The word “membrane” popped into my brain one morning and refused to leave. So I paid attention. I learned that a membrane is “a thin, soft, pliable sheet” surrounding the cells in our body and in many other things, as well. Membranes provide a separation, protect what they surround, and can also transport materials that enter and exit the cell. Think of the placenta that held us as a fetus, or the thin coating inside an egg, or the shell around a seed.
While I was educating myself about membranes, I began pondering the coming feast of Easter, the celebration of joy. I questioned what kind of membrane might be surrounding my joy. Was this protecting or preventing it from coming forth? I found my answer in a comment Joseph Campbell made to Bill Moyers in The Power of Myth: “People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”
Feeling the rapture of being alive—isn’t that Easter’s underlying message? Not only celebrating the aliveness of the Risen Christ after his brutal death, but finding the aliveness that can come after we go through our own “deaths” of loss in various forms. Easter assures us that joy is possible even when much of life does not meet our desires or needs. I see now that the membrane I have created is what prevents joy from emerging—it is formed from my expectations of how that aliveness ought to happen in my life.
I recognized this while watching the touching PBS interview of war reporter Rod Norland who has brain cancer. After his diagnosis (forty months ago), he reunited with his estranged children. Having brain cancer led him to “think about what is important” in life and to learn how to be vulnerable. Norland now knows he is truly loved in a way he never was before. At the closing, Norland acknowledged, “We’ve been through some of the worst circumstances.” Then he concludes, “I’ve never been happier and I have the tumor to thank for that. I will die a happy man.” Norland has found the rapture of being alive.
It’s up to me, to each of us, to unseal our “membranes,” to find the aliveness that awaits. It doesn’t have to take a brain tumor to do that. I think of the Easter story—the two disappointed followers of Jesus, forlorn with grief. As they made their way back home, they were unable to break through the membrane of desolation. Only when they openly welcomed the disguised Risen Christ meeting them on the road did joy begin to leak out. The two didn’t hurry their pace nor did they ignore his presence. Instead, they welcomed this stranger, deliberately entered into conversation with him. This led to the magnificent “weren’t our hearts burning” recognition—the membrane concealing their joy gradually dissolved as they “urged him strongly” to stay and break bread with them. (Luke24:29)
The permeable layer surrounding my joy, your joy, varies but we can move through it if we slow down and extend a welcome to the stranger within ourselves and others, if we lovingly attend to what stirs within and beyond us. It is then that the Essence of Joy slides through the membrane’s seal and we know the rapture of being alive.
Abundant peace and joy,
Joyce Rupp
P.S. Scroll down to find my reflection on the journey a seed makes as it sheds the once-protective membrane that needs to gradually be discarded so the aliveness within it can come forth.
“Seed Song”, Joyce Rupp
I am the seed
so small, so dry,
lifted in the hand
of the silent Sower.
Into the earth
I fearfully fall,
darkness covers me,
silence surrounds me.
The terror of my heart
is the only sound
to keep me company.
All that is me
huddles together
trying desperately
not to surrender
any part of self.
“Why was I planted?”
I cry out.
“Why am I here?”
I entreat.
“Take me out into light;
I cannot bear
this deathly dark.”
I weary. I weaken.
The days become long.
I can no longer fight.
I surrender
in this lonely place
of waiting.
Quietly I sense
a penetrating warmth;
it surrounds me;
it fills me
and blesses my pain.
In a moment
of peacefulness
I forget my fear.
I let go of my self
and suddenly
the husk that holds me
weakens and breaks.
“No!” I scream.
I am losing my self,
but it is too late.
The husk is cracked,
I cannot be contained.
It is then
that I sense a power
deep inside of me,
encouraging
“Let go. Let go. Let go.”
It is an energy
that pushes the husk
until it falls away.
As it slips aside
my eyes behold color.
Ah, can it be?
A tiny glimpse of green.
“How could that be?”
I marvel,
“there was never green
in the heart of me.”
Yet, it is there;
each day
it slowly stretches upwards
to where the warm
seems to be.
I become less of a seed.
I am losing my self
but the pain I once knew
is lost in surprise;
something wonderful
is greening and growing
deep within my heart.
Days go quickly now.
I become one
with the small stem of life.
Oh, the glorious moment
when, ah, breath of Spring
fast fills my face.
I move through the hard earth,
and taste the world
that awaits my arrival.
From within my tender shoot
comes a soft sound.
I listen. I hear.
It is a song to the Sower:
O, Sower of seeds,
did you always see
this gift of green
that was hiding in me?
O Sower of seeds,
how came you to prize
the beauty within
that I hid from my eyes?
O Sower of seeds,
the husk has been broken;
all praise to you
for helping me open.
Accept now my praise,
my thankfulness, too,
for the seed you have sown
and the gift that you grew.
May you lead me to others
who await your good word,
so the seeds within them
can awake and be heard.
Amen, alleluia!
(Taken from: Fresh Bread)
