the religious hierarchy and the manipulation of that hierarchy would work.  In essence, the disciples did not spread the simpler, purer message that we ARE the spark of God and that as such we are our own Creators. In fact, I am sure they would have met much the same fate as Jesus had they tried. 

Jesus probably also explained in greater detail Karma or the laws of cause and effect. It's not personal. There is a Universal balance to be maintained. You reap, without judgement, what you have put into effect. Conscious of the power we all possess - the Power of the Creator, Jesus refused to manipulate or coerce. At the close of his 40 days, I suspect he reminded everyone  that we are all Divine and it's embracing that Divinity that creates peace in our souls and a better world around us. We are responsible for being our own Creators. And frankly, we don't need an intermediary to bridge the Divine conversation. The Kingdom of God is within us always. It never leaves us because it IS us. We can access it any where, any time.

I think Jesus did say many, many things during his 40 days. Much of it so simple and powerful that it frightened the people responsible for spreading that particular part of the gospel. So in the end, we got the CliffNotes. Could explain why we aren't exactly making an "A" on the ensuing test.