“We wondered if Palm Sunday might have been an act of civil disobedience. We imagined a prophetic Jewish teacher mimicking the pomp and slender of Roman colonizers in a parade dedicated not to himself, but to the outcasts who had gathered to hear a message of grace. We asked if the parade may have been a celebration, not of Jesus’ ego, but of his love of all the people who were colonized, disabled, rejected, humiliated and oppressed. Perhaps he was illustrating that love can build a temple from all the stones other builders have rejected.
[…}
“We remembered the words of Rumi: ‘Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn’t matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again , come , come.’
“Then, we imagined what such a parade would mean in our day. Surely it would call us all out of our allegiance to the death star of capitalism where human worth is calculated by what we have instead of who we are. It would call us out of any of the world’s empires where we are forced to participate in the slaughter of innocents. And it would call us out of artificial living where human temples, pipelines and skyscrapers displace the sacred temple of nature.
Since November our heads are still spinning
and it looks like the bullies are winning.
With more wars in the works
while the rich rake in perks,
will we witness an end or beginning?
© 2017 Lily Beth Baker