Growing up in a very conservative Catholic environment, sacrifice, especially when it is linked to love, is a concept that has defined my life. Unlearning the meaning I was taught has been a significant task over the past decade. Now that I finally feel at peace with my roots and my departure from my former beliefs, I came across this beautiful piece, and… (I will keep the rest to myself). Muchas gracias, Jonathan. ❍
Thank you, Jonathan, for your timely post today. And it connects with Jamie Wheal's take on the simple yet profound ritual sacrifice of paying attention -- and thereby giving one's time -- to small things that matter. https://substack.com/profile/16082705-kathryn-kang/note/c-52690669
This was excellent! I have subscribed. John O’Donahue describes sin as “woundedness that keeps you stuck in hungry, anxious places, and then poison comes from you, that is destructive of others.”
I appreciate the intricacies you point to so beautifully, Jonathan, and the notion of joyous struggle itself. I actually broke my own habit and became a paid subscriber, till and if I need to change. The future we (I) want is based on my values!
I participate in a couple pub/ cafe philosophy groups. Recently at one we were talking about competing moral theories: utilitarian, virtue, and deontological. It just now struck me (and why I'm commenting here), that one can speak of the utilitarian what, virtue how, and deontological why, to bring them together (on a layman's understanding). What is good is utilitarian, but how to achieve it is virtue, and why it is (the how) is deontological. (I hope I'm using this last big word correctly. And I hope laying it out schematically like this is enough for the reader in general to join the dots. I also hope, given my I expertise, I'm not just lifting and oversimplifying the ideas of others.)
PS maybe it'll help to say deontological here is associated with Kant's categorical imperative, and that the background to the set of relations is 'the who' we are. (I can't stop myself: who, therefore a utilitarian what, and a virtue how given our epistemic limitations, and a virtue how because of a deontological why because of who we are, where 'who we are' is individuals in relation to one another, seeing one another, envious and admiring and otherwise caring about each other....)
Oh PPS I think I need to throw the word 'free' into these reflections, as part of the who. Free connects/ holds separate the deontological why and utilitarian what (via virtue how): we need to act for reasons other than utilitarian because the other people in the picture are free (too).
Hi Jonathan, thank you for your enlightening and insightful article about the power and significance of Easter.
I was troubled by your reference to Jesus as a Palestinian Jew when there was no Palestinian entity at that time, and Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea.
This article by a professor of ancient Christianity at Boston University, whilst polemical in nature, is helpful in explaining why it is historically inaccurate and an act of cultural and political appropriation to write that Jesus was a Palestinian Jew.
Thank you Danny. This is not a matter of critical importance to me, and nor one where I have any expertise. But since you asked, I got curious. My understanding is that historically Palestine was an unofficial geographic term (not a political term or one with any ethnic significance) for the region between Phoenicia and Egypt and long predates ‘Syria Palæstina’ which is the term Romans gave to what was previously Judea and Galilee. For instance, in c.450 BCE Herodotus wrote of a "district of Syria, called Palaistinê" that included the Judean Mountains and Jordan Valley. (Aristotle apparently also used it to refer to a region that included the Dead Sea, though I don’t have a source for that). To call Jesus a Judean Jew feels tautological, while to call him a Palestinian Jew locates him ethnically and geographically without being too specific.By this logic, it can be true both that Bethlehem was in Judea and Palestine, just as Edinburgh was/is capital of Scotland politically even before the UK, but has always been part of the British isles geographically. I didn’t refer to Jesus as a Palestinian Jew as any kind of political statement when I first wrote it 5+ years ago, though I can see it has more significance in light of current events.
The idea that the martyrdom/murder of Jesus was the literal and final Sacrifice of God is a perversion of the Truth about the human condition.
The true sacrifice of Jesus occurred while he was alive. That sacrifice was of an esoteric Spiritual nature, and it is of no inherent value to any other human being, unless that individual will duplicate that same sacrifice in the processes of his or her body-mind-complex.
The idol of Jesus persists, because it is one of the archetypal alternatives to authentic personal religious or Spiritual responsibility.
The consoling archetypal Myth and the idol of Jesus have nothing to do with the Process that is True Religion, or the Spiritual responsibility of Man (male and female)
The question remains what does anyone really know about what may or may not have happened in Palestine 2000 years ago - whenever and wherever that was.
Jesus of course was never ever a Christian, the presumed resurrection did not happen, could not have happened, nor did he found the religion about him (aka Christianity) every minute fraction of which was invented by people who never met Jesus up close and personal in a living-breathing-feeling human form, such that could receive his personal instructions as to how to practice the universal non-sectarian Spirit-Breathing Way of Life that he taught and demonstrated.
We can believe what we will. I love your joyful dance around the bowl of hot porridge, just like the Pixies in Nordic attics at Christmastime.
Today is the world between. Yesterday constituted a metacrises. And tomorrow will constitute metanoia, a change of mind for a joyous life. Let us not reject true Life. A life operating at all scales. This is Nature and true divine understanding. Yesterday I read from Mathew 5 to 7 the undiluted voice of Christ, the voice mankind seems to deny more and more on the altar of non-Darwinian Neo evolutionary religion. I love Easter Sunday, a day for celebrating new Life.
As Jesus said: "I have come that you may have Life in all its fulness." For me, this is new every morning through a lifetime of experienced realisations of Computational Reality Processing, leading to the end of confusion of the work of life. All Life we are currently discovering emerges from observing Nature at the microscopic scale and realising everything to be purposefully organised.
Happy Easter Sunday, brothers.
Love brother Nelson.
P.S. Why is it so damn difficult to express reality in words?
"That struggle with despair and hope defines the human condition, and Easter Saturday can therefore be seen as a microcosm of our whole lives. Perhaps the reason we don’t hear much about Easter Saturday is that we live it every day." You've put your finger on something very important here. Parker J Palmer calls this living in the tragic gap, between the harsh realities that crush our spirits and overwhelm us and the real world possibilities, life as we know it can be, could be or ought to be.
I'm grateful that you are one of a few people, here and through Perspectiva (e.g. the recent piece Cross with the Hemispheres), willing to speak in public about spiritual matters, "questions about the ultimate nature, meaning and purpose of existence".
In terms of this piece, I appreciate the exploration of sacrifice and I find the extended analogy of chess to explore Easter jarring and reductionist.
Growing up in a very conservative Catholic environment, sacrifice, especially when it is linked to love, is a concept that has defined my life. Unlearning the meaning I was taught has been a significant task over the past decade. Now that I finally feel at peace with my roots and my departure from my former beliefs, I came across this beautiful piece, and… (I will keep the rest to myself). Muchas gracias, Jonathan. ❍
Thank you, Jonathan, for your timely post today. And it connects with Jamie Wheal's take on the simple yet profound ritual sacrifice of paying attention -- and thereby giving one's time -- to small things that matter. https://substack.com/profile/16082705-kathryn-kang/note/c-52690669
This was excellent! I have subscribed. John O’Donahue describes sin as “woundedness that keeps you stuck in hungry, anxious places, and then poison comes from you, that is destructive of others.”
I appreciate the intricacies you point to so beautifully, Jonathan, and the notion of joyous struggle itself. I actually broke my own habit and became a paid subscriber, till and if I need to change. The future we (I) want is based on my values!
Thanks Andrew. I’m joking about the Easter eggs in heaven, but paid subscribers really are very much appreciated.
I too appreciate the break in ordinary time — and I very much I appreciate this break in the ordinary conversation. 🙏🏽
I participate in a couple pub/ cafe philosophy groups. Recently at one we were talking about competing moral theories: utilitarian, virtue, and deontological. It just now struck me (and why I'm commenting here), that one can speak of the utilitarian what, virtue how, and deontological why, to bring them together (on a layman's understanding). What is good is utilitarian, but how to achieve it is virtue, and why it is (the how) is deontological. (I hope I'm using this last big word correctly. And I hope laying it out schematically like this is enough for the reader in general to join the dots. I also hope, given my I expertise, I'm not just lifting and oversimplifying the ideas of others.)
PS maybe it'll help to say deontological here is associated with Kant's categorical imperative, and that the background to the set of relations is 'the who' we are. (I can't stop myself: who, therefore a utilitarian what, and a virtue how given our epistemic limitations, and a virtue how because of a deontological why because of who we are, where 'who we are' is individuals in relation to one another, seeing one another, envious and admiring and otherwise caring about each other....)
Oh PPS I think I need to throw the word 'free' into these reflections, as part of the who. Free connects/ holds separate the deontological why and utilitarian what (via virtue how): we need to act for reasons other than utilitarian because the other people in the picture are free (too).
Hi Jonathan, thank you for your enlightening and insightful article about the power and significance of Easter.
I was troubled by your reference to Jesus as a Palestinian Jew when there was no Palestinian entity at that time, and Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea.
This article by a professor of ancient Christianity at Boston University, whilst polemical in nature, is helpful in explaining why it is historically inaccurate and an act of cultural and political appropriation to write that Jesus was a Palestinian Jew.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/03/28/easter-jesus-not-palestinian-jew/#
I would be super grateful to hear your thoughts on this and why you decided to refer to Jesus in this way?
Many thanks.
Thank you Danny. This is not a matter of critical importance to me, and nor one where I have any expertise. But since you asked, I got curious. My understanding is that historically Palestine was an unofficial geographic term (not a political term or one with any ethnic significance) for the region between Phoenicia and Egypt and long predates ‘Syria Palæstina’ which is the term Romans gave to what was previously Judea and Galilee. For instance, in c.450 BCE Herodotus wrote of a "district of Syria, called Palaistinê" that included the Judean Mountains and Jordan Valley. (Aristotle apparently also used it to refer to a region that included the Dead Sea, though I don’t have a source for that). To call Jesus a Judean Jew feels tautological, while to call him a Palestinian Jew locates him ethnically and geographically without being too specific.By this logic, it can be true both that Bethlehem was in Judea and Palestine, just as Edinburgh was/is capital of Scotland politically even before the UK, but has always been part of the British isles geographically. I didn’t refer to Jesus as a Palestinian Jew as any kind of political statement when I first wrote it 5+ years ago, though I can see it has more significance in light of current events.
The idea that the martyrdom/murder of Jesus was the literal and final Sacrifice of God is a perversion of the Truth about the human condition.
The true sacrifice of Jesus occurred while he was alive. That sacrifice was of an esoteric Spiritual nature, and it is of no inherent value to any other human being, unless that individual will duplicate that same sacrifice in the processes of his or her body-mind-complex.
The idol of Jesus persists, because it is one of the archetypal alternatives to authentic personal religious or Spiritual responsibility.
The consoling archetypal Myth and the idol of Jesus have nothing to do with the Process that is True Religion, or the Spiritual responsibility of Man (male and female)
The question remains what does anyone really know about what may or may not have happened in Palestine 2000 years ago - whenever and wherever that was.
Jesus of course was never ever a Christian, the presumed resurrection did not happen, could not have happened, nor did he found the religion about him (aka Christianity) every minute fraction of which was invented by people who never met Jesus up close and personal in a living-breathing-feeling human form, such that could receive his personal instructions as to how to practice the universal non-sectarian Spirit-Breathing Way of Life that he taught and demonstrated.
We can believe what we will. I love your joyful dance around the bowl of hot porridge, just like the Pixies in Nordic attics at Christmastime.
Today is the world between. Yesterday constituted a metacrises. And tomorrow will constitute metanoia, a change of mind for a joyous life. Let us not reject true Life. A life operating at all scales. This is Nature and true divine understanding. Yesterday I read from Mathew 5 to 7 the undiluted voice of Christ, the voice mankind seems to deny more and more on the altar of non-Darwinian Neo evolutionary religion. I love Easter Sunday, a day for celebrating new Life.
As Jesus said: "I have come that you may have Life in all its fulness." For me, this is new every morning through a lifetime of experienced realisations of Computational Reality Processing, leading to the end of confusion of the work of life. All Life we are currently discovering emerges from observing Nature at the microscopic scale and realising everything to be purposefully organised.
Happy Easter Sunday, brothers.
Love brother Nelson.
P.S. Why is it so damn difficult to express reality in words?
"That struggle with despair and hope defines the human condition, and Easter Saturday can therefore be seen as a microcosm of our whole lives. Perhaps the reason we don’t hear much about Easter Saturday is that we live it every day." You've put your finger on something very important here. Parker J Palmer calls this living in the tragic gap, between the harsh realities that crush our spirits and overwhelm us and the real world possibilities, life as we know it can be, could be or ought to be.
I'm grateful that you are one of a few people, here and through Perspectiva (e.g. the recent piece Cross with the Hemispheres), willing to speak in public about spiritual matters, "questions about the ultimate nature, meaning and purpose of existence".
In terms of this piece, I appreciate the exploration of sacrifice and I find the extended analogy of chess to explore Easter jarring and reductionist.