Easter day 11 April 2004

Pic of the day: It was about here that I first came to associate the song with resurrection. The way the sun twinkled into existence, early night changing into sunrise in a few seconds, whereupon the main character was surrounded by his friends. It made me think of how a resurrection may be experienced. One moment you're dying, the next you are sometime else. (Obviously I don't believe in souls hanging around for millennia, able to observe but unable to interact with the world. How could any remotely nice god allow that?)

Resurrections

What has the resurrection of Jesus Christ got to do with a song in the anime Naruto? And why do I think this concerns me personally? If you want to know, I invite you to follow me for a few minutes.

Let me preface this by saying that the first Christians believed Jesus came back from the dead. Really, literally, physically. None of that "well, he is dead, but he lives on in our hearts" stuff. No. The oldest parts of the New Testaments that we know pretty exactly the age of are the letters of St Paul, who belonged roughly to the same generation as Jesus. He is stating rather plainly that Christianity is worthless if Jesus was not resurrected from the dead. Also most other New Testament sources consider the Resurrection the important thing, more so than the Crucifixion.

True, working men were only borderline literate, and women even less so. But they were not idiots. These people not only killed farm animals for food rather than buying meat at the supermarket. Most of them had also lost a sibling or first cousin to early death. They had personal experience with facing death and had if anything less illusions than we in our sanitized world where people just fail to return from the hospital. They KNEW that dead people remained dead. And that's why Christianity from the outset was a religion of faith rather than one of ritual or law. But the apostles and various other disciples of Jesus did not just get a "sighting" like an Elvis sighting. They talked with him, some of them ate with him, after he came back from the dead. They were perfectly willing to lay down their lives for this testimony. After all, if death was not the end, it was no longer such a big deal.

Today, this is all far in the past, and who really believes it? There is no proof that could hold in court. All we have are the words of people who are dead more than 1900 years ago. And their words are brought to us courtesy of an organization that for centuries sucked the marrow out of the populace to fatten its own purses, using this very message to rule their hearts and minds. Of course people are skeptical. Who would not be? That's where the other resurrection comes in handy.

***

St Paul, while very categorical about the Resurrection of Christ and the hope in an actual resurrection for the believer, also talks about resurrection in symbolic terms. He doesn't seem to consider them mutually exclusive. Indeed, the whole Jesus incident is permeated by this double meaning: Jesus was both man and myth. Even in life, he seemed larger than life, yet more human than most humans I have known. The man and the myth are inseparable, despite generations of theologians doing their best to pry them apart. He lived a mythical life and died a mythical death. So it is no big surprise that also his resurrection was taken to have a spiritual meaning in his disciples' lives.

St Paul talks about dying from sin and becoming alive before God, and he likens this to the death and resurrection of Christ. Baptism is also clearly linked to this event by at least two apostles. And yet baptism is a common occurrence before Christ and even in some separate cultures. It is usually an initiation ritual, of the kind that changes a child into an adult. Laying off an old life and rising to a new.

***

And now for Naruto. At the end of Episode 78 (and onward) in the anime, there is a beautiful song, powerfully illustrated. The main character is sitting as night descends, but then he looks up to see two of his friends there with him. As more friends come running, the sun miraculously rises in the blink of an eye and they all face the sunrise together. It is hauntingly beautiful, and the song is performed with great intensity. Sadly it is in Japanese, so translations tend to differ in details. But that is not the point. The point is that I thought to myself: "I wish this song would be played at my resurrection."

Admittedly my resurrection is in grave doubt, because I am not a very worthy person. But one can always hope. And as I've said before, I'd be happy with whatever circumstances may surround my return from the dead. It was just an impulsive wish, but one I would not mind stating as just that, a stray wish with no demand in it. There is one tiny detail in all this. The song is called "Imamade nandomo" – probably meaning "many times before". How can that possibly mesh with an event so unique as to be virtually unbelievable at the outset?

I don't know about you. Well, actually I know about at least one of you, and there may be others. Who have fallen apart. Who have lost the way, lost themselves, lost hope, lost cohesion. Like a snail that dissolves as it moves forward, a soul melting like wax. There are those who never come back from the darkness, a night so dark that even the light blinds rather than showing the way.

And there are those who fall apart, only to find themselves being put back together in a new upgraded version. For me at least, this is a religious experience. In fact, it is a central religious experience. For someone used to never being able to trust anyone, to break like a piece of pottery and fall into the well ... only to find that the well is the Wellspring of souls, from which a million lives could rise, all different, all unique, an unending source of life. To find that losing parts of ourselves is not the worst thing that could happen, but the best.

And yet, after all this, faith is needed anew each time. So attached are we to ourselves. And when that faith, that courage runs out, so does the change and the growth, as it has done in my case, when I stood at the height of my life and wished for the moment to last forever. It is not just in the myth of Faustus that this wish leads the soul to the gates of perdition. Jesus himself tells a story of a man who became satisfied with his riches and said to himself: "Now you have lots of good things stored up for a long time." That night, said the Lord, his soul would be demanded from him.

But those who are broken, they fall into the eternal well and are put together in a new fashion. They rise again, stronger than before, a small resurrection of the soul. And in the end, is it not the soul that counts? What help is eternal life if our soul is unable to enjoy it, if it is bound in boredom or selfishness or even discord? An eternal life of envy and suspicion would be a fate worse than death. The resurrection of the soul needs to come at the very least no later than the resurrection of the body. Preferably before.

***

While the concept of a resurrection of the soul in this life may be uniquely Christian, I am sure there are many others who can vaguely empathize with it. Who have lost something and found something greater. Many times.

And now, the song. I don't really know which translation is the best, so I have kinda distilled a compromise that expresses feelings familiar to me while not, I hope, moving too far from the original.

Always having to be patient.
Crying in the heart,
yet unable to give up the chosen dream.
Being just supporting cast,
standing in another's shadow.
But when facing the dream,
being oneself, being honest.
This has happened many times...
-- not giving up --
this has happened many times...
-- rising up again --
this has happened many times...
We believed, many times;
dreamed, many times.
This has happened many times...
Being a fool, many times,
standing in another's shadow, many times...
Now that you play the main role
please allow us our own dreams.

(Actually, not giving up is a bad thing. I have gradually started to believe that people who are suicidal have simply not understood the process of death and resurrection in this life, and fatally misunderstand it. Bouncing back is hardly progress! Giving up, dying, is an important thing, to not bounce back to who you were. But killing the body is not the way. The body will be gone soon enough. To give the obsolete parts of the soul unto death, that is important, to make room for the new life.)

I am a fine one to preach, am I not? Having failed as a human, then failed to become a god, then failed to become human again. (Yeah, I feel like Adam Warlock sometimes...) But even so, feel free to think of me when you hear this song. For if I rise again, it will be as a supporting character, to help others reach their dream. I will rather serve in Heaven than rule anywhere.