Of Rabbits and Resurrection

I’m noticing a kind of resurrection for Kathy Bush.  In Two Men and a Woman Show Up in Heaven  a week ago, I unknowingly started a demonstration.  As this blog looks at the Good Samaritan story as Fr. Howard Gray’s model of see-feel-help-change-ing our way to becoming more human, it seems Kathy has been meeting us on the road, picking us up and teaching us about mirror neurons and endorphins and the multiplier effect of acts of kindness.  She is meeting us not on the perilous Jericho road, but on the mysterious road to Emmaus.

In countless ancient cultures, navels, volcanoes, and death are the portals between this visible, outer life and the inner one, the unseen and mysterious one.  And since we in the U.S. consider navel-gazing foolish and our volcanoes are few, death is perhaps our main window to the unknown.  So when we find out that someone like Kathy Bush had terminal cancer, that without us knowing she struggled through it and died, feelings arise in us.  We find ourselves on the threshold of that portal, and death looms larger in us, perhaps maybe it’s only because it’s closer.  We want, most of us, to step back from the precipice, but our knees are weak, and we stand there, immobilized by something inside us.  Or our failing sense of balance finds us sitting quickly down, our bodies suddenly mouthing the words our tongues cannot quite speak: “Oh, MY!”   We sit and think about Kathy and our mirror neurons begin flashing, slowing us down, dying us, perhaps, taking us to that place where she is - stilled, unable to be more than thought or spirit.

We’re told that acts of kindness set off endorphins, trigger gladness in not only the person performing the act and the person receiving the kindness, but also those observing it.  Neuroscience sees this, and tells us that our bodies crave kindness, grow healthier, heal faster, and are energized by kindness practiced, received, or even observed.  Kindness given or recieved by others comes to life in us.

The Emmaus story finds a couple of guys walking to the town by that name a few days after Jesus died.  The charismatic healer/preacher had had quite an impact on people.  These two were on the dusty, flat road surrounded by the local hills, but their minds walked along the precipice that borders life and death, feeling the vacuum in their living world that used to be occupied by Jesus.  And just then he appeared on the road with them, unrecognizable to them in their grief.  As they told this apparent stranger about the Jesus for whom they grieved, something rose in them.  When the stranger broke bread, the realized that it was him alive with them, alive in them; their “spirits stirred inside them”

Kathy Bush seems to be meeting us on the road, and just as the Samaritan met the fallen Jew, We find ourselves lifted by her.  My earlier blog mentioning her has given me the gift of hearing from a few of the many people who remember her as I do, and every one speaks of her goodness to them.  Like the travelers on the road to Emmaus, our spirits stir within us, and we are returned to those moments of kindness, and brought back to that human experience of connection in the good that Kathy did for us.

Kathy’s acts of kindness, random and intentional, are multiplying in our sharing here on the internet and in our conversations.  In the stirring of our spirits I think that there is an aspect of Resurrection.  Kathy Bush lives in us, or not at all, just as Christ does.  And we have the opportunity to invite both to accompany us on our journeys, and at our tables.  And we have the opportunity to be lifted by the stories we share, and nourished by the bread that we break along the way.  And perhaps others might observe us along the way, and feel mysteriously good inside as they wonder what it is that they sense in us.  And perhaps it will work like it does with rabbits.

  

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.