THE POINT ABOUT US

WHAT IS THE POINT ABOUT US?

Perhaps the most perplexing questions we are faced with concerns who we are and discerning the purpose of our lives on this speck of dust floating through the vastness of the universe.  

 What about us?  Why are we here at all?  What's the point of our being?

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We cannot give a definitive answer as to why we exist any easier than we can answer questions regarding the existence of God.  In the  unanswerability of such questions, however, is the connection between God and us.  As such, the history of our being is the history of God's being.  

That may sound as if we humans invented God, but that would be missing the point entirely because there is a point at which our ontological questions have no point, where the question as to our existence simple becomes  the question of "What is the point of us?

This interconnectivity between the existence of God and we humans is referenced in the Psalms, "For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks?"  (Psalm 6:5) and "Shall thy lovingkindness be declared in the grave?or thy faithfulness in destruction?" (Psalm 88:11).   The point of these questions is to posit the question, "If we don't exist, does it matter if God exists?"  

I am sure this is an uncomfortable question to many religious people because the answer is clearly "No."   It doesn't matter.   If we don't exist, then God or a creative force by some other name does not matter as the Psalmists clearly points out.  So the point of our existence is, in part, to proclaim the existence of God and places some importance on our being.  Our being is the proof of a creative force unimaginably bigger than the sum of us or the sum of an ever expanding creation

* * *  

The only way religion has been able to express this truth is through its mythic imagination telling our story with God from an imaginative outside perspective. This imaginative perspective is not make-believe, but rather a perspective garnered from our collective life experiences within the world of our making which extend back to our prehistory that prompted our ancestors to find meaning and purpose in them in order to orient ourselves to world in which we live.  Without these stories we have difficulty understanding who we are and why we do the things we do.  They help explain our experiences to this day. 

Cast in theism these mythic stories tells us that the life we experience is the life that proceeds from God's kenotic creativity; of God expending self to expand SELF.  While God is unlike us, we are connected to God by and through God's kenotic creativity; God's desire to be and, in particular,  God's desire to be known.  In most religions this desire to be known is associated with the human emotion of  love.  

For example, "God is love," is Christianity 's  fundamental creed.  To feel unloved, is to feel a profound absence, a hole in one's being that will seek something to fill its void.  The absence of love in one's life is the loss of connection with God who nevertheless continues to love the one feeling unloved because we are of God and God is love.

* * *

The truth is we matter to God, regardless of who one is, what one does, or what one fails to do.   This  truth is something that transcends our sense of justice within the world of our making.  There are times that I feel we, as a whole, are striving to value every human being's worth as something we humans can accomplish on our own.   Seeking to value every human being and every form of life we encounter  is not a "Christian" endeavor but rather a human endeavor that is present in almost every religious and non-religious ideology.  It hearkens back to what I have written earlier blogs on the primary impulse of religion (of bringing us together in shared beliefs) is the fundamental realization that we need each other.  

In the world of our making, however, the ability to differentiate has caused us to see the most subtle nuances in an other as a barrier to this value of every living thing.  This is particularly challenging in the differences we see in our fellow human beings.  In Abrahamic monotheism,  this nuance is captured in the mythic story of Adam and Eve, our first parents who differentiate themselves based on sexual appearances.  

In my reading of this story, I do not find a "fall" from God's grace but rather a fuller engagement with it.  Gifted with the ability to choose, we opted to know good and evil like God,  Since we cannot know as God knows, we were summarily tasked in our dualistic understanding of good and evil to  make a world of our own amidst the diverse world of God's creating.  Our story from that moment onward is a story of dealing with the paradox of God's being and God's creation.  

Where we see dark and light, good and evil, God only sees light and the goodness of the creation God loves.  Where we see difference, God sees none.   Difference makes no difference in the light and love of God.  What we perceive as paradox in the world of our making is the sign of God's presence in it; that Oneness and Singularity from which all things proceed and dwell in.  

* * *

Ours is a struggle with the temporality of our existence and the limitations which hinder our ability to experience the ultimate fulfillment of what we seek in our creative endeavors.  Nothing symbolizes this than the monumental structures we leave behind us to serve as a reminder to those who follow us that we made a difference in the world of our making and that they stand upon our shoulders and, at the very least, owe us recognition.  We are haunted by our perceptions; that whatever knowledge we possess will never be enough; that our ending will be much as our beginning, an emergence into the nothingness from which we were born.  

* * *

The point of our being is to be alive; to give, in the short span of our existence, acknowledgment of the God we seek to know in full.   God's delight in us is never-ending even though we cannot comprehend it or understand the paradoxical love of God.  The point of our existence is to engage the love that brought us into being; to be that love in the world of our making; to love ourselves, to love our neighbors as ourselves, and, paradoxically, love that which we find unlovable, our enemies. 

* * *

The point about us is that we matter to God, otherwise we would not be here.  God needs us to need God; to give recognition to the giver of life whose desire to be is expressed in our being.  Understanding our being is central to understanding God's being.  

We are not God, yet God shines through us.  God is evident in us as we are contained in and sustained through the being of God.  We proceeded from God's kenotic desire to be; to expend self to expand SELF.  We are, in part, that SELF of God expressed in and throughout the entirety of God's creation.  

In the shortness of our life-span, we give evidence of the plentitude of God's creating grace.  At the end of this transitory life, one can only hope that the life force of one's life, the totality of one's soulfulness returns the one who made us living souls.  We were made of love, made to love, and it is hoped that this love will return to LOVE, to God.

Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm

ONE PLANET, TWO WORLDS

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.  And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.   Genesis 1: 1-5

GOD

As I have mentioned in other posts, God is a kenotic action; God (BEING-NESS) expending self in order to expand self.  Theologically speaking, God is the Singularity (God is One) from whom or from which all creation came into being.  To put it into the language of Act 17: 28, God is that being in which we live and move and have our being.  

Given that expansive understanding of "God," we human "earthlings" have difficulty understanding our  place in its immensity.  While it is no longer difficult for most to accept that the Earth is not the center of the universe,  it remains difficult to avoid thinking of ourselves as the crowning achievement of God's creation.  

IN THE BEGINNING

If one is talking about the need of Christianity to have a Copernican type of revolution, a revolution that orientates us to a right perspective of our relationship to God and our place in the Universe, one must start at the beginning. The five verses quoted above from Genesis 1 is the starting point we are given in the Holy Bible.   It is important that one does not gloss over them but pays particular attention to them.   To begin with one must understand that the canvas of scriptures paints a picture of us in relation to our Creator via the intimate brush strokes of individual stories within the framework of a particular story of an interrelated people referred as the Chosen People by which to depict our true nature as being embodied in that Being through which and in which we exist.   

Remarkably, the creation story in Genesis intuitively depicts an evolutionary process.  It confirms that there is a process to creation which, in Genesis story,  began with the conception  (the idea) of heaven and earth.   The term "In the beginning" (an a priori a sense of time)  the proto-earth or the idea of earth is conceived as a formless and void of any particular meaning.  According to Genesis, measurable time doesn't occur before light is separated from darkness by which to measure earth-time in terms of its having days and nights.  Broadly speaking it also hints at the temporal nature of our known universe.  

A point before time begs the question of whether such a point is eternal.  What does "in the beginning" tell us about God?  Did God exist before the beginning or does "In the beginning" denote an ever-present nowness of God's potential (or creative force) in which there is no sense of linear time, no measurable dimension of being?  

In Genesis, time has a starting point and therefore our scriptures talk about its ending point.  From its starting point to its ending point time is conceived as a linear measurement of both past and future. One could say that time measures anticipatory decay; as in, the past giving way to a future whose presence  quickly becomes the past, as each present moment instantaneously dissolves into a past that no longer exists as it gives way to the future in a nanosecond.  

One may ask why this is important.  Its importance is that  the world in which we currently live, what I refer to as the world of our making, is undergirded by an incomprehensible cosmic now, a constant that has no past or future but is briefly recognizable in the brevity of a present moment.   It is against that incomprehensible constant backdrop that the world of God's creation proceeds including the world of our making which resides on this specific speck of dust called Earth. 

OUR PLANET HOME

Earth is called "Earth" because that is what we call the skin of our planet home in any number of languages. We know today that life on earth has existed for a long time.  Relatively speaking, human life, is the new kid on the block.  We literally stand on the remains of distant,  one-time living worlds that are part of God's ongoing creation that goes as far back as when the first single cells plants and animals emerged from the chemical soup that this planet produced and housed. 

It is from that primal soup that we humans eventually evolved or as Genesis describes as being made in the image of God.  In essence we are cognitively aware that we embody the both the physical and animating force of God's creation.  For most of human history the Earth was understood to stand at the center of God's creation and humankind was understood to be the pinnacle of the animated life on it. The Sun, Moon, and Star all revolved around us.   

This notion of centrality, both of place and being, remain intact in the human psyche.  Even though science has long ago proven that our planet is not the center of our solar system and much less the center of the universe, we humans largely continue to consider ourselves as the pinnacle of God's creation and Earth its brightest gem.   This will remain true until such time there is proof of intelligent life beyond the Earth and even if that were the case such intelligent life will have to demonstrate to a more advanced intellect than we humans before we will lose the idea of our centrality.

For the present, we are the only known planet on which intelligent life exists, which brings us to the concept of a world.  The word "World" has many meanings.   Generally, it refers to various domains of human interest; such as, the world of animals, the world of plants, the world of sports, the world of business, and so on.  For the purpose of this post, as noted throughout this blog, the term world is used to describe two perspectives of life on this planet; the world as God's creation and the world  of our making.  

THE WORLD OF GOD'S CREATING

"... in the place where the beginning is, there the end will be."  -The Gospel of Thomas*

 

In the Gospel of Thomas the above teaching of Jesus is in response to his disciples asking what will happen to them at their ending.  Thomas does not give the reader any sense of the context in which their enquiry is made.  We do not know if it is reference to the Last Judgment, which seems implied, or whether it is about the end of life.  

Unlike the canonical Gospels, the Gospel of Thomas directs them to go back to the beginning, to Genesis to find what they are looking for.  In other word, to know one's ending, one must know one's beginning.  The open ended aspect of this teaching of Jesus is what makes the Gospel of Thomas so intriguing.

The world of God's creating is the structural foundation upon which the world of our making rests.  The world of making is like the earthy skin of our planet.  It is a surface covering of something more substantial and foundational.

If we consider the two creation myths of Genesis; the creation of the Cosmos, the Earth, and all the living creatures on the Earth found in Genesis 1 and the formation of humankind in Genesis 2 in the Garden of Eden, we should come away with the understanding that Eden is more than a geographical place, it is a metaphor for the world of God's creating, a world that exists along side of and beyond the world our mythical first parents were tasked with creating as they were cast from this garden state.   

It is the world of God's creating that God judged as being very good.   As the Gospel of Thomas points out if you want to know our ending, go back the beginning because that primal judgment of God's creation is God's final judgment of it.  Eden is the term I use as a synonym or metaphor for world of God's creating, what Jesus referred to as the Kingdom of God. 

All of us have our roots in Eden.  It is motherland of our being.   It is the metaphorical home we long for, the Kingdom of God that Jesus said is at hand.  

* "A New New Testament: A Bible for the Twenty-First Century" (Copyright 2013, Hal Taussig. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, New York, New York.).   

THE WORLD OF OUR MAKING

"Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my Words shall not pass away" - The Synoptic Gospels

The world of our making is (for the lack of a better word) a byproduct of the world of God's creating.  The world of God's creating is foundational to the world of our making.  The world of our making could not possibly exist without it.  

That being said, there is, in a manner of speaking, a world of difference between these worlds; in that, we differentiate in the world of our making.  We are obsessed with differences.  Please understand that by differentiation, I am not being critical of seeing differences but  acknowledging them as a fact of life in the world of our making.  Our ability to differentiate, like most everything else we do in our world has both good and bad aspects; hence, the mythic story of Adam and Eve being dispelled from Eden.  Knowing difference helps us to be imaginative, how things compliment and contrast each other.  According to Abrahamic religions it is an aspect of being made in the image of God.  We could not be artists of every kind, builders, inventors, idealists, etc, without the ability to differentiate.  

This ability to differentiate, of course, has an evil side.  It seems for every good thing we humans do, there is an evil aspect that can be derived from it.  In the realm of God, differentiation does not exist.  Light and dark are both alike to God, our Scriptures says Psalm 139:12.   In Matthew 5:45, Jesus points out that rain falls on both the righteous and the unrighteous.  In the world of God's creating good and evil, righteousness and unrighteousness are non-issues.   Difference makes no difference to God.   Difference is clearly a human issue.  We cannot escape difference in the world of our making.  It proceeds from our ability to make choices.  In order to chose, one must have the ability to differentiate.

In the world of our making, this non-difference between that which appears and feels different is understood as paradox; when two contradictory things or points of view come into play simultaneously.   Paradox is considered a sign of God's presence, the sign of Christ which will be discussed in later posts.  In contemplative circles, paradox is embraced as non-dualism; that is, achieving or striving for a sense of equanimity about all things and seeing the interconnection between all things created and the Creator.  

In the world of our making, however, paradox is perplexing.   That opposing elements or entities can be at play at the same time disrupts our sense of certainty; in particular,  the certainty that there are absolute truths that are unchangeable within the world of our making.   Most of us fail to understand or refuse to understand that our sense of difference is a product of our making; a product of the choices we have made since the beginning of our history. 

Jesus proclaimed that the Kingdom of God is at hand, which is to say that the world of God's creating is present within the world of our making.  As Paul reminds us, however,  we see it as if looking through a dark lens.  What, for the time being, preoccupies us is the illusionary surface world we have made that occludes the immensity of God's kenotic Being.

The world of God's creating is the "cosmic now" of God, the cosmic center of all that is.  A center that knows no boundary or as the hymns, John Mason wrote of God in the 17th century, "Thou art a sea without a shore, a sun without a sphere, Thy time is now and evermore, Thy place is everywhere." That is the world of God's creating the kenotic world of God expending self in order to expand self, the unbounded center of all things.

The earth and the world of our making are only a minuscule part of the world of God's creating; a part that is a temporary manifestation of God's creative expansiveness.  The heaven and earth we know is merely an experience with impermanence.  Death is a necessary facet of life within time.  

Mass and energy may always exist in the Cosmic Now of God, but how it is manifested; how God is expressed or manifested through it is subject to what God told Moses, "I am that I am;"in other words, "I will be what I will be." God is undefinable as a being as God is BEING.  Christians take note:  God cannot be differentiated or given a specific image that we shape either through the imagery of matter or the limitation of  our language.  We can only express our imaginative depictions and thoughts of God, but such imaginative depictions and thoughts are simply that and nothing more. We cannot not comprehend the fullness of God in or through the world of our making.

In the world of our making we have power, but our power is limited by the ability to differentiate.  As such we only have the power to make and the power to destroy.  This dichotomous, either/or ability, is manifest in our many achievements and in our many wars.  As great and tremendous such power is in the world of our making, it does not compare to paradoxical power of God.  We do not have nor can we ever possess the creative power of God that both expends and expands simultaneously.  

Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm

 

SET ABLAZE - A Homily

This homily was delivered at Christ Episcopal Church, Yankton, South Dakota on Sunday, August 14, 2022.

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Luke 12:49-56

Jesus said, "I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! 

From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided:  father against son and son against father, mother against daughter
and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."

He also said to the crowds, "When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, `It is going to rain'; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, `There will be scorching heat'; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?" 

(the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA)

* * *

 In the Name of our loving God.  Amen.

We’re not as familiar with the Jesus depicted in this reading - a Jesus who is not peacemaker - a Jesus who causes division.

Christianity has a tendency to distort the image of Jesus; in that, it downplays his being a human like us.  We say Jesus is true man and true God, but let’s face it, of the two descriptions, the one people have been banking on for the past 1800 years is Jesus as true God.  It’s time we reorient ourselves to the true man of that credal equivocation in order to properly understand the power of the Gospels in our lives, because what is true for Jesus is true for us.  He is one of us and we need to be one with him.

* * *

During Jesus’ ministry, the Gospels make it clear he struggled with getting his message about the Kingdom of God across to people. Jesus encountered the difficulties all prophets encounter when speaking truth to those who don’t want to hear it and opening our eyes to the ignored obvious taking place around us. Perhaps the best description of Jesus, the man, is the one the early Church found in the writings of the prophet Isaiah:

He grew up as a tender shoot in a harsh environment.  There was nothing majestic about him; nothing about his appearance that would attract attention.   He was rejected by most.  He experienced suffering and understood grief.  He was despised as someone who didn’t count.  (Isaiah 53:2b-3, paraphrased)

Jesus was not the auburn haired, nordic type we see depicted in paintings and stained glass windows. The Jesus of Jesus’ day would have looked more like the Palestinian of today.  At times, the Gospels depict him looking unkempt from being pressed by the throngs seeking to be healed and looking crazed when passionately preaching about the Kingdom of God;  At one point his mother and brothers even planned an intervention to prevent him from making and spectacle of himself.  What attracted people to Jesus was his passion for healing the incurable, forgiving the unforgivable, and loving the unloveable - his human touch.

* * *

  

What was a day in the life of this man Jesus like?  Luke 11 and 12 record one day in the life of Jesus’ ministry, the day from which this reading is taken.

 

After teaching his disciples how to pray, Jesus healed a man rendered mute by what was believed to be a demon.  As a result, Jesus was accused of being able to do so because he was in league with the prince of demons, Beelzebub.

Then he was invited to dine at the house of a Pharisee.  Jesus, in state of fatigue and hunger, headed straight to the table without performing the usual washing up ritual before eating which his offended his host.Then there was the man who wanted to use Jesus as his personal agent to Bible-thump his brother into sharing an inheritance he felt entitled to.  It is no wonder that Jesus would take off in the middle of the night to get away from it all and  seek the solace of the night’s silence and pray.

* * *

Jesus was a suspected troublemaker in his day; a threat to the status quo, not only by the religious authorities of his day, but also to the Romans who were all too ready to crucify anyone causing trouble. People were divided over Jesus because they didn’t know what to make of him.  We’re still divided over Jesus.  

Conducting an online search regarding how many Christian denominations exist today, I found there are 45,000 different Christian denominations worldwide. In the US, there are 200 Christian denominations, but If one asks how many non-denominational Christian churches there are in the US alone, the answer, as of 2012, is over 84,000. What I see dividing Christians are the various teachings we have about Jesus; teachings that have largely dispensed with the teachings of Jesus.

Understanding Jesus as one of us prompts us to take a closer look at his teachings, which are vital in dealing with the world of today.  Unless we are immersed in the fiery baptism of Jesus’ passionate ministry and his love for all that God loves, we really can’t claim to know Jesus because we haven’t carried on his work and be like him, the daughters and sons God called us to be at our baptisms.

* * *

At the close of this reading, Jesus challenges us, “You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”

I’m not so sure we’re good at interpreting the appearance of the earth and sky nowadays; much less, interpreting the present time.  The challenge for us today, as it was in Jesus’ time, is to avoid hypocrisy; acting as if we know the mind of God, thinking that by claiming to be Christian our thoughts must be God’s thoughts on the issues we are confronting today.  Isaiah reminds us, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8).  

Nothing makes this more apparent than the table-turning teachings and ministry of our brother Jesus who sheds a new light on our darkening world, who bequeathed us his ministry of healing those who are hurting, forgiving the unforgivable, and loving the unloveable; a visionary ministry that would set our world ablaze with the purgatorial fire of God’s love that would burn away the chaff of our selfish desires to expose the pure grain of our God-made selves. 

May such a fire burn within us today and always.    Amen. 

* * *

Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm  

CARING FOR ONE'S SOUL - A HOMILY

 This was the homily I prepared for Sunday July 31.

* * *

Luke 12:13-21

Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me." But he said to him, "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" And he said to them, "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." Then he told them a parable: "The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, `What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?' Then he said, `I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, `Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' But God said to him, `You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.

(The New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA) 

* * *

Jesus’ parable about a rich man, a well-to-do farmer who has experienced an huge bumper crop of grain, that exceeded the capacity of his current grain bins and who is laying in bed thinking  to himself about how he can maximize this harvest to his benefit is a bit odd.

Let’s be honest, could anyone of us sitting here in today’s world blame him for thinking this way?    It’s his grain.  He planted it.  He sowed it and he reaped what he sowed.  Isn’t he entitled to enjoy the fruits of his labor, the blessing of such a great harvest?  Why not build better grain bins?  Why not enjoy the thought of being able to sit back, eat, drink, and be merry? 

* * *

Was Jesus just having a bad day?   What got Jesus so riled up that he shouts, “Take care!  Be on your guard against all kinds of greed because one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possession!”

One could say that Jesus was having a bad day, which started back in Luke 11, the chapter that preceded today’s reading, where after healing a man of demon possession was accused of casting out demons by the prince of demons, Beelzebub. Then Jesus was being chastised for not properly washing up before dining by the Pharisee who invited him to dine.  Finally, there is this man who wants Jesus to tell his brother to share the inheritance that was left to his brother, as if  Jesus’ primary role was to fix the mundane issues of the world we created.

* * *

Yes.  Jesus was having a bad day but not as bad as the day the people who were being trite, who were caught up in their self-righteousness, their sense of self importance; who failed to see the goodness of God working through Jesus for them and  who couldn’t see God’s love within their own souls; in that, they were caught up in what Jesus described as every form of greed in which the small self of egoism shaped their limited perspective of life’s meaning and purpose.

To address this limited perspective and to get them and us out of our mundane comfort zone,  Jesus invited them - invites us - into this parable in which he reveals the inner thoughts, the inner dialogue between this rich man and his own soul on the very night this man’s souls, his very life would be required by God.  

In Genesis 2, the soul is described as the totality of our being, shaped by God’s own hands and breathed to life in order to bear the image of God within the world of God’ creating.  The problem that Jesus is addressing in this parable is the failure to recognize what we just recited in the Jubilate; “Know this: The Lord himself is God; he himself has made and we are his….”

The man in the parable had forgotten who made him, whose he was.  He fell victim to that deceptive idea of the self-made person, the person who has pulled oneself up by one’s bootstraps, who owes no one anything, even God.   This becomes apparent when he says to his soul, as if he alone owned it, “`Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” 

It was at that point in the parable that God speaks to the man directly, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”

Jesus ends this parable by saying, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”  Through the use of the stark imagery of this parable Jesus is stressing the need to take care of our souls by keeping in mind who made us, whose we are, and  that our life’s purpose is not to make the most of our lives by through the acquisition of things, but to present in our lives the righteous image of God.

Unfortunately, the lectionary left out of today’s reading Jesus’ explanation of the parable and gives us a clue how to be mindful in caring for our souls which I will paraphrase:

After this parable, Jesus said to his disciples, “Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat, or what you will wear.  Life is more than eating well and looking good.  Look at the birds: they don’t sow or reap, they don’t have storage bins. God feeds them.  If God feeds them, God will feed you. 

There really is enough for everyone if we stop being anxious about things that really don’t matter.

Do you think worrying about acquiring more than you need will add a single hour to your life?

If being anxious about such things won’t add an hour to your life, why bother with such things?

Look at the wildflowers that grow in the pastures.  If God clothes the grasslands with such beauty, God will clothe you because you are a child of God, made in the image of God,  

Trust God!  Stop worrying about what you think you need to acquire in order to live a good life in the here and now.  God knows what you need.  Rather, seek God in your life; find the image of God within your soul.  Be the child of God that you are and you will find that your soul’s truest and deepest desires will be met.”  (Compare original text in Luke 12: 22-31)

To which I can only say -  Amen.

* * *

Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm

GOOD TROUBLE AND RESURRECTION

RESURRECTION 

This post is a reflection on how the story of Jesus' resurrection illustrates a pattern for identifying the experience of resurrection in this life.  

For the purpose of this post, resurrection is a new way of being or a new-found purpose or meaning to one's life brought about by a life-changing experience that causes one to let go of the controls over one's life; a free-fall experience allowing whatever is going to happen to happen as an act of faith.  I can only talk about resurrection as a life experience from my own encounter with it.  

To begin with, resurrection experiences are never expected.  When they occur, one is not even thinking about resurrection.  One enters into the experience of resurrection unknowingly.   In general resurrection happens when one gets involved in what the late Representative John Lewis called into "good trouble."  Good trouble is trouble nonetheless, but I believe good trouble is a factor in bringing about resurrection experiences both on a personal and communal level.  

* * *

My own experience with resurrection involved getting into good trouble, which was doing the right thing for the right reason at the state mental hospital where I worked.  Without going into specific details, I found  myself up against a system that relied on long-standing methods to address individuals in crisis that often demeaned them under the banner of doing so for their own good.  In reality and in retrospect one could see such practices were aimed at maintaining control in a frequently chaotic environment.  Over time the focus of such practices places the good of the system over the good of the individual.   

Systemic injustice or systemic failure to recognize the dignity and worth of another person is difficult to detect because we live with it and are prone to both active and passive participation in it at work, in our homes, and in our communities.  It is largely cloaked and embedded within laws, regulations, and practices under the broad banner of preserving the peace (aka the status quo) but fail to serve the needs of individuals deemed problematic and often results in victimizing them.

My resurrection experience resulted in unintentionally exposing systemic failure by doing something that was focused on the immediate needs of a person in my care rather than think about the systemic regulations of the institution I worked for.  As I mentioned above, getting into "good trouble" will get one in trouble and I found myself in trouble to the extent that my job was on the line and not only my job but also, to my dismay, the job of two  co-workers who followed my lead.  

There is a relevant backstory to this event. Outside of work and prior to this event I had been in the process of seeking Holy Orders in the Episcopal Church.  To that end, I finished a bachelor's degree in religious studies and philosophy at the Roman Catholic Benedictine university in my hometown as preparation for pursuing an  M. Div. degree at an Episcopal seminary.  The discernment process I underwent was not encouraging and plans for entering Holy Orders eventually stalled.  

Ironically, my time at the university was the best educational experience I ever had.  While I attended university, I was working full time on the night shift at the hospital and taking a full class load during the daytime; squeezing in both family and sleep when I could.  Remarkably, I ended up with a 4.0 GPA when I graduated, something I wouldn't have thought possible given my earlier educational experiences.  While I wasn't ready to further my education as planned, having a B.A. offered me a chance to obtain a better position at work as a Mental Health Technician (a higher level of aide) and daytime hours after working nights for twenty years..  Then this life-changing event happened.

When I found myself in trouble for doing something that was right, my first impulse was to fight the system which, in my opinion, was ultimately responsible for the incident that I was being blamed for causing.    As I was building steam to go after the system or go down trying,  a sense of calm came over me and I felt compelled to step back and let things play out to wherever this incident was leading.  I thought, perhaps, that losing my job was God's means of opening a door and motivating me to further my education and enter into ordained ministry after all 

As I was walking to the administration's conference room with my two co-workers, Jesus' journey to his trial came to mind.  I couldn't help but think about Jesus and the two thieves who were crucified with him.  I felt horrible that two of my  co-workers were being treated as partners in a crime they, in particular, didn't commit and were going to be metaphorically crucified with me unjustly.   I made up my mind that my immediate responsibility was to admit to violating policy with reason and make a plea that my co-workers should not be held responsible for a decision I made. 

When we arrived at the Administration's conference room it was full of people.  Not only was the Human Resource Officer present and my direct supervisor,  but also the Administrator, the Medical Director, the Clinical Director, the Nursing Director, and all of the hospital's Program Directors.  On the conference room's conference telephone was the State's Secretary for the Department overseeing the hospital and the Departments attorney.  To be honest I could not recall a need to gather that many people to what I thought would be my dismissal. I had a sense of what it must have like for Jesus to face the Sanhedrin.  As overwhelming all of this was, I was confident that whatever would happen was meant to happen.

After I was allowed to speak and admit that I didn't follow routine practice, my reason for doing so, and making a plea on behalf of my co-workers, the Administrator and Secretary did something I wasn't prepared for.  Instead of firing me and my co-workers, I was tasked with fixing the problem.  In essence they understood why I did what I had done and understood the role systemic failure played in this case.  They appointed me to chair a committee  to rewrite the hospital's policy.  

My call to ministry took a different path.  Eventually, I was given a new position within state government, as a Human Rights Specialist.  I was to serve as the Department's in-house advocate for patients at the hospital where I had worked for over twenty years.  I remained in that position for fourteen years when I entered into retirement. 

My story may strike some as unremarkable and hardly worthy of being called a resurrection experience, but it was for me.   I came to understand that I was raised up to take on what I understood was a prophetic role in the place where I worked; that is, to point out the often ignored obvious and minister to those in what one of my religious mentors identified as the Gerasene wilderness.  The Medical Director affirmed this prophetic role by affectionately referring to me as the hospital's gadfly.  

***

GOOD TROUBLE

When it comes to experiencing resurrection in this life, I think a common denominator is finding oneself engaged in some sort of "good trouble."   Getting into "good trouble" is not something one intentionally does in order to feel good about oneself or attract admirers.  Good trouble occurs when one is focused on the needs and well-being of others, nothing more and nothing less.  Good trouble often comes by doing the right thing at a time when others are seeing what one is doing as the wrong thing.   Jesus understood "good trouble" and found himself engaged in it throughout his ministry.  

John Lewis' iconic and prophetic admonition to get into "good trouble" reflects Jesus' personal admonition to Peter in the last chapter of the Gospel of John (Chapter 21).  I view this particular chapter as an afterthought or second ending to this gospel, as if to underscore that the resurrection of Jesus didn't mean what Christians loudly proclaim at Easter that sin, death, and the devil have been vanquished.  I believe that in the long-run within the universe of God's creation that is true and if so, it has always been true.  In the world of our creating, however, sin, death, and the Devil (the evil embedded in our systems or what Paul identified as principalities and powers) are very much a factor in daily life.  Resurrection is also a factor in this life as people are daily being raised to new life and finding new purposes and reasons for being in the illusory world we created in order to create pathways to new life. 

In John 21 we see resurrection illustrated as the last act Jesus performed on one of his disciples.  It begins with the resurrected Jesus on the shore of the Sea of Galilee cooking fish and inviting some of the disciples who were out fishing all night long to join him.  In that story, Jesus pulls Peter aside and asks him if Peter loves him.  He asks him this three times and I believe Jesus did this in the Gospel of John for a reason.  As you recall, all the Gospels record the situation in which Peter denied Jesus three times.  This is the same Peter who swore that he would die rather than see Jesus arrested.  It was a selfish boast and as Jesus predicted when real trouble arose Peter would engage in protecting himself and deny he ever knew Jesus which is what Peter did.  

John 21 is another resurrection story.  In this case, Jesus resurrected Peter to get into good trouble.  He tells Peter to feed his sheep, to take care of them, and therein resided the true challenge Peter was called to in picking up the ministry of Jesus was leaving him and to all who follow Jesus, which is to love and care for the whole creation of God present within the world of our making.  

Jesus did not candy-coat what getting into good trouble would mean for Peter.  He lets Peter know that getting into good trouble, caring for others, spreading the Gospel story will get him into trouble and eventually cost him his life.  Peter was ready for such a challenge because he experienced the limitations of his ego and possessed the strength to set it aside and faithfully follow the way of Jesus.   

Jesus' admonition Peter to feed and care for what God feeds and cares for is an admonition for all of us to get into to good trouble, to love and care for that which God loves and cares for and in doing so be raised up by raising up others in the risen and rising Christ.

* * *

Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm 

  

FROM CHRISTIAN MYTH TO THE CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE

Myths are archetypal stories that attempt to explain the human experience on this small speck of cosmic dust called Earth.  Myths abound in every religion.  Every theistic religion is rooted in its creation myths; how we came to be and, in some cases, why we came to be.  Importantly they give us insight into our behaviors and interactions with one another and with the divine. 

While Christianity is rooted in Judaism and its myths, Christianity has its own myths related to the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus's life and times that reflect the mythic imagination of the Hebrew Scriptures; an imagination that imbues the stories of real people and places with a mythic hue to expose within their stories their deeper meanings. No person in either the Old or New Testaments is ever meant to be idolized or thought of as apart from the rest of us because they are us.  

Three prominent mythically imbued heroes of the Old Testament, Abraham, Moses, and Elijah are used by New Testament writers to explain Jesus and our relationship to him.  The Epistles of Paul utilize the stories of Abraham to depict Jesus as the one offspring through which God's promise of being the father of nations is fulfilled; namely, that those who believe in Jesus are by faith the true offspring of Abraham [See Galatians 3].  In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus is depicted as being a law-giver like Moses and on par with Elijah as the greatest of all prophets.  This is particularly demonstrated in the story of Jesus' transfiguration.     

In my earlier posts, I said that I do no like using the word mystery too often, as the term has often been used to steer one away one from seeking explanations and accept what is written without understanding the reason for what was wrote.  This is the primary reason I prefer the word myth when it comes to stories about Jesus.  While there is an aura of mysticism surrounding these stories to be pondered, they are best explained and understood as myths.  In fact, understanding these stories as myths removes the burden of having to believe them as fact so that one can freely investigate the truths they express and ponder their mystical applications within our life experiences from birth to death.  

It is of upmost importance to never separate the teachings of Jesus from the mythic stories about Jesus.  Treating the myths about Jesus as something to be believed as factual events necessary for salvation tends to diminish the teachings of Jesus as being nonessential to the redemptive purpose of Jesus.  The Synoptic Gospels, in particular, blend the teachings of Jesus with the mythic stories about Jesus into a linear narrative which is itself instructive on how the teachings of Jesus are experienced throughout one's life.  

We start life on this planet like Jesus and we end life like Jesus, and in Jesus we are given a vision of more life yet to be.  It is only the details of our individual lives that vary, but if we are to follow Jesus then we must be alert to where his and our stories connect.  Such connections are exposed by following what Jesus taught.  

It is in following the teaching of Jesus that we begin to understand the mythic meanings of life that surround them.   It is in applying what Jesus taught as a way of life that one can experience the mythic meanings of his birth, his baptism, his transfiguration, his death, and his resurrection in one's life.  I have already written about such applications in other post on Jesus' birth (here and here), baptism (here, here, and here) transfiguration (here and here), death (here, here, and here), and resurrection (here, here, and here).  

There are other mythic stories about Jesus that are cast as miracles.  Miracles are something that people truly experience.  I have experienced what I call the miraculous in my own life. I believe it was Rabbi Jonathan Sachs, however, who wrote in one of his books, something to the effect, that miraculous events rarely, if ever, convince someone to join a religion.  

To illustrate Rabbi Sachs observation, try explaining a miraculous event in one's life to others and you are likely to find someone giving you a reasonable (factual) explanation to the miracle that for all practical purpose is an attempt to explain the miracle away.  In fact, I would go so far to say that any miracle is a personal encounter with mythic experience; that is, with truths that do not require a factual explanation.  The only people who don't question the miraculous experiences of others are those who have experienced one themselves.  This, of course, begs the question why stories of miracles abound in both the Old and New Testaments of the Holy Bible.

When it comes to stories of miracles in the New Testament; particularly, those performed by Jesus we are once again faced with their mythic meanings and application, some of which are quite obvious and others are more cryptic. The point of miracle stories involving Jesus go far beyond trying to prove  he is the Son of God.  If that is all one gets from them, then one has missed the point of their being told.  

The mythic aura surrounding the teachings of Jesus frequently involves the miraculous.  In these stories, we see the teachings of Jesus come to life as they are fleshed out in stories depicting the direct impact they had on the lives of others.  It is the intent of such stories to depict the relevance of what Jesus taught has in our lives.  

In the posts that will follow, I will take a look at some of the miracle stories involving Jesus and their mythic meanings and applications.

Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm

 

THE SURETY OF GOD - A Homily

 This homily was delivered by this blogger on Sunday, February 13, 2022 in a Zoom service of Christ Episcopal Church in Yankton, South Dakota.

Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.

They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.

It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;

in the year of drought it is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit.

Jeremiah 17:7-8

This passage from today’s reading of the prophet Jeremiah offers a beautiful metaphor of faith, of one’s trust in God; that deep stream of God’s surety for those who would tap into it.  Jeremiah knew something of the blessedness Jesus is talking about in today’s reading from Luke.   Like all prophets he found himself impoverished, hungry, deeply depressed, hated and persecuted for speaking truth to power by those in power, and yet  like all the prophets Jeremiah knew his life was solely dependent on the blessed surety that God gave him.

* * *

Luke’s account of Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain has people from all walks of life, Jews and gentiles, rich and poor alike, a cross section of the world  coming together at the cross-roads of world, the Middle East to be healed by Jesus and to hear what Jesus has to say to his disciples, that will heal the world’s woes.  Jesus’  “Sermon” in Luke is one of balance; beginning with four beatitudes matched with four corresponding woes delivered on a level plain, to describe a level playing field today.

Unlike today’s reading from Jeremiah which starts with who is cursed and moves to who is blessed, Jesus begins with those who are blessed and contrasts them with those who by our world’s standards may seem blessed but are toying with woe.  Jesus is not saying that poverty, hunger, sorrow, or being hated and persecuted is good or that having abundance, being happy, and admired is bad.   Jesus is saying that often those who have abundance are more tapped into themselves, forgetting who they are and whose they are; claiming to be self-made, and entitled to the good life they claim to have created, owing nobody anything other than what enhances their popularity.

   

***

Those who are blessed are those who are tapped into the surety of God ’s trust, knowing their dependence is on God and God alone; that they are made of God, made for God, and made for others.   

Those who are blessed are those who see the poverty of one as the poverty of all, the hunger of one as the hunger of all, the sorrow of one as the sorrow of all, and the persecution of one as the persecution of all.  They make no distinctions between those who have and those who don’t because all are dependent on God’s good will.

Those who are tapped into the surety of God avoid the pitfalls of entitlement and exceptionalism.  They are level-sighted, seeing all as equally loved by God and deserving of our love.  Their compassion and mercy does not dry up in times of despair or hardship, but flourishes and produces the fruit of God’s love given to all.

* * *

Let us pray,

Loving God, our surety in times of plenty and in times need.  Root us deeply in the stream of your life-giving love that we may produce the fruits of that love, a blessing to be shared with all that you have made through Christ our redeemer.

Amen.

* * *

Until next time,  stay faithful.

Norm

GOD IS LOVE - A Homily

 The following is the homily this blogger delivered in Christ Episcopal's Zoom worship service on January 30, 2022.

GOD IS LOVE

Those three words in some form or another is a truth expressed  in every known spiritual or theistic religion.  

As followers of Jesus, they have profound implications not only in understanding who God is, but who we are and why we are.  If God is love, then we are made in the image of love and made to love God by loving that which God loves, in the way that God loves, and the way that God loves, the very nature of God, is the subject of our reading from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians; in particular, the portion of today’s reading that defines love. 

Allow me to paraphrase and reread that portion substituting God for the word love:

“God is patient; God is kind; God is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. God does not insist on God’s own way; God is not irritable or resentful; God does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. God bears all things, has faith in all things, hopes in all things, endures all things. God never gives up.”  

What Paul is describing is the unconditional love of God, the love that Jesus portrayed as the father in his parable of the Prodigal Son, the love exemplified in every step of his redemptive ministry, the love he pronounced when forgiving those who crucified him, and the Love that raised him to new life.

This is the love we were made from and the ministry of love we are called to.

* * *   

So how are we doing?

* * *

It is good that God is patient.  In the nearly twenty-one hundred years since Paul wrote this letter, we Christians, as a whole,  continue to struggle with demonstrating God’s redeeming, unconditional love for all.  

Jesus' approach to redemption was to forgive people, to heal people, as unconditionally as he loved them.  

  

It’s unfortunate that we have been indoctrinated through these years to fall on the sword of our imperfections by pleading original sin as an excuse for failing to forgive and to love unconditionally, as Jesus did.   Sin is not original to us, just as it was not original to Jesus. Sin came to us, as it always comes to us, a temptation wrapped as an opportunity to do things our way.    This is why Jesus taught us to ask God to lead us away from temptation and the evil it causes.

What is original to us is the grace of being made in the image of God’s love, the grace which Jesus revealed to us and about us in himself.

That God does not insist on God’s own way is because God’s assessment of creation is that it is good and worthy of love, including the least of us and the worst of us.  God has faith and hope in our original goodness even when we don’t.  This is why Jesus taught us to ask that God’s will is done in our lives because it is the will of God for us to love.

The first letter of John sums this up nicely when it says:

 

“We are of God.  So let us love one another because everyone who loves, knows they are born of God and knows God.  For God is Love.”

May the revelation of God’s love in Christ Jesus enlighten and strengthen us to love.   Amen.

* * *

Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm

MYTH AND JESUS

 In the well-known hymn attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux, "O Sacred Head Now Wounded," is the following verse:    

                                                What language shall I borrow to thank thee dearest friend,

                                                 for this thy dying sorrow, thy pity without end?

                                                O make me thine forever!  And should I fainting be,

                                                Lord, let me never, never, outlive my love for thee.

This is perhaps my favorite verse in all of Christian hymnody because of its opening line, "What language shall I borrow. . ."   Indeed, what language can we use to describe something too deep for words?    

As mentioned in my previous post, we humans are physically limited in our abilities to perceive the world around us by our five senses and three-dimensional perspective and for most and for the most part they work very well in finding our way around it.  

Beyond them, however, we humans are gifted with imagination and intuition, which help us formulate our experiences as knowledge which is retained by the faculty of memory. 

Beyond that we humans have evolved a means of recording and sharing our memories through speech and language.  

Beyond that we have invented a way to preserve and systemize our language through writing. 

This evolving human journey is amazing in itself as I am reminding myself while I am siting here typing away on my laptop preparing this post electronically and will be digitally preserved in a binary code that exceeds my current understanding of how such things work.  Things we can do today, fly around the world in the matter of hours, travel into space, communicate with billions of people around the world simultaneously through picture and sound at the speed of light would have been considered nothing more than science fiction and fantasy a little more than a hundred years ago, but such fantasy, as we know today, can become reality as a result of the four "I's":  Intuition, Imagination, Intellect, and Invention. 

* * *

ALL KNOWLEDGE IS ROOTED IN MYTH

Amazing as all of that is, we still encounter things too deep to understand in simple terminology.  We have yet to find a scientific answer to the intuitive inquiry as to why anything exists and that exhausting one-word question, "Why?" that every child learns to ask as soon as he or she begins to question frequently leads impatient parents to answer with the ambiguous answer, "because."  To answer the "Why" of some things requires the use of imagination and story-telling to provide a context for understanding the question and that provide the semblance of an answer to it.  

There is one catch-all word that we humans have come up with to answer that question, a word that has no intrinsic definition of its own, a word that proceeds from the depth of human intuition about why anything exists,  a word that requires the telling of stories to make any sense of it, and a word that kindles the mythic imagination and that word is  "GOD." 

God is an imaginative mythic word that can be divided into any number of gods and goddesses.  It can be given a shape and it can transcend any shape.  Gods are generally considered immortal, all-powerful, and beyond comprehension, yet accessible through prayer.  Gods can be ambivalent, capricious, caring, involved in human affairs, and so on.  The word God is a paradox in some religious understandings; in that, it is a noun describing verb.  This is particularly the case in Abrahamic monotheism, where God is love and God is light and where it is forbidden to make a concrete image of God, where God is whatever God is at any given moment.  

Myth is a very misunderstood word and method.  It shouldn't be, but it largely is because we have been taught that myths are lies.  Let me emphatically say that myths are not lies and the reason I say that is because myths never pretend to be facts and should never be taken as such.  Myths are about something deeper than facts and they appeal to something deeper in us than cold facts, something that attempts to answer that perennial question, why?  Myths are about exposing truths that lie beneath the surface of our factual experiences.  Myths are stories that give voice to an intuitive body of knowledge that is older than recorded history, an imaginative knowledge upon which every facet of intellectual knowledge is rooted in.  Myths attempt to answer the ultimate questions as to why anything exists.  In doing so they expose us to truths about ourselves and the universe we live in that resonate within our living souls.

Science itself gives a nod to the mythic by the fact that it theorizes phenomena that are true enough to be utilized in factual ways but are, as yet, unprovable in themselves.  After all, the root word in theory is "Theo" the Greek word for god.  As such, scientific theories are mythic formulae that are true enough to be factually utilized.  In fact, some theories are so true that they are no longer considered by some to be theories.  Darwin's theory of evolution is such a theory because it so effectively explains the how, the what, the where, and the when of life on our planet emerged. The one thing it doesn't explain is the why.  That it cannot answer that question doesn't make it false.  Instead the theory of evolution has drawn us closer to the truth about ourselves and our universe than any other theory to date, making Darwin a saint in my book.

* * *

Christianity struggles with the mythic imagination, which is unfortunate because Jesus regularly employed myth in telling parables and all the Gospel writers use it to explain who Jesus is in one way or another because there is no contextual way to explain some things without its use.  An example of this is found in the mythic of all the Synoptic Gospels, the Gospel of Luke, where we find the well-known story of the Rich Man and Lazarus.  This mythic story combines the factual condition of greedy wealth of man and extreme poverty of Lazarus with the metaphorical imagery of heaven and hell to expose a truth that is not apparent by cold fact itself.  Why greed is wrong is not something that is based upon it intrinsically being so but rather it is deemed so by the rippling experience and effect that can be traced back to it, an experience that was initially expressed in myth. 

The term the Kingdom of God is a mythic term or as Jesus says in the parabolic Gospel of John, "My kingdom is not of this world," during a discussion with Pilate on the issue of truth.  The Kingdom of God, mythically speaking, lies both above and beneath the surface of the world of our making.  It cannot be grasped by human hand or seen with the physical eye. It can only be perceived and grasped by something deeper within us that is intuitively perceived and emotionally felt; perceptions and emotions that can be and are shared.  

When Jesus preached about the Kingdom of God he did not directly clarify what that meant as he did to Pilate in the Gospel of John; in part, because I believe Jesus wanted his audience to seek its presence in the present, in their daily experiences, and to that end he told them parables to engage their imagination and connect intuitively with them to see the truth of what he was saying.  One can deduce that sense of its presence in the present by the fact that when he talks about the Kingdom of God he uses the present tense, "The Kingdom of God is like...." as opposed to an anticipatory future coming, "The Kingdom of God will be like... ." In other words, we can see its presence within the world of our making, if we look for it.  "Seek the Kingdom of God and God's righteousness and all this will be added to you". - it will become apparent in our lifetimes in what you do and how you act.  

The mythic employs and resides within the parameters of our social and cultural experiences and upbringing that have been shaped myths extending back to the dawn of human experience.  In Jesus' mythic imagination and as a result of his intuitive vision,  God is his Father.  This is not surprising as Jesus was the product of a patriarchal society and upbringing. That intuitive vision shaped his understanding of his world and prompted him to question himself and the world around him.  It also opened his eyes to what the Kingdom of God meant and that God was not a self-righteous, capricious god, but a loving Father whose kindness and mercy knows no end. 

Understanding and appreciating Jesus' use of myth serves as an inspiration to those who are seeking truths beyond fact, to truths too profound for words alone, truths that can only be understood within the context of imaginative and intuitive story-telling.

Until next time, stay faithful,

Norm