Ascension

“… The third day
he rose again from the dead;
He ascended into heaven,
And sitteth on the right hand
of God the Father Almighty;
From thence he shall come
to judge the quick and the dead .…”

From the Apostles Creed is the familiar line above we learned in Sunday school.

We’ll skip the liturgical tradition. Religion as the expression of a creedal statement (belief) went out of the window before my time; creedal pronouncements as part of authentic religious practice focuses more on honoring ties to tradition. They do not clarify our understanding but it makes us feel comfortable about the life that religion celebrates!

Creedal statements, unfortunately, got literally translated into physical science in Christendom, so Ascension Day has emerged to many as a literal lifting up of Jesus from Mt. Olives into the sky 40 days after the empty tomb, forgetting that the 40-day metaphor is a sacrosanct numerical unit, in the same way as the 40 days prior to Holy Saturday from Ash Wednesday recollects Jesus’ 40 days in the desert of fasting, penitence, and abstinence. Further back, it echoes the 40 years of the Jewish wandering in Sinai before crossing the Jordan into the Promised Land. The physiological metaphoric got taken literally with the creedal statement.

HH in Herman Hesse’s popular short story, the Journey to the East, was “unfaithful” to his vows as a member of a League’s journey when an enabling servant disappears as a test to HH and the rest of the journey folks. HH did not fare well and struggled with his memory until he ran into the League again and asked to be taken back. The story ends with HH deciding to forego his persona so that Leo the servant can ascend, a classical motif of Jesus ascendant role in Christianity.

Though the story ends with HH surrendering his identity to Leo (also a Islamic theme), it still makes the Hellenic mistake of idolatrizing the messenger to the detriment of clearly understanding the message. Defacing the reputation and image of a liberator Moses, a messianic Jesus, or an enlightened Mohammed, is a grievous mistake among adherents inspired by the three. Not following the teachings is ignored.

To put ascension in today’s language is to ask: “What makes your life so significant and meaningful that it is worth living?” One’s “ultimate concern” defines the answer.

Many in our readership are stuck with the Ptolemaic geocentric view of the universe that medieval Christendom appropriated in continuing its two-story picture of earthly life, making heaven and hell literal places in their cosmology, and a gracious cosmic finger responsible for charting the destinies of their lives. 

However, it was not the boy from the hills of Galilee who later ascended from Mt. Olive that we are asked to idolize. What ascended was the final triumph of the life-style chronicled by followers of a crucified and resurrected sense—feeling, cognition, and behavior that became the “ultimate concern.”

The Jews in Jesus time waited for a Messiah to liberate them from the Romans. It took Hitler and the Nazis to awaken the Jews as a people to quit waiting. There is much about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians that I do not approve of, but I am clear that tired of being blamed for the death of the Christian hero, they finally built an Israel where they are taking history and human science by the nose.

The future of nation-states is under close scrutiny, and Israel’s Shimon Peres is lucid enough to say that nations do not represent settled real estate, e.g., Israel across the Jordan, but the impulse to seek significance and meaning in the living of human life. President Peres is articulating his “ultimate concern.”

Ascension is better understood outside the incensed clouds of CK Cathedral to the light of day at Subalu Market. The indigene will not “ascend” by telling CWs and their families to “get out.” The indigene’s challenge is not ownership of the CNMI real estate but rather, ze meaningful and significant participation in the journey of humankind.

What is the journey of humankind? A journey theme in early Chinese history was undertaken to retrieve sacred papers in the Journey to the West, one of China’s four great literary works, aka Monkey King in Western TV. Herman Hesse wrote the Journey to the East, a journey into sacred practices of personalities and movements. A sci-fi account of a Journey to the Center of the World is entertaining but needs an update.

The human journey in our time is a Journey to the Center. It begins with the sensual world inventoried by science even as humans discover their abilities to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. Then to the poetic skill of existential contemplation and meditation, and to the interactive exchanges of word and numerical symbols made possible by the Internet and smartphones. This is capped by collaborative behavior, conscious of the limits of cognition, the consequences of contradiction and conflict, and the promise of consensus and cooperation.

Might we start reflecting and setting down our version of that journey, up close and personal? I am doing mine. Why not do yours? Rise. Ascend.