My Cyber-Zombie

A couple of days ago I deleted a blog I posted here. Some readers had found it offensive. Belatedly, I regretted ever hitting the “post” button, but, fortunately, blogger's “delete” button erased my post — or so I thought.

In the post, I compared the appearance of a proposed JPMorgan Chase bank branch for our neighborhood to the ominous appearance of a certain concentration camp's entrance.

I added pictures of both to drive home the point and the vague similarity in appearance.

At best, the reference was a cheap shot. At worst it was an odious, outrageous comparison. Somewhere in the middle it was in poor taste, however true.

When I alerted a well-known local blogger to the community’s reaction to Chase's desire to open shop here, he discovered my deleted post and managed to exhume it.

As best I can figure, he dredged it back to life from someone’s trash cache.

In any case, the "dead" post now lurching around cyber space has been read by more viewers than it ever was in life.

Call it a cyber-zombie. Grim, haunting, shocking to some and embarrassing to me, it has taken on a life after death.

There’s a morbidly familiar lesson here. Once loose on the internet, any message is impossible to contain. There’s even an ad on TV these days of a guy who makes the mistake of unintentionally “replying all.” The only solution is for him to dash around snatching computers from the hands of his friends and colleagues.

Fortunately, my error was not that egregious and I did apologize. The apologetic post survives.

I suppose the lesson I’ve learned was worth the penalty of my on-going discomfort.

The lesson? In cyberspace, "deleted" messages can become more alive, famous and dangerous once they have been “killed.”

The Christmas Zombie

The family gathered on Christmas Eve. Those in their 30s talked of vampires and zombies — the latest craze. No one mentioned the birth in Bethlehem.

The conversation turned to encounters with spiders, ants and snakes. No one mentioned Jesus of Nazareth.

I was quiet, numbed by the banter, the stories and the weight of my years. With the Christmas tree glittering in the next room and the fire crackling in the fireplace, I too did not think of the child in the manger.

So we passed the evening disconnected from Christmas and its meaning. As I pulled the covers up around me after everyone had gone home, a restless unease settled on me. The discomfort was beyond Christmas and banter about creepy insects and corpses that stalk the streets. It was much bigger — about being, not about worrying or thinking.

Finally, I concluded I was much too tired to deal with the enormity. I surrendered to a place beyond words, and there, in the silence of the void, I sighed and fell asleep.

It was only on this morning of Christmas Day that I began to connect the frivolity and seeming meaninglessness of the night before with Jesus and his teachings. Zombies and vampire are about transformation, even resurrection, gone horribly wrong. The world of these creatures is one without hope. Are the myths, which are so much in vogue, a warning? Are they a wake-up call, just as the message of Jesus was? Can we be led to love by zombies, vampires as well as by Jesus' teachings?

Are these stories, whether horrible or hopeful, ways of making us aware before it is too late?

The Christian mythology, fabricated years after Jesus’ death, also sought to direct and, yes, strike fear in our hearts. Vampires and zombies emerged from societies aware of, even steeped in what Jesus taught and what others mythologized about his life.

It seems odd yet worthwhile to ask: Was Jesus a kind of zombie with a difference when he reappeared after death?

Finally, I asked myself on this Christmas morning before we open the gifts, who would we be without this searingly honest itinerant teacher who spread his truth two thousand years ago?

Who would I be?

And you?

How is the world different today because of this birth in the manger? How is this very moment different because of Jesus?

Who is Jesus to us? Does he, like all others we encounter, become part of us, and how has that inward spirit changed us?

Indeed, Quakers, of whom I am one, believe in such an “indwelling spirit,” the Christ within. Would we hold such a belief, would we experience it, without that birth in Bethlehem so long ago?