Starred with Paradox

This Easter I’m in awe of the paradoxical nature of life. How death is necessary for Christ on the cross to show us the very heart of life itself. Which is true even if we comprehend only a small glister of this living dying as we begin, again and again and again, to try to experience the staggering nature of it all: That, in this light, death becomes exquisite. Like a supernova in all its paradoxical glory; a vast, dying star exploding into shockwaves of new stars, shedding its layers as it melts away. A death that is the celestial dust which becomes the very carbon that forms and fuses us. This exploding star, in all its dying, dizzying effulgence, shows us, just as Christ did and still does, that the deaths without dying we experience are also elemental. For, without the pain of them—without the affliction none of us escape, without the torture that feels worse than complete obliteration—we wouldn’t need to learn the grace inextricable from accepting all the myriad variations of la petite mort. We wouldn’t need to learn how to work through these seeming cataclysms, nor, very significantly, how to let them transform us into blazing newness. Which is a process that may inarguably very well be the most significant and challenging and never-ending job of living itself. Without the crucifixion, we would be bereft of the burning knowledge that the kingdom of heaven is within us. Like the eons of stars in our hearts. Like the stardust that scores us, composing this refined and untamed and unfathomable music that unifies us all with a vehemence permanent and breathtaking and numinous.