Zombies?

Zombie Crawl - Eureka Springs, AR 

Countless people dressed up as zombies have flocked to our little town of Eureka Springs. It’s time for the annual zombie crawl and a constant, cold rain has not deterred them. I, personally, have never understood the appeal of dressing up in ugly apparel, with macabre makeup, and bloody accoutrement. As I drove through “the loop” on my way home this evening, I contemplated the zombie phenomenon. Why dress up in this way and congregate to parade the streets? I truly cannot imagine why they enjoy doing it! Perhaps “living dead” personifies what many of us are exhibiting in these human bodies. Maybe we’re simply animated flesh, performing our human activities without ever realizing we’re alive. The dead-eyed stares of these Halloween zombies are vaguely familiar. When we haven’t looked beyond the surface of our human existences, there isn’t a whole lot to be excited about. I’m reminded of Bruce Springsteen’s song “Dancing in the Dark” — 

“I get up in the evening 

And I ain't got nothing to say 

I come home in the morning 

I go to bed feeling the same way

I ain't nothing but tired 

Man, I'm just tired and bored with myself 

Hey there, baby 

I could use just a little help.” 

Could it be the zombies are helping us wake up? I hope so!

“The way of error is awful to contemplate. The illusion of sin is without hope or God. If man’s spiritual gravitation and attraction to one Father, in whom we ‘live, and move, and have our being,’ should be lost, and if man should be governed by corporeality instead of divine Principle, by body instead of by Soul, man would be annihilated. Created by flesh instead of by Spirit, starting from matter instead of from God, mortal man would be governed by himself. The blind leading the blind, both would fall.” 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 536:10-18

“The body is the ego’s idol; the belief in sin made flesh and then projected outward. This produces what seems to be a wall of flesh around the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master. And this unholy instant seems to be life; an instant of despair, a tiny island of dry sand, bereft of water and set uncertainly upon oblivion. Here does the Son of God stop briefly by, to offer his devotion to death’s idols and then pass on. And here he is more dead than living. Yet it is also here he makes his choice again between idolatry and love. Here it is given him to choose to spend this instant paying tribute to the body, or let himself be given freedom from it. Here he can accept the holy instant, offered him to replace the unholy one he chose before. And here can he learn relationships are his salvation, and not his doom.” 

A Course in Miracles T-20.VI.11:1-9