Passionate environmentalist Julia Butterfly Hill, who sat in a tree for two years to save it from logging.
By Roland Ashby
The mystical branch of Islam – Sufism – has produced one of the world’s great mystics: the 13th century Persian poet Rumi. His prayer calling for the Beloved to set him free by dragging him into the gang of those crazy with the ecstasy of love, provides a profound insight into Christ and the meaning of Easter:
Beloved, drag me, I beg you
Into the gang of the crazy.
For the ecstasy of drunkenness
Is far more precious to me
Than any sane sobriety.
Do anything you need to me
To drive me mad with Love and set me free.
It’s an echo of the Italian Franciscan mystic Jacopone da Todi, also of the 13th century, who wrote that Christ reaches out to us in a “frenzy of love”. It was this that makes Christ one of the “crazy”, so drunk with love and compassion for humanity, so consumed with desire to liberate us from suffering, so “driven mad with Love” that he could accept such a terrifying death. Even so, he was so terrified by the prospect of the pain and horror of what he would endure that on the eve of his torture and execution he literally sweated blood.
His sacrifice on the cross represented a love so powerful that it has reverberated throughout millennia.
Christians believe that Christ died but rose to new life. So where’s the evidence? It’s seen in the millions of individuals who, many inspired by Christ, have led lives of selfless courage and compassion, and lit the flame of a myriad social justice movements.
But the Risen Christ is most particularly evident in those men and women who, in a “frenzy of love” have sacrificed all, including their lives, for the sake of a better world. In our own era, think, for example, of civil rights campaigner Dr Martin Luther King, or voice of the poor and oppressed in Latin America, Archbishop Oscar Romero, or Sister Dorothy Stang, trying to save the Amazon Rainforest. All members of the “gang of the crazy”. All murdered for living out their beliefs grounded in an extraordinary love.
But we also see the Risen Christ today in women like Greta Thunberg and Julia Butterfly Hill, fearless prophets speaking truth to power, “driven mad by Love” to save the planet from destruction.
Julia Butterfly Hill was so outraged by logging of the ancient redwoods in Northern California that she made a commitment to sit in one for two years to stop it from being logged. Named Luna, it was a thousand years old.
And, so as to avoid being consumed by her anger and sadness, she started praying. “One day, through my prayers, an overwhelming amount of love started flowing into me, filling up the dark hole that threatened to consume me. I suddenly realized that what I was feeling was the love of the earth, the love of Creation.”
See her story at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyLiOnmBZLw