This Week

This week at praxis...Easter, Can I get a witness?

When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, 
and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him.  
And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, 
they went to the tomb.  They had been saying to one another, 
"Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?"  
When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, 
had already been rolled back.   As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, 
dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed.  
But he said to them, "Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, 
who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the 
place they laid him.  But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going 
ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you."  
So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; 
and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. 
- Mark 16:1-8 

But Mark, the harshest, the sparest of the Gospel writers, gives us an unhopeful Easter.  
Many scholars believe that the manuscript actually ended with a failure of nerve.  
The women, seeing the angel at the empty tomb, are terrified.  
The angel tells them to bring the message of Christ's resurrection to the disciples, 
but they don't.  It is believed that the original manuscript ended with this verse:  
"Then they went out and ran away from the tomb, beside themselves with terror.  
They said nothing to anybody but they were afraid."
-Mary Gordon
 


I keep thinking of you standing in Korea, in the courtyard
of the prison where the poet is in solitary.
Someone asked yo why not in the street
where you could be seen.  You said you wanted
to be as close to him as you could.
You stood in the empty courtyard.  You thought
it was probably doing no good..  You have written
a poem about it.  This is not that poem.
This is another-there may be details
wrong, the way variations come in
when you pass on a story.  This is a poem
about a woman, a poet, standing in a courtyard
feeling she is probably doing no good.
Pass it on:  a poet, a woman,
a witness, standing
alone
in a prison
courtyard
in Korea.
- "Solitary", Sharon Olds
 



God, I am sorry
I ran from you.
I am still running, 
running from
that knowledge,
that eye, that love 
from which
there is no refuge.
For you meant
only love,
and I felt only fear,
and pain.
So once in Israel
love came
to us incarnate,
stood in the
doorway between two worlds,
and we were all afraid.
-Annie Dillard

Because, you see, the alarming fact is that any realization of depth 
carries a terrible burden:  Those who are allowed to see are simultaneously 
saddled with the obligation to communicate that vision in no uncertain 
terms:  that is the bargain...if you have seen, you simply must speak out.  
Speak out with compassion, or speak out with angry wisdom, or speak out 
with skillful means, but speak out you must.
- Ken Wilbur, One Taste:  The Journals of Ken Wilbur
 

Questions:

	Why do you think Mark ended the gospel with the  women running away?  
	How do you feel about this ending?
	What does it mean to be a witness to something?
	Must one witness, as Wilbur suggests, if one "sees" God?
	How do you witness, and how do you run, in your life?