The point of these readings is not to necessarily champion the entire views of each writer but to take their essays and glean helpful, insightful, and challenging truths from them. It is, however, interesting for me to be exposed to new viewpoints and new names that I hadn’t come across before. That name in today’s reading is Morton T. Kelsey. Kelsey was an Episcopalian priest and therapist who is also credited with bringing meditation into Western Christianity. He draws on both backgrounds in the reading for today entitled, “The Cross and the Cellar.” The identity of the cross is obvious enough but the cellar demands some explanation. Frankly, for Kelsey the cellar is that deep part of ourselves that is not pretty that we try to keep hidden. It is below that cellar, the deepest pit where evil and hatred resides. If we allow it to that pitted evil can make its way out and what we might normally consider inhumane takes over. Kelsey walks this thought through history of how people who lived common, good lives became caught up in some of the gravest atrocities. He then makes a line to the characters surrounding the crucifixion. His brief, pointed biographies of Pilate, Caiphus, Judays, and the nameless carpenter show how their participation in this great evil may not have started from a vile place even though that’s where it ultimately lead. His summary paragraph about the crucifixion hits at my heart:
These were the things that crucified Jesus on Friday in Passover week A.D. 29. They were not wild viciousness or sadistic brutality or naked hate, but the civilized vices of cowardice, bigotry, impatience, timidity, falsehood, indifference- vices all of us share, the very vices which crucify human beings today.