Good Friday (but not a great one)

This particular entry is chock full of religious musings. It will probably annoy the non-Christians among you, and maybe draw an attack or two from fundamentalists.  Sorry about that.  I'll try to make it up to you with some cool new pictures at the beginning, middle and end of the entry.

Over on the St. Michael & All Angels Arts blog, in which I post mostly my own religious stuff to a audience of zero, I just reprinted an early posting from Musings.  It was called "Palm Sunday Heresy."  It was the history of my attempts at religiosity, from mock masses in the game room to high school Jesus Freak-ing, the many years when I didn't attend church and the reasons why St. Michael's has become my spiritual home, even though I still don't know exactly what I believe, much less understand it all.  I'm not going to post the whole thing again here; just bop over to the other blog if you're curious.

But at the end are some updates, most of which I will mention here, and even expand upon:

******* Update: 2005 ******

It's been a year, almost, since I wrote "Palm Sunday Heresy."  I've gotten better at being a lector, and I don't make quite as many mistakes as crucifer. But really, overall, not much has changed in terms of my knowing what I believe or what I should be doing about it.  I listen to the sermons - heck, I edit and post the sermons.  I say the prayers and sing the hymns, carry the cross and read aloud at the ten o'clock.  Yet somehow, I don't seem to be making much progess.

I haven't accomplished much this Lent, in terms or fasting or readings or special devotions. You know I haven't quite managed to avoid blogging at work, and I haven't done that well on the dieting.  Last year, I read Girl Meets God plus all four Gospels during Lent. Not this year.

Nor have I learned anything much about my faith, such as it is.  I still don't understand about  heaven, or how to reconcile troublesome Johannine presentations of Jesus to the earlier, very different synoptic ones. Most of all, I haven't figured out about what Father Smith calls "the scandal of the cross." I don't understand the reason for what happened on Good Friday all those years ago. Oh, the human reasons - jealousy, politics, power, and sectarian disagreement - seem clear enough, but God's reasons remain obscure to me.

But I know that something happened, something that matters, something that resonates through 2000 years of translations and interpretations, of the same or similar words repeated so often that meaning threatens to slip away. It matters, whether or not I understand it, whether or not I'm clumsy or distracted when I'm carrying the cross or sitting in the sanctuary.

And I pray that by next year, I'll understand why it matters and what it means, at least one percent better than I do now.

Karen