Unless you are attached to only one thing you cannot be my disciple.
Dave, one of two people that occasionally travels together with me, brought that word into our dialogue, attachment, many weeks ago. It is not my favorite thing when he does that. Because he doesn't acknowledge it, that he's bringing in a new word into our dialogue when commenting on something that I've written. He provides no bridge for me to understand that he realizes he's done it, why he's done it. And usually I'm crossing enough bridges in my work, that I can't divert and take on another one. But I often don't forget things that are important.
Jesus talking about hating mother father son daughter.... ? Has that been easy for you to understand? It certainly has not been for me, so I haven't been able to discount it, nor have I been able to embrace it. I can't Embrace that which I don't understand.
Well all of a sudden this morning it's striking me hard, in a good way, that he was referring to attachment.
If you are attached to anything beside being my disciple, you can't do it. You won't be able to.
Could an aspiring Olympic gymnast achieve and maybe even surpass the level of performance of Simone biles if she were attached to anything but discipleship to Simone biles? If she was attached to anything more than being a disciple of simone, let alone, as much?
And this hit me so hard, in an important way, because of my wrestling in general to stay on the path of discipleship to Jesus, and a particular tool for doing so that was profoundly helpful to me several weeks ago, and then all of a sudden I wasn't able to make work for weeks until last night.
The tool is, at almost every moment, posing the question, to my imagined audience of jesus, creator, if I do this, will it Delight you? And looking for their response.
When not too many weeks ago this tool emerged it was life-changing.
I was no longer traveling alone. In fact I had two cheerleaders, for the first time since my dad died. Many many decades ago.
And more importantly, a compass, a guidance mechanism, to unfailingly joyful abundant life. For me and potentially others.
And then after several days, it stopped working, pretty much.
And all of a sudden last night, it was working again. Yes, pretty much that binary.
And through the night on and off my nervous system was pondering that. Why was it working, then it wasn't, now it is again?
And all of a sudden I was pretty sure, almost certain, that in part, or maybe entirely, it was attachments. Attachments to how good it feels to stretch in the morning, attachment to uninterrupted sleep as opposed to that interrupted by terrifyingly loud trucks buzzing the vehicle, attachment to the cleverness of my mind when it is allowed to run free, facebook, convincing people to be Disciples of jesus, stopping the evil of the American Israeli Empire , saving Palestinians , to my very physical life as yesterday the shoulder disappeared on a 70 mph secondary road with drivers that clearly didn't care about anyone's life let alone mine, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on...
All those attachments were sapping so much of my energy, my attention, that my imagination was not sufficiently free to use that tool. And by chance and some effort, I'm working much harder at freeing myself from distractions and that which drains away from being a disciple, I found myself last night at a place where the attachments were at an accidental low. And the tool was working again!
Well, time will tell, and if this insight demonstrates itself to be inadequate or incorrect this post will be corrected, Creator willing, and this mistaken understanding reported out elsewhere. But I expect that this was a major leap forward.
And might not have occurred had Dave not brought the notion of attachment to my attention.
Oh, and Jesus could not have meant hate mother, father, etc. There are just too many other instructions he gave that are exactly in the opposite direction.
Now james, he could have meant single-minded focus. Hmm.
And elsewhere he said, to that long list, if you love them more than me you cannot be my disciple.
So is it a matter of loving him, Jesus more? Was he pointing to, creator, our humanity, loving that more, and discipleship as the way of doing that? I don't know, though I suspect the latter.
.... and did he really mean, as rocketed into my attention yesterday, if you are attached to anything besides exercising your Humanity as ragingly as I Jesus did, that you might exercise it in others, you cannot be my disciple? This, I think.
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