An Easter Parade of Jesus gifs

Jesus is pretty big business at this time of year. As in: let's go to church on Easter Sunday, because aside from Christmas Eve we never go, and if we go twice a year at least we can say we're "churchgoers".

I myself, a recovering churchgoer, have found much that's interesting about the Jesus Industry. In fact, it's hard to find a Jesus without a sense of industry, in these days of universal commerce.

Hey, I wouldn't even DO this, I wouldn't "make fun of" the Holy of Holies (and I'm not, just displaying some of the more interesting representations of him in a new medium) were it not for the fact that my former church went a certain way with things. They decided to try to dispense with their stuffy, outdated image, not to mention the sinking-ship feeling that accompanied all their efforts, and came up with a hip new web site. I will not and cannot quote it here, except to say that it was the first place I encountered Bobblehead Jesus.

Why did I feel this awful sinking in my gut, this anger, this fuming feeling, this desecration, this - hey, what's the matter with you? What ARE you, an old lady (and obviously not welcome)? Everyone else either accepted this atrocity without question, or laughed at it. Aren't we generous, don't we take it on the chin for Jesus, proving we really ARE relevant, hip and leading the way in modern attitudes?

Spare me.

Having dispensed with that odious topic, let's get on with something more sincere (and I mean this! These gifs, tacky and strange as some of them are, were made with sincerity. None of them reflect the jeering satire of the "sendup" ones. Hey, we're on holy ground here.)

This group of gifs represents what I call the "walk with Jesus" collection. Though he walks, he doesn't walk very smoothly. In the walking-on-water ones which I decided not to include (hey, I can't do everything, can I? And it's Good Friday, a day off work, for God's sake), he seems to slide on ice, saving him energy to pull Peter out of the soup.

Minimal walking in this Blingee, but you can see his foot moving. (Didn't know he smoked. He should've given it up for Lent.)

Love this one. If it doesn't work, just click on the image and he'll come a-slidin' down.,

I don't know if these are supposed to be stairs or not, or an old rope bridge. I wonder why they can't just have him sit on a sled?

Now we're getting into the black-lit Disco Jesus images. There's something a wee bit Satanic about the spiky background, which I suppose is meant to represent the crown of thorns. But don't look for this one for too long, or you'll be seeing a spiky-looking skull (meant to represent Golgotha, perhaps?) all day long.

You gotta wonder about this one. Jesus seems to be flashing back and forth (and let me ask you: what WERE those little images that flashed back and forth between two religious scenes called? Why hasn't anyone else ever heard of them?) The background is the color of Kraft Dinner, pulsating wildly around a nasty-looking Christ who suddenly turns into a negative, a la the Shroud of Turin. Colorful.

This is Migraine Christ. Meaning, you'll get one if you look at him too long.

These are just icky, except for the hair blowing in the second one and the fact that he looks sort of like Richard Gere.

There's only one way he could've gotten out to that rock, if his clothes are this dry. But the graphics are gentler in this one, and the reflection rather effective. The probably-unintentional seagull is a nice touch.

This is Ghost Jesus: the best of all the gifs, and for some reason, after one cycle (if you're lucky), he often disappears. (Hint: try clicking on the image and see if you can bring him back from the dead. It worked before, didn't it?)  This could represent a number of things:

The attendance in this church has hit a new low.

They don't pay their electric bill.

They wouldn't know Jesus if he showed up in their own sanctuary.

God left this place a long, long time ago.

Take this cup away from me: blood sacrifice

Burnt offering

She came slippery and she came dark. She came along a stone place hollow with echoes. Smells of animals lurked, and moaning. She came dragging. A handful of hair.

This was the sacrifice, the Blood Sacrifice. It was time. Time to put it all down, to skin the dog and hold up its flesh. She was not good at hunting but knew when it was time to dismember prey.

The temple was dark and full of moisture and praying, moans. It was a dark and terrible God they appeased. Every day, every week the sacrifices. He was merciless. He had no name, because they were afraid to name Him. They were afraid to look Him in the eye.

If you come face-to-face with God, if you see God in person, stand before God, you will die. This was why Moses went around with a veil, for an ungodly light streamed from his face and blinded everyone as if they were looking directly at an eclipse.

Eclipse. Sacrifice was an eclipse, was it not? A raising of talent. A skinning, a hairing. A giving up. A lifting. The smell of blood was everywhere, and as she raised the head of the bull the dark thick blood slimed down the drainway into a hole in the floor.

The blood had to be captured in a certain way. It reminded her of menstruation a little, but that would be her own blood, and forbidden. Deeply forbidden. With blood everywhere, why couldn’t you touch a woman? But this is about talent, is it not? Burnt offerings, sacrifice?

Singed hair, gutted dreams?

Giving it all up for the sake of peace?

Take it out of me, take it out of me, takeitoutofmetakeitoutofmetakeitoutofmeGOD. Just remove it. Whatever desire I had to please Thee with my inborn gift, rip it out. You made a mistake, see? God DOES make mistakes, look at that two-headed calf over there. You call that perfection? Yes, sometimes you DO make mistakes, such as instilling in me the dream. The dream of fulfillment such as I saw around me. As if that were a sin, too.

Lift high the head of the calf, slit his throat, catch the blood in the chalice, lift it high. No, don’t drink it, that would be too theatrical. And you’re guessing at this, aren’t you? This isn’t any Charlton Heston movie. This is sacrifice. Burnt offering.

Given up, given up for You! For You, God, you big son-of-a-gun, my Destroyer. You shatterer of dreams. You who giveth with one hand and taketh with the other big, suffocating hand.

Here. Here have it back. Right now rightnowrightnow. Have my dream.

 

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.com/2012/01/synopsis-glass-character-novel-by.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Easter ache

Easter values in the garden of Gethsemane

Easter is a strange one, and it's hard for me to sort out my feelings about it.

I can go with the fluffy-chicks-and-lambs-and-decorated-eggs part of it, especially where my grandkids are involved. Even the miracle-of-nature-renewing-itself makes sense. But for years, this day was dark and gloomy and even morbid, as I tried to follow the dictates of my church and focus on a bloody, senseless, irredeemibly horrible act.

Since I left my church behind due to a massive tangle of dysfunction that nobody else seemed to see, I don't know what crucifixion means any more. Resurrection makes a kind of sense, but to get to it, why must we nail grace and peace to the tree and watch it writhe and bleed and die?

Yes, we always kill the ones we love. We kill Gandhi and Martin Luther King and even Bobby Kennedy, who at least attempted enlightenment before he was savagely cut down. I say "we" because events like that don't happen in isolation.

It's popular to say, "oh, it was just one nut case, it has nothing to do with the rest of us". Is that why Pilate washed his hands?

Crucify him, crucify him.

So Good Friday is supposed to be a spectacularly grim day, filled with darkness and grief. We'd have sombre church services with gloomy readings, and often re-enactments of the hideous deed. I felt terrible, deeply depressed, but there was always a feeling I was somehow doing it wrong.

Yes, we have Good Friday services, but for God's sake, why do you get so depressed at them? It's just a social gathering, after all, with nice hot cross buns and coffee afterwards, and chit-chatting about our plans for the Easter weekend.

It had about as much content and depth as that magpie-chattering-made-manifest, Facebook.

So I did it wrong. I did what they said, I meditated on evil and blood and destruction, on the ultimate disaster. And somehow, it was always wrong.

Crucify him, crucify him!

The next day was always weird (Easter Saturday?) and I felt spiritually disoriented, but come Sunday, it was all hosannas, allelujahs, and white lilies emanating the heavy, sickly-sweet smell of a funeral parlor. We always sang the same hymns, processed the same processional. The choir did something sprightly.

And I was still depressed.

Eventually, this sense of profound dislocation caused me to walk. There was not a single person I could talk to about my confusion and despair. It was somehow anti-church, taken as a criticism, and if there was one thing my church couldn't tolerate, it was criticism.

You were either in, or you were out.

Crucify him.

We still call it Good Friday, and I know my little grandchildren don't understand why. Probably my children don't either. Apart from a minority who attend some sort of religious institution, we are a secular world. Good Friday has about as much meaning to most people as Easter Monday, a nonsensical day tacked on to the blinding. transforming miracle of resurrection.

For the huge majority of people, it's just another day at the mall, "Easter Values" of another kind, half off of everything. I'm not saying churches don't attempt to raise awareness of Christian values, to instill them in children as they grow. But it's whistling in the dark when kids are living in a blur of violent video games, Facebook, puberty at age nine, constant phoning and texting, readily available porn, and other forms of unconscious despair. In the core of the abyss, there's not much room for feeling.

They have to get along, don't they? God forbid they should be like me, the perennial square peg. Yeah, it's Good Friday and all, but for God's sake, stop being so melodramatic!

Crucify him. Crucify him.

I don't know who Jesus was, or what praying is. I absolutely do not. And this after some 15 years of single-minded dedication to my church. Did I walk, or was I expelled? But we're supposed to meditate on expulsion, aren't we - on rejection - on Jesus being disowned and literally nailed up and sacrificed like some sort of animal?

Gethsemane is a lonely place, and maybe we've all been there - but if other people have, they're sure keeping to themselves.

But hey, it's only a church service! For Christ's sake, don't be so overdramatic. Here. Have another hot cross bun.