I like traditions — well, many of them I do, (not a real fan of having a colonoscopy every 5–10 years, but I do it). This is one of the most tradition-full seasons of the year, at least in America. And yet, America and other kingdoms on earth are now undergoing, as never before perhaps, a time when traditions are being bucked to a rather outrageous and dangerous degree because truth and love are being bucked to a dangerous and insane degree. But one of my long-held traditions, as many of you have, has been writing a letter to friends and family that wish you felicitations for the season we call Christ-mas or Holy-days and to encourage you to have a good year in the next reincarnation of our calendars. And so it is this year, that I write again.
Sometimes I don’t feel like writing, especially when this season’s exceptional story of God’s Love seems so far from the religions and nations that claim it to be true; but I do appreciate all the traditions that try to keep this story alive — the nativity sets, the fragrant Ever-greens, the car rides to see neighborhoods decorated like electricity was free this time of year in honor of The Light of the World; the candy and cookies and sleigh bells ringing, the carols about Peace on Earth; and songs about St. Nick, giver of gifts to rich and poor alike — all the symbols that speak of joy and community; and of freedom, and kindness and generosity and care; of sacrifices for future generations and humble righteousness defeating power and greed for the benefit of humanity and the human good; and of love that has no barriers, no agenda, no judgement — because it is the love told and symbolized in the story of a helpless baby and his struggling mother and father. It is a Love that endures this life’s suffering and pain because of anticipated joy. I was incredibly blessed to go through the pain of child-birth four times, and let me tell you, there is nothing, no pain as agonizing as letting a new little human being struggle her or his way out of your body into the world — but the anticipation of going through that pain to the absolute joy you experience when it is over is worth every excruciating moment. I love that this season centers around that pain leading to joy because of love: the universal, very human story. As a long-time Literature-Geek, perhaps most of all, I love the symbols and metaphors and True Truths of stories and story-tellers that have those themes and unseen, but not unrealized, truths that transcend the place, time, and culture in which they were written and become ever-living testaments to what all humans seek and all wise ones find. And this season has some of the best stories ever written which can point us to True Truth — if we know how to listen with our hearts.
For me, though, the best part of this season has always been the anticipatory aspects of it; I love Advent. Traditionally, this year, my hubby and I gave all our adult kids Trader Joe Advent calendars. I have squirreled away stocking stuffer gifts from “Santa” and look forward to the family opening their stockings on Christmas morning (sometimes more like noon now by the time they can gather from their homes), and some of “Santa’s” gifts will be met with the surprise of “Oh, I love this!” and some will immediately mentally go into their “To be regifted later” pile. I don’t care; it’s the journey to the opening that counts. The house is decorated with all the traditional things in “hopes that St. Nicholas soon will be here” — the tree has ornaments the kids made in Sunday School, although some of the stars are missing a point, and the glitter ratio on most is diminished; I have the little ceramic table-top Christmas tree that lights up that a neighbor gave me years ago which reminds me of the one my Grandma Gladys used to have; and the nativity that my Mom gave me my first Christmas as a mom myself; and a ratty old four-foot stuffed Santa I have had since I was a one-year-old whose stuffed body has seen better days (as has mine, which is maybe why I like it so much). But my favorite tradition that I keep year after year, despite the fearful rumblings in the world, despite the personal trials or tribulations, despite my age, or despite the suffering of people I know and of those I don’t know — the tradition I keep despite any of that, despite my very own self — is the tradition of Anticipation. At odd times, like when I am doing the dishes, or lying in bed wondering if today will be the day the world’s insanity stops and we will all choose to turn it around in time, or when I am convincing myself that “yes, I do really want to head out at dawn again for my run”; or when I am snuggled up next to Raoul thinking about not a whole lot except how glad I am to have him with me all these many years and also just in this very present moment — sometimes — out of the blue — my heart will start pounding like a little drummer boy, (and at my age, you do worry when that happens); but then I remember — that is how one’s heart feels when there is a sense — not a thought — not a belief — not a doctrine — not a law — not a government instituted program — but a Sense — that something Good is coming. When the heart flutters like a butterfly taking flight, it is a sign that wherever and whenever human beings still anticipate that good things are just up ahead, that no matter how dark things may seem, that the Light of Truth will “Dawn” and that a Star will always dispel the darkest night, and that the truest symbol of all our truths can be found in the story of a mother giving birth to a New Life. When we can trust that the Heart of Love never lies then we can anticipate that tomorrow will shine forth with what a little baby-in-a-manger story teaches us — that Love wins. Love always wins.
Happy Advent: the season of the heart. May the stories of this season, and the examples of all those who came before us bringing truth, goodness, peace, and love, fill you in unexpected times and inexplicably joyful ways, with hope and peace — enough for you to give birth to your own renewed, and eternally-blessed Love.
May we live in the hopeful expectation that just around the proverbial corner, one day we shall have Peace on Earth and Good-will for All. May your hearts flutter at unexpected times with a sense beyond words, beyond explanation even, that God is Good and that we small, little specks in the Cosmos, we here and now and on-call-today human beings have what it takes to bring heaven to Earth, because somewhere deep inside, just like the story of heaven incarnated on earth in the manger scene, we each have the divinely-given desire and capability to Love. And Love always wins.
Back where I am from there is a saying “She’s a ‘Beaut, Isn’t She?” (Pronounced “Byoot”) Translated out of Midwestern or Southern dialect, one might say, “That is very Beautiful” or “She is a Beauty”. Calling something a “beaut”. is often used when referring to a new purchase like a car, or a baby crib, or a cow. There is another saying that may have come to some minds when they read my title, another “B” word that we often link to Karma. It is a word which, as a woman, I dislike intensely and try never to utter. But then also, I have come to connect Karma not with the idea that many Westerners do, which is a type of justice or just deserts (pronounced as in “desserts” with two s’s although spelled with one “s”). Karma is the idea that every action — good, bad, and neutral — have logical and unerringly correct consequences. It goes along with the other spiritual teachings and all true historical worldviews, and along the lines of “Do good and good will come to you”; “You reap what you sow”; poetic justice and just deserts; and so forth. “True Truth, Karma is”, (said in the voice of that wise one called Yoda). Then there is the karmic connection that one can not help but come to mind when I have seen the latest news and social media hype about a person who died last week, and that karmic saying really often does feel like it deserves the other “B” word: “you live by the sword, and you will die by the sword”. Or in America, translated as, “You preached that everyone should be allowed to own and use a gun whenever and however and now you have been killed by a gun that someone had the freedom to use because of people like you.” Karma is often, indeed, if not the “B-word”, oh, so situationally ironic.
I know there are people who are sad about the death of this man who was killed by a gun. In this country, as perhaps in many Western countries, there are several problems surrounding this. The first is that we deny the fact of death and the very real reality that everyone is going to die. So we are just super-duper shocked when someone actually dies. And what with the uber hype of social media and the talking heads that claim they are giving us “news” (Definition of “news” according to the dictionary: newly received or noteworthy information, especially about recent or important events.) Hence, I try these days to skim headlines, just to make sure I don’t have to pack my car for the next SoCal fire or to inform myself on what I might expect to find (or not find) at my local grocery, and I move on to more important things — like reruns of “Columbo” on Netflix. Otherwise I can lose whole decades and globs of hair I tear out obsessing about the latest machinations and tweets of crazy people.
The second thing that social media does to skew our view is to make us feel we “know” people that we don’t actually know. I am very glad I never knew anything about — not even the name — of this man that was killed by a gun this past week. He is possibly rolling in his grave to hear that, but there it is. I try my darnedest to spend my valuable and rapidly running out days left on this earth reading about people past and present who matter and who share or increase my understanding of what I, as a little human being, have been called to do (or not do) while I exist as matter on this earth so that in some way, I might matter — not because I am great or famous but because I love. And I believe one thing when I can’t seem to believe anything else, and that is that Love never dies. Love is in some way, some how — Eternal. I am old-fashioned enough to believe that every one, whether they know it or not, lives according to a WORLD- VIEW. I believe my greatest task left to me is to walk that so-called, “narrow path”, The Trustful, Truthful Way, the Tao — and to try my best to stop doing harm, to spread light and love, and to find the peace that passes my current understanding, with trust that God is Good, and that no matter how many times the Earth is destroyed or we destroy it, that Life, and True Life will keep regenerating from our ashes.
Thirdly, there are so many people in this country, and maybe the world, who have no idea what sorrow is and how to grieve. In fact, we deny being sad (we are depressed); we deny grieving (“mama is in heaven now so be happy”); and we deny the fact that we have allowed violence and injustice to thrive in this nation in the name of some idiotic idea that it means we have freedom. In fact, in America, we have taken the word and idea of “freedom”, and made it into a prison of selfish individualism in a nation that cares nothing for its citizens but only for the illusory chimera of wealth for the few and the “bread and circus” promises of winning the lottery for the majority.
Now I am, after having read more headlines about this man who was killed this past week, actually very, very glad I had no idea who he was until recently and that I have no history with ever hearing any thing that came out of his mouth. And please, can we be clear? This man was not “assassinated” like people who were actually killed for speaking up about justice or racial inequity, like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This man was not a martyr for his ideals, like Ghandi. This man was murdered by someone who was simply exercising his Second Amendment rights — according to the man who was killed. Do I rejoice in his death? Absolutely not. But not because of him, but because, as that beautiful Christian poet, John Donne, who suffered and sorrowed much, especially over the death of his young son, I believe that “every death diminishes me”. However, do I think this man’s death warrants the hoopla surrounding it. Nope. So, stop reading here if this offends somehow your sensibilities or if you feel that not faking sorrow for a man who did not live in goodness or love for others is a bad thing.
I will tell you about a few of the people that I do not know that I actually do mourn. I mourn the twenty INNOCENT children and six teachers who were murdered at Sandy Hook. (Those children didn’t know that a crazy man was just exercising his Second Amendment rights.) I mourn the deaths of the fourteen students and three staff members killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. (I once lost a job at a Christian school, in part because I allowed my class to participate in the six minutes and twenty seconds of silence for the first “March for Our Lives” national movement day. Long after the scars have healed over, the irony still catches my breath.) I mourn the wives and mothers killed by gun violence in their own homes because their spouse or partner is allowed to keep a weapon despite the fact he is a known domestic abuser. I mourn Trayvon Martin and George Floyd; I mourn Matthew Shephard and Harvey Milk; and already and still — despite the fact it is not the current hot news du jour, I mourn the twenty-nine deaths and sixty serious injuries from school (SCHOOL!!!!) shootings in America in 2025 so far. (When did we stop being shocked by school shootings? That must be the day the soul of America truly died.) And if you get me started on some parts of the rest of the world where children are left to starve and innocent civilians are killed, I will probably implode with disbelief and sorrow to the point I will never stop mourning. “Every death diminishes me”, but the death of innocent children and the death of the innocent reduces me to a pool of sorrow.
Eckhart Tolle has helped me see the current state of many countries in the world, and especially my own nation of the, now seemingly ironically named, “United” States of America. Remember the Corona Virus (for those of you who still believe in science)? Well, we currently have, as Tolle brilliantly sees, a serious mental virus. I would, along with Jesus, be so bold as to call it a spiritual virus as well. That is the only way to explain the absolute insanity of what our government (and others); and some non-government leaders (like those in churches or synagogues or schools); and some random, known and unknown, citizens are believing and “preaching” and doing. It is — no other word for it — INSANE INSANITY. And just as Germany woke up after years of murdering innocent people and labeling people as less than human during the fascist regime of the past (not the current ones). And just as the nation I have loved and long lived in, woke up after we burned women for being witches at the stake because they were strong and outspoken and healers; and woke up after we stole human beings from their land to use as slaves, deeming them less “human” than we were because of their color; and just as we woke up after realizing that women were smart enough to vote and have their own money and property — we might still wake up in time. We might wake up from this horrible nightmare of our own creation in time to save our nation. We might even wake up in time to save other parts of our world, as America has often rallied and risen-up to do. We may even have the guts and righteous reasoning to save our planet.
But we may not.
And with each passing, fearful day, I begin to think perhaps this Insanity Virus, that so many in my country seem to have been infected with, will not be recognized in time and that we will not have the strength or the truthfulness to diagnosis the real problem we have and to turn to the Healers and the Helpers.
And it is, I regret to point out, in great part because we keep breathing in the toxic fumes of people like the man who was murdered this past week. And of course, we keep sucking in the nuclear waste of the supposed leaders who react and mourn this guy who died but not the actual recent assassination of Minnesota Representative Melissa Hotrman.
And we keep denying we have become sick to the point of spiritual death by caring more for what we have (or think we once had) than what we are called to BE. And we think somehow there is not enough to go around, when there is plenty if we are willing to share. And we believe in some future “good” when what we need to do is believe the Truthful Ones, like Jesus, who said, “The Reality of Heaven is NOW, not Then and not Someday. Live Light now, for you are the Light of Awareness and Truth and Love”. And if we lived that way, then we really wouldn’t have to fear death. We could mourn the loss of those who die without losing the sense that as individuals we are impermanent but when we live together in Oneness as part of The One, then death is simply transformation.
When I was in high school, I memorized some scriptures whose meaning has morphed as I have aged and has definitely morphed since I began to see my nation, my world, and myself in different ways. The shock of 2015 for me was that any one who claimed to know or want to know Jesus, the Christ, could ever catch the insanity virus. I thought the “Jesus-Worldview” would make any one immune to worshiping hatred and greed and lies. But as I saw people worship not the Golden Calf of the ancient Hebrews but the Golden Pig(s) of this Uber-Capitalistic Oligarchy, masquerading as supporters of “democracy” and as I witnessed people who would never say a swear word, blaspheming the name of God with their misrepresentation of what we have been told about The Way, and corrupting the ideas of the Judeo-Christian belief system — I realized — people really can go crazy without realizing it. People really have gone insane and I can not imagine they realize they have caught a deadly mental disease. “What does it profit a person if they gain the world (or the Congress or the White House) and lose their soul?”
So here are some things that continue to help me and why I don’t mourn some individual man who spread the Gospel of Hate and whose name will be forgotten in a few years, if not a few weeks. Here are my musings and my meditations on Galatians 2: 20,21)
“I am crucified with Christ”, (that is I die to ego and selfishness and greed and prejudice — and all those things that make me a prisoner of hate and fear) and I am crucified in the way Jesus accepted the reality of suffering and even death and I accept all suffering as crucibles and ultimately the way to Rebirth and Resurrection. “Nevertheless, I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me”, (I seek to know my true “Beingness”, my Soul, my Deep Self that Jesus knew and that God gives all who embrace the “holy spirit”; I seek to live in the Spirit which overcomes not only evil, but also overcomes death. So, when I die to ego and hate and greed and fear, I truly find Eternal Life.) “And the Life which I now live in the flesh, (while I still have a body and still have “stuff”), “I live through the faith of the Son of God” (I trust that I am, as Jesus was and is in a new form, a beloved Child of God), (and so are you, and you, and you, and you and yes, so is even that man who died by a gun and those men and women who are frantically and selfishly intent on destroying our world — we are all beloved children of God) (And so, there has only been and will always be only one Real Reality — and that is Love). (Jane’s current paraphrase of Galatians 2: 20–21)
I will share with you this paraphrased prayer, because I just don’t know what else to say to give you hope, except: May the peace which passes understanding, give you strength to keep fighting and to keep sorrowing and to keep loving to the End of Time and then Beyond Time.
So yes…. Karma is indeed a ‘beaut. Because just as the followers of Jesus wrote, quoted above (albeit in Jane “strange-speak” language), the amazing, wonderous, awesome thing about being a human BEING is that we can, if we choose to, elect to change our overall karmic arc. There are just so many examples of those who have changed their karma — the trajectory of their lives — through one intentionally good action at a time — So many little and great human beings have changed the moral/ karmic arc of their own lives and of history, that the pages in The Good Book can not hold all their names. “We can not all do great things, but we can all do small things with great love”, as that Good Karma Saint, Teresa taught us. And maybe, just maybe, if each one of us allows the Light of Love and Truth and Trust and Hope, to shine through our dense selves, then we will Light a path for those who choose darkness over light, those “blind guides” who choose to lead with hate and fear rather than love and faith. As the children’s song says, “This little light of mine. I’m gonna’ let it shine. Won’t let Satan blow it out — No! I’m gonna’ let it shine”. God willin’ and the creek don’t rise, I will.
I went to a funny little concert a few weeks ago, outside in a big park here in SoCal (SoCal — epicenter of the war waged from afar on justice and kindness). And at the last song of the concert, everyone got out their cell phones and turned on their flashlights and waved them around. Back in the day, we all had lighters to do that, even if we didn’t smoke, and the symbol of a little blaze of fire waving around in one’s teenaged hand was a more complete metaphor back then because of, well, fire. But still, at my recent concert, as you looked around and back and in front and on the overhead screens, you saw a vast ocean of waving lights. All it took, was for this one person to bring the light, and then that one person to bring the light, and then that one, and that one, and that one…. Fear not, my friend and stay strong. And Bring the Light.
You are the “Light of the World”. Let your Light so shine before all human beings, and someday, when you are “going towards the Light”, in those final moments, well, we don’t know what happens next, not really, but if we “do not walk in darkness, we will (for certain) have in hope and in fact, the Light of Eternal Life”. The Great Teachers have pinky promised us that; and I am going to trust them on that promise. One precious moment at a time.
Why Easter is Not My Favorite Christian Holiday — No Guilt
By Jane Tawel
April 21, 2025
*
Next to Christmas, Easter seems to be everyone’s favorite holiday, at least in the Christian-Western world. It is no longer one of my favorites and it isn’t so much the fact that, like Christmas, these holidays have morphed into a non-religious Santa and the Easter Bunny party-time, not at all really Holy-days, no matter how you dress up your theology or that you may call it “Christ-Mass” or “Resurrection Sunday” etc. No, I am not all that keen anymore because both Christmas and Easter are focused on “get-me-mores” on the one hand and on the “religious hand” more focused on the “feel-good-about-me’s because of something Someone else did” hand; and both are what I see as a tragic reality of people’s desire to skip to the top of the mountain-top experience, without first experiencing the long, grueling climb. The thing is, the world has become so full of the desire to feel pleasant and superior, without any need to suffer and without knowing that in order to actually be happy or “saved”, we are not told to pin our hopes on the idea that Jesus did all, but to take up our own cross (His words, not mine). (For a great thesis on the truth about being happy, see the Dalai Lama in his book, “The Art of Happiness” — a great lesson on the difference between seeking pleasure versus seeking happiness).
*
Anyone who truly knows me, knows that I have what some would call a “guilt-complex”. And sometimes I feel apologetic about this as it can lead to a disabling, fearful sense of shame and also a harsh judgement mentality of others as well as myself. But lately, as I see a world riddled with ego-driven and narcissistic superegos, and people who treat others not just as inferior but as less than human, I am here making a case for feeling guilty. And I don’t mean these non-guilty superego folks are just the usual suspects in narcissism and power-mongering and greed, I mean us little folks have become that way too. Now, there is a difference between feeling guilty and feeling shame, and there is a difference between feeling guilty for something you have done wrong and making someone else feel guilty or ashamed — that is the judgement that Jesus warns us against — both for our own selves and for others. But we have come to a place where many of us — most of us — can not even admit we are wrong, let alone sinful before God and toward others. (For the very best help with recognizing the advantages of accepting when one is wrong, at least the best after the teachings of Jesus, see Kathryn Schulz in her exceptional book, “Being Wrong”.)
*
In the past several years, mostly as I have seen the religion that I have espoused for most my life, change beyond all recognition into something so sad it hurts me, I have learned more about what I believe Jesus taught and about how it fits into the True Truth that is available to all and in all True Truth teachings. I remarked to a friend of mine that I am so glad I got out of America’s Christianity in time to hopefully begin to find Christ. And in light of this new, intentional, serious, and yet joyfully awe-inspiring journey, I have come to recognize that my favorite Holy-days are Ash Wednesday leading into Lent and Palm Sunday. Now I got you on that last one, didn’t I? Because you thought I would say Good Friday. But in defense and support of feeling Guilty, here are my reasons.
*
I have celebrated Ash Wednesday for many years, even though I have never been Catholic. For me, Ash Wednesday is like the Jewish Holy-day that Jesus would have celebrated that is now called, Rosh Hashanah. Rabbi Barbara Aiello explains, “Jesus, who was born, lived and died a Jew, was well-versed in the tradition of ashes as a symbol of penitence and “teshuvah” a Hebrew word that signifies the return to a God- guided life. In fact, Jesus is said to make specific reference to ashes when he referred to the towns of Tyre and Sidon, rebuking them for their reluctance to engage in traditional practices of repentance by donning sackcloth and ashes. (Matthew 11:21) (https://rabbibarbara.com/2024/02/15/ash-wednesday-ashes-have-roots-in-jewish-tradition/). Rosh Hashanah is the beginning of the New Year and it is “celebrated” with a time of repentance and penitence, as Ash Wednesday is meant to do. Rosh Hashanah culminates after ten days (the number of completion) in Yom Kippur and Lent (after forty days, the number of completion of Jesus’ suffering and trials) in Easter. Now, I was raised a good Baptist in the Midwest, so the idea of ritual (ashes on the forehead) and fasting (from food or some pleasure or addiction during Lent) was completely foreign to me. But for probably twenty some years now, I have worn the ashes on my head to signify my need to look inside and humble myself in light of what I would call “The Divine” or the “Eternal Mystery” that is pure Goodness, pure Truth, pure Joy and Peace, and pure Life compared to us little ants on this little planet. I practice Lent by giving up something I find pleasure in (one year it was the newspaper, one year Facebook, one year sugar, this year I did an economic boycott on all but the necessaries) and every year — every blasted year — I FAIL! And this is a great lesson in humility and a great lesson in forgiveness — humbleness in the face of my daily failings and forgiveness in my need of forgiveness — of others and myself. It also really, really, really makes me respect what I know about the life of Jesus.
*
Now a lot of people see the celebration of Palm Sunday as a wonderful religious event that shows how people loved and adored Jesus as a king. I have come to believe this is not at all how Jesus experienced Palm Sunday. The reason I have come to like Palm Sunday is because it holds a mirror to human hypocrisy — and I hold that mirror to my own hypocrisy with trembling hands. Oh, dear Jesus, how he tried to teach us what his Kingdom was really like and how we just didn’t want — still don’t want — to hear it. “My Kingdom is not any thing like these kingdoms you worship here and is not “of this world”.” “If you want to follow me, take up your OWN cross and die to the praise, the ego, the self-centeredness, the desire for power or fame or fortune”. Jesus loved to act out his teachings and parables and he chose to ride to his triumphant celebration on a little colt. As a king, he would have ridden a steed, a war horse, or in a horse- drawn carriage. As a suffering servant of God’s Truth and Light, as a messenger of a different Kingdom, a different Way, he chose to ride something small and weak — a colt is a child-horse, chosen as a fun, subversive visual for the crowds to remember along with his words, that to “enter the Kingdom, you must become like a child”. So, I like to stand in a church that gives the congregants a palm leaf (easy to come by out here in California). And I like to wave my palm with the others, but I most often now have tears streaming down my face as I wave the frond because I know that I am a hypocrite. I claim to “follow” Jesus — as long as it doesn’t cost me too much. And I remember that what Jesus said it would cost me to follow him is — Everything.
*
But I don’t want to leave you with guilt with no recourse because guilt with no recourse leads to either anger or despair. I have begun to find my way towards a purer, cleaner, more healing emotion about so many things, including guilt, and that is — grief. On the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem, he looked upon the city, the symbol of his day’s (and today’s) religious power and the epicenter of the theology of his time, and rather than anger, he felt a deep sorrow. “And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” (Luke 19: 41–44) Matthew has these heart-wrenching words as Jesus feels the grief a mother feels for her children as they stray from the path, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Matthew 23:37) It takes a good amount of looking clearly and humbly at oneself to recognize that one is weak and in need of help, to run to be covered by the Wings of a loving Parent-figure. It takes even more strength to look at all the things one has done and does do that are wrong and accept one’s guilt with humility but also with Love. Just as if one wants to walk the Christ Way, the Tao, one must look on others and accept their guilt with humility and great Love. This kind of guilt leads not to shame, but actually leads to “the peace that passes all understanding”. Would that I would “know on this day, the things that make for peace”.
*
Today we have so little recognition of our frailty or brokenness, of our transgressions or our errors. We refuse to see that we are wrong or hypocritical and yet, we point the finger at others. We mistake the symptoms for the problems. And we look to today’s earthly kingdoms and kings for salvation rather than the Son of the Man who came to show us a way — a different way, The Way to True Truth, to true Joy, and to true Life. We mistake our theology for faith, our kingdom for God’s kingdom, and our minds for the Mind of Christ. And because of our lack of self-reflection and truth about the human condition, we skip the tough or bad parts and instead hope to achieve all through Someone else’s effort, which in the current case of Christianity means forgiveness without repentance, Palm Sunday without humility, and Easter without taking up our own Cross. We head straight to the happy endings and the Disney version of what it means to be a hero — awash in the greyness of no black and white morality and no guilt.
*
When Jesus died on a cross, he asked His Father to “forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing”. The older I get the more I realize how true that is — I have no idea what I am doing. And I desperately need forgiveness for my ignorance just as much as for my sins, sins of commission and omission, sins known and unknown, sins done and sins left undone.
*
On what we now call Easter Sunday, when Jesus appeared to his followers, they didn’t recognize him. In the same way, we don’t recognize him today if he doesn’t fit into our neat little theological package, perhaps with the flag stamped across the top, tied up with the bow of our preferred denomination. Yes, I know this will not be a popular post but then I am seeking to follow The Way of people like Jesus who may have had their moments of popularity but which ended up as mercurial moments, evaporating quickly as people chose the religious or political kingdoms rather than the Kingdom of God. Tragically, today, people still prefer Golden Calves or Barbabas — they make us feel better about ourselves and better about our chances. I will take a chance on my guilt and on the forgiveness of the one human who counted the cost of death in light of the hope of the Eternal Kingdom.
*
So, if you are still reading, I make here an unpopular case for feeling guilty and for finding perhaps your own times and your own rituals and your own symbols that will give meaning to your own very human self. And then as you understand that all is forgiven in the same way you will need to forgive all others and forgive all in yourself, you may as I am trying to do choose to use that guilt to get off the side-roads and onto the Straight and Narrow Road that Jesus assures us leads to Life and Life Abundant!
*
I don’t really like Easter or as you will, “Resurrection Sunday”, because I don’t know it. No matter what others say, the only Risen Jesus I know is the one who lives in the humility of those who believe that we are created “from dust and to dust we will return” and who lives in the Love of those who believe that “greater Love has no one, than that she lay down her life for others”. But I do know a whole lot about my own brokenness and frailness and sinfulness and guilt and I know a whole lot about my own hypocrisy and posturing. So my favorite Holy Days are the days when the truth about me can be brought before my Creator. And year after year, Ash Wednesday after Ash Wednesday, Lent after Lent, and Palm Sunday after Palm Sunday, I am still trying to learn what it means to be what Jesus called himself and called us to be — A Good Human — the Son of Man. And here is the “kicker” — I am finding that as my guilt turns to my grief and sorrow over the world, my loved ones, my friends, my neighbors, and my enemies — my grief turns to healing and I am often quite surprised as my sorrow turns into a strange and wonderous and true Joy. I am finding that God’s Kingdom and the Kingdom of Christ is nothing if not ironic — it is a true Living Paradox. To find one’s life, one must give it up; to be found, one must be lost; and to be saved, one must be guilty. It isn’t easy this straddling of the line between useful guilt and destructive shame, nor is it easy to find forgiveness in the same way I try to give forgiveness. But step by step, moment by moment, incremental as a piece of dust blowing in the wind, small as a speck of ash blown from a great fire — I am trying.
I wonder if he chose fishermen because they knew how to be dependent on what and on Whom they could not control. Fishermen know in each bone and fiber of their being, how like the Ocean, God truly is. They didn’t so much believe in the Ocean as try to understand it so that they could live; so that they could make a Living. Fishermen already knew that we are but waves tossed sometimes, and resting peacefully sometimes, but always just a wave in The Ocean. Fishermen know the Ocean is both Shadow and Light, Depth and Height, Uncontrollable, Unknowable, but Bountiful and Giving. “And this is how you should pray, ‘Our Parent-Creator, Give us our daily bread and don’t lead us into bad waters’.”
*
I wonder if he chose fishermen because they knew how to suffer. It was not an easy life being a fisherman. Strong and steadfast fishermen would be the Rocks on which He would build. Hard to break, but the World would do its best. “In this world you will have suffering and tribulations”. “Take up your own crosses”. But he would teach them what they already knew a bit about — that by going through suffering, they would be stronger; that strength comes not from going around but going into the heart of suffering and in that way, “just like I have overcome the world, you will too.” Fishermen know a lot about storms, and they know enough to be afraid and cautious of them. But one day, these very fishermen would be in the worst, most dangerous kind of storm there is, and He would calm both the storm and their anxious, fearful hearts. One day he would show them that even when we are in the worst of Life’s Storms, if we keep our eyes above the crashing waves, going through, but not sinking under, we can rise above — we can walk on water. Now that was something even fishermen couldn’t anticipate.
*
I wonder if he chose fishermen because they knew how to keep moving. They weren’t connected to one place so much as connected to the Ebb and Flow. He needed people who didn’t mind having to follow a trail wherever it might lead; people who could trust that if they left everything behind, something better would be up ahead; people who knew that Faith is really just Trust in what you cannot see, cannot know, cannot control, but that with a bit, just a little tiny bit of Trust, there is going to be Enough; and not only Enough but sometimes, there will be a Great Harvest. “And look up from your downcast eyes on your empty nets — Look at the birds of the air. If the Father takes care of these little beings, how much more will He take care of you?”
*
I wonder if he chose fishermen because they knew the depths and they knew the heights. One day a good catch; the next day, nothing. Fishermen know you can be really, really great at what you do for a living and have lots of knowledge, but ultimately, having fish on your table, and money in your pocket comes down to a bit of luck and a lot of Grace. The wind can change direction just like the winds of Time. The fish just may not feel like biting that day — God knows why? Your line can break after years of useful loyalty. You might get sick or someone at home might and you can’t go out today. Life is like fishing, and you don’t have to tell a fisherman that. “And he couldn’t do many miracles there…” “This kind of healing takes a lot of prayer and faith, so tough luck on this one…” That’s the way it would go sometimes. Other times, “If you have the faith of an itty-bitty, little mustard seed, you can move a mountain.” Oh what a Guy for hyperbole! but then he lived within the Loving Hyperbole of His Hyperbolic Father.
*
I wonder if he chose fishermen because they had already learned the practice of contemplation. When you are out on a boat with just your brother, there is a lot of time to think. If you choose to think about stuff, that is. But you can also just sit and meditate and pray. And real prayer is best maybe when you aren’t exactly thinking. And you don’t need fancy words to pray when you are out at Sea. “Thank you”, will do. “Help!”, will also do. “Your faith has healed you.” “My God, My God, why have you deserted me?” Dealing with real emotions can lead one to contemplation on the Real.
*
I wonder if he chose fishermen because they knew how to listen. Oh, they didn’t know how to listen as well as He did, and He had to school them just like the school of wondering, wandering fish they all were. But fishermen better develop patience or they will starve and patience can lead to a wonderful ability to listen — to others, to the Ocean, to the Winds, and to the beating of one’s own heart and sound of one’s own breath. “Let them who have ears to hear, hear”. And they did.
*
I wonder if he chose fishermen because fishermen like a tall tale and a good joke. What a sense of humor He had. If you were in the right mood and had the stomach for a good joke, He sure could tell them. In fact for a couple of these fishermen, when He called them, he started out with a joke: “Leave your nets and stop catching fish with no legs, and I will make you fishers of two-legged ones.” How they wondered then and later must have remembered that first humorous invitation with a hearty guffaw. And talk about tall tales! Yowza! That Guy could tell some whoppers! One day, He acted out a whole improv joke much appreciated by the fishermen in the group, when he turned two small fish into baskets full of fish to feed thousands. That was a tall tale of “How Big the Fish Was” that has never been topped! And on this note of telling tall tales? Well, His whole life was one tall tale of Mythic proportions. “Anyone who follows my Way will know IAM as Truth, Life, and The Way.” “This is my body and my blood. Take both, eat and drink. I have given my life in Love for you.”
*
Yes, He had followers of all kinds, but I think in those first days, He realized that it might be good to Seed the Lake of His disciples with some fishermen.
Oh, that I might be reformed with the soul of a Fisherman.
In 2018, I posted a quote by that great “worker in the fields”, Dorothy Day:
The sense of futility is one of the greatest evils of the day.…People say, “What can one person do? What is the sense of our small effort?” They cannot see that we can only lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment.
Reading this post of mine from a previous time of great and deep weltanschuaang (2018) and my quoting Dorothy Day back then, I remind myself that the feeling of futility or hopelessness is static and keeps one feeling incompetent to do the smallest things. And I am reminded that Mother Teresa said that not all of us can do great things but that even I can do small things with great love. And I believe that ultimately as Judeo-Christian wisdom teaches, “only three things will remain”: trust in Something bigger than ourselves; hope that, as that great Black Preacher, Martin Luther King said, “the arc of the universe bends toward justice; and Divine Love, available to all humans, Love that ignores ego and self-interest for that which lasts. And the greatest thing that shall remain, beyond nation, beyond “stuff”, and even beyond the self, and indeed, the only thing we can ever know of God, is Love. But even our deepest held belief is a fragile thing and it wavers with each storm, my friends. It can be very hard to see the light in the face of darkness, so each moment I will try to forget all the things I think I believe and I will simply walk forward, one step taken at a time, by the sheer will of a freeing Love. By going through suffering, not trying to get around it, we do find peace. One step. One moment. One small act of love. One hand reaching out. One at a time.
“Peace is present right here and now, in ourselves and in everything we do and see. Every breath we take, every step we take, can be filled with peace, joy, and serenity. The question is whether or not we are in touch with it. We need only to be awake, alive in the present moment.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step.
“My peace I offer you too. Not the peace this world offers, but a peace that will pass your wildest imaginings, a peace that passes your beliefs, a peace that passes your understanding.” — Jesus, The Christ,
I shall take my responsibility in this present moment seriously, but I shall not look at the fortress of hate and greed being built against the True Truth. I shall mourn but not hate those who tear down that which others have worked hard to build, not seeing through their foolishness and greed and hatred the Good things — things of justice, and open-mindedness, of sharing and acceptance and care and kindness. I shall lay down my one small brick at a time in my own back yard, not as a wall to keep people out, but as a wall to support the vines of love that I choose to plant and hope to grow. I shall plant one small seed at a time, and trust that the Mountain will move.
Never Regret Betting on Hope, Even if it Seems Your Horse Badly Lost the Race
By Jane Tawel
November 14, 2024
*
A couple days after the shockwaves of what America and many Americans have become was revealed on November 5, 2024, my husband turned to me and sadly said, “I want my money back”. He felt he had bet on the wrong “horse” in the race to save America.
A lot of people may feel that they took a chance, made a bet and somehow, they made a mistake because they lost a race (or several races as the case may be). I imagine there has been among the “losing horses” in our recent national and state races, as so often is the case, of what I think is called “fifth quarter quarterbacking” (I may have that idiom wrong as I am not an acolyte of the religion of football). But I have ignored all news since that day when America chose evil over good (yes, I will say it because it is obviously the case). I have never been a looky-loo and when I see a horrible accident on the side of the road, I purposely turn away. I did my part in trying to prevent the train-wreck that Americans seem to want to create and now, frankly, I need to focus on, what someone once wisely called “the things that shall remain” — faith, hope, and love. As Jesus advised, I will give “Caesar” what is “Caesar’s” and I will turn towards the things I can do both for the little world I actually inhabit, and the Earth that I need to do my part to save, but most importantly, I will turn inward and work on my Self, and Soul. More than ever before in my life, I will work on forgiving others, and take to heart, mind, and soul, the profound words of Jesus: “What does it profit anyone if they gain both houses and the White House — I mean — gain the World — but lose their own precious soul?”
And so, I said to my husband, “I understand your disappointment, but never regret placing a bet on hope.”
All races are temporal, but when you choose Hope, you are connecting with what is divine and of that which is eternal. Because when we are gone from this “mortal coil”, we have to believe that all the spiritual wise Ones were right — the things that are True, the things that are Noble, the things that are deeply and truly in us of faith, hope, Goodness, Righteousness, Nobility, Honesty, and above all what is in us of Love — will somehow, somewhere, in some way — Remain — eternally Being.
And I choose today to also forgive those who chose to place their bets on a horse that may have won, but that is full of literal and figurative disease and corruption. I am working on it, but I am more and more finding it in my heart to pity the “winners” who have no idea what they have actually lost. For what does it profit you if you win everything — the whole enchilada — but do so by losing hope, love, joy, kindness, truthfulness, and open-minded acceptance of others? Why would I ever want to live a life where I have no love for other people, who in their differences are really just like I? I choose to pity people who seem to have everything but don’t understand the words of Jesus — I pity them because I, too, have been just like them at times. And so, when I forgive them, I am on the path to forgiving myself. What does it profit you if you gain “stuff” — if you gain a false certainty about you, your ego and your beliefs and your “team”, but lose the One thing that matters — Love, The Oneness? I remind myself each day: Forgiveness and Pity — those are things I try to do for me and my soul, even if no one knows I forgive them. Even if they don’t think they need it. So, I encourage you to forgive. And to pity. For as Jesus said, “in the measure you forgive, you will find forgiveness.” Forgive the foolish ones. But also forgive the evil ones. Eva Kor, a survivor of the Holocaust, amazingly was able to say this: “Anger is a seed for war. Forgiveness is a seed for peace”; and “Forgive your worst enemy. It will heal your soul and set you free.” Plant the right seeds in your soul today. Seeds of love, hope, forgiveness, and peace. Bloom where you are planted — which is really just your “own back yard”.
So I am seeking freedom from my thoughts and feelings about the past, and freedom from my fears about the future of this nation, this species, this planet. I am focusing only on taking the one step that is the only step I can actually take in the “journey of a thousand steps”. And I am trusting, having faith, that whatever is Good in me and others, will remain, and that all else will burn as dross. I am trusting that the words of that great Shakespearean politician and someone later revealed to be a shyster and power-monger, Marc Antony, are not true, and that “the evil that men do actually does die with them and will be interred with their bones, but that the Good will live long after them.” If that is not true, then I have been long mistaken about what kind of God might be in charge of this Cosmos. Hold tight to what you know in your heart must be true about reality. After all, how many quotes do you remember by bad, evil people and how many do we live by or try to live by when they are spoken by good people? As Martin Luther King, Jr. encourages us, “We shall overcome, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward Justice.”
Races come and go. Nations come and go. And while it is tragic and horrible to watch a nation I was born in, lived in, and loved my whole life, die a horrible death by its own foolish, greedy, mistaken, and for some, downright evil hands — America was bound to die some day. All nations do. The Bible predicts it. So did George Orwell. And while I am heartbroken that America has decided to die by means of suicide — you know — it is just a nation after all. Just a place and time in history that like all temporal things, is impermanent. Unlike me. Unlike you. Unlike Hope. Unlike Love.
I am all for people still trying to save America. There has always been so much possibility here, so if that is still motivating you, keep your chin up and keep working at it. But at the same time, I do believe that as Jesus and much later, C.S. Lewis taught, we live in whatever “Kingdom” we long for Now — Today. Either you — personally, in your heart, mind and will — live in a kingdom of heaven or you live today in a kingdom of hell. Either you are working for and living in the Kingdom of God and Light — of our better angels and nirvana and Good — or you live — today — now — in a kingdom of “Satan” — darkness — pride, greed, fear, anger, prejudice, racism, and control-freakishness. Either you choose to live in the Light of The Now, when you are all you need to be and have to live — fully and richly and joyfully, as Christ and all great spiritual truth-tellers lived and taught — or you choose to try to live in a past that never existed, because only the Present has ever existed, but you choose to believe there was a time in the Past where you had more, were more, and that the way for you to get back to that place is to take things from other people or inflict your beliefs on other people by force. Your choice.
And just because over half of Americans have made the wrong choice for their lives and for our nation — don’t regret your choice to bet on Hope, to live by the Light of Truth, to seek to love others as you love yourself, never forcing them to believe as you do, but simply letting your Light shine. And never regret a single moment when you felt joy or a single moment when you turned the other cheek or a single moment when you rose above your fears or anger or sorrow and chose to truly Hope and to truly Love. Psalms 51:10 is my prayer today: “God, create a clean heart for me and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”
Two mornings after the end of the latest race in the world’s history of races, and fights between Good and Evil, and warmongers winning over peace-makers — I was running the trail with my very early morning people, most of whom I don’t know by name, only by sight. I did meet Paige and her wife one time, when we were both donating blood at the Red Cross. I said to her as she lay on the table, giving her blood for the sake of others (allusion to Jesus intentional), “Aren’t you on the trail in the wee hours?” She said, “Yes! I’m Paige. Aren’t you “hey-hey Woman”?” (My Kentucky ancestors come out strong in the wee hours on my jogs.) Since that time, many moons ago, Paige and Jane have said “Good Morning (Paige)” or “Hey-ya” (Jane) as we bop along on the trail and pass each other. On November 5th, Paige passed me and gave me the thumbs up sign. I said, “Here’s hoping!” Two days after November 5th, I started to pass Paige, and I saw even in the dark before dawn, tears welling up in her eyes. I stopped, and meekly, tentatively went to her and just put my hand lightly on her shoulder and said, “Take care of yourself today. Take care of your people. Love yourself and love those in your life.” Paige nodded and we went our opposite ways.
And so, with deep humility, I say to you as well: Take care of yourself today. And by that, I mean, take care of your soul — that which is eternal. And take care of your people. They need you. And yes, it is always darkest before the Dawn, but never regret spending your money, your time, or your energies on Hope. Or Joy. Or Love. Always keep hoping to create Good in the place you live in and the people you live with. Remember the words of The Greats, who lived in a world exactly like ours but overcame the negative and eternally live on forever in word and deed, and in Spirit. Keep letting the eternal things motivate you. Forget the Past. Let Tomorrow take care of itself — it is not within your power to do anything about it today — except to keep your hope alive and to keep trusting in the Power of Good.
So, if you are finding yourself today still in a “mountain of despair”, believe as the great Black Preacher and Christ follower told us, in every mountain we must climb, there is a “stone of hope”. Believe as Jesus taught that it not through faith in any one else or anything else, it is Your Faith that will heal you. And believe as he did, that it is you and your soul that above all is a “pearl beyond all price”. You above everything are worth saving. You may not save this nation. You may not be able to save even those you love from making bad choices. And we may not still have time to save ourselves from the most immediate future of trials and tribulations. But we can save and hold fast and tight to those things that remain forever — faith, love, and hope.
My words are meager, but please remember the words of better folks than I who kept betting on hope, no matter what.
Remember the words of Saint Emily:
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops — at all –
And sweetest — in the Gale — is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –
I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet — never — in Extremity,
It asked a crumb — of me.
Remember the words of the Healer (Doctor) Martin Luther King spoken two months before he gave his life for us by an assassin’s bullet, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope”.
Remember the words of the Psalms. Psalms 37, 51, 34, and so forth: Hope renews your strength.
And remember how you felt, probably like I did, when you had hope and joy and love. Claim them for yourself and your loved ones, right now. They are not a bad bet — they are your right and they will help you heal the world, heal the planet, and heal your soul.
A friend posted the above meme today, and of course, since it was 4:30 a.m. in the morning, my usual time to study my spiritually inclined tomes and meditate on my spiritually inclined thoughts, and pray my pathetically needy inclined prayers, I, of course instead, chose to respond at length to this post. Here are my hastily but life-time-so -far thoughts on the above post.
What I didn’t say in the post, but do now, is that this is the sort of post, I think Jesus would have responded to with the same harsh words he said to his disciple, Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!”. I used to want to make t-shirts that read on one side, “Jesus was NOT nice.” and on the back said, “but he was God”.
Imagine me shaking my head and sort of smile-muttering here: “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus… (smile, shake head)… what in the world are we going to do about You?”
Yep — that is the question. What in the world are we MEANT to do about that raggedy figure on the edge of the crowd, the man named Jesus, the figure named Messiah, the archetype for humanity, named The Christ?
Following are my expanded thoughts from my response today on my friend’s well-intentioned post (you have guessed by now I don’t have many friends):
(WARNING: Thoughts of mine may appear larger in the mirror than they do on a written page.)
Well, my friend, thank you for the thought-provoking post/ meme above. Of course, it gets me going…. hmmmm, where to begin?
Jesus was, as was Buddha, as was Moses, as was Gandhi, an actual historical figure and people actually wrote about him and what he taught, so we don’t need to guess at it, but it sure wasn’t at all as simplistic as this post implies, and wasn’t at all simple to understand, and as Jesus said himself, it was an almost impossible thing to practice and live, without the almighty help of the very Hebrew God which is the One that Jesus believed in.
Jesus was Jewish, teaching Judaism to Jews and hoping they and his ragtag bunch of misfit disciples, and eventually the world would catch on to what it was meant to be in and from The Beginning with humans’ relationship to YHWH and humans’ relationships with each other, first to the Hebrews but meant for all peoples and nations. And while this post is full of good ideas which are nice and good sentiments, and certainly have some truth about what Jesus taught, they aren’t very inclusive and are simplistically, if not dangerously, misleading. For instance, if we are to take the words as true that are recorded in the testaments, Jesus said in fact that he came “not to bring peace but a sword”. Metaphor?- definitely. Peaceful life?- definitely not.
If Jesus is to be taken seriously as The Christ, and as our meta-type in how to live, he was not at all an easy “pill to swallow” or a particularly Rodney King sort of “why can’t we all just get along” kinda Messiah. He was a radical worldview shaker-upper. The worldview of the Jews had gone far off its intended course in Jesus’ day, much as Christianity has often veered off course, and continues to do so in ways that must indeed, make Jesus weep, and God turn away Her Face.
The fact that Jesus taught and more importantly lived and died, what were meant to be God’s universal truths, inherent in any of the good parts of any religion (Christianity) or belief system (Buddhism) simply points to the other ancient Hebrew belief that “all humans have a conscience that is written in our hearts” — we also have a proclivity to be selfish, greedy, less than truthful, and hateful and to quiet our conscience if we would rather have it our own way. It’s a choice of will and a choice of faith in something more important than oneself to choose The Way, The Tao of Christ, no matter whether one believes in something religious, spiritual or not.
This is the other fun thing that Jesus came to point out; he hung out with the least, the lost and the least likely to be named Pope, Dalia Lama, or Rabbi of The Year. Radical guy, that Jesus and a super hard act to follow. And yet so many of us claim we are trying to do just that.
The important thing that this post reminds us is that for those who claim to “know Jesus” or “have him in our hearts”, we should be ever more loving, serving, giving, humble, and peace-making, even with our enemies. We should also seek to speak absolute truth with kindness, not niceness nor fear, but with the knowledge we are all meant to be “something more”. Because even when Jesus was judging others, (and he did, he sure did, don’t fall into the trap that we are not meant to judge wrong doing with the same measurement that Jesus would and did, but we are to make sure we live our own responsibility first and foremost and with humble judgement of our own personal and systemic wrongdoings); but even in judgement, Jesus was incredibly kind in his judgements comparatively. (Calling someone a viper is better than killing them with stones. Pointing out someone’s greed was more important to their eternal well-being than pointing out someone’s sexual brokenness. Jesus spoke to the evils of the tribe and the powers, much more than the broken sinfulness of the individual.)
Jesus spoke, acted and healed in the most loving, but “searing into the very soul” truthful way. I daily have to throw myself on that Christ-like, truthful, kind, loving judgment, both in the judgement of Christ, and My God, and of those I love and live or work with, and especially on the mercy of those many unknown, unsung, uncared-for people who continue to suffer in a world gone astray.
To allow myself to judge is to hope that the world, the planet, and the systems of this world have a hope and prayer of one day being better than they are today. To judge myself and to let myself be judged, is to let myself have hope of being better today than I was yesterday.
And to hark back to what Jesus, who wasn’t a Christian, and wasn’t a Buddhist, and was a Jew, actually said about himself and us, I believe I will one day, in some way, and some kind of New Kingdom, New World, take a knee with the rest of the world, and I will throw myself on the Mystery of Universal Mercy and Love, throw myself at the feet of The Christ.
I am incredibly grateful to have been raised to get to know about Jesus, in a place and time that has so much knowledge about him, and personally, in America where I have had so much freedom to study about that character and those who knew the man called Yeshua. But as it is also written, “to whom much is given, much will be required”. True for me as an individual, and if Jesus is to believed, true for nations and religions as well. God have mercy.
I got in trouble once teaching at a “Christian” school (my family reading this is thinking right about now, “only once?!?”). Well, I did have issues with a few of the places I worked at (yes, plural). I had a hard time shutting up about the fact that so many people at these “Christian” schools thought by sticking a label on ourselves and calling ourselves “Christian” or “evangelical” was enough. (You will get tired of my constantly putting quotation marks around the word Christian, but if you know anything about the differences between Christians and “Christians” or the differences between The Christ and “Christianity”, you will possibly understand why.) So, yeah, I didn’t mean to stir the waters, but I did mean to stick my oar in. I just couldn’t get around the fact that so many people wanted to label themselves “Christian” but at the same time felt that the label in no way should be allowed to effect their behavior or address the inconsistencies in their proclaimed and overriding worldview.
Don’t get me wrong, labeling one’s institution by a religious nomer is quite helpful. After all, how else do we get out of paying taxes on a business venture but still make sure it doesn’t matter if what we do or say is inconsistent with the worldview of that religion? But in terms of calling something “Christian” and actually letting it effect our relationships, our community, our ethics, our behavior, our systems, or our worldview, well, that all depends on whether you toe the company line and support the right team. It often depends entirely on whether you give a lot of money to said “Christian” institution or whether you are picking up on the current political trends. And sometimes, “Christianity” is reduced to the lowest common denominator of whether you are posting the currently accepted FB meme du jour.
However, it usually seems to me far too consistently, I am sad to say, that the most vocal and accepted formation of the religion of Christianity, at least here in America, has very little to do with the worldview as presented in the Bible and even less to do with the life of the guy we all claim to have gotten our name and lifestyle and beliefs from — The Christ. At any rate, actually living the life or comprehending the consequences of saying we want to follow Jesus, doesn’t seem to be part of the current trend in “Christianity” ala American worldview. Fun fact about this idea of “worldview”. I was told at one Christian college I was teaching at, that I shouldn’t use the word, “worldview” any more as young people no longer understood what that term meant. Call me flabbergasted, because I actually thought one reason I and others are hired to teach, is to well…. teach. And I actually had the nerve to think that when one is hired at a “Christian” school one is expected to have an understanding of what different worldviews are and what we are agreeing upon together are basic tenets of our own unique worldview.
So, yeah, I guess I got in trouble a few times or more for thinking out-loud. I have a problem. My mouth or the words I type on the computer just fall headlong into truth-telling. I just so darned often seem to have no control over the truth being blurted out. I have been told that speaking the truth is rude, judgmental, “unchristian”, and not nice. And when someone calls me one of those things I know I must be finally doing something right, because the guy I’m supposed to be following, The Christ, was rude, judgmental, definitely not Christian, and very often not at all nice. So anyway, about that one time…
I was an English teacher who also happened to be teaching a Bible class and I mentioned that one of the major themes in both Literature and the Bible is that of the conflict of Good versus Evil. And you know what? I got called into the administration and was sat down before the Sanhedrin, I mean, before the “evangelical” men and one token woman leading the school and they, with all the saccharine sweetness that unthreatened powerful people can always muster told me that I really shouldn’t use the term “evil”.
After I cleared the flies out of my dropped open mouth, I did let what I thought was an obvious truth pop out: “Isn’t the reality of Evil versus Good sort of the point of the Biblical worldview?” I didn’t actually understand their response through their hems and haws, so I can’t tell you what their counter argument was, but it didn’t matter for long; my days as a “Christian” there were numbered.
I was eventually let go from this school and one other I was actually an adjunct professor of at the time for allowing students to discuss the incompatibility of their Christian beliefs with newly elected Donald Trump (Who knew “Christians” had to believe in Republicanism no matter who the Golden Calf at the helm was?!?!). The other school couldn’t come right out and tell me why they let me go, but I was told by one of my few friends there, that the straw that broke their camels’ backs was that I had allowed my class to make a statement about gun violence in America by joining in the nation-wide School Walkout and Moment of Silence after the Parkland shooting (who knew that “Christians” had to be NRA-worshipping, do or die (literally) gun rights supporters?!). Well, Duh! Obs, not I!
I was clueless, and still am, because I honestly can not get my mind around the fact that helping each other see where we might have gone wrong is not kosher in today’s “Christian” circles (oh, that was fun to combine a Jewish term with the word Christian). Speaking truth or disagreeing with the in-crowd of “Christianity” in America today, is considered judging. That is you are judgingif the person you are trying to speak truth to labels himself a Republican Evangelical Christian and you are not one of those things. Or if you refuse to turn the Bible or Christian creeds into a referendum on American nationalism. And believe me, there is nothing worse, other than supporting a woman’s choice, than a woman who knows something about the Bible and Jesus and thinks it ought to effect how she lives.
But be of good cheer! You too can make judgement calls if you have correctly labeled yourself. It is NOT considered judging if a Republican is judging a Democrat or a person who was raised “Christian” is judging a person who was not raised Christian. It not considered judging if you are comfortable and you are judging someone who is struggling to make ends meet on minimum wage. Neither are you considered judgmental if you are a white person judging a person of color. None of those things is judging. And that is just the plain, real facts, folks, not the double-dirty-down claims presented by the fake media.
I guess a lot of what I keep hearing real “American Christians” believe and preach is not part of what I keep understanding the worldview as presented by the Bible and Jesus are. I guess that would make those things I keep thinking are the fundamental truths of a Christian worldview, actually in fact, just the claims of the fake Jesus, right? I mean, you couldn’t honestly be expected to believe in the actual words spoken by the actual Jesus or even attempt to follow the actual life lived by this actual person called Jesus, The Christ. I mean, c’mon? How would a real American Christian even begin to take seriously the radical Jew named Yeshua without a check account to his name, with a following of people who didn’t carry guns and wouldn’t know a smorgasbord from a water-boarding, and who began life from the wrong side of the border and ended it as justly executed common criminal? #notourAmericanJesus!
I honestly don’t recognize the “Christianity” of America today. I certainly don’t remember it being anything like this when I was first learning about it in the Sunday Schools of the Midwestern plains, in little churches where everyone knew everyone else and didn’t just see each other on Sundays but all week long too. Today, even the people I know who personally grew up right along side me in those same churches, are angry and entitled, afraid of some unknown changes they can’t control; they are prejudiced but unable to admit it, and they are convinced that America, not God is the foundation of their belief system. I understand all of that, and of course everyone, including I, have every single one of those issues. But what I can not understand is how they can keep using the Bible and person of Jesus to defend those attitudes when the Bible and Jesus are meant to change those attitudes in us. Jesus taught us that we should only let ourselves stay angry about injustice. He taught that if He, the Son of God was not allowed to be entitled, none of His followers were either. Jesus believed that every single human being was worthy of being called a child of God, that the true way of living in God’s Kingdom kind of Life was much more available for the sinner, the broken, the weak, and the minorities.
Jesus was quite clear right before he was put to death by Rome and the Moral Majority of his time, that there is no nation that belongs to God; there is no nation, state, or congregation that is “of this world” that is his kingdom. No, the Kingdom of Jesus and his followers is “not of this world” because those who want to live in The Way of God do not use fear, or anger, or entitlement, or prejudice as the means to bring about their ends or justify their beliefs. Jesus taught us to start living right now in a different kind of kingdom, a different kind of nation, a different kind of synagogue or church, a different kind of community. He taught us to be a very different kind of friend, neighbor, and enemy. And I just am gob smacked to know so many people who seem to have forgotten that; or who have decided they would rather have something else, some Golden Calf to comfort, some idol who has flesh and blood to follow, and tragically, some enemy they can hate and try to over-power. And often that enemy is merely a neighbor with a different label than they have given themselves. But they still think they are following Jesus. So the real question is, as Jesus asked his own disciples, “Who exactly do we think this Jesus person is?”
I mean, at some point way back probably about the time of the Crusades or the Inquisition or maybe as recently as the formation of the Moral Majority, most people just accepted that they didn’t have to actually follow the teachings of that wild-eyed, crazy Jewish Rabbi / Guru (who can’t have really been Jewish because he was “Christian”, right?). It must continually be such a relief to those in the current religious majority who want to label themselves, “little-Christs”, that the operative word is “little”. Just a little dab of Jesus will do ya’, as the old Brill Creme commercials used to assure us. People must just thank the God of the Hebrews (that old Jewish God that they no longer need since Jesus came along) that though basically Jesus came to show humans how to live, he never really expected us to do it. Just like that old God never expected Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree, or expected that the Hebrews would actually live-out the ideas for the perfect earthly community He gave them the instruction manual on.
Jesus very kindly got himself killed so we wouldn’t have to accept any responsibility for our actions as long as we said we believed he was God and that he rose again so we can go to heaven. If we said a little prayer and go to the right church and think it’s okay to kill adults and children but not fetuses, why, we are all set for a Christian America and a future Heaven some where far away from the planet we are destroying. And unless you are a big mouthed non-labeling person like I am, then it seems you don’t need to worry about any future or current judgment of your actions. I can’t quite figure out though, how today in America it seems that you can’t be judged if and only if, you vote Republican and attend church on Sundays even during a deadly pandemic. And I have noticed that as long as we keep paying salaries to the professional teachers and preachers who run the company businesses of Christianity and toe the trending company line no matter what those famous important rich “Christian” leaders do or say, then we’ll be okay; I mean after all, those top dogs do so much for America, they are national treasures. I mean, it is almost as if they are the Pharisees and Sadducees of Jesus time come back to life to guide us.
Thankfully, it doesn’t matter at all if any of this, or any of our current beliefs are completely incompatible with what Jesus or the Bible from the beginning in the book of Genesis to the end in the book of Revelation says is the real truth. We have gotten just too smart to buy into what the Bible and the Life of Christ reveals about human nature and the world of the Divine. We certainly are not meant to give up any national or individual or denominational power we have worked so hard to achieve. There is no way we are expected to be both American and humble servants of all. (Jesus was only one of those things, by the way.) No, we are not expected to change or be changed. That is a worldview, and we don’t believe in worldviews any more.
I recently splurged and bought myself “The Complete Jewish Bible”, a version by David H. Stern, who calls himself a Messianic Jew. That amazing and beautiful version of Tanakh and New Testimony is a great discussion for people much more knowledgeable than I. But each morning as I read it, I find myself tearing up as the names for God and God’s people, including Yeshua, The Jewish Messiah appear in my meditation. I have written before about the dangers of people who worship a book instead of a living God who changes with our understanding and Who is always Mysterious Being, not pocket-sized easy to please and control genie nor raging, abusive male household-leader nor national god who works through the powerful and mighty so that they may be treated like gods themselves. But the Bible is an ever surprising, shocking, glorious minefield of Vision. It is replete with spiritual guidance and dire warnings. It has story after story of human beings who tried to be good and failed, and those who were quite bad and failed at staying bad after God got a-hold of their hearts and souls. It has poetry and imagery that never fail to inspire and delight, sober-up and amaze. And it has the story about the strangest human who ever lived who believed that every human being would be happier, more fulfilled, safer, richer, and better if they lived just as strange a life as he did and his name was Yeshua, Jesus, Jewish Messiah, Westernized as The Christ.
The book that Jews and Christians alike read as religious requirement and personal counsel and enlightenment uses many different genres to achieve one singular end — to shape the reader’s worldview. That Judeo-Christian worldview, even before it was all written down and put into a book has been affecting and infecting the world since the beginning of Time. It is the only worldview that matters no matter what one calls one’s religion or lack thereof. Most people don’t follow it, many people don’t know they follow it; many people know nothing about the religion or book that best describes it; and every human alive except for Jesus fails at living it. I fail at understanding it, having faith in it, believing in the best of it, and definitely daily fail at doing it. But good golly Miss Molly! I still believe I should try. And when I fail, I believe people who care about me should judge me so I can learn what to do better. Because that is the expectation — that God sees we are imperfect but believes that tomorrow, we can do better.
My many ex-students were “forced” to learn a term from me and most of them giggle now whenever I remind them of it. The term is “Judeo-Christianity” and it is my “worldview”. Many years ago, I began to realize that I wasn’t reading like other people seem to be doing, the book that Jews and Christians call their “Holy Scriptures”. And then once I realized that, I of course, realized well, yes there are many people of many different faiths and some of no religious leanings at all who read the things collected in Tanakh and Testament in the ways I was trying to read them. Years ago, long before the recent morass of confused morality, I secretly stopped calling myself by the same label that others did when they called themselves “Christians”. It had become offensive, through no fault of its own; and it wasn’t offensive in the ways that Jesus was offensive. The Christ, who said things like “hate your parents compared to how much you love me”, meant it to be offensive. He got that from His Heavenly Father, who is so offensive in His insistence to let the sun shine and rain rain on both the good and the evil. Jesus didn’t accidentally offend either, He made sure people knew they were being offended. He did it however, without abusing one ounce of his divine and magnificent power. Jesus did not make personal affronts in the way a bully means to be offensive. He was trying to break up the team-mentality that had caused people to stop caring for others. He was trying to get people who had so much entitled wealth at the hands of Rome and Religion to be humbled and revealed for the “death maws and empty caskets” that he called them. He was trying to help all the people who didn’t have power or money or the right job or the right color or even the right religion know wherein the truth and the reality of God and the world really lay.
Today we seem in so many ways to be back in the times of Rome and the religious power structures of Jesus’ time. Just as then, it had become about a team, not a God, about a memory, not a present reality; about winning a ticket to heaven, not making a heaven on earth; so too today in the country and churches of our time and place. The Chosen People of Jesus were warned they would be judged for what they did to the prophets, with Christ foremost among them. We who read the Bible or look around at the way the planet, nation, world, and our communities are going have been warned as well. And a person just can’t claim to follow Jesus and not believe that we too will be judged; and as Jesus says, we will be judged most of all if we come claiming we did things in his name. So, I seek daily a way to go “further up and further in”, as C.S. Lewis would say; but I will not let myself think it is enough to go alone. So in every flawed, big-mouthed, offensive way I can, I will have to try to drag my brother or sister into The Way, the worldview walk on the narrow path that Jesus showed us how to take and promises to help us complete. Neither will I restrict access to The Way, however someone may find his or her spiritual path towards it. I am incredibly humbled by my own selfish, greedy, sinful life to not accept my part in presenting a false view of the God of Love and the Jesus who came to change not my little heart alone, but the whole wide world. I accept my responsibility to those who will never be able to hear the life-giving words of The Christ over the din of those who choose to cheer only their own team from the sidelines or refuse to march into the lion’s den for Truth or heal the sick and broken-hearted if the needy have the wrong color or label.
We do not know the Truth or Love of God; that is a mystery like a vast ocean, that we can only appreciate from this far shore. God has the Eagles’ view; we, only that of the sparrows, who peck along the ground and squabble with each other over fallen seeds. We keep forgetting that “if God sees and cares for even this little brown and grey bird, how much more does The Mysterious One care for this little brown child, or this little grey-haired lady, or this little pecking and scrabbling human being”?
We may not have an eagle’s view of the world, or even a clear view of reality, but we all do very much in fact have a worldview. As the truism goes, we all believe in something, we just don’t always realize what we truly believe in. It is quite obvious to others what your view of the world is from how you live your life. The old adage that actions speak louder than words is never more true than when we slip-up and our real worldview is revealed. And one of the most helpful things, I have found, from the worldview that all the people and the God written about in the Bible believed in is this:
There is Good. And there is Evil. And both of those things are making a constant play for power over my mind, heart, words, and deeds. They are making a constant bid to be the controlling factor in every government, every system, every company, every town, every church, every synagogue and mosque, every family, and every individual. They are part of every thing that is a human system or human being, and they are in constant flux trying to gain power over each human being alive today. The question is, not if they exist, but whether or not I can recognize which of them is trying to influence me. The question is not if everywhere Good and Evil vie for the controlling shares of power, but whether I recognize which one is winning now.
If I cannot recognize the good and evil that vies for power over my own daily life and recognize it is up to me to be in control of which one takes the lead, how can I be expected to recognize it in the many systems humans create and that I have such little control over? But the paradox that Jesus taught is this, the less I think of me, about me, the greater chance true Goodness, True God, has to be within me, of me, flowing from me, upholding me, and fighting against the powers of Evil that love to lull us into thinking they aren’t real. The more I turn my eyes away from myself and towards The Way of Jesus, the more power I will have over what evils try to keep me from The Good Life.
I am moored in my worldview when I realize that Jesus believed in Evil. In Christ’s worldview, Evil was both an unearthly, un-human power called Satan and a human predicament that comes from our fallen natures. Evil is both an outside force like Good is, in fact a Satanic power like Good is a Godly Power. Evil is also the slippery slope of ethical relativism and self-centered pride that we all keep falling down and trying to climb back up out of. Satan or just human evil desires both consistently tempted Jesus to adapt to a false worldview of what is real and true and important and good and spiritual and divine. But The Messiah, the Godly-Man was also tempted to give credence to the Evil that comes from human beings creating systems of power and mighty institutions of ownership of material goods. Jesus was tempted in all things as we are. But Christ didn’t slide down that slippery slope or put his faith in the systems of this world — not even once. Jesus remained true to His Word. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)
A rather famous follower of Jesus who tried to convince non-Jews to follow the Judaism of Jesus and tried to help his fellow Jews get back to the real spiritual foundations of something they had warped into a misunderstanding of what religion is supposed to do; and tried to help everyone, even the pagans and the Romans, understand what the real God might actually be like, left us all this wise meditation on worldview: “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known”. (I Corinthians 13:12) The disciple of Jesus named Ya’akov has this to add:
“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” (James 1:22–27)
The operative words in Paul’s metaphor of “the mystery in the mirror” that reveal the truth about our own ignorance (even about the very things we think we know about in this world), and the imago-Dei infused desires of every human heart to seek a spiritual reality here in our lives and in the systems of this world, are Paul’s words: “now” and “then”. We cannot help ourselves for Now to be overwhelmed by the setting in which we live our lives — the here of place and the treadmill of our days and the fears of our needs being unmet. The Now greatly effects how we see the world, how we see ourselves, how we see others, and how we see or rather don’t see God. But the “Then Worldview” that God provides and Jesus lived out, teaches us that we need to have faith that the Now- Worldview is incomplete, incomprehensible, and inconclusive. We can know this if we look in our mirrors and look at our neighbors and enemies and see in every face, the reflection of the divinity that is in us all. And while the reflection of the Divinity on the other side of the glass is foggy at best, broken for the weakest, and fallible and fallen for each of us, we are all created and instructed to gaze and gaze and gaze until our eyes hurt, seeking the glimmers of the Other Side until we get that glorious glimpse of the Goodness that Love creates. Then we are meant to keep trying to live into the Then as Now of Heaven on Earth.
Just because the Now clouds and mars the Then, doesn’t mean we aren’t supposed to keep trying to see through it all to what we are meant to be, what God has waiting for us if we truly love God, love ourselves, and love others. Good defeats Evil with the delight of a child who plays a game she knows she will win; and Love conquers fear with the hope of perpetual spring-like, springing-forth Eternally-secured Life.
The Hebrews were constantly instructed to “remember the God who saves”. And we who claim to believe that the ultimate revelation of Who that God is was met in the life, death and eternal glory of a human being named Yeshua, are also instructed to remember. “Whenever you eat or drink, whenever you worship or celebrate, whenever you are together talking, arguing, discussing, planning, laughing, singing, posting on Facebook, or driving your car; whenever your country is at war or at peace, whether you have lots of money or none, whether working, playing, or resting, whether despairing or worrying, whether alone or in a crowd — Remember Me.” (Jesus, at his final dinner with his followers, at least for a while; as recorded in the Gospels.)
We are meant to always remember and to never forget that there was once a human being who lived in time and space, and never forgot that though human beings had broken the mirror of our own worldview, if we followed in his way, The Christ Way, we would catch just enough glimmer up head to keep journeying away from evil and darkness and toward Goodness and Light. That is the Judeo-Christian worldview, whether we recognize it or not.
One day over a decade ago by now, I had to leave a place that I really loved. I didn’t want to leave but I had tried my best to be a Judeo-Christian there and they just weren’t having it. Go figure. I don’t mean to set myself up on a pedestal or imply that I am not fully aware of the tree trunks in my own eyes before I try to help a sister with the bit of dust that blew into her own. But I am finally coming around to learn somethings (I love that expression “coming around to learning” because the very best lives are lived in circles, circling around and around the Center of Truth). So, a few things I am circling around that I would relate to my insistence on clinging to this idea of having a Worldview that learns a thing or two from Judeo-Christian thought.
First, always speak the truth even if it falls in a forest and you think no one hears it. Secondly, if the person you are truth-splanning too (why yes, I do believe I just made up that word. Cool, eh?) — if the person is unwilling to even think about what you are saying or think about what they are saying or doing in any kind of way that most worldviews at least used to call “rational”, then walk away. This is what Jesus meant when he told us not to throw pearls before pigs — it’s not because we see others as “pigs” and hate them, but because we see others as struggling with what it means to be fully human and we love them and there isn’t a blasted thing that a pig can do with a pearl, not eat it, not wear it, not even see it for the value it has. This is just the way some people are with truth, especially God’s truth. I know because I have been a pig looking at pearls a lot of times in my life and it took me a long, long time to recognize certain pearls of wisdom that I just didn’t want to believe were true, for what they were and are.
Secondly, go in to any situation and any conversation — actually go into each day — as a disciple of Jesus’ Worldview would do — with high hopes and love as your motivation. BUT, always keep in mind the very good advice that Jesus gave his own disciples in Matthew 10:14: “If anyone does not receive you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet as you leave that house or that town.” Back to ten years ago and the place I loved but had to leave — -When I left the place that I loved but that had stopped loving me, I stood teary-eyed in the parking lot and then I picked up one sneakered foot and I leaned down and brushed the dust off. And then I picked up the other foot, and I wobbled a little bit and then flicked the dust off that shoe. Then I got in my Prius and drove away from Then and toward Now.
Finally, I am at last coming around to understanding that it is not enough to walk away from a negative, untruthful, unloving, unbalanced, irrational, or un-good situation or person (or group or church or political party or business or friend). It is not enough to shake the dust off my feet, if I don’t continue to shake the dust off my thoughts and memories. That is one of the worst and sneakily real evils that attract our souls and our waking and sleeping moments. That remembrance of a wrong, whether done to me or by me, is very often the motivating force behind the little devilish attitudes and actions we are victims of or perpetrators of.
And if you are still claiming this has nothing to do with the existence of evil, let me present to you this idea. Far too often the evil that festers and grows and seems to defeat the good in the world and in us, lies not so much in our not seeing the truth — we usually see it if we want to or eventually do; evil doesn’t exist just because we don’t believe in or truly know a loving, gracious God as revealed in Scriptures or Nature; evil doesn’t thrive because we judge others or judge ourselves, whether legitimately or not. True Evil gains power when we choose to nurture it and save it to justify how we feel and act today. Real Evil purrs inside us like a half-asleep but watchful hyena, waiting to pounce on the corpses of our sins and errors, fears and pride. Evil rejoices in its continued half-life that comes from our inability to let it go, to walk away, to lay down the gauntlet of truth about our need to resurrect the dead zombies of our yesterdays. Evil delights in preventing us from doing the very most loving Good-thing we can do for ourselves and others — forget about it, forgive it, and choose love.
I have wasted so much of my life, my time, my mindfulness, my wholeness and my joy, by going back to the parking lots of my memories and picking up more dust to put back on the soles of my shoes. I just keep picking away at these past problems, slights, sorrows, fears, worries, angers, irritations, etc. etc. — picking at negative thoughts like scabs on soft skin. And the dust? — the bloody scabs? — Oh, those are what evil loves. Evil can’t stand a clean slate of forgiveness and a pure moment of release. Evil can’t stand a healed wound. Evil loves to throw the dust back on the soles of my “soul” and make me believe that if I let a scab heal over, I’m not dealing with reality, I’m letting someone or myself “off the hook”, or maybe I am just not smart enough to figure out a problem. And so evil becomes a reality most often, because I want it to be.
The problem is, when evil becomes reality, Goodness and God seem unreal, unattainable, and unknowable. And while Goodness and God may be mysterious, they are more real than any negative feeling or idea that has ever existed in the world and in the human heart or psyche. It is evil that we truly only see as if through a foggy, dim glass or broken mirror. Evil is the dust that will one day return to being but dust — shaken off and left behind. When God’s Kingdom Life is lived by human beings on earth as Jesus did, and lived in heaven as God does, then Evil won’t be real at all any more. But Goodness, Faith, Love, Light, and Truth — those things will remain and be more real than any reality we ever knew, more real than our deepest longings and our wildest imaginations.
Good Things are what Life is really made of. Goodness is what you and I are really made of. And the ultimate Good, which is Love, is what our God-image is made of, because God’s reality is only Love and that kind of Love is Pure Light and Joyful Truth. And that is the only worldview that has ever truly existed; on our planet, in all religions, all kingdoms and nations, all communities and families. It is not just label, it is reality. That is the Judeo-Christian worldview. And I don’t want to step away from it or leave it in the dust.
Questions:
What do you need to shake the dust off of Today, Now; so your feet are free and your soul is free to move forward on the path of Tomorrow, Then, in truth, righteousness, freedom, and joy?
Who do you need to stop treating like a pig who can’t eat a pearl and instead, treat them as a fellow human being who is in need of a little more time to find the narrow path and The Way of Christ today? I try to remember as instructed to do, that tomorrow, I might need someone else’s help to see pearls of wisdom for the gifts they are. I remind myself of all the times I used wisdom and truth as weapons and all the times I felt someone was hurling little stones at me, because I couldn’t yet make out that they were throwing me pearls, full of worth and beauty.
Where do you need to walk away from today? How do you need to journey away from the Past, and toward a Now that believes the Then has much to teach us; a glimmer of a reality we can have in part Today?
What scabs do you need to let heal over? What fear is keeping you from letting past hurts be buried? Who do you need to forgive so you can move forward? Is it really so hard to forgive another person for what they did so you can find goodness within your soul today? Of course, it may be that the hardest person to forgive is yourself, and if that is true, then I have found that Jesus can come in quite handy.
And finally, how can you more fully embrace the reality and follow the truths of your own Best, Good -defeating -Evil Loving Worldview? You may only see it dimly now — as in a fun-house mirror or a scratched up darkened window pane, but believe me — it is real and at the very minimum, you owe it at least a chance to affect the world and infect your soul with Goodness and Love and Life.
A final teaching from Jesus about how to see through the fog to the reality of a consistent, motivating and healing Worldview. This is a story about a Good Man facing the Temptations of Evil.
When Jesus was tempted in the desert, he was tempted to deny the realities of this world (turn these stones into bread and no one will ever go hungry again). Then he was tempted to worship the reality of what power can accomplish when wielded over the reality of what love is meant to accomplish. (Satan assured him that the end always justifies the means). Finally, Christ was tempted to believe that as long as he had the right labels, God would protect him from the reality of the material world and twist the reality of the spiritual world to suit Jesus’ desires. (Jump from this high tower and angels will appear to save you.) Jesus was tempted with the idea that Good was relative and that morals could be used for political ends. Satan responded to Jesus with his own carefully chosen verses from the Bible, wielded as personal defenses against doing God’s Good Will, and some cleverly warped manufactured interpretations of Scripture. Jesus was starving and alone but he knew Satan’s worldview for what it was — evil masquerading as a means to justify a good end.
Jesus was tempted by The Evil One to abuse his divine power over the very qualities that all humans share and that God in infinite wisdom gifted to the World of human beings. We are all connected and gifted by God with these three things: our needs, our abilities, and our dreams. But we are also each and every one of us tempted to abuse our humanness by corrupting our divine natures. We do this by corrupting our own understanding of what we need with what we merely desire. We misuse our abilities when we use them only for our own personal gain or glory and not for the good of our fellow humans or the solvency of the Earth or the worship of our God. And we confuse our dreams for our rights, when we put lies to truth, or choose greed over love. We struggle in our confusion between our present reality in this needy, broken world and our longings and search for that perfect future World that we want to be a present and perfect Now.
Jesus was tempted to choose Evil means to achieve Good ends. He would later achieve both ends and means through pure love and perfect goodness. Jesus would choose miraculously good means to achieve eternally fulfilling life-giving ends.
Satan created evil temptations, out of the qualities and guidance given to all human beings, those that connected Jesus to all of us then and now. He was tempted through his needs (Jesus was hungry); his abilities (Jesus was powerful and smart); and his dreams (Jesus could have ruled the world). And do you know how he resisted? By being very, very sure of His Worldview.
I am not all that sure that what I think or do today will survive the future blindingly bright Light of Truth or that I will pass tomorrow’s Test of Being Good. I am not sure of myself at all in terms of my feelings; my feelings, maybe like yours, are a continually bubbling oxymoron made of the gossamer and steel of my broken needs, my eternal desires, and my personal life’s events. And I am not always too sure about God. (Remember that poem I wrote that one time entitled, “Maybe You Have Left Us?” Yeah. That.) It is probably why I love the Psalms as contained in the Tanakh; poems full of all our questions about God’s presence and humanity’s condition. No, it is very hard most days to be sure about the Mystery and Otherness of God. But I am sure of one thing and that is this —
There is a way to view the world that is right and good and true. There is a way to see through the mists and the charades, just slightly, just temporarily, just humbly. There is A Way, and the dust and the scars can be left behind; and we can understand that there is absolutely both evil and good; but we can also have just enough small little bits of faith, that in the end, Good is always, always going to win over Evil.
Jesus shows me, that there is a way to love others as I want to be loved and that there is a way to love a Mysterious Being just as much as I want to have Someone love the mystery at the center of who I am meant to be. And because I am completely sure that those are realities that I have been circling around for all of my life, I will call it what it is — Our Judeo-Christian Worldview.
I don’t plan on stepping away from my search for the Worldview of the Judeo-Christians who infected the world with truth, justice, freedom, life, light, and love. I don’t plan on giving it up, any time soon, but I do hope to keep seeing how it changes and how it changes people. I hope it keeps changing me, radically, rationally, and realistically. I hope to keep believing that no matter what people call what they believe, all people who are trying to be better humans today than they were yesterday are God’s Chosen People. I hope I find that someday I no longer feel a need to either defend my strange, radical Judeo-Christian worldview, or even completely understand my worldview anymore. I hope someday that just like God intended, just as Scriptures teach us, just as Jesus lived it, I too will simply live my worldview and never look back.
Jane Tawel 