“Just when I think I’ve got it all figured out, a book, Evolutionary Dancer, lands in my lap. It opens my understanding of resurrection to the point of inviting me into it, to claim it, not just proclaim it." Rev. Christina Paradela, once a parishioner now a friend and colleague, sent me a copy of her Easter newsletter.
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It's thrilling and humbling for an author to see her book take legs. While it's affirming when you're quoted by someone you deeply respect, it's grounding. Me, the book, you, we're all vessels of a higher consciousness rising up at this time in response to the crisis of the planetary family calling us to be part of a dying planet's transformation. Vessels of a wisdom, an intelligent universe, a consciousness some call God; vessels, simply, powerfully, and wonderfully vessels.
"And when resurrection is claimed," she goes on to explore this new idea, "there is a respons- ability that comes with that. And suddenly, resurrection is something brand new ... a sense of wholeness (salvation) with our context. ... In this time, when this living breathing earth, groaning in flame and flood, in pandemic and consequential upheaval, I can well imagine" Christina writes to her congregation, "that you too long for that greater sense of wholeness that the Easter story promises. We are of the universal resurrection; Christ came that we might reclaim that truth."
"Did I get it?" Christina writes to ask me. And I shake my head in awe and gratitude as she marries Evolutionary Spirituality and Christianity. Yes, resurrection is all about wholeness. It is, and I share the quote from the book, “a universal power bringing out of death, more Universe; a principle of cosmic creativity, and a pattern that was billions of years old. Everything comes from resurrected stardust.” It is one of the many faces of cosmic creativity; it is coded within all that is. ( Raising Resurrection page 221)
Everything is coded with transformation. Within the imaginal cells deep in the mush of the dying caterpillar are seeds of its future. Transformation makes the most complete kind of change possible. It drives the cellular metamorphosis whereby a new organism arises from the liquefaction of its prior form. A chrysalis becomes a butterfly. An embryo becomes a chick. One form dies and another resurrected in a new state of being. The body dies, be it Jesus, my mother, you or I, to arise as spirit or consciousness, one with the whole from which everything came.
But we don't need to wait to claim resurrection's promise. We can rise now as a very new kind of human being living as though there's a very different kind of culture. This Easter morning, we can waken up to a one-Earth community. We can put our feet on the floor as the best lovers of Earth we can be. Claiming this resurrection power, owning the deeper wider wholeness, life will never be the same.
Carol Kilby, March 31, 2021. #evolutionarydancer