This is Turtles All The Way Up: a guide to living a chaotic good life. These words are intended to inspire positive change, so take what resonates and leave the rest. If most of these words resonate with you, share them! Send any alms via Venmo - @EmHaverty. And if you haven’t already…
My favorite part about the story of Easter is that Jesus rises again, and then peaces out a few days later.
Hanging out with the living as a resurrected person must be a drag.
The conversations must get monotonous. Everyone says “we thought you were dead” then act entitled to an explanation. The first folks get the long one, full of digressions and fun details about the afterlife. After a few more folks bring up the recent history of deadness, it’s clear there are not enough hours in the day to keep retelling the story. By the time he’s told a baker’s dozen, he’s sussed out what details are essential and trims the fat of the story. The next person he sees, an acquaintance asking if he’s walked on any good ponds recently, hears all the ineffable essentials distilled into an immaculate elevator pitch.
I swear, I didn’t want to write about Easter and Jesus and all this originally (I have other interests beyond contemplatin’ divine mysteries, ya know!) I’m a lapsed Catholic-current-pagan who is Universalist-curious. These bible stories and their remixing of pagan holidays rattle in my brain. I am seeking answers that feel “meta” to the whole she-bang (religion/ our existence.) Still, yesterday I couldn’t refuse a sense of synchronicity at a used book store and picked up a copy of The Laughing Jesus - Religious Lies and Gnostic Wisdom. This bit about resurrection stood out:
“The essential message of Christianity is that whilst we identify with the operate self we are dead and we need to come to life or resurrect. In the Greek used by the original Christians, the word usually translated ‘resurrect’ also means ‘awaken.’ The resurrection represents waking up… The resurrection is not something that happened in the past to Jesus. That’s just a story. Neither is it something that may happen to you after you die. That’s just a fantasy. The resurrection is something you must experience for yourself in this present moment by becoming conscious of your essential nature as awareness. A Christian text called The Treatise on the Resurrection announces “The world is an illusion. The resurrection [awakening] is the revelation of reality.”
I italicized a bit that’s tough to chew. From my understanding, it’s awakening to our own truth in a way that is transcendental of what we know in mundane waking reality. This use of transcendence aligns with the study of other world religions and shamanic practices. (“From my understanding” means “This is theological riffing, any clarifications are welcome.”)
The becoming of “one” with all underpins what I believe is an essential part of living for the chaotic good of all things. In a paradox, we exist opposite to the everyday world by being “one with the world.” A glorious crazy logic. There’s a similar leap of logic that comes with gender transition. In trans discourse online, people who have not realized their trans yet are called “eggs.” Death of the old, awakening of the new. Is it rebirth or… just birth? Dying is painful, but awakening from death must be excruciating, like a hangover for the entire mind, body, and spirit.
As I get further from religion as enforced upon me, I gain a deeper appreciation of what religion attempts.
Organized religions remind me of an ambitious-but-messy movie. There are a lot of ideas being thrown around. Some of them are really good, too! It’s easy to lose track of the throughline, and some b-stories are puzzling at best, but the inspired fans will seek answers that explain the choices. Do they seek out the humans who wrought the film, or do the fans dedicate their time crafting their own theories.
Does this mean that world religions are “cult classics?”
Thank you for reading this. If you need some help shaking these thoughts out of the body, listen to Amyl and The Sniffers. It’s amazing joyous Australian punk rock that’s endlessly listenable as if 70s punk was stripped down to the essential desire to jump around in celebration of life’s good things.