Morning Meeting

        for my friend K.N.M.

 

Standing in the cool morning air,
in consideration of self and solitude,
a sudden joyous flutter distracts;
another self’s beating wings brush by,
for there will be sweet nectar
to imbibe in the bye and bye,
but first, a turn and a level gaze.

 

So pointed a greeting,
subject to subject 
—for we are each subjects
within a realm, a paradise,
sharing a language of wonder
whose name we cannot know,
but by all reckoning must be Life.

 

This shared gaze opens a window,
through which the bumblebee flies,
casting us only a sidelong glance;
engagement would only tarry
the work of bud embracing
on which all creation depends,
so to our tête-à-tête we are left.  

 

This wordless meeting draws me
to recall a nearly forgotten music,

a tune perhaps heard by us both, 
even if only in such waves and echoes 
as still radiate from the first such encounter,
which might well live on in fluid eddies
as the song of eternal return.

 

This mutual gaze cannot last,

for this, our singular moment, it must end;
this language we live
cannot abide the invariable:
all moments must transcend,
capitulating to the music and meter of next,
to the changing changeable.

 

We know one another only by sight,
and to that degree, perhaps not at all,
but the blessing that we have delighted,
to look and to see, with equal curiosity,
sharing the light of the same sun,
must have changed us, in ways we’ll surely discover
within the cocoons of our solitary dreaming.

 

© 2020 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

 

Dividing Division

Once to ev'ry man and nation comes the moment to decide,


In the strife of truth and falsehood, for the good or evil side;


Some great cause, some great decision, off'ring each the bloom or blight, 


And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.

~ James Russell Lowell

Within the past week, I was reminded of this text by my friend Suzanne, who said of it “If we get beyond the obvious sexist language, there is a pointed message for every believer, a call to social decision and activism, even if our efforts do not end well. It is a powerful, discomforting hymn, and seems very apt for this moment.” A few days later, this same friend made the following observation: “Some of my Christian friends believe that Christianity is under attack. It is. From itself.”

Humanity, in general, and the United States particularly, has not been in such upheaval since the H1N1 pandemic of 1917-19, which was on the heels of WWI. The uncoordinated response of our civic leaders in the United States could be addressed here, but that is part of a larger discussion I’ll save for another time. What I find profoundly disturbing is the poor example set by mainstream christian church leaders, particularly of the mega-church variety, in how to address the pandemic – to the point, pastors seem to prefer large maskless, in-person crowds, rather than the safer live-stream or even pre-recorded services.

When some congregants are challenged with regard to going about maskless, they claim this is self-determined choice made “in faith,” adhering to “the will of God.” Pastor Tony Spell, of Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, LA, was quoted in the Washington Post as saying “We feel we are being persecuted for the faith by being told to close our doors.” I’ve seen posts on Facebook – and have actually heard regular church-going people say in public – that being forced to wear a mask is (1) an act of “faithlessness”, (2) “surrendering to fear” and (2) “an assault on my constitutional rights.” In a letter to the editor of a newspaper, one writer declared, “If we fall in love with Jesus, God will heal our land.” 

Interestingly, citizens of the United States wrestled with these same issues during that H1N1 pandemic of one hundred years ago. Unfortunately, average citizens of the nation today don’t seem to have learned much in a hundred years about how to deal with the threat of viruses, despite all of our scientific advances. But, what seems worse is that great masses of citizens have not learned, in all that time, that self-determination and secular freedom cannot overrule public health orders, and neither can they overcome a virus. A virus is not an idea. You can’t argue with a virus. A virus is not a terrorist plot. A virus has no religion. If faith was indeed the medicine needed to eradicate the threat, I feel sure that the virus would have been eradicated in an instant, or maybe never have presented, at all. That the virus is still rampant means that people need to engage whatever critical thinking ability they might have, look for real solutions, follow advice from epidemiologists and act responsibly in public settings. A virus is not a political tool, but the presence of this one is certainly being used to polarize the masses, to profit from suffering, and to sow doubt and fear. 

The attitudes recently displayed in my greater community, the disdain for rules imposed on the religious and non-religious alike, have made me think long and hard about my dealings with the general public and my understanding of my faith, and how frequently my understanding seems at odds with what I see acted out in public, particularly by those who identify as faithful christians. In the past few weeks, I've realized that I have thought on these matters much over the years.

I think it started in the 1970s when, as a youth, I remember being disturbed when I noticed Ichthys (fish) signs appearing in the windows of businesses in the town where I lived. Even as a naive youth, I felt there was something off, something fundamentally wrong with this. The signs seemed to telegraph the message, “we cater to Christians.” This seemed to me to go completely against the teaching of Jesus, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” This seemed to me to go completely against the teaching of Paul from Galatians 3, where he says “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Time has marched on since then. Today, it sometimes seems to me that the greater mainstream modern christian mission is intent on a type of control that is anything but reflective of that fruit of the spirit, listed in Galatians 5, self-control. The mission is now about mass control of the public and the marketplaces, dictating what people can be and do, as well as what they can't. Those christians that engage in exercising this control at the political level are using secular freedoms and contortions of the law as tools to accomplish these goals. Such goals have nothing to do with being responsible, honoring freedom, human rights, individual personhood or – do I have to say it? – with honoring God. These goals have been lobbied long and hard the halls of our local municipalities and state capitols, and now they seem to have been installed at the very pinnacle of our government, through a figurehead who is anything but godly. 

A political minority is now in the process of reversing decades of modern human progress. Biblical scriptures are being used to return America to the way it was a hundred years ago or more, to deepen systemic racism and implicit bias, to allow the “free” market to tell us what we need (and deliver it at the highest cost to any people on the face of the earth), to dictate what people can do with their bodies (without offering public support for the policies imposed), to tell people how they must define their personhood, and at times suspending their rights. Scripture is being used to divide and rule. People are being told on the one hand that their lives are self-determined (via their Constitutional rights) and on the other that they must live by faith (via their religion). That “results may vary” is beside the point; if you don’t succeed, it’s surely because you lack faith or don’t work hard enough. 

But it is patently incorrect that the church universal is a “by faith only” institution. For one thing, the exercise of religion by faith alone is fatalistic, is it not? Declaring all circumstances and situations to be “God’s will” is asserting that results (good or bad) are inevitable. This is not what scripture is intended to teach; if this were the case, we might as well bury our heads in the sand and give up. But if Jesus taught anything, it is that we must never give up, especially not in the face of hardship. 

All that I have said above is merely a prelude for what I will do next, which is to unpack a portion of Mathew, Chapter 10, from my understanding of it. [And I apologize if it seems like I am leaping around; but all that is written in this essay seems related and cohesive to me.] In this section of Matthew, Jesus has empowered the disciples to heal and has commissioned them to go, first, into the Jewish communities to preach and heal. They have been told not take anything with them, to seek the hospitality only of those willing to offer it. Jesus tells them to use their judgment and inner wisdom in their encounters. Then he says, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword,” and then he enumerates a list of “divisions.”

Of all the passages in this complex gospel, I have considered this one much over the years. For a long time, I thought this uncharacteristic of Jesus. But over time I have come to a different way of thinking. What has Jesus been preaching, since Chapter 4? “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” For Jesus, the kingdom of God is here, but people are not living it—for myriad reasons, but primarily because their hearts and vision are not properly aligned with a few vital truths. Predominant among these truths is that social equity is mandated within the kingdom; no one is better than anyone else, or worse—unless they act in a way that does not respect the rule of law and the individual. 

When Jesus talks about dividing people from family or other groups, I’m fairly certain he is talking about separating people from ways of thinking and understanding that have been promulgated by custom and culture, ways of being that are rote, formulaic, even work-around rather than genuine, practical or direct. What specific results of this cleaving are possible? I believe the cleaving intended to separate people from ideas of caste and class, wealth and poverty, strength and weakness, so that individuals are understood based on who they are and how they act, rather than based on an assigned label, to be treated formulaically according to some custom or rule. 

The first time we hear “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” it is delivered (in Chapter 3) by John the Baptist. John’s message is no less violent than when Jesus talks about bringing a sword, but the resulting message is the same. “Bring forth fruit worthy of repentance.. Even now the axe is laid on the root of the trees; therefore, every tree which does not bring forth good fruit will be cast into the fire.”

After years of thinking about these passages, the meaning that they hold for me now seems so uncomplicated. John and Jesus sought to divide us from the delusion of division.

To divide us from divisions, what could that mean? Well, I think that is about making us whole, healing us for the work of the kingdom. What is kingdom of God like in such a case? It is a place – even a political system – where everyone has personhood, place, and role, where every challenge and need is appropriately met, at a shared cost. As Martin Buber wrote in I and Thou , “All real living is meeting.”

And so, I return to the sentiments expressed by James Russell Lowell, from whose longer poem, entitled “Verses Suggested by the Present Crisis” (published in the Boston Courier on December 11, 1845) the hymn text quoted above is derived. A later verse proclaims:

We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great,


Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate,


But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din,


List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,

—
"They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin."

 And still later in the poem:

They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires,

Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's new-lit altar-fires;

Shall we make their creed our jailor?  Shall we, in our haste to slay,

From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away

To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of today?

And with these thoughts, I conclude by proclaiming that the sword continues to be wielded, “the soul is still oracular,” and “the kingdom is at hand.”  I hope that mainstream christianity will find its way out of the wilderness it has created for itself and for all of us.

I personally believe that every moment is alive for new and thoughtful choices, always ready for healthy repentance and renewal, if one will allow oneself to be divided from division.

But, please, do not be divided from your facemask, at least until the pestilence is gone.

© 2020 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

Foresight 20/20; A Commencement Address for our Graduates

Parents, Friends and Neighbors, we stand here today to honor our 2020 graduates. 

It cannot go without saying that 2020 has been a strange year. I don’t think any of us was, nor could have been, prepared for the sudden arrival of a pandemic. Our lives have been turned upside-down. The norms and expectations of everything, including and particularly celebration, have been curtailed. The globalized economy has collapsed like a house of cards, and the highest levels of leadership have proven themselves to be insubstantial, even unfit, but certainly unready to meet such a crisis where it needs to be met – often treating this environment as though human needs are not an integral part of it.

Suddenly everything came to a halt, and we were mainly limited to being at home, really only going out for essential procurements or essential work. It doesn’t take long for people, so used to social commerce, to become bored, isolated, sad. On March 18^th, I awoke from a dream and these words lingered from it, so I wrote them down and gave them a title: 

Together, Alone

We hike along a way
we’d usually share abreast,
but right now, we each move
together, alone.

The distance is forced and,
as two pendulums in motion would,
we try to match our steps,
try to meet in mind,
mindful of the gap.

A contagion we can’t see
threatens to separate us;
to divide and conquer
by means of infection
is the metaphor of this age.

This disease might save us,
if we could embrace a truth
writ large by the threat:
we live webs of intersections;
as we go, it is together, all one.

© 2020 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

A year of promise begun in the Fall got the wind sucked out it in February and March. To borrow a book title from Judith Viorst, for many students this has been a “Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad” year. It is of little consolation that a year such as this is not unprecedented in the history of our nation and our world.

In 1918, the world, already in the grips of World War I for a full year, was hit by an avian H1N1 virus that came to be known as the Spanish Flu. Troop movement is thought to have been the primary means of spreading this virus, and there were three primary waves of infection. Then, as now, public heath officials recommended the wearing of masks, proximal distancing, and quarantine as the primary methods by which to slow the spread of the disease and allow it to play itself out. 

In his commencement address to the 1918 graduating class of the University of Indiana, Mr. Rough and Ready, Theodore Roosevelt, nine years out of office as our 26^thPresident, said:

We need institutions of technical teaching, of technical learning in the country; but in my judgment, we need more the institutions that teach broad, cultural development, which this nation needs more than it needs anything else. We need the kind of learning acquired not because it can be turned into money but because it is worth so much more than money.

Let [each person] remember that no nation ever yet amounted to anything or ever will amount to anything if it consisted simply of money-getters, and if the trophies and proofs of its success consisted merely in the symbols of successful money-getting. The money must be there as a basis, but by no means as broad a basis as most of the very successful… among us have made it in their lives. [Money] is only [a] foundation, and the foundation is worthless unless upon it you build the super-structure of the higher life, the life with ideals of beauty, of nobility, of achievement of good for the sake of doing what is good, the life of service and sacrifice in any one of a hundred lines, all directed toward the welfare of our common country.

I hope it isn’t trite to say that though this year has been tough, we’ve all learned that doing good, in the simple way Roosevelt defined it, is something that can be done by going to work or school, or even by staying at home—doing the best we can, whatever any specific circumstances demand. We’ve seen what works, and what doesn’t work has been unmasked– as façade or out and out fraud – for all to see, if they are willing. We’ve learned that “Being together, all one” is part of our social contract, an act of cooperation we agree to do as a group even if we are self-isolating.

--

That you have arrived at this day is not, per se, a miracle. You’ve been nurtured and encouraged by parents, grandparents, neighbors, teachers and coaches, ever since the day you were born. But that you have arrived at this milestone is an accomplishment—your accomplishment, a result of your hard work. Even, sometimes, boredom, contributes to growth, being the parent of invention.

You’ve spent so much of your life in school but, let me just say, school’s not over, yet – life is what some would call “Continuing Education.” I’m sure you’ve survived any number of “group projects”, during your time in Middle and High School, even College. When asked why students thought they were being given such assignments, at least 85% percent respond, “In order to lower my GPA.” As hated as these exercises are, there is a point to them; they are short experiments in the realities of cooperation. In these “controlled” experiments, the group you end up with must work together to produce a result. You get to choose who you hang out with at lunch and after school, but you mostly never get to choose who is going to be working with you on such assignments nor in any job setting. You and several or a bunch of others are thrown together to solve a problem and deliver a report or a product. Some members of the group have skills; some can organize, some are smart but flaky, while others might be excellent at avoidance all together. You have to find someone willing to take the thankless lead, and then together you have to plan meetings, benchmarks and goals, and each person has to agree to Do Their Part. This is nothing less than a social contract. Sometimes the results aren’t that great, but you can breathe a sigh of relief when your presentation is over, even if you were up until 2am making the PowerPoint presentation because you had to wait for one of your partners to email the data and another partner to email the text. This is a microcosm of real life; we all muddle along just like this, and every such experience offers an opportunity to observe people, and this contributes to your developing critical thought process. One thing you learn is that even people with the best of plans encounter issues that can cause them to change course. If there’s one rule of thumb you can live by, it’s this: Everything takes four times longer to accomplish than you think it should, from simple chores on up. And yet, there is art and grace to be found in all of this, and joy.

Perhaps, during our shelter-in-place, in our quiet meditations, we have made some important observations. Perhaps we’ve been able to breathe cleaner air. Perhaps we have been able to actually hear the birds singing without the continuous hum of traffic and construction to dampen their songs. Perhaps we have been able to see the moon and stars more clearly at night. Perhaps we have discovered – and maybe to our surprise – that a lifestyle of rushing around and being artificially busy is not required in order to live fully and productively. Perhaps we have thought about how much energy – personal energy, as well as resource energy – is wasted when everything and everyone is constantly turned on and in motion. Perhaps we have concerned ourselves with how isolation might be impacting others, because we know how deeply it has impacted us. Perhaps we have observed that all are not treated equally or based on truly demonstrated merit. Perhaps we’ve finally heard and identified divisive rhetoric and platitudes, and been upset by them. Perhaps, in thinking about all these things, we have thought of solutions to certain problems. 

What ideas have you had during this time that you think are worthy to pursue? Ideas that can help us do more than just muddle along? Such ideas are the capital on which every former society has been, and any newer society, can be built. 

In the words of a Fleetwood Mac song from my generation:

Don't stop thinking about tomorrow
Don't stop, it'll soon be here
It'll be, better than before
Yesterday's gone, yesterday's gone

Right now, we are still in a bit of a holding pattern, waiting for the pandemic threat to be “yesterday,” and some of us marching to demand greater social justice. As difficult as it is to be missing out on shared celebrations with your peers, I hope you realize that you are experiencing history first-hand, and that this moment is but a spring-board to the next phase of yours and all our lives. You are on the ground floor, and everything goes up from here. In the parlance of business, disruption is the fertile ground for innovation. Carpe diem, seize the day! This historic moment contains the seeds of opportunity that you and all your classmates can cultivate toward holistic and positive change so desperately needed in our world, changes that don’t treat humanity as if it is detached from the environment or subservient to money, changes that honor individual personhood. 

As we slowly return to a “new normal,” I hope that you will be able to safely rejoin your classmates and extended family in celebration of your collective achievements, and that those celebrations will be all the more fully experienced and cherished because of the crisis we have lived through. 

In the meanwhile, we congratulate you and the entire Class of 2020, and hope that the springboard of current events will catapult all of you to success in the fields of your choice, with the best wishes and continued support of all of us. We are confident that you and your generation have and will further develop and employ critical discernment, and with it the capacity to concentrate on those issues pertinent to the “common good,” and we have high hopes that every new construct you have imagined can be realized to make the world “better than before,” where each person has a place and a vital role. You have heard the phrase, “20/20 hindsight” – it is our hope that you and everyone in your generation will look on the year 2020 as a challenge to look ahead, to make leaps forward and to lead, leveraging your knowledge of the past and, now, new perspective and energy toward building a better, safer, more loving world for us all, a world with just a touch of 20/20 foresight.

Best to you always, 

Elisabeth Eliassen
your neighbor and fellow citizen

© 2020 by Elisabeth Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

This address is for all students who were unable to partake of a commencement gathering with their fellow students and families. I wrote this specifically for a young man, a neighbor, who grew up with my kids. I want all our graduates know that they are special and that they live in a special time, and that they can shape the world. I pulled out the more personal comments directed toward our young friend, but the message is the same for all.

Covid Pentacost

Grief walks the streets, masked.
Isolation is summer’s undesired shield
from the hum of bees,
of birdsongs,
of joy.

Help me—oh mama!
I cannot breathe!
Bye-bye!

Injustice walks the streets, armed.
Legal structures and strictures shield
ideologies of subjugation;
they rule with impunity,
sparking outrage.

Help me—oh mama!
I cannot breathe!
Bye-bye!

A virus propelled by breath runs unabated.
Much needed conversation is stifled
—not to mention song,
medicine the spirit
longs to feel.

Help me—oh mama!
I cannot breathe!
Bye-bye!

Gather, all ye in the village squares,
mourn that capture by all such restraints
as leads to the stifling of breath,
sending, untimely, more men of color
to meet Jesus in Paradise.

Help me—oh mama!
I cannot breathe!
Bye-bye!

Fire beetles, light the night,
signal the elusive dove to morning flight,
and when comes here the sun,
rain upon us a fire for righteousness.

Transform these hearts of stone
into the living hearts of compassion;
Make us to speak only justice,
to understand the language of love and no other.

Let not the riotous soul go unheard,
that stands by with help for all humanity;
strengthen us to bring comfort and blessing
to every neighbor, in these times of trial. Selah!

© 2020 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

We live in dangerous times. People who should be leaders are fomenting unrest for political gain. Innocent people are caught in the crossfire. Some sworn members of that profession intended to “protect and serve” abuse their power.

I am reminded of Ezekiel, Chapter 7, a description known as “The End Has Come.” At the very end is this line:

“I will deal with them according to their conduct,
and by their own standards will I judge them.”

As bleak as this seems, there is much to hope for. There are good and compassionate and loving people in every place.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said:

“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”

Love truly is the answer, and the only one.

This is It: Commentary on Episodes 1 through 4

The average reader of that corpus of literature Christians call the New Testament don’t realize that John the Baptist was as powerful a figure as Jesus. John and Jesus were the charismatic leaders of parallel movements, each drawing very large followings. It is possible that John’s movement had more followers than that of Jesus. 

For the sake of my rendering of gospel narrative, I allow the conceit that the two are “cousins,” according to infancy stories in Luke.

Seen through a modern lens, John’s wild appearance and messianic preaching suggest someone on the spectrum. His ministry, from what we know of it, is centered in repentance and renewal as preparatory to the arrival of the kingdom and a final judgment: “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” (Matthew 3:2) John’s sacrament was for the remission of sins, but more than that, it was a personal self-healing, a confession, a turning back to the holy one, a rebirth to new ways.

Jesus accepted the sacrament, and then made it integral to his own movement. 

What leaps out to me from the scriptures is that each man points to the other and asks, Are you the one? And by that, each one means Elijah, returned. 

Another interesting thing that leaps out to me is that there was never a suggestion that the parallel movements merge. John went his way and Jesus went in another direction. 

I find it possible—and this is pure speculation—that officials might have been concerned that the movements might merge, particularly because the texts suggest that the two groups maintained contact. Already, the great throngs of people who could be swayed by preaching presented a threat of uprising; a broader coalition of the disenfranchised would have raised the level of such a threat. 

The great difference between John’s ministry and that of Jesus is that only John could administer the sacrament. So, the movement would have died whenever John died. Executing him while he was in prison—and any excuse would have done—was an effective and quick way to destroy his movement and disband his crowds.

By contrast, Jesus gathered a group of willing disciples—a move that I can only think was strategic. He put the sacrament of baptism front and center in his own movement, but he empowered his disciples to offer it, as well as to perform healing. This ensured that the legacy of John would live on, and also made this movement an official target, once John’s movement was ended.

An additional similarity between the thought of John and Jesus has to do with trees bearing fruit. Trees and fruit are metaphors, I believe, for physical and spiritual self-care; how well we tend to ourselves is reflected in the mental choices we make and physical actions we take in the world. How do we tend the tree of our soul? The tree that is not well tended will bear rotten fruit or, worse, no fruit, at all. The ministries of John and Jesus make it plain that such a tree is only useful as fuel for the fire.

© 2020 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

Read them again:

https://songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com/2020/03/this-is-it-episode-1-at-river.html

https://songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com/2020/03/this-is-it-episode-2-who-are-you.html

https://songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com/2020/03/this-is-it-episode-3-finding-purpose.html

https://songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com/2020/03/this-is-it-episode-4-blessing.html

This is It - Preface

I realize it will seem strange that this preface is appearing after all the episodes have appeared in my blog, but there it is…

I embarked on this project during lent of 2020 with a specific personal goal in mind. I want to reclaim, for myself, the personof Jesus, a human exemplar. Jesus is but one among a pantheon of what Joseph Campbell called “The Hero with a Thousand Faces,” heroes who were elevated to the level of divinity after their deaths.

I know some people will be offended when I suggest that many people call themselves Christian without embracing the actual moral code Jesus taught, a moral code with deep roots in the Torah,brought forth in perhaps a new context for new generations. In the time that he lived, the sect that Jesus taught was one among many, many sects, just as today we see many parallel and competing denominations of every extant religion. That being said, there is no single way to view the teachings of Jesus, any more than there is a single way to view the teachings of Buddha, Zarathustra, Mohammed or any other exemplar. 

Humanity is tearing itself apart in the competition to define and impose a definitive construct, mainly in the name of controlling the masses, at the expense of freedom of personal expression. As I have read it, in scripture and commentary, Jesus himself decried the imposition of orthodoxy, in the main because people fall into habits and practices that are rote and formulaic, if not “magical”, and that these often lack spiritual intent and purpose, and fail to bear fruit. 

The canonical and non-canonical writings that are available to us do not completely reveal what took place in the life story of Jesus, and when it gets right to brass tacks, we’ll never know.

I suspect, but experts will have a different opinion, that Jesus was a follower of John, who took up his own ministry, maybe providing a refuge for John’s followers after his murder, bringing forward his own observations and voice about godliness. 

I suspect, but experts will have a different opinion, that all the gospel narratives we have were constructed with the use of one or more sayings collections, in the typical style of Greco-Roman biography of the time. It has always struck me that, for example, the canonical gospel of Matthew tries and fails to be a well-constructed work of literature because the author(s) tried to cram in too many parables; the ordering of them seems sometimes inconsistent within a somewhat forced storyline, and the transitions are awkward in many places. I used Matthew as a framework for my own version and tried to construct a consistent story by means of episodes.

Since the death and martyrdom and elevation Jesus as Messiah, the focus of the church universal tends to focus on Jesus as the lamb of God, sacrificed to be an offering for all the sins of humanity; as such, much of lived Christian theology puts the work of creating a just world on the Godhead, rather than on the people. This is a failing and, I think, a grave misreading, one that turns the gospels and really all of Judeo-Christian literature on its head. What is the point of the Bible, if not to encourage and insistthat people do God’s work of tending and caring for the world and everything in it. Too often, faithseems to mean that God does all the work of caring for the world while simultaneously forgiving people for a never-ending stream of sinfulness! The newspapers and the television are full of the sort of ungodly corruption that Jesus saw—much of it perpetrated by people at the top of government and religious hierarchy, who are seldom called to account or repair—against which we are seemingly powerless now, as then. 

“Thought, word and deed” is not and can never be replaced by the “thoughts and prayers” that abdicate from the servant leadership that Jesus advocated and seem suggest that we all just sit around as willing victims—waiting for the next world to come without doing anything of substance to bring the world we have in the here and now to a better place. I struggle with the notion that faith is all we need in our toolbox—I don’t think that is what Jesus meant for us to understand. It is all work; there are no shortcuts.

For me, the teachings of Jesus are meant to place accountability on each individual for their choice of actions. If people miss the mark, they can repent and be forgiven—but forgiveness is not a given. The overarching call is for people to do the right thing for the benefit of others (and self) in any moment, even if that means going against the framework of temporal legal standards. I think that Jesus was empowering people to make the kinds of “greater good” choices everyday that we expect our governments to make. Sadly, the pandemic we are living through has shown that we all, each and everyone, must make “greater good” choices because government has been carved out and caved in to serve mammon rather than serve people. 

I will probably tweak my gospel’s construct, as well as write commentary on it. Owing to the time I had available, there are bits I did not include, such as the Widow’s Mite and the Good Samaritan, which I would like to add. 

I do not take my effort to be anything but a personal practice, meant to challenge my own perceptions of what it is to be a follower of Jesus. 

Alameda, California

12 April 2020 

© 2020 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

This is It - Episode 17: Dawn on the Third Day

As Sunday dawned, Mary Magdalen and Mary of Bethany and Salome came to the tomb with perfumes and spices, so they could take the body to be embalmed. They were waiting for someone else to come, as they needed help to move the stone from over the tomb. 

But an aftershock, from the earthquake of the day before, shook the earth and knocked over the stone.

They crept inside the tomb, slowly, afraid that the earth would shake again.

But they shrank back in horror, for standing in there was a young man dressed in a white robe, and he said to them, Why are you looking for the living amongst the dead? He is not here. See, this is where the body lay. Go, gather up the students and tell them to go to Galilee. There he will be.

The three women ran away from the tomb in the grip of terror. They were too afraid to tell anyone what they had seen.

© 2020 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

A brief note about my literary exploration of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth: I have undertaken this exercise having read, sung (in several languages), meditated and prayed on the contents of the Synoptic Gospels (as well as the Non-Synoptic Gospels) for at least 45 years. In that time, I’ve accumulated a bit of a library (which comes as no surprise to those who know me), and I try to follow modern scholarship. Here is a partial list of the authors and books that come to mind as I write these episodes:

Ballentine, Debra Scoggins, The Conflict Myth & the Biblical Tradition; Oxford University Press 2015

Erdman, Bart, various titles

Gaus, Andy, The Unvarnished New Testament; Phanes Press, 1991

Herzog, William R., Parables as Subversive Speech; Westminster John Knox Press, 1991

Louden, Bruce, Greek Myth and the Bible; Routledge, 2019

Tatian, Diatesseron; www.earlychristianwritings.com/diatessaron.html

Wajdenbaum, Philippe, Argonauts of the Desert, Routledge, 2011

Ward, Keith, The Philosopher and the Gospels, Lion Hudson, 2011

Yosef ben Maityahu (Titus Flavius Josephus), various writings