Christ – Jane Tawel

Dichotomy vs. The Divine: There is Plenty of Amniotic Fluid for Us All

Dichotomy vs. The Divine: There is Plenty of Amniotic Fluid for Us All

By Jane Tawel

January 8, 2026

We have created a false dichotomy-ridden world — my team vs. your team, your politics vs. my politics, my god vs. your God, us vs. them. Our dichotomization of the world we live in extends to our philosophy, theology, worldview, plan for living — whatever you would like to name that which claims you and how you think and how you behave. We give these various worldviews names so we can contrast them, own them, follow them, when facts or life seem to intrude on the mysterious truth of our Meaning. We feel we must have something to fight that gives our achievements the savoring quality that metaphorically, a plain diet of bread and water does not fulfill. Competition becomes the spice of our lives whether we know it or not and creates sound-proofed walls around our religions, our national loyalties, our genders and races and economic statuses, and around our football teams. But here is the thing I have been learning, small little nibble by small nibble, in the works of people like Walter Wink, Paul Tillich, Richard Rohr, and Marcus Borg among others: our dichotomies have almost severed our relationships to other humans and to The Divine. We are hanging by a thread to the Real, which some call God or Spirit or The Divine or the Universal. There are several causes of this, and I am sure I am not at all smart enough or aware enough to know them all, but the number one cause, I think, of our estrangement from God is that we see God as the distant over-seer of a dichotomized belief-system. And what God says over and over in the Hebrew Bible, in the Christian Testaments, in the Quaran, in the Hindu Vedas, and in the glorious, achingly beautiful scriptures of the Natural World is this: God/Spirit/ Divine/ Creator wants loving, compassionate, truthful Relationship with every human being — a relationship as close as our heartbeat, as close as our breath, as close as a lover, as close as Mother’s womb.

Imagine if we thought of every immigrant, every Palestinian, every person of color, every unhoused person on our streets, every differently gender-identified person, every person from the other team as swimming in God’s Womb with us? Picture it: Here we are floating along together in Mother’s care and there is plenty of amniotic fluid for all of us. Or imagine that we begin to see God as a Father who doesn’t love any of His kids any more than His other children? And this God-Father, that allows us to call Him, “Daddy”, “Da-da”, always sees us as His little innocent baby who really can’t talk all that well because our words are limited, and really can’t think all that well because we can’t see much past our own little toes and we can’t reach much further than Da-Da’s Face as He holds us, and as Daddy places us in Mother’s arms, which are the same as His arms, we can’t really get nourishment from anything other than God-Mom’s ever-flowing- with-Life-giving-nourishment Breast. Is this not what all the teachings of Truth, True-Truth, try to show us with metaphors and parables and myths — all those human creations that struggle toward those Realities beyond the material and beyond our egoic-minds and beyond the struggling wrestlings with the limits of language that give us just an inkling of our own created creativeness in the image of the Creator?

Let’s be honest: relationships can be tough. I don’t know about you, but I have never had any kind of relationship: friend, spouse, child, parent, relative, co-worker, boss — you name it — that has proceeded in a lovely little straight line forward, like a smooth road with no hills, no bumps, no muddy potholes. And some of these bumps and potholes are frankly of the other person’s making and lots and lots more of them are of my own making. But if you commit long-term to being in a relationship as I have been privileged to do with my hubby, my children, and a few close companions on The Way, then you can see the trials as part of being a human being who is meant, like all in and of this lovely Creation/ Nature, meant to let go in order to hold on to something new, to get lost and seek in order to find, and to, just as the trees who lose their leaves to grow new ones do, to die daily to our old sense of self in order to be reborn to new life. And to find a more intimate loving relationship with Another that without those bumps and trials and vulnerable achings would not have been possible yesterday.

When I read what now I have come to think the Bible was supposed to provide for us — stories about real people’s struggling relationships with The Divine Real (God) — I realize that much of my life and hence, my belief system, has been about making God into my image. God is so often only close if I think of God as an “It” that can fit in my heart, kinda like Jesus, and be used as needed. But God is also so often been at the same time, a distant figure Who has dichotomized the world into haves and have-nots, thems and us-es, good and bad, my religious team against their religious team, and heaven-bound folks against the hell-bound. God has been for most of my life a powerful patriarch of my own religious views that I need to beg for what I want, that judges my every action and thought, and that I hope will forgive me enough to allow me as I am to live forever as I am, while sending to hell the people whom I deem unworthy. And then I throw Jesus into this mix as someone who was God but died and “paid up” all my debts so I don’t have to worry about my connection with God any more because Jesus had a special relationship with God on my behalf. And when you put it that way in words — it sounds as crazy and insincere and messed-up as it is. Right? Because what The Divine/ Creator / God — whatever you can still with love call Spirit in and of, but also beyond and above this material existence — what Parent-Spirit wants is not our sacrifices, not our offerings, not our achievements — but our loving hearts connecting to THE IAM Loving Heart.

As a parent of four adult children, I can confirm: when I am filled with true love (compassion, desire, care, obsession, commitment, adoration) of my four children, now adults — when I am full to the brim of That Which Loves and Only Loves — then all I want is to Be with them, in relationship, in relationship, in relationship. Why can not I trust, have faith, that God in the Purity of His Grace, wants this with me, Her child?

There is this old rock and roll song and one of the lines about the romantic relationship between the two lovers has stuck in my mind all these years. It is partly because I grew up when you had to figure out the lyrics to songs by hearing them over and over on the radio or sometimes on the LP you had bought. Ah, life before computer screen immediacy of information — how sometimes I do miss it! So, for this song that we heard on the radio, the important line was a bit hard to understand, and we had a friend one time riding in the back seat of mom’s car with us, and she was adamant that the catchy line was: “For you are Amanda and I am Steve”. And you know that works for what I am trying to say about God. God wants to be our Amanda or Steve to our Steve or Amanda, depending on which gendered name we want to identify with. The Divine wants to be as close as a lover in the act of loving the beloved — God wants to name us and be named — and this understanding of God is all over the Bible texts and many other spiritual texts as well. But the true lyric of this song, which eventually we preteens in the back of that car finally figured out, reveals something also true about what The Divine wants us to understand about Her which is also metaphoric and anthropomorphic, because of course God is incomprehensible and beyond our human understanding, despite our centuries of boxing Him up and defining Her in controllable, bite-sized bits. We still laugh today about our confusion about what the lyrics actually were to that song, which were: “For you are a magnet, and I am steel”.

Today I am on a journey by way of, not fighting, not running or even walking, but of Being — being in the kind of relationship with what I call God, that people throughout history have sought with The Divine Mystery/Reality. I am letting go of my striving in small moments as well as I can to find: “resting”, “cradling” and “hiding in”. I am asking The Divine Creator to “create in me a new heart”, to “hide me in the Rock”, to be the “Mother Bear to my cub-ness” to let me be the “chick to Her Mother Hen”, “the son returned to the Loving Father”, and the “little lamb to the Shepherd who lives among us sheep”. These are all metaphoric relationships found in my primary Scripture, the Judeo-Christian Bible, but they are true to all True-Truths throughout our known history of humankind. We just have either forgotten or neglected that Truth and chosen to set up the golden calves of our preferred individualistic idols that have led us, like the lost sheep, astray.

The next time I feel the old dichotomies of us vs. them rise-up in me, I will try to remember that in Christ there is no us and them. The next time I want to cling to the black and whites that seem to build a foundation for me I will remind myself they are foundations built on sand, and like the sands of Time, they melt away in the Flow of Eternal Truths — beyond space and time and where black and white are forever, only Light. The next time I feel what I call God is distant, needy, controlling — a monarch to be feared and to whom I must beg — I will lightly touch my breath and pray, “Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me and breathe into me Your Life”. The next time I feel angry or alone, I will let God know how I feel, just as I would my most intimate lover and I will trust that my relationship will grow through honest vulnerability to He Who Loves me. The next time I despair at all I think or fear all that I feel, I will thank my Mother-God, that She holds me safe in Her Womb, safe in Her arms, and safe in Her Love. In fact, she “holds the whole world — tree, rock, lizard, bee and my enemy — in her loving hands.

And I will ask Love to let me begin to see the Universal Christ not as a small, locked security-deposit-safe, but as a free-flowing Ocean of compassion for all — not just enough, but so much that it breaks our nets of prejudice, and spills out of our baskets of miserly grasping, and runs to our prodigals with forgiveness and joy and connection — just as our Father runs to embrace and welcome us.

Relationship. Scary, isn’t it? Yes, one hesitates in any relationship to be vulnerable. But I have found that a life of putting on the armor of constant battle is exhausting, confusing, and leads to a life of negativity. I am trying bit by bit, to unshackle myself from old ideas, and to free myself from the battlements I have let my thoughts create. I ask The Divine, to create in me Her Spirit, and to be unarmored except with the “the breastplate of faith and love, and a helmet of the hope of salvation”. I appeal with no small amount of trepidation but also quite a bit of excitement at what I might discover about the Lover of My Soul and That which longs to live not just with me but within me. And I can call this “Other that is All and is My Truest Self” God — or I can call it Mother, Father, Divine Spirit, Creator — or I can call it Amanda or Steve. True Lovers have lots of names for each other. But no matter what names we use, I want to learn, day by day, hour by hour, breath by breath, to be the longing heart of Steel to the Magnet of Universal Compassionate Truth that draws all the world, all of us, to The Pulsing Heart of the Eternal Lover.

May it be so. Amen.

All metaphors, allusions, imagery and symbols can be found in the Hebrew or Christian Scriptures.

What Small Part of Oneness Am I?

by Jane Tawel

What Small Part of Oneness Am I?

By Jane Tawel

The ray of light is from the Sun,

it is of the Sun,

but it is not the Sun.

The cloud is in the Sky,

it is of the Sky,

but it is not the Sky.

I am in Space,

I am of the Space,

but I am not Space.

I am in Life’s Ocean,

I am not the Ocean,

but I am a small wave.

I am in God,

I am of God,

but I am not God.

If I accept the wonderous mystery

of being blind to what lies beyond,

I will be the Light.

If I let go of my anxious need

to control the weather of my life,

I will be content with being now —

Floating, not digging in and dissipating.

If I release all my desires

To contain and to enlarge myself,

My Heart will open the cage of my mind

and I will be as One;

Spacious with All.

If I, with thanks, set learning aside,

And experience God

In the Unknowingness and Love

Of the God of All Creation and All

I will no longer play God —

I will be Christ.

“Each day, I am looking at my small self as dead

And yet I AM — more alive than ever.

The anxious, painful, over-thinking self is slowly decaying.

I realize the tiny me is no longer only who I AM.

But instead, Suffering becomes Love and Joy

in the small self that is not myself

But a resurrected Savior of Goodness and Peace”**

Choose the name you wish to be crucified with –

Be it Krishna, Buddha, or as was chosen for me —

The Christ.

Die to all that is in you that does not save.

Die to all that is within you that does not heal.

Die to all that is in you that does not forgive.

Die to all that is in you that is not at peace.

Live to all that is Love.

Live to only that which is Love.

Let the clouds disperse

and release into the vast mystery

of The Sky.

Let the ray of Light dissipate

as it touches the Earth

warming others

and new things will grow.

Let the wave resolve back into the Ocean

and come and go

We know not from where or where to

But always at one with the Ocean,

Alive forever in the One.

Live, and move and have your being

in God.

And be your True Spacious Self

Be the Light of “just as I AM”*

What small part am I

in the ever-moving parts

of this planet’s short life?

In Light of Eternity,

What is Yesterday? Tomorrow? Today?

I am, at heart,

as God — beyond understanding.

But God is even beyond words.

Let me not try to understand

myself or others;

Just as I can never theologize about God.

Let my peace pass my understanding, O God.

You know all my innermost parts.

Create in me a new heart, O God.***

Hold me in the palm of Your Fatherly Hand.

Cradle me in the Womb of Your Motherly Love.

Let me Be no longer a small part,

But Be at One with All Beings;

Be at One with all Beingness;

and Be at One with You.

**My paraphrase of Galatians 2:20

***Psalm 51:10

*”Just As I Am, without One Plea” by Charlotte Elliot

I Wanted to Write About Jesus, But…

“Homeless Jesus” by Nicola Barnett is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

I Wanted to Write About Jesus, But…

By Jane Tawel

August 7, 2023

I wanted to write about Jesus, but….

I wanted to write something about Jesus,

but then I kept asking myself, “Which Jesus would that be?”

I still think a lot about this person,

known to history only by the name “Yeshua”,

and maybe you have heard about him,

and later, people added on the title, “Christ”,

and I think about that,

even though I don’t think about him the same way I used to any more.

I no longer wanted to write about

the Jesus that people had invented from their need for a new god,

because they didn’t like the Jew’s God (or the Jews).

And I no longer wanted to write about a Jesus that died,

so that I never had to face what was expected of me,

by that same Jesus, expected of me in order to live the right way.

I didn’t want to write about a Jesus that wasn’t human at all,

but whose myth conspired and morphed

into weapons used by millennia of power-hungry people.

I didn’t want to write about a Jesus who came not to heal the broken,

but one who oppressed the very ones Jesus said he loved;

the weak, and poor, and judged, and hungry,

the very ones he said he came to save from oppression and greed.

I didn’t want to write about the Jesus who

supported gas chambers or inquisitions

or “detention centers” in places like Guantanamo Bay,

or greedy, polluting pipelines on sacred land.

And I didn’t want to write about the Jesus,

that was hidden away in people’s hearts,

without ever coming out to show me,

Christ’s hands, and feet, and mind, and smile.

So, I was left with nothing to write about Jesus.

Then I remembered that the man Jesus,

also had nothing to write about himself,

or others,

or his God.

He never wrote a single word to leave behind.

He once wrote something in the sand,

which saved a woman’s life,

but what he wrote there,

blew away with the next wind,

like dust to dust.

He simply lived,

and loved,

and shared some food, and wine, and conversation.

And maybe that is the miracle –

Maybe that is where the miracles came from —

that he simply lived and loved,

and shared.

And so that is what I decided to do.

A Meditation on The Man of the Hour

Homeless Jesus Statue and Homeless Person, Statue by Timothy Schmalz

A Meditation on The Man of the Hour

By Jane Tawel

December 24, 2022

Christ did not come to Earth,

for he has always come

to those who wait, and mourn, and hope,

in that which Love deigns True.

Christ will not come again someday,

for he is always coming now,

to those who wait, and suffer, and hope,

to those who seek and love,

in mysteries and all they can not see

but that which all do long for.

Christ was not born in Bethlehem,

except he is born in us.

Christ did not die on Calvary,

unless he dies today in me.

Christ did not rise to live again,

unless today he lives and loves and lives again

in life eternal starting Now!

in life eternal starting now in me.

Oh, do not worship temporal gods,

They have no hope for you.

And do not worship gods with names,

for you must find the name God has for you.

A name is written on a stone,

a white stone, pure and true,

and there you’ll find the name of Christ,

that God has given you.

Our hope is in The God of All,

The Great IAM, The One, Creator,

Parent of a man named Jesus,

who once did live to show The Way to God.

The Way of Christ is more than fairy dust,

and more than Santa Claus or even angels tell.

If you would follow Christ, the man,

then know his plan was to rebel,

against the tides of time and governments and yes,

even the surest shores of your religions –

all will turn to rust.

There is a truth in this dear season,

in which we gladly, foolishly give,

all of our treasures to the ones we love.

There is a way of hope and reason,

that’s imaged in the true myth of

a babe born once in history.

But Christ comes daily not to keep

our vision turned behind us or before.

He comes as someone that I see right now,

in persons struggling, lonely, fearful, lowly, poor.

Yes! There he is! Appearing as Star Light today,

in newborn, old man, woman, friend, and even enemy.

Christ’s coming! Yes, I see him there —

in you, in her, in them—

Oh, let me see The Christ in even me!

Christ breaks through as The Morning Star

that heralds God’s real presence,

in even those with empty hands, like Christ was born in Bethlehem.

Christ did not come and never will he come again someday.

The Christ is not alive at all unless I walk The Way.

Oh, Parent-Love-Creator-God, help this small child of Yours,

to be the Light, and walk upright,

and live the love and hope and faith

of All it means to come as Christ in me—

yes, please Dear One,

be born in me, today.

What in the Name of Christ Would We Know About That!?

by Jane Tawel

What in the Name of Christ Would We Know About That?!?!

By Jane Tawel

May 29, 2021

I see a lot of posts and hear,

a lot of folks who rage or fear,

about the suffering that they do,

and how they pray for me and you.

They don’t seem usually to reflect,

on how they’re getting what they get,

but think instead that God should bless,

them more than He should bless the rest.

And as we privileged ones complain,

I ask myself, (and them) again:

As we grow rich and we grow fat,

While others live their lives with scat;

We say our prayers like God’s spoiled brats,

Yet, claim to God, we’re working at,

Salvation like we’re in combat,

Republican or Democrat,

We choose a team and go to bat.

And when we pin them to the mat,

We prove again and again that,

We don’t know Christ worth diddly-squat.

What can we all be thinking of,

when we plead with some God above,

for healing, when we have a Doc,

while others don’t — oh, what a crock!

What makes us think that God is listening

to all our nationalist dissenting,

political — religious too —

muck up our prayer life’s point of view.

We don’t look at the systems which,

keep most folks poor, while few get rich.

Nor do we end the world’s sad squalor;

Our gods are Euros, Yen, and Dollars.

When Bibles are turned red, white blue,

we’ve really lost God’s Point of View.

I don’t know when to cry or laugh,

as we dance round the Golden Calf.

It wouldn’t otherwise be funny,

to see our gods have become money,

except we think we are more smart,

than Man and Woman at The Start.

The Tree of Knowledge has been gotten,

but at its roots, it still is rotten.

If only we could try to fathom,

the calling of The Second Adam.

For hoarding and for wanting more,

We bang on Heaven’s Silent Door.

And while the ones who have no voice,

take crumbs we give — (they have no choice);

we still think God can hear our prayers,

though we neglect to serve and care.

And as we grow more proud and fat,

and treat His grace like our doormat,

God turns His face and asks and asks:

“What in God’s Name would you know about that?”

I know lots of religious folks,

(who’ve sort of made God’s Love a joke).

And yet when I look at our life,

I don’t see too much lack or strife.

We pretty much have every thing

and so I keep on wondering,

“What kind of God do we believe in,

when we don’t see our own deep sin,

of only taking and not sharing,

of only praying and not caring?”

We use God as if He’s our Tool,

and use His Word like prideful fools.

Oh, please forgive me, God above,

for thinking that You only love,

the ones that look or speak like I,

or that my goal is in the Sky.

Forgive my treatment of the Earth.

Create in me a true Re-birth

that sees all others as Your Own,

and nurtures this world as Our Home.

I pray, Yahweh, O God on High:

Restore my faith, but crucify,

my selfish, foolish, sinful pride.

I’ll never know the Depths or Why’s,

of how You seek the weak and lost.

Help those who love, take up our cross,

and follow in the footsteps of,

the Son of Man, the Man of Love;

Who showed us how to live like Him,

if we will only just begin,

to give up what we think need,

and Love’s True Word, to trust and heed.

There once upon a space and time,

lived a Great One, who was divine.

Part prophet, rabbi, brother, friend,

He came to us to love and mend

the ways that we have lost our way.

He offers now to walk today,

beside us, and to live within,

and help us, over sin, to win.

He paid Love’s ultimate true price,

and we who follow in sacrifice,

will know what it means to Be Christ.

For in The Way, and only then,

will we be wholly born again,

into The Life, The Truth, The Way.

Now, let us pray,

“Give us today,

just what we need, and nothing more.”

Christ stands and knocks upon the door,

of every heart, and every soul,

and offers Love to make us whole.

The Truth, The Word, The Way, The Tao,

is not in history, but in The Now.

The Path of Christ is deep and slim,

and we who claim to honor Him,

must listen to His words by fearing,

just how far we have been veering,

from what The Teacher actually said;

not only claiming, now He’s dead,

that we can have eternity,

without our soul’s fraternity,

with what The Christ came here to do,

which was to change both me and you;

and get the whole World realigned,

with God’s Plan to make All, Divine.

The Way is open to all, but narrow.

Christ imparts worth, “more than a sparrow”.

The Earth is ours to daily cherish.

The Lie of Death will one day, perish.

Oh, Our Great Spirit and Creator,

Help me to change my wrong behavior.

Forgive us as we seek to forgive.

Help me to die, so I might live.

And live as One, and live apart,

and ask Christ into mind, will, heart.

Oh, Parent, Mother, Father, One,

when Christ said, “God, Your will be done”;

he didn’t mean by only him.

So, in this moment, help me begin,

to not treat life as some grand game;

but from The God Who Has No Name;

as gift and grace, help my small aim,

to follow You in all I do.

Create in me, God, through and through,

the Love that Christ has called me to.

Amen.

©Jane Tawel 2021

Commemoration and Belief

by Jane Tawel

https://unsplash.com/photos/oQC81OHcl4Q

Whatever one’s belief system, this is historically a good weekend to meditate on what makes a belief “true”. If I say I believe something, but don’t in fact, myself, act in accordance with it, what is the meaning and purpose of my belief? If I say I believe Someone loves me enough to suffer for me (and some believe die for me), but I accept that Someone’s love only to make myself feel better, and not in order to love those others in the world in need of a belief in A Love Without Strings Attached, what does that say about what I truly believe about the quality of a Higher Love?

As we look to what we say we believe, we often get stuck in the childish questions, like, “How has it changed me? How am I better a person? How does my future look brighter?” But the real questions to ask myself that the events commemorated in this weekend ask, the grown-up questions of The Christ are: “How does what I believe make me want to change the World? How does The Divine make me a better human being? How do I bring the future Kingdom of God to earth — now, today, here, for all — as The Christ did?”

If we aren’t suffering with others on Friday, and mourning for the whole world, the whole Earth on Saturday, we will never truly know what it is to celebrate life and resurrection on Sunday. No matter what one claims to believe, this is a good weekend to ponder as the philosopher might ask, What do we owe each other? And as the prophets or saints might ask, What would happen if some of us began to really believe in Love?

(c)Jane Tawel 2021

In Nature — A Poem

In Nature

By Jane Tawel

September 2019

In figs and pears

You oft appear,

And like the rose,

You rose

Despite the thorns.

What all I lack

In yon lilacs,

I find the glory;

As morning glories

Seek the same

Of the sun.

I too find rest,

Forever blessed

In The Son.

In bird and song

And honey bee throng

Like sparrows tended

By Your strong hand,

In sky and earth

In seas and land

You reign, You reign, You reign. . .

And like the rain

You fall on all

To grow the good

Among the weeds.

In winter mulch

Alive, all, much,

New life.

First, we die

Then rise to bloom.

Temporal as a weed,

But as The Rose of Sharon,

In death with You, Eternal.

Lent – a poem— by Jane Tawel

Lent

The First Day

By Jane Tawel

March 6, 2019

Lent, surprising season,

And for good reason,

One’s never sure when it draws near.

Each year its start

To ream our hearts,

Will suddenly appear.

This first of Lent,

Our souls should rent

With sobering contrition.

But like Succoth,

Lent fills our cups,

With God’s Chosen’s commission.

The change of date

Just like our fate

May throw us a curve ball.

For loving chaos

We suffer pathos

Ever since The Fall.

Today’s descent in

This season Lenten,

Requires of me a price.

But that is little

If only it’ll

Bring me closer to The Christ.

The Only Son of Only God,

When on this earth, Christ trod,

Took up our lent

When God’s will bent

To die upon a cross.

And so today

In some small way

I suffer by election,

To become like the only Man

Who sinless, Resurrected.

Each Lent’s first day surprises me

Like did Christ’s death upon that tree.

But suffering for our human doom,

In this dark season of Lent’s gloom,

Is the only way to be surprised,

In the same way at long past sunrise,

Those women who loved The Christ who died,

Saw Him Arise.

Surprise!

A Recipe for A True Taste of Christmas

By Jane Tawel

December 11, 2018

First, get poor. Literally. Wonder not only where your next meal will come, but be shunned by any group of so -called safety net groups. Be outcast by your religious institution for being sinful and “unclean”; and be considered an illegal alien by the country you have grown up in.

Next make sure if you are not yourself currently in labor with an expected child, that you are the spouse of a very pregnant woman. Decide to relocate with no job, no insurance and with no health care, no doctor, and no Douala around. If you can’t manage being pregnant or the spouse of someone pregnant by Christmas time, then, make sure you are really, really, really sick with something that could easily kill you and that makes it hard to walk or talk or even focus on anything other than how you feel physically which is in pain, afraid, and, well, in pain and afraid. Oh, and make sure you are of an ethnic religion that the entire world is prejudiced against. Like Jewish, maybe? Then…

Take a 90 mile (157 kilometer) trip by foot. In worn sandals or barefoot. On dusty dangerous dirt roads. Make sure as you travel (remember, very pregnant or very ill) that you are dependent on the kindness of strangers for the food and water you need on the 90 mile trip. Make sure that even if you arrive after about a week’s walk, that you have no where to stay and that you know no one when you arrive at your final destination. If you do arrive that is, considering the violence in the country in which you are currently living, where not only criminals and terrorists abound but even those who are meant to uphold the law have become lawless. I mean the police / soldiers, governors / senators, and priests / rabbis. Those lawless ones who can demand any thing of you or from you since you have no rights.

Since you are treated like an animal, decide to have your baby in a sheep shed. At least it is out of the elements and will be safe from the wild dogs. If you can not manage a pregnancy in a sheep shed, this Christmas, and have opted to merely be super, super sick to recreate the true experience, then simply leave your medications behind and after your 90 mile walk, find a little cage at the southern border of your country and snuggle in with all the other outcast, unwanted folks. This will help you feel like the parents of the Christ child felt on the day we celebrate his birth.

And as you contemplate this recipe for preparation of a true Christmas, remember that the angels, and kings , the God as Father and miracles –they are all part of a story that people told long after the Jewish parents, Mary and Joseph had to tell Jesus about the night He was born. That night, Mary and Joseph were just happy to be alive and that their kid was alive.

And as you prepare your recipes for a true Christmas, remember that Jesus loved being alive, just like we do. And that He didn’t want to die, just like we don’t. But that He believed that only in His death, could He have eternal life with God, just like we can.

So celebrate Christmas and celebrate the fact that today, you are alive. And being alive can feel like nothing or it can be every thing. And being alive means you can make choices today.

The recipe for my Christmas celebration should be the same as every day. Will I choose the ingredients for my life that the Jewish Messiah did? That the Jewish parents of Jesus did? Will I choose to walk the long, lonely, painful road not just to Bethlehem but to Calvary? Will I find joy in a sheep manger as easily as I find joy around a hearth with my well-fed and well-cared for loved ones? Will I be willing to care little for my own comforts in comparison to my great thirst to know and love Jehovah, the Lord? Will I look at others as my brothers and sisters on a planet we have mutually wrecked while mutually mutilating each other, body and soul, and try to heal rather than grab more before it all runs out? Will I believe that there is a future day of celebration when Jesus is the ruler of all humans – a ruler who serves as we serve Him? An eternal dawn where the planet is no longer just one big sheep shed and that the recipe for eternal peace, love and joy will be finally re-made by The Chef who created it in the first place?

Will I who claim the road to Calvary, take The Christ’s first baby steps on the road to Bethlehem?

What meals and snack ideas do I have for eating and making for others while traveling Life’s road? Jesus’ idea for a good meal on the road, was His body and blood. Messiah knew in His heart the truth of this Hebrew recipe: “Oh, taste and see that The Lord is good! Blessed is the one who takes refuge in Him.” (Psalm 34:8)

A Recipe/ Psalm for a Judeo-Christian Holiday

By Jane Tawel

Dear Creator,

First fill my cup with thirst.

May my hands kneed love in need of You.

Spice up my heart with passion for Your Word.

And let the Oil of my faith in Your Covenant

Never run out.

May a small teaspoon be the only portion

Of my earthly gain

So that my eternal fill will

Be only eaten in Your Forever

Feast of Body and Blood.

May I never turn away from my table

strangers and sojourners; and

Just as You have always fed

Both the good and bad

With sunshine and rain;

May I not stand in judgement

Over the meals that others make;

But instead look to the small

Morsel of my own small self.

May no matter how many times

I eat of You;

Or how much I am served of

Your words and Your Word,

May I hunger only more;

May I thirst only more deeply

For Your Approval,

For Your Love.

May I receive at Your mighty hands–Hands

That created all the ingredients and recipes for all living things—

A wee little Christmas star—

One star out of the billions of stars that rate the universal Creations—

May I get a little half star,

rating my life today

As worthy of You.

Please, Oh Lord of All,

Messiah, Christ-child,

God of the Ages,

I humbly offer today,

A morsel – an offering of my life,

Of my small snack of a soul.

May you multiply the ingredients of my life today,

As You always do increase

Our silly little

fish and loaves.

meal+and+snack+ideas+for+OTR+traveling

A Resurrection Acrostic

A Resurrection Acrostic

By Jane Tawel

March 31, 2018

Restored to original design

Eternally changed,

Savior and King– my Lord and my God.

Under the blood and over the grave

Righteousness of His, crucified my guilt, then

Rinsed and rolled it away.

Eternally with Our Father–

Can’t comprehend it; But…

Triumphed over death, He did!

In Him, By Him, Through His

Omnipotent Weakness

Now and Forever more, I AM remade.

the-empty-tomb

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by Jane Tawel

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