After sharing my post about a call for a new system and seeing the numbers roll in quicker than they ever have for anything else I have ever written…I knew I had either struck a nerve or struck a nerve. For those that see the world the way I now see it – I struck a nerve. For those that see the world the way I used to see it – I struck a different kind of nerve.
I drew a definitive line in the sand with that post. I didn’t know it so much when I hit “publish”…I just KNEW I had to speak up or die from the fire burning inside. But now, sitting here writing this and putting my finger on the nerves that have been in the pit of my stomach the rest of the day…well now I realize that I have put myself out there, I have drawn a line, I have crossed the point of no return amongst and within my former community.
And now?
Now I see more beauty in the story of Jesus. I now FEEL the turmoil and discontent and the heartache that must have been wrestling around in his inner being when he realized the Pharisees and Sadducees just didn’t get it. When he realized that he was not just going up against a forceful Political System, but an even more powerful Religious System. When he realized the Power of this System, that the momentum of that System is not easily broken… I totally understand what he must have felt. It’s a little scary, a little intimidating…yet if he stayed quiet, if he ignored the burning in his throat to speak the Truth as the way he saw it…well, he couldn’t…he just couldn’t.
He knew the truth was Love. He knew the answer was Love. He lived that Love, he embodied that Love. When the Church of his day wouldn’t accept his message of love, he had to leave the Church of his day to express that Love the way he needed to. He had to leave his family – and to welcome in any who would be receptive to his Love…even if those were seen as despicable, unclean, unfit to be around – and even if in the end being around those women who were the best at receiving and giving the Love only added fuel to the fire. This was his new family. He had to surround himself with lowly men, men who received his message with hope and passion, with joy to know that someone didn’t think they were failures from the get-go, that could only be redeemed by doing the right thing or by paying enough money to be forgiven.
The interesting thing about all this is that just a few weeks ago I was speaking with a friend asking her if she thought is was possible to live in such a way in this day and age that it would put me in serious danger. That if I spoke loud enough about how I know I am a Daughter of God, that I know that I AM love and light, that if I expressed my views on how I see the Bible as something different than those in the Evangelical Church…if I came out speaking harsh words to the System of the Church while loving those unlovable around me and gathering a crowd of followers…what would it do? Would I be seen as a threat? One who needed to be quieted at all costs? Even the point of death in some mysterious way?
TAKE UP YOUR CROSS
Here’s my point to all this: If you really want to take up the cross that Jesus perhaps referred to…then perhaps you could take up my “cross”. Think I’m joking? I’m not….I am dead serious:
Try putting yourself in the shoes of someone like me, of someone who was once blind, then saw…and then took another look and saw something else. Of someone that was raised in a Tradition that was a predominant one for the area you lived in…and who adhered to those doctrines like they were your daily bread. You did what you could in order to serve the Tradition faithfully…you loved It and what It brought into your life. You even decided that you would follow the footsteps of the Rabbis and apply to seminary so you could further serve your Tradition.
When you were not accepted into the seminary of Rabbis to become a disciple, you return to your homestead and continue your trade knowing somehow this is an answer to prayer – even if you cannot yet see it. So you pick up your hammer and continue building your life. That is until one day you realize something about your Tradition that will forever change the direction of your life. You realize that you had been spending your time on doctrine instead of Love. So when you decide the doctrine no longer serves you nor those around you, you start to tell others about this change, excited and wanting to share the Love that is setting you freer than you could have ever imagined.
So you “preach” Love and nothing but Love…you really say nothing new (just as I once heard a rabbi talk about Jesus not really saying anything new about the Torah), you are just illuminating the Spiritual Truths that are locked into the Torah by using language in a different way than those in power would care for you to use. You use language as a tool to draw out the mind of your listeners or readers. You then realize that you cannot stay who you are and stay in that place where you have called “home” any longer because they think you are off your rocker.
Yet, this is still your tradition! You still care deeply for those in your Tradition and wish with all your heart that they would find the Love you know they so desperately need and so desperately crave. You wish with all your heart that they would stop closing themselves off ~ that instead they would let go of their tight grip on the sand and open up to ALL that Love you have found and you keep trying to share and to tell others about. How you wish that the oppression you so clearly see would be made evident to those who are still living under it. That the dogma and doctrine would be ripped away so they can see the spiritual truths that are true for ALL humans on this planet. Let s/he who has ears to hear, hear…and eyes to see to see.
The group that had been following you swells to immense numbers. That is until you have further revelations about the people following you, about the way they still don’t understand your message. But determined to bridge the gap between your mind and theirs, you try again. It fails though…and many turn off the computer, many de-friend you from Facebook, many stop talking to you all together.
You look at the band of misfits that remain, and with a bit of trembling in your voice as you think about how you might have to go this alone – which you are willing to do even though none go with you – and say, “You do not want to leave me too, do you?” The small band stays for now at least.
Yet, the more you “preach” this message, the more push back you get form the very ones you have felt led to talk with. Lines between friends and family are drawn, between Church and individuals…your message gets more and more uncomfortable for those within your Tradition to hear. You continue to use language metaphorically to make your points; you use the physical world to talk about things in the spiritual dimension. And in doing so you are calling attention to things that make most within the Tradition feel slightly – if not really – uncomfortable. They feel their tight grasp on the sand start to slip and they don’t like it.
Instead of asking themselves why they feel uncomfortable with their tight grip on sand, those within the Tradition point fingers at you…saying you are insane at best and blasphemous at worst. That it is because of your harried past and the fact that you are a female you have come to these conclusions — and therefore your conclusions have no value and must be dismissed as valid. That you are a heretic and that you will be prayed for heartedly until you repent of your heresy…and if you continue preaching your version of things – well you might not be killed directly…but they will find ways to muffle your voice. To delete your writings, to erase your podcasts, to burn your books. If you continue to make them uncomfortable enough, I am sure they would find a way to hang you on a cross or burn you at the stake or shoot a bullet through the back of your head.
Until the small band of misfits comes together again and figures out finally what you were trying to say all along…and they figure out the metaphorical meaning behind your existence and start to preach the message you lived to die for. Cautious, they wrote your story embedded in the typical myths and stories of their own day and their surrounding cultures. This would buy them some time to spread your message – one of Love that is Divinely part of everyone’s DNA.
Your memory is carried on until one day the big wigs have had enough…and they figure out a way to shut up your message: by adopting it as their own while adding their own slant on top of it. They can turn your message of love into a myth of redemptive violence and say that the way to be saved from the destruction of the internal chaos they create with their myth is to buy into their way of salvation…which they beautifully paint as words you said, but in a different context, with a different meaning. They turn your memory, your metaphorical work of salvation of one’s own soul into a scapegoat – you. This helps them control you and thus your followers, keeping people locked in a state of eternal servant, eternal commoner to the Master…which was never you…but the System. By using your own words against you, they swallow up the true work of your life in such a way that it will take many attempts, many more deaths and thousands of years to undo.
Why has the story of Jesus survived as it has?
How many times has this story been repeated since Hierarchy in the form of Patriarchy took over the world? How many more times will it repeat itself until we say enough is enough?
I do not have answers to these questions, but my guess is “a lot”…
I do not have answers to these questions, but I have never understood Jesus’ words more than I do with each passing day.
I do not have answers to these questions, but I know the answer for me is to divorce the Church and its God of power and control to be Christ, to be Love as I AM.
