The sacrificial instinct is the deep recognition that something always has to die for something bigger to be born… we gradually get closer to what really has to be sacrificed—our own beloved ego—as protected and beloved as a little household lamb! We will all find endless disguises and excuses to avoid letting go of what really needs to die. And it is not other humans (firstborn sons of Egyptians), animals (lambs or goats), or even “meat on Friday” that God wants or needs. It is always our false self that has to be let go, which is going to die anyway.
Richard Rohr, from Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent, Saint Anthony Messenger Press.
Slowly the sun begins to set over the hills behind the sea. I cannot understand how I have been blessed to live in this most beautiful place, this little liminal town on the bay at the very tip of the Isle of Purbeck, filled with sea-change and the pure light of an endless sky.
In a few minutes I shall walk down to St Mary’s Church for the Maundy Thursday evening service. I’m a little hungry, and as puzzled as I always am about how the Lord of all could have gone through these days of Easter for someone like me, for people like us all. God’s good hand is there in all of the creation that lives around us, the air we breathe, the gravity that turns the worlds. Through Jesus all things were made – it was his hands, the maker’s, healer’s, gentle hands, that were nailed to stained and riven wood, in a real place, on a recorded date, in bloody fact.
2 comments:
I am not surprised that the Lord of all has gone through these days of Easter for someone like me, because so much of you reminds us of him.
As to something always having to die for something bigger to be born, this had never crossed my mind before. I have thought that I had to die in the past to an old me so that a new me could be born. I just never saw it 'bigger' just 'other.'
Thank you for your post.
Thank you, Claire. Your comments recently have been so encouraging - I feel we have somehow walked this Lent together... May God bless you and keep you and draw you still closer to his Son this Easter, and always!
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