A walk in the dark
Saturday, May 23rd, 2009 | LIFE
The Maiko – In a social style that is common in Japan, men are amused by the illusion of that which is never to be…
I’m not sure if every jaunt down memory lane is like walking in the dark. As long as the moon is out, it’s all good. My eyes adjust and I can find my way back. Of course, sometimes the path taken to revisit leads to a different way home. I am sometimes truly enthralled with the human psyche. Aren’t you?
Ah the moon – the inconstant moon. There’s a Shakespearean line for everything. If God didn’t put in in the Bible, Bill put it in one of his plays or sonnets. I remember taking my Shakespearean Quotations test in the incomparable BOB – BOB BRITTON’s class. There was a line after every quote where we were to write the answer to “WHO SAID.” Ideally I wold have written the names of characters from various plays that I was supposed to be studying. I wrote either GOD or SHAKESPEARE. And yes, I did pass that test. Talk about feeling my way through the dark. Yes, Bob, I live heah.
The past is an interesting animal. I somehow have managed to refuse to be victim to it. For those of you who know me who actually read this – stop laughing. I still suffer self pity at times, but I make sure to truly indulge when I do. I roll in it. I wallow in it. I am a veritable pig in shit.
I do not believe for a moment that God “tests” us or puts us “through” something in order to fulfill some higher purpose or plan. In XTian terms… wasn’t that why there was a certain young man who was hung up on a tree? God created us perfect. God created us to tend His garden and be fruitful and then multiply. God created us a little less than gods. Don’t you know that we will judge angels? What the hell is the point of putting someone in a highly dysfunctional family? We’re judging angels – not the trailor park.
We do what we do to ourselves and each other. That’s just the way it is outside of the garden. Hell, that’s exactly how it was IN the garden, otherwise we would still be walking around naked and unashamed. It’s that reaction to these things that’s the kicker. Remember when Jesus totally confounded Pilate with His silence? And Jesus was summarily lead to slaughter. Do you suppose there was part of the man who didn’t say anything because… well… what good what it have done? I understand the whole religious dogma that it was “His time” and that He fell silent to fulfill the prophecy. But… He was human. In being silent and doing “God’s Will” He threw up his hands and basically said, “Why bother.” I mean, no one was really listening to Him up to that point anyway…
Jesus was without sin. I do not believe that. He came here to restore relationship between God and Humanity. In order to come Earthward and BE our ransom, He had to enter the same legal way we did. And He did. All men are born into sin… are they not?How relatable is a superhuman perfect Jesus? He was tempted. Just like me.
Superman. We’ve made Him a comic book character.
What He did as a human being is what made him so… AWESOME. What he DID with what He was given…
So there He was – on trial and being passed around more like an inconvenience than a person – bought for 30 pieces of silver. That was the cost of a male slave back then. And legend has it that He could have opened His mouth at anytime and stopped it all. He was the son of God, after all.
I wonder if after Gethsemene (where he was sweating blood, mind you) – if He was just so physically, emotionally and spiritually spent that He had white noise in the head. Maybe the only words going through his mind were the Aramaic equivalent to, “Crap. Let’s just get this over with.” Although the son of God probably wouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition.
He just sat there. He didn’t say a word. What a price was paid for that. The shedding of innocent blood. That does mean something to some of us.
All because the cost of sin is a human life. Worth 30 pieces of silver – or the cost of a medical precedure.
