1.28.2006
My creative life has been extremely stagnant with my back injury. I am starting to finally see some improvement after eight months of constant pain that was not getting any better. With a let-up in the pain has come a small trickle of ideas and a desire to write again.
I have been writing some very short scenes that I see in my head as I have studied the Bible. I have been reading the Bible a lot over the past eight months. It is what is inspiring me these days. It is what I want to write about.
I know that most of you who read this blog hate Christianity. So many people do now as our country gets more and more polarized. But maybe what you hate is actually the current administration's insistence on breaking the very necessary rule of seperation of church and state, their seeming determination to create a fundamentalist Christian theocracy, and the "religious right's" interpretation of Christianity, if you will. Or perhaps you were raised in a church that focused only on what a filthy sinner you are and crushed you with guilt every Sunday. At times, I think that in the minds of many people in this nation, Christianity gives them a perceived right to be bigotted, close-minded, and full of hate, judgement, intolerance, and war in the name of Jesus.
However, from what I have studied and read in the Bible and in Christ's actual words, there was no one more progressive in His thinking. He was the first and the true progressive, who spoke out against the establishment of strict rule and law, urged people to stop focusing on the law and love each other, to forgive each other, to not shore up treasures on the earth, and to give to the poor, and to love Him. He said that true religion is not speaking loudly about what you believe. True religion is taking care of "the widowed and the orphaned".
That is how I can be to the extreme far left of the political spectrum and still follow Jesus with all of my being. Contrary to what today's most vocal Christian groups bellow, Christianity has at its base, a bleeding heart.
I put these scenes on my blog not to try and change anyone's mind about religion. I put them up here because I believe that the words and the imagery from the Bible are beautiful, and I feel inspired by them. So read with a mind open to the words without feeling any aggression or judgement or insistence that my way is the only way that's right.
my brain's vision of John 5:1-18
There was a pool near the sheep gate. Lame and sick people would lie there, staring at the water, waiting for it to stir. It was believed to be moved by the spirit. It took away disease. The very lame could not get up to dunk themselves in , and everyone else would run to the water, and there they would be, just watching.
Jesus asked a man lying there on his mat, "Do you want to be made well?" The air was still and sandy, the man's lips dry and cracked. The water stood still and was the color of an aquamarine. A fly landed on the man's knee as the pool began to stir.
The crowd stepped over the lame man. A woman's skirt dragged over his shin. Jesus stared at the lame man as he rubbed his emaciated thigh. "Do you want to be made well?" The man sniffed, visibly attempted to gain his composure as a tear escaped from his eye. He answered, "I can't get to the pool in time."
Jesus said to him, "Stand up, take your mat, and walk." The man looked at Jesus, feeling as though he were being cruel. A long, hot moment passed. There were zealous shouts coming from the pool. The lame man bent one knee. He bent the other knee and rolled onto his side. He pushed on the sandy ground with his hands, and his body came up to sitting, the vertabrae cracked into place, the spasms ceased, the muscles lengthened, his spine straightened without pain for the first time in years. Blood pumped where it had before only dripped, flushing out the layers of grit and the hot, burning fluid that had collected near his spine. Necrotic black tissue became pink.
He stood, cautiously, testing, listening, waiting, for the crippling pain that never did come. He looked at Jesus, but He was gone. The man was surrounded by the crowd of moving bodies, waiting for the next stirring of the pool's waters. The lame man took up his mat. And he walked.
This is what I see in my head as I read the beautiful words of Hebrews 10:11-25:
The tired priest stood over the fire, sacrificing again the same doves, the same bull as yesterday. He took the goat from the farmer and tried not to look too long into his eyes full of desperation. The eyes that pleaded with the priest to cleanse him once and for all of his terrilbe crime. The priest sighed, stared into the pit of fire with its charred bodies of animals; the smoke watered his eyes and rimmed them with red. He was powerless to take away their sins. He turned around to receive the lamb from the next in line.
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Christ materialized in the distance, walking toward His father's throne. All the company of heaven sang praises, two angels tended to His wounds, wrapped Him in a robe. He slowly approached His father, and "He sat down at the right hand of God," "perfecting for all time those who are sanctified". With a single offering of His own body and blood, He had done what no priest could ever do.
The Holy Spirit spoke to the realms, both heavenly and earthly. He spoke as a wind blowing through willow trees, "This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days: I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds, I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more."
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The priest extinguished the fires and took the dove from the tax collector and set it free. "Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin."
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