New Life for Dry Bones

Dry Bones in Dry Leaves
Photo by Trista Wynne

As is the case with most of humanity, part of me has been dead for a long time.  We are all zombies of one sort or another.  Some of us have parts of our personality, or psyche, or spirit or core self that has stopped working and we suspect has died.

For some of us that part of ourselves was brutally beaten over years of experiencing or witnessing the mistreatment, abuse or neglect of others.  In other cases, a singular traumatic event caused that part of ourselves to suddenly shrivel into a prune-like state.  Over time these bits of ourselves have begun to rot and even to turn to dust.  Whatever state of decomposition these parts of ourselves are in, I assure you, dear ones, that we have a word of hope.

The Zombie Within - A Prayer for Release

Lord,
I desire to be at peace.  I desire freedom from anger, freedom from hatred, freedom from death, pain and darkness.  I desire fullness of love and abundant mercy to flow out of me like a wellspring of living water.  Dear Lord, I want to be whole.

I want to be able to give from an infinite wellspring of life and abundance.  This sort of giving is only possible through intimate communion with You.

But You are not all I desire.

Dust and Ashes: Mortality, Ash Wednesday & Collective Memory

Fellow zombies attempting to remember our Identity,

Yesterday we began one of the most intense seasons in the Family year.  As our heads were marked with ashen crosses, we exhaled and sighed, remembering that humankind was created from the dust of the earth and animated by the Breath of our Creator.  We all know, don't we, the pain that comes with the return to the earth?  Death hardly ever comes easily or quickly.  Very few people simply drift from this life into the next without a fight.  We live in a society seemingly hell-bent on retaining animation as long as possible.

Ash Wednesday, dear brothers and sisters, reminds us that we will return to the earth.  But this is not the end, dear ones.  Oh no, this is not the end.

A Simple Zombie Credo

The following was just posted in response to a comment on ZombieTheology.  I invite you to read the post here, and then to continue reading this one.

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Dear Sonny ~

You said,

“Zombie Theology isn’t about finding cool walking dead references in the Scriptures (we’ll have fun with some of that, who can resist?), it’s about the disease. How it’s contracted,how it’s spread from host to host. How they can be stopped (got to shoot them in the Soul, their head) and the most important question of all, how do we cure ourselves once we are bitten by the overwhelming Zombie Army?”

Here, dear one, is the gospel: we don’t have the cure. God does. The cure came in the form of Jesus Christ and is being distributed by the Holy Spirit breathed into the world as Jesus breathed His last. Jesus came to resurrect our imaginations, to give our brain-dead appetites something other than each other to gnaw on. One day, all of creation and all of humanity will remember the goodness and freedom it was crafted with. We look forward to that day.

You are right when you say that many Christians are acting in ways that resemble zombies. We are part of a world that is infected with the virus, (or the toxin, or the radiation, whatever imagery we find in zombie literature can be applied). We’re born into it, we’re raised by infected beings, and we’re exposed to it every day. The zombie infection is everywhere. It’s what gives all humans (and other animals, for that matter) a tendency towards violence, self-preservation, destruction of others and other behaviors that are not conducive to societal uplifting.

My Icon

Greetings, fellow zombie theologians!

I'm delighted to share an icon design with you for this site.  If you have read the first couple of posts here, you know that I am an artist as well as a student of theology and a zombie lover.  My second post, Working on the Art, linked to a beautiful tattoo design that I located on the web.  A bit of my theological observations regarding the bio hazard sign can be found in that post.  Building on that, I was inspired to craft my own icon.  You can find it below:

Theological Zomnbie Student Icon - Acrylic on Paper - Art by Trista L. Wynne - 5 June 2011