A Few Musings From Sheldon Swartz

"Wake up, O sleeper, and rise from the dead . . ."
- Apostle Paul, in Ephesians 5:14

There are times when we are more alive than others, as you are well aware. I feel more alive when I am engaged in an activity that is very meaningful and/or enjoyable, and guilt-free. I also feel more alive when my sinfulness has been exposed to myself and I get a fresh taste, no, drink, of the grace of God that envelopes my fallenness. Both of these kinds of experiences are times I could truthfully say, "I am all here, tingling with energy, fully present, awake."

But most of the time that is not the case for me, so I am assuming that I am fully alive a very small fraction of the time that that my body is breathing. Sometimes I am much more dead than alive.

One of the effects of sin in our world and in our lives is that it diminishes life and makes us "sleep," or deadens us to all that is of God, and good. It is interesting, isn't it, that Jesus at times uses being "asleep" and being "dead" interchange- ably, as does the Apostle Paul, as though they are the same thing. Why do you suppose that is?.

When Jesus took the sin of the world on himself, he died, went to sleep, lost consciousness of Good. (Good, God, whatever) Because of His willingness to bear the weight of sin on himself and "die" to His ability to protect himself, God raised Him from the dead. He "woke up" and came out of the grave.

The nature of spiritual power is that it cannot be contained. It can go through anything in its path. The flesh can't go through anything - in fact it creates resistance. (You've noticed when you think someone just has to get what you are trying to say, that the harder you try the more resistant they get?)

Now, living alive and awake is harder than living (if you can call it that) dead and asleep because there is a kind of vulnerability that goes along with being awake that is not there when one is asleep. Have you ever slept through something really bad happening? You are not affected at all by the event. Nothing painful is stirred. It simply touch you. (Think of Jesus' three closest friends in the Garden of Gethsemane.) Let's not easily assume we would rather be awake than asleep, because being awake means we experience all of what life is about with no ability to shield ourselves.

So we are all sleeping in some ways, disengaged from the pain and joy of living, with perhaps just enough of both to make us think we are more awake than we are. With eyes half-open we look around and think we see a lot, not realizing that our eyes are only half-open, with the crust of sleep in them. We think we see enough.

Although . . . sometimes we are aware that there has got to be more than we see. There must be more to life than this. There must be other ways to view things other than our limited, short-sighted ways. When those times are our experience we are hearing the invitation to "wake up!"

So I ask myself, "What part of me is sleeping? If Jesus said, 'Wake up' to that part of me and it heard Him as Lazarus did, what would happen?"

Maybe I don't want to know.

What about you?

"Spirit of the Risen Christ, I think I want what is dead or sleeping in me to wake up. On the other hand, that is scary. I have a bit of control this way over the amount of pain or joy I experience, and I'm not sure I want to give that up. Please make me more aware of my own deadness and the price I and others pay for me being asleep and give me the courage to abandon the security of the grave (or my bed) and be willing to come out into Life. Amen"

I work with individuals, couples, and families to identify the ways of life and death in their lives and help uncover the motivation to choose that which leads to life, whether it be through counseling or spiritual direction. - Sheldon Swartz, MA/LMFT