Sunday dawns as one more day. This day is incomparable, a day only superficially similar to any other. We Americans have designated the seventh day Sunday, as a day of rest, reflection. To say it in a degraded form, “the Lord’s day,” a day for collective worship. Degraded you say!? Yes. Do not feel obligated to misunderstand, to resist the meaning of the written words.

We cannot grasp, not really, how early Christianity might have coalesced in those years of the Roman empire. It was a time of religious ferment. The Mediterranean pantheon of the old gods, the home of the sky-gods, of Zeus, Apollo, Hera, Dionysus, was positively over populated. The deities of tribes and peoples subsumed, bound by the politico-economic bands of Rome, elbowed and crowded in.

Consider that the core concepts of Christianity are a paste up, a montage of ideas native to late antiquity, ideas which the man on the street would have accepted without hesitation. For example gods from time to time have sexual relations with a human female. A semi-divine child is born, a son-of-god.  Achilles the son of Peleus and Thetus a sea-goddess,  and Jesus of Nazareth born of a virgin are good examples. Of course this is not an everyday occurrence, but it does happen, so thought our ancestors.

In addition in keeping with the wide spread anxiety of the times, Jesus understood himself as a freelance pundit offering practical advice, an action plan for the apocalypse.  Basically, you should wait for it, the End of History, and pay attention to the signs.

As it sometimes goes his message became a movement, inconvenient to Rome’s mandate to keep order. The Romans being a Law & Order minded people, gave him a hearing in presence of the governor, before executing him. In due time, the story was circulated, the execution was in effect a ritual sacrifice, an innocent mammal, in this case, a homo sapiens is offered – a death in exchange for human life. (Our ancestors were always anxious that they had somehow angered a god.) Remedy for inadvertent ‘sin’ was a sacrifice, a transaction of appeasement.

Add to this Lego-like construction of ideas from antiquity: the ritual of Eucharist. The story circulated that Jesus instructed his followers that to remember him, a ritual sip of wine, and a taste of wafer is to participate in his blood and his body. How far do you want to take this idea?  Is this metaphor, or does something magic occur?

This suffices to make a point. Christianity at the earliest definition was a collage of ideas accepted without further ado by our ancestors. Nietzsche is bold to write: this collection of ideas is like a gruesome ghost rising out of a primeval grave… My opinion: I think the matter is personal, whether these ideas are coherent and credible to you is up to you.

A friend commented about the respect that he feels for the Dali Lama, a man recognized far and wide for his advocacy of love, for the practice of kindness.  A further comment was made that this position of mindful solicitude for all things is transcendent, a hallmark of epitome, a sign of a possible future for all of us, and for our home.

As a Buddhist the Dali Lama thinks that ’emptiness’ is at the heart of all things.  The idea of emptiness seems to make room for our creativity does it not?  Maybe the future is up to us?

Returning to the beginning of this post. What makes this day one-of-a-kind, a stand alone?  May I suggest the advent of tulips, and many other spring flowers?