Today I want to write about passion. It’s not specifically about ‘sex after fifty’, but if you find that any of the ideas you read here fit, then please don’t hesitate to use them. Instead, let’s start with the word, passion. It comes from the Latin word, patior (pati, passus), and it means ‘to suffer’ or ‘to undergo’. In a derived sense, it also has a connotation of allowing or permitting something to happen, or ‘accepting‘ something that’s happening. From this little word, we get such English words as ‘patient’ and ‘passive’ as well as ‘passion’.
In the Judeo-Christian world, this week celebrated the Exodus of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt, the passage through the Sea of Reeds and the hope of a promised land. Today also marks the culmination of the celebrations at Easter. They began last Sunday (‘Palm Sunday’) with the reading of one of the narrations of the death of Jesus, “Passio Domini nostri Jesu Christi secundum Johanem . . . ” (“The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to <Matthew/Mark/Luke/John>”). The celebration culminates with the proclamation this morning at the empty tomb that, “He is risen; he is not here.” What all this has to do with us, and what it has to do with midlife is what I want to reflect on today.
After all the historical trappings have been stripped away, both Passover and Easter are the contact-points with our destiny. It’s impossible to grasp the full impact of their meaning without an appreciation of the nature of Sacred Scriptures (writings, texts) themselves. Everybody knows that, somehow, Sacred Scriptures (of all sorts) came to us through men and women under divine inspiration. Throughout the ages, these inspired writings have appeared, and they continue to do so: for example, it would be hard to argue that A Course in Miracles or the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous were not divinely inspired. Yet, are they Sacred Scriptures? Mere divine inspiration is not enough.
In order to become Sacred Scriptures, divinely inspired writings must be recognized as such by a spiritual community. In order to be so recognized, the texts must not only tell someone else’s story, they have to tell my story too: I have to be able to recognize myself in the writing. For this reason, the writings are said to be prophetic: not in the sense of foretelling the future, but in the sense that their meaning is open to new interpretation by each successive generation that encounters them. They are timeless because, for ever new reader, they are forever fresh and new.
Easter, then, can truly be said to be the celebration of the midlife passage, and, at the same time, the acknowledgment of the passionate destiny of each one of us. Significantly, Christian Easter reflects the prophetic nature of the Jewish Passover. The story of Jesus finds its full meaning only in the context of the Exodus story. The term ‘Passover’ itself comes from a Latin word, ‘passus‘ or ‘step’, from the verb pando (pandere, pandi, passus) meaning ‘to stretch’. Although they are very different roots, both patior and pando have the same participle form: passus.
It is not wrong, therefore, to see the connection between passage and suffering or acceptance in the Exodus story (the touchstone event in the history of the Jewish people), the Easter story (the touchstone event for Christians), and our own personal midlife passion. Spiritual transition and transformation are prophetic: they speak to the saving Presence of a Higher Power acting in and through the events of our personal lives.
Whether this past week you celebrated your liberation from slavery by recognizing yourself in the Passover haggadah, or today you’re recognizing a personal victory over futility and death with the women in stunned silence at the mouth of the empty tomb: either way the Scriptures are pointing out to you the deeper, more fundamental meaning and purpose of whatever it may be that you’re going through at this phase of your life. This is your Passover; this is your Passion. As such, this is also your liberation and entry into a new phase of your existence: from both a human and a divine perspective. You are assuming a brand new relationship with your personal destiny, in terms of which everything else in your experience needs to be reinterpreted.
Think about it: neither the Jewish people nor the followers of Jesus had any idea where they were going when they arrived at the chiros: the critical transitional moment in their life of faith. It took them years . . . generations . . . to gain an appreciation of what had happened to them. If today you stand at your own turning-point, your own passus (both in terms of passage and passion), remember that this may be your own prophetic moment: it may well take you the rest of your life to come to an appreciation of what you’re experiencing right here and now.
If you’re still standing on the shore of the Sea of Reeds, feeling the chariots of Pharaoh and his army pressing down on you, or, if you’re still in shock and awe from witnessing the suffering and death of your Hope, I say to you: be patient. Find acceptance, and trust that there is, indeed, Someone beyond yourself who holds your destiny safe and sacred for you. This is your Passover from slavery to freedom, from death to life. Know that, however difficult it may seem at the moment, ahead of you lies your destiny. Hold on to it passionately!
H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2010 H. Les Brown
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July 29th, 2010 at 8:08 pm
If you bear from anxiety or a great fear, you are not alone; this is a piece of the human condition. But we don’t have to ache unendingly because anxiety has an interior structure in the form of negative thought processes and notions powered by emotional energy that has become frozen in place. Reveal these patterns of negative thought processes and you are on the path to taking substantial change.