Quite sure I'm seriously following Jesus instructions and example. What am I doing wrong?
Following Jesus instructions and example has cost me:
- A half million dollar house
- A high-tech career, executive, half million dollars a year in income.
- Everything that goes along with that.
- Many of my teeth.
- Any and all privacy and safety. Tonight like most nights we sleep exposed separated from the shoppers by thin vinyl and plastic, in a Walmart parking lot. Otherwise truck stop parking lots.
- The magnificent one bedroom senior subsidized housing apartment on the 10th floor of a new building in Washington DC
- A face without these ugly tattoos. I've never liked tattoos.
- Homeless in Washington DC so that total devotion to activism was possible.
- Hospitalized multiple times for near-death hunger strikes.
- In jail multiple times for actions in Washington dc, nonviolent, and nonviolent action at standing Rock we are 5 years in prison was faced.
- No week for years now when we aren't nearly annihilated on the highways.
- A decent chance of being assassinated for standing for my Palestinian family.
- No security for the future. Everything goes into the mission.
- Interrogated by Walmart managers in their lot.
This is a partial list. What am I doing wrong?
It's a trick question. I envy no person. I give my life so that maybe someone else can have a quality of life as high as mine. Abundant life, transcending much of the misery of this hell world we've created.
This is brought to mind by a conversation this afternoon with a minister who stopped by to talk here in the parking lot.
He said, like most in such a conversation, Now that I follow Jesus I have the house that I want. Now that I follow Jesus I have the property that I want. Now that I follow Jesus I have the job that I want. Now that I follow Jesus I have the health that I want.....
But that's not following jesus. The flesh means nothing, the spirit is life, he said. The rich already have their reward, he said. Unless you deny yourself and pick up your cross you cannot follow me, he said. If you were of this world the world would love you, but you are not of this world.
I came that you would have life and have it more abundantly. I speak these words that my joy would be fulfilled in you. Do not fear that which can kill the body and not the soul. If you love me you will keep my words, and the father will love you, and the father and I will come and make our abode with you. You're not, nothing they do will hurt you, paraphrase. Enter the joy of the lord!
I now, some of the time, closing in on much of the time, live with the two most wonderful entities that ever existed: creator, and jesus. And I can look to them to cheer when I do it right, and nudge me toward the cheering, when I'm not. I've tried everything folks. There's nothing as good as this. I'm learning to live in the presence of, and through, my humanity. It's heaven. In hell.
I've got all that. If I've met anyone else that does, it's no more than two or three or maybe four people. And I've met a lot of people.
I'm not doing it wrong.
A yearn for others that they were doing it right.
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