This morning I awoke from a record breaking 6 hour night of sleep to feeding baby kittens, cleaning the kitchen from a late night cooking adventure (tofu balls, sauteed greens and rice - and yes, it was DELICIOUS), washing the kitty blankets and accessories, prepping the intimates for washing later, and accidentally breaking a glass saucer (whoops!) and sweeping it up with care.
Sometimes I wonder how in the world I ever got anything done when I worked a "regular" job. At least I know now why my house usually looked as if a tornado hit it and why on a normal day, I was ass and elbows. Unless I wasn't. Stop or go. No messing around in the middle for me.
Today is a day that I won't leave the house. It is a sacred day for Muslims that commemorates Abraham's journey to the mountaintop, son and knife in hand. The day is marked by mass religious offerings of goats and cows, mostly. The entire process is prayerful and the majority of the meat is given to the poor. When a young student explained it to me, he made it sound beautiful. Truly religious people want to help the poor.
When I was little and in the car on the way to my Grandmother's house, I saw a side of cow being hoisted up into a barn loft. I was traumatized and then teased about it. If at all possible, I will not eat meat. Fish and chicken if I have to; meaning I need the nutrients because I can't get it anywhere else. Through smirking grins from my co-workers where I was first assigned to "teach English" here, it was joked I must be Hindu because I will not eat cow. Oh well. Of course I would be Hindu because I didn't represent anything else that made sense to them.
Anyway.
So. Sacrifices and offerings. As I was washing dishes I was thinking about that. I guess if your God is mean and hostile, it would be necessary to soothe Him with gifts. The Old Testament is FULL of sacrifice stories.
In this day and age, meat is mass marketed, shot up with steroids, chickens are stacked on top of one another with clipped beaks...in short, rarely do any of us have the opportunity to connect with the manner in which our dinners are prepared for the table.
To pray, give thanks and share the nutrition we receive from animals is a nice change from an industrialized meat market. Yuck.
But back to sacrifices.
Maybe I can say that the Muslim community views sacrifice in that way, to pray, give thanks and share.
In the Christian community, however, there's often a different take on what it means to sacrifice. Too often it seems that it's necessary to endure suffering, as Jesus did. That means that we are to endure being mistreated. One can almost gain a pious and righteous happiness when subjected to more suffering than others. (Adeline Hulot, Cousin Bette by Honore de Balzac, springs to mind) It makes one more devout. Suffering can mean foregoing your own will, wants, goals and dreams to accommodate the expectations of someone else. This can even mean enduring an abusive relationship, whether work or personal (friendships and marriages, specifically)
For me, Jesus suffered for us. He took our sins with Him to the cross. We are washed clean. I don't believe that God wants us to suffer and endure mistreatment. Just the opposite. We are to pray, give thanks and share. Pray without ceasing. Give thanks for every little thing. Share the love, grace and forgiveness that God gives to us. So sacrifice?
Even though God loves us and wants us to be happy (Benjamin Franklin supposedly quipped that beer is proof of that!), perhaps we should sacrifice something, but I don't believe that we are supposed to sacrifice as if we were the Son of man.
We should sacrifice our greed. Our arrogance. Our self-centered consumerism. Our love of material wealth The privilege of status, earned and unearned. The desire to dictate to others how they should be, how they should act and even dress.
For Protestants, the crosses that hang in our churches are empty. Our focus is on the resurrected Christ. We remember His sacrifice, but we should know that it was His, not ours. Ours is different. Ours is to pray without ceasing, give thanks to God for His goodness, and share His love, grace, and forgiveness with our neighbors.
743. :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment