petard.us

First and foremost, let me apologize for the F word. I keep forgetting that there are many who still find it offensive., not part of the daily discourse they hear. Margaret, you example is apt. Mindf-inf to me comes from the psychedelic culture. certain persons, whther malevolent or prayful, would lay out discourses that would so confuse people that they would begin to feel a bad trip. Often it was insoluble paradoxes such as Jesus gave. I have lately been looking at the hard parts of the gospel. Jesus meek and mild has mostly disappeared from my ken. And I am also looking at our practice. Quite a whole back I began to hear “Fairest Lord Jesus” as quite racist. for instance. And I saw Martha, in asking Jesus to tell Mary to get off her duff and help with dinner, as attempting to triangulate Jesus. Which he avoids but providing Martha a lesson in what really counts. Mary is not fulfilling here role as a Jewish woman. She is not in the kitchen, she is doing what a man does, seeking teaching from the Rabbi. Jesus rebukes Martha, hard to tell how gently at this distance.

To the question about paying taxes, he equivocates beautifully. After all, what do we owe to Caesar. Caesar is more glad to tell us in great detail. But what do we really owe to God. In another place he says, You have Moses and the prophets. What do they say about Caesar, meaning the Kings of Israel and Judah in the case of the prophets. Jesus is a social disruptot. He ignores the rules, about Sabbath, about kashruth, about defilement, about the foregivemess of sin. He breaks all these for the benefit of an actual human being right in front of him. He is a major breaker of boundaries. He ignores the safe and sane social structure, rules and regulations, customs and mores. And he does it for real people in real situations. It is this sort of behavior that I attempted to name with my Fword vulgarity.

Last first, first last and its ilk is a primary example. It speaks to a complete reversal of all social norms. My response is that it is radically equalizing. It dumps all our porestige, it dumps all out levels of society, it dumps all our hieirarchies. It put us all on the same plane with one another. It negates our whole system of life based on being one-up, or one-down relative to another.

There is a Hebrew word for this state of affairs, shalom.

So why would anymore have ever followed such a disruptor of our lives? because following confers the real life, the one God intended us for from our creation, new life, fuller life, life that is real based on on convention but our mutual love of each other as neighbor.

And finally, because Jesus is God in human form form, living out the God-life in our midst, showing us the true Torah, the way to live fully in accord with the Creation of God, how to conform ourselves to that Creation as fully as we can.

I was seeing the mind-f as a teaching device, I was coming to a new understanding in a flkash of insight. and I rushed ahead breifly, too briefly, to pass it on. Sorry about that. Haste makes more than waste.

Now how the heck do we go about following this man-God through our world of class, race, and gender, through all the rules and regulations that compel us in our life of work and life-management?

Thank you for challenging me to think this through considerably further. And now letting lob this back into all your courts.  😉

The last shall be first and the first last. And similar
sayings. Paradoxical, but more. Like a Zen Koan, to be
chewed on and chewed on but remaining impossible. It’s a
sort of double bind. Where do I stand? Where do you stand?
Nowhere and in nothing. The solution of the koan, the
resolution of the paradox must be that there is not last
and first, that rank and prestige are abolished, that the
bonds that bind us to them are loosed, the yoke made easy
and the burden light. In christ there is no east or west,
etc. Oh freedom, Oh Freedom. No more hieirarchy over me,
over me. Life, real life, life abundant. Hallelujah.

I just answered the phone and heard, “Buenas tardes.” I replied, “Lo siento pero no hablo Espanol.” How weird!