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Practice resurrection


The Resurrection by Sandro Botticelli.


"What you do to the least of these," said Jesus, "you do unto me" pointing to the children gathered about him.

If we practiced resurrection, living within the boundary of this Christian witness, my Easter weekend would have been very different. The stark reality of 'child trafficking' would be a thing of our collective past.

Sadly it is not and, therefore, such organizations as the Esther Benjamin Trust (http://www.ebtrust.org.uk/) must exist- to rescue trafficked children in Nepal (and from Nepal in India), either to return them to their homes or care for them until capable of an independent life and to work on the causes of trafficking both in poverty and education and in changing the law and its enforcement.  

For a busman's holiday, I find myself in Kathmandu helping the committee and staff of EBT's Nepalese partner think through its strategy and explore ways of taking up new opportunities to implement that strategy. It is, as always, deeply moving to see a dedicated group of people (both voluntary and paid, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu and simply human) explore together how they might 'do more' to help the most vulnerable. 

If 'child trafficking' is a sign of a falling failure, the response is one of practiced resurrection.

It was St Teresa of Avila, that deeply practical mystic, that said that Christ has no other hands than our own. It is only in and through our own hands that resurrection is made real, present.

I am finishing a re-reading of Jung's last autobiographical testimony, 'Memories, Dreams, Reflections'. One of his radical Protestant hopes was that we shifted our attention from practicing a religion about Christ and sought to embody the religion of Christ: a life lived in the Spirit that makes us free and whole to be as Christ is with God, fully at one and fully and particularly human.

Jung is suggesting nothing more that Christ Himself suggested that He needed to go, so that the Spirit might come and makes of us the Resurrection.

Practice resurrection. Happy Easter.

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