Epiblog for Easter Sunday

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. The snow continues to linger stubbornly. It started out by being annoying; it’s now got to the stage where it’s boring as well.  I have been putting off the evil day when I have to clear it off my ramp in the hope that it would have melted, but the stuff is packed so hard it will probably take a road drill to shift it.  I managed to break some of it by sitting in the doorway and whacking it with the yard-brush, which also helped me work off some aggression.  The weather’s also been playing havoc with my “just-in-time” shopping solutions, in that we’ve been (unaccountably) running out of stuff that we normally have in the cupboard. Debbie is a firm believer in stockpiling, of course, which is how we found, on one occasion, that we had 22 tins of beans in the house.

Matilda has been (very sensibly) keeping warm and not doing anything so unwise as venturing outside for longer than she absolutely has to. A typical Matilda journey into the outside world lasts about twenty seconds; half a minute, if you’re lucky.  It may change, of course, if it ever stops snowing. As I type this, she’s curled up on the Maisie-blankets at the foot of my bed, her nose in her tail, snuggled up to Mr Hedgehog. 

At least now that the snow has packed down into hard ice, the nuts and bread I put out for the birds don’t immediately vanish from sight, as they did earlier in the week when the snow was new, soft and powdery. I’m always amazed by the speed with which the birds and squirrels appear, once I’ve thrown the stuff down for them. I can only assume that, in some way I haven’t fathomed yet, the squirrels have the house under surveillance.

Brenda, however, just turns up whenever she feels like it, and takes pot luck on what’s available. It has been suggested that I should write “Brenda” on the stainless steel bowl we leave out for her on the decking, but I think that probably would be going too far.  She definitely visited on Tuesday and Thursday, but I still haven’t got any photographs to speak of, because on both occasions, by the time I’d untangled the web cam and set it all up, she’d wolfed the food down and gone.

This being the last week before the Easter break, Deb was looking forward to just getting through the remaining four days of teaching. She had a rude awakening, however, when she got lost in the snow drifts on Monday. As she left, my last words to her were to the effect that I’d been looking at the weather photos on Facebook and if I were her, I would go via the main roads. 

Debbie, of course, totally ignored this advice and went via her usual back roads short-cut way, through Kirkburton. She got so far along the route and found a snowplough blocking her way.  Eventually, she had to backtrack and just got there in time for the class to start.  She said she’d never seen drifts like it, and they were as high as the camper van on both sides of the road.  She doesn’t have a good track record with Dewsbury; when she went there for her interview, one of the windscreen wipers fell off - obviously an omen.

The teaching week finally ground to a halt and Deb emptied out all of the boxes and bags of teaching stuff out of the camper on Thursday, including several dozen library books. In fact, there were so many library books that I suggested that rather than Debbie take the books back, the college could just post a notice somewhere saying the library is now located at 111 Meltham Road, Lockwood. In terms of logistics, it’s the obvious solution.  The reason Deb was emptying out the camper was that she is talking of our setting off somewhere, for a few days, over Easter. We shall see. Personally, I’d rather be cold and miserable in the comfort of my own home.

Deb does deserve her break, though. Unbelievably, the College have asked her if, after Easter, she will cover the hours of another lecturer who is off with stress.  This is obviously part of the official “share the stress” College policy.  In addition to your own stress, you have to take on an additional portion of the stress from someone else who has been made ill with stress.

These days, I don’t get stress, myself, I give it. It is more blessed to give than to receive, especially when it’s to some nudnik who deserves it. This week, I had a follow up call from AXA/PPP healthcare insurance, following on from my conversation with one of their bods last week, checking that I still had a terminal illness... I foresee hours of fun stretching ahead with these people. Next time they ring to check if I'm still suffering from a terminal illness, I am going to say "Yes, in fact it's much worse today, I am feeling... .... .... argh!" then let the phone fall to the floor.  Or get Debbie to tell them I have died and their prayers went unanswered.  Somehow I doubt that even that would get me off their call list!

The Archers message board saga rumbles on.  This week I had my reply to my various Freedom of Information Act requests to the BBC about the numbers and the traffic on the messageboard which the BBC say were their justification for the closure. Basically the BBC’s position is that such things come under the heading of operational stuff which they are not obliged to disclose to mere plebs like us; we just pay the licence fee! The letter was signed on behalf of the BBC FOI unit by one Lisa Quarrell, and I foresee this is a quarrel which I will be pursuing again next week, as soon as I get round to it (and, fourteenthly…)

Meanwhile, the idiot who actually took the decision to close the message boards has been promoted to a new “digital” job at Five Live, although he was only in fact implementing the flawed policy of someone else who has already left the BBC, and even the much-maligned (and justifiably so) producer of the show, Vanessa Whitburn, is going. She is retiring, no doubt to spend more time with her “ishoos” and her zeitgeist.  So it would seem that the poor old Archers message board has been the victim of what might be called the “Samson Agonistes Defence”, pulling down the temple on good and bad alike.  What a way to run the British Broadcorpsing Castration.

Still, it all gives me something, and someone, to think about, while I am playing Whack-A-Mole and clouting the lumps of ice on my wheelchair ramp with the head of the yard brush. Take that BBC! Take that, AXA/PPP!

Friday didn’t seem like Good Friday; in fact, because of the weather, this whole Easter hasn’t seemed like Easter, really.  I did my usual devotional task of trying to find some quiet space to read Good Friday 1613, Riding Westward, by John Donne, something I’ve done every Good Friday for as long as I can remember.  Usually, it sets me in the frame of mind for thing about these sorts of things, but it seemed different with snow on the ground. It is really strange that an aberration in the weather can have such a profound effect on how you feel about everything else, but I know I am not alone in being depressed by the cold, lingering winter, other people, too, have told me how it makes them feel “seasonally affected”. It is still a great poem, though, and I recommend you to read it in its entirety (too long really to quote here) and marvel at the dexterity and wizardry of Donne’s use of paradox, to name but one – “A sunne, by rising set”, and the way he plays with the idea that his body is travelling westward on a day when he should be turning to face Jerusalem.

Zak and Freddie spent the day with us on Saturday, Granny being out and about.  We all sat and watched the snow melting, which it was doing, albeit slowly. Eventually, towards dusk, Debbie decided that they had to be exercised whether they wanted it or not, and rousted them up to go “walkies”.  The magic word had its customary effect, and they were soon at the door, tails wagging in anticipation.  They all set off into the wintry waste down the track into the woods out the back.

A quarter of an hour later, I was tip-tapping away at my keyboard and I looked up to see Zak standing on the decking outside the conservatory door. A couple of seconds later, he was joined by Freddie. I trundled over and let them in. No sign of Debbie. Hmmm. Odd, that.  Just on the offchance that she might be lying face-down in a snowdrift somewhere, I dialled her mobile. Fortunately, she answered.

“Yes, I know. They’ve abandoned me.”

Apparently they had got so far along the track towards the cricket-field, decided they had had enough of this cold, unpleasant white stuff, and, on some unspoken but mutually understood doggy signal, had turned round and set off for home, leaving Debbie to make her own way back.

By the time I had cooked and served the evening meal, they were both snoozing soundly; Zak in his armchair, Freddie on the rug in front of the fire.  Fearless guard dogs and protectors of our property that they are, they slept through the visit of Brenda the badger, who scoffed the remains of the cheesy topping from Thursday’s pasta bake; and Freda-who-may-be-Fred the fox cub, who demolished the remains of the peanuts put out for the birds.

And so we came to Sunday. Easter Sunday, and the start of British Summer Time, no less, and the snow still lying.  Again, it feels all wrong. Easter should be a time of hope, of rebirth.  Even if you don’t literally believe all the stuff about Jesus rising from the tomb, it should be a time when you can look forward to the advent of, well, if all else fails, better weather.  So this is one of the stranger Easter Sundays I’ve spent, probably – at least on a par with the one I spent in Oakmoor aka Broadmoor, having intensive physio, two years ago.

It is perfectly possible to believe in the Bible literally, and believe that every word of it is true, and is the revealed word of God.  Lots of people, many of them living in the southern states of the USA, do just that. I, personally, struggle with it on many levels.  There is evidence to suggest that a historical person called Jesus did exist – references are scattered throughout Tacitus, Suetonius, Josephus, and Thallus.  There may even have been, at one time, and official record of the Crucifixion, written by Pilate himself, which is now long since lost.

Tacitus, writing about a great fire in Rome in 115AD, mentions Jesus in passing:

"Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths, Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty, that they were being destroyed."

This is a far cry from the magical son of God stuff, though, it’s a straightforward account of the persecutions of the early Christians. In fact, with a few details updated, it could be the Coalition Junta’s policy towards the disabled.

The main evidence for Jesus is what we today call the New Testament, which also does have brief, tangential connections with actual historical events recorded in other sources, but those recollections that we now regard as the New Testament weren’t written down until maybe 100 or 150 years after Christ’s death, and not collected together until about 150AD. The early fathers of the church omitted many of the stories of Jesus which they found inconvenient or incompatible with the narrow version of Christianity promulgated by St Paul, and these became what we now know today as the Apocrypha. However, even allowing for the fact that oral tradition would undoubtedly lead to some variations in the recollections as set down, what strikes me most, whenever I look at the New Testament, is the cohesiveness, the degree of agreement between the accounts. Whoever Jesus was, whatever he did, he must have left a strong impression.

As to whether he performed miracles, who knows?  I have my own views of the nature of what we call reality, and the more I read, particularly of modern physics, the more I personally become convinced that it is perfectly possible, in theory at least, to bring about an alteration of perceived reality by the exercise of the will. It’s what people try to do whenever they pray. Maybe Jesus was just very, very good at it, or maybe there was something in him, something divine, that allowed him to step out of time. In effect, to have a “rewind” button, to enable him to raise the daughter of  Jairus, or Lazarus.

It still doesn’t answer the question that bothers me most of all, theologically speaking, which is why God, if indeed Big G is behind it all, chose to redeem mankind in this particularly long-winded manner in the first place. All this son-of-God stuff. I suspect I never will know, at least not this side of the tapestry.  Interestingly enough, in diagrammatic representation of the Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition, the Sephiroth traditionally associated with Christ, Tiphareth or Tiferet, is placed at such a point on the intersecting pathways that it looks as if it is mounted on a cross.  And between the more “material” aspects of the world, and Tiphareth, is Paroketh, which can translate as “the veil of the Temple.”

As Glyn Williams writes:

Paroketh resides on the Tree of Life, between the level of Hod and Netzakh and that of Tifaret. It is known as the veil of illusion, concealing from the illusion of our everyday senses a greater illusion beyond. But the veil of Paroketh is itself illusory, because there is no real division between the physical and the spiritual worlds.

So in that sense, the Jewish mystical tradition and the Christian story of the Crucifixion coincide. A rending of the veil of the Temple, the Crucifixion showing the continuity of the physical and spiritual worlds.

This “revelatory”, revolutionary aspect of the Crucifixion is also, maybe what the anonymous author of The Dream of The Rood was getting at.  Since I managed to replace my lost copy of Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Reader, I’ve been reading it again in the original. Painfully slow going, because it’s been 36 years since I last studied it in depth, and I haven’t retained the vocabulary, so I have to look up nearly every word.  Like Homer Simpson, every time I learn something new, it pushes some of the old stuff out of my brain.  The poem, preserved in the 10^th century Vercelli Book, and carved, in part, on the Ruthwell Cross in Dumfries-shire, recounts the story of the Crucifixion told from the point of view of the cross on which Christ was crucified. I’ve been obsessed with it for years, and we make a point of stopping off at Ruthwell on our way back from Arran, most years.  There are several online translations of the original Old English text.

The idea of a speaking, “animated” cross is not as odd as you might think at first. Anglo-Saxon verse is stuffed with “riddle” poems, where inanimate objects describe themselves, and then invite you to guess what they are. If the description can be smutty and sexually ambiguous, so much the better. I guess this sort of thing eventually evolved into doubles entendre and jokes.

The startling things about the “talking” cross in The Dream of the Rood is not the fact that it talks, but what it says. Using imagery that almost harks back to the pagan, Germanic roots of the way Old English society was organised, Christ is not the meek sacrificial victim as he is often depicted, the sort of portrayal that troubled me as a child when I used to think “why doesn’t he just get down off his cross and zap them?” – in this poem, Christ is the battle-leader, the Lord in the sense of one to whom fealty is owed, and the cross becomes his faithful retainer, fighting at his side. At the height of the battle they are both pierced with nails, both splattered with blood, and Christ dies a heroic warrior’s death, taking one for the team, willingly embracing his fate.

The cross in the poem says that Christ wanted to climb up on it, with great “zeal”

Geseah ic þā frean mancynnes
efstan elne micle, þæt hē mē wolde on gestīgan.

I, personally, find this interpretation of the Crucifixion much more revealing, much more satisfying, though it still doesn’t answer the question, why? So, to sum up, even though I still can’t say the Creed without crossing my fingers, maybe what we’re meant to get from the story of Jesus rising from the dead is this:

Was there a historical person called Jesus?  Yes, probably.

Did he do the miracles attributed to him in the Bible? Who knows – it depends what you classify as a miracle.

Was he crucified under Pontius Pilate?  Again, there seems to be some sort of historical reference.

Did he rise from the dead after three days in the tomb?  Who knows.

If he did, what does it mean?  Ah. Now that is a toughie. The best I can get to is that maybe it means that we don’t have to fear dying, or we don’t have to fear it quite as much. 

I can’t prove that, of course, I can’t prove any of this. It is a matter of belief, of faith.  And I have absolutely no idea why it has to be this way. What I do know is that there’s a something in the human spirit which turns and embraces sacrifice. The early Christian martyrs certainly suffered – just to recap, thank you, Tacitus, from the top:

“Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths, Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.”

Yet it’s Nero who is reviled today, as the idiot who fiddled while Rome burned.  And all those people in the past who were willing to be torn by dogs and perish, nailed to crosses, covered with the skins of beasts, and all that stuff, are the bedrock on which 2000 years of Christianity has been built.

Organised religion gets a bad press, not least from me. For a start, I can’t be doing with a one-size-fits-all morality. Some people (mainly followers of Richard Dawkins) would like to subject all Christians to the equivalent of Nero’s tortures today. I don’t blame them. In fact, there are some Christians I’d quite like to see covered with the skins of beasts and fed to the lions, for giving the rest of them a bad name (are you listening, Westboro Baptist Church?)

But for all the evil, intentional and unintentional, that it’s done, Christianity has also done good.  I don’t want to get into some sort of crude “scales of justice” type of argument here, with a hundred child-molesting priests on the one hand versus one Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the other, but there is something, something in the human nature which, when nurtured by devotion, tends towards the lost state of the divine.  In this case, by devotion to Christ.  That last paragraph, it may surprise you, took over twenty minutes to write and re-write, and I still feel I haven’t nailed it.  As Eliot says, I had the experience, but missed the meaning.

So if you come to me and you way, what is the meaning of Easter Sunday, what is the meaning of the Easter story, all I can say is, it means that, at the point where things look worst, when – for instance -  your garden has been battered with winter storms and them dumped on by snow and ice, when your daffodils are flattened, or your sheep are lost in snowdrifts, at the point where your heroes have all died in battle and are lying cold in their tombs, and you feel like the last survivor on the battlefield, picking through the corpses of your comrades; at the point where you wake up in the dark before dawn, and you feel cold, hungry and bereft; at the point where you think life’s done its absolute worst and then some bastard goes and pulls the rug even from under that, there will come a day of renewal, of resurrection, when the sun rises, the snow melts, the stone rolls away, the garden blooms again, and light and justice and goodness will be restored, and darkness will vanish into fleeing shadows.

The night is long, but day is longer still; no matter what you’ve lost, be it a home, a love, a friend. Pharaoh’s armies got drownded. And all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.  Happy Easter, everyone.