New Life for a Frozen Brain

Grace to you, dear ones ~

I have spent much of the last couple of years adjusting to a new life here in Portland, Oregon.  Although it was my childhood town, I had been away for over seven years pursuing the last part of my BA and then my MA at seminary in Seattle.  The majority of my time back home was devoted to caring for my dear father as he prepared to pass from life to Life.  That transition happened this summer, the day before my birthday.  We have just passed three months since he died.

In the time since his passing, I often felt much like the walking dead.  No purpose.  No dream.  No hope for the future.  All was simply numb.  These effects of shock - which is our normal human response to the trauma of death - has only in recent weeks begun to dissipate.  My brain and emotions, it seemed, were in a cryogenic state - frozen in time at my Daddy's death bed.  Both have begun to thaw.  The time of healing has now begun.

For those of you who may be experiencing the loss of a loved one, or the deep shadows of grief as you care for an ailing parent or sibling, I write to offer you companionship.  New life, I am convinced, can be found when we tend one another's hearts.  I am here to walk beside you, accepting you with your permafrost brain, erratic emotional swings and physical aches that are a manifestation of your grief.  We will get through this together.  We will learn to live again.

"I have come that you might have life and have it to the fullest measure." -- Jesus says.

We have a promise from the Living Christ that new life is coming.  I am convinced that this is a deep, cosmological truth.  All life, from the smallest fruit fly to the greatest mammoth and basilosaurus, and everything in between, will all find newness and resurrection in the time to come.  For now, I am thankful to be receiving a small preview of this new life with the slow, gentle resurrection in my frozen grief brain.

I will do my best to write here once a week, both to walk with you and to record my own journey of resurrection.

Photo by Trista Wynne - Zombie 5K -- Dayton, OR -- October 2013 

Feeling Dry?

Grace and peace to you, dear ones!

At several points this year, while clambering to and from various gatherings and trying to push myself through the final quarters in my seminary career, I have found myself feeling a little dry, (I wrote a little earlier in the summer about this very thing) and wondering where our Beloved was.  I felt as though I was in the midst of a terrible storm of thunder and lightning but was lacking the refreshing, cooling downpour of grace upon my thirsty soul.  As one born and raised in the pacific-northwest where rains are quite abundant, this is saying something!

On account of my geographical location, I don't often identify with the imagery of desert sands and arid places; the landscape surrounding me is usually quite lush and green.  However, during certain points in my life, and particularly poignantly in the last few months of seminary, I have had very strong sensations of being unceasingly thirsty, dry and in a time of waiting for our Beloved to come and take some powerful action.  In these times, this vision of Ezekiel is particularly profound:

"Feeling Dry" - Photo by Trista Wynne

What Am I? -- Wheat & Weeds Zombie Style

"Jell-o Brains"
Photo by Trista Wynne

It's a question that every zombie asks themselves as they become self-aware.  What am I?  Am I living or am I dead?  The answer is neither and both.  It's a strange identity to have, that of living-dead.

This, however, is exactly what Martin Luther means when he says we are both saint and sinner.  Long before him, the apostle Paul talked about the two parts of himself that battle one another.  Flesh and spirit are the terms Paul used.

No matter whether we use terms of flesh and spirit, saint and sinner, wheat and weeds, or living and dead, we are all referring to the same phenomenon.  At the church we attended this morning, we looked at the parable of the wheat and the weeds.  In this parable, Jesus talks about the harvest fruit growing up right alongside of the weeds in His garden.  The wheat was sown by the Lord and the weeds were sown by the adversary, and both are growing together until the day of the Great Harvest.

If we think that we are only wheat, we're likely reading the parable wrongly.  If we think we are only a weed, the same is also true.  At the present time, we are both, and we are neither, just like a zombie.  The day will come when all of the parts of us that resemble weeds will be blown away like chaff in the wind.  All that remains will shine like the sun and we will be a glorious sight for our Lord and God.

We look forward to that day because we know that all things will be made new and there will be no more suffering, death, tears or war.  We will not have the desires to trample or maul one another in order to reach the top of the mountain.  We won't bite and claw one another to feed an insatiable appetite.  Peace, justice and mercy will abound.  Until that day comes, dear ones, we simply wrestle with the fact that both life and death abide within us.  We do not wrestle alone.  Our Lord is working with us, and those who have fought this fight before us are encouraging us along the way.

Be strong, dear ones, and know that the Spirit is breathing new life into you even as you read this.  The day of the Lord will be very good, and that day is coming quickly.  May God bless you and hold us all close as do what we can to become signs of life in a living-dead world.

Amen.

A Grateful Zombie

Tonight's post comes from my evening prayer journal.

*****

Hello, Beloved!

Photo by Trista Wynne

Thank You for this beautiful day!  What a blessing it is to inhale the coconut scent of the sunscreen slathered on my skin!  What a delight to dance in the sunshine and read in the courtyard!  How wonderful to receive the sunshine vitamin without the hassle of supplements.

I loved the way my body felt after the long hill-filled walk this afternoon through the city!  Thank You for the gift of mobility.  I certainly appreciate the valuable resources of a healthy body!

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.

**********

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.

Working on the Art

This tattoo design that I found on deviant art is similar to a symbol I'm developing for this site and my book.  It incorporates both the biohazard sign and a symbol that can reference the Holy Trinity. 

Check out this awesome art!

Opening our Minds (Yum!)

Grace and peace to you!

It has been a dream of mine to merge my love of zombie culture and Christianity into one place for several years.  I hope to compose a scholastic, culturally-rich book exploring Scripture through a zombie-tinted lens with the new generation of church in mind. Until my publishing dream becomes a reality, I will endeavor to post notes, homilies, thoughts and visions here. I invite you to join me as we ponder the resurrection of the body, the apocalyptic discussions infusing our local media, the fractured society in which we find ourselves, and the general malaise which threatens much of our culture today.  Church and zombies are not so far apart as it seems at first glance.  Let's explore this overlap together.