Blogging Through the Seasons

In the opening sequences of one of my favorite movies of all time, The Lord Of The Rings: Return of the King, we are given a brief history of the character we have come to know as Gollum. At this stage in the story, though, he a little different. Through the first and second movies, Gollum has been depicted as a small, emaciated, sneaky creature, but here he is none of those. In these opening moments Gollum is . . . well . . . healthy. To be honest, he looks like a completely different character. In this brief moment of backstory, we learn Gollum wasn’t always Gollum. There was a time when he was called “Smeagol,” and he enjoyed simple things, like fishing with his brother.

But everything goes wrong. 

It wasn’t until I read The Last Week by Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan that I came to understand just how much my childhood view of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem missed the point.

Rather than a nice story about the crowds hailing Jesus as King, this procession marks the intensifying clashes between Jesus and the Roman and religious authorities, which ends with Jesus’ execution a few days later. Jesus is not a passive bystander following the whims of the crowd here; he is the orchestrator of the events that unfold.

Borg and Crossan point out that two processions entered Jerusalem on a spring day during Passover in the year 30 . . .

Bedtime duty. Currently a multi-hour endeavor. Kisses, chattering, hugs disguised as full body tackles. (30 minutes). Currently, two out of four fall asleep easily and quickly. One child is willing to sleep only under precisely managed and negotiated conditions—dark room, one drink of water, one parent, preferably of the mommy kind. (30-60 minutes).  One child has been recently initiated into existential anxiety via the fear of nuclear annihilation. Physiology and psychology, deep breathing and essential oils, I use all my hard earned knowledge and summon all my Mother Presence, then I release my child into the lonesome valley. Repeat process as necessary. (15 minutes-3 hours. Varies by night).

This chapter is a celebration of pleasure. That’s right, a Christian celebration of delightful, sensuous, pleasure—and not in the once-a-year sex-sermon way. This is, as will be familiar now, a focus on the ordinary-everyday experience of pleasure—“the slight bitterness of tea, the feel of sunshine on the skin, a ripe avocado, a perfect guitar lick, or a good plot twist” (129).

Also familiar will be reciprocal relationship—Tish calls it “symbiotic cross-training”!—between the school of the ordinary and the school of gathered worship. She once again ties these two together.