Holy Today

Birth

Death

Life Goes On

For each of the past five Lenten Fridays a small group of us have met.  We meditate for about twenty minutes and then have a teaching.  Liz asked each of us to take a turn at doing the teaching.  Yesterday was my day.  I gave each person ten cards with the sayings from the Ten Ox Herder Pictures and fourteen cards with the Stations of the Cross.  What I did in my teaching was to try to match the two stories.  And what makes these two very different stories match, is my understanding of each story. 

So here's my story for Holy Saturday.  The final Ox Herder picture is titled:  Entering the market place with open hands aka Life Goes On. I matched this picture with the 13th and 14th Station of the Cross:  #13 - The body is taken down from the cross.  #14 - Jesus is laid in the tomb.

Station 13

Station 14

By the final picture, the ox herder has found his ego maniac self, tamed it, the ox has disappeared and so has the ox herder.  And he's returned to the origin.  This is all pretty transcendent stuff.  So what happens next?  The identities he once loved and cultivated are gone.  All that is left is for the ox herder to do is to go into his life, but now he goes into his life with open hands. There is a line from the chant Merging Difference and Unity that goes like this:  Encountering the absolute is not yet enlightenment.  This is where the ox herder is:  entering his life.

Now, in the story from the Stations of the Cross, Jesus has died (#12). The Stations of the Cross explain how all of Jesus' identities were stripped away and in death he finds the transcendent.  And what do the people left behind do?  The Sabbath is coming and the body needs to be removed from the cross (#13).  And so it is taken down.  An empty tomb must be found (#14).  And so it is.  What is happening is that life goes on. In the midst of tragedy and sorrow life goes on.  Encountering the absolute is not yet enlightenment.

The Ox Herder Pictures and the Stations of the Cross are stories about finding/understanding/seeing the Divine, God, Emptiness.  What I've learned is to try to take stories like these from the concrete and move them to a different plane.  But most importantly I learned and feel the story inside myself.  We all can take "age-old-stories" and make them our own by finding truth deep within us.

I encourage you to take the Ox Herder Pictures and the Stations of the Cross and put them together for yourself and see what you learn or see differently.  What you learn will ultimately wind through you and become another story.

Many Blessings as you go into your life with open hands.
Marilyn