The ancients understood that God spoke to them in their dreams and visions. The ancients told those stories around the camp fires and those stories grew by the flame enkindled in the hearer's hearts; transforming them into story tellers too.
During the season of Lent-the days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday- Christians are called to self reflection and repenting-understood as a turning away from or as a change of course which seeks God first.
In the gospel [good news] told in Mark 3: 31-35, the mother of Jesus' and his brothers arrived at the house where he was teaching.
Jesus replied, "I am here with my mother, sisters and brothers. For whoever does the will of God is my brother, sister and mother."-Mark 3: 31-35
"What does God require? He has told you o'man! Be just, be merciful, and walk humbly with your Lord." -Micah 6:8
Being just means correct, true, accurate, right and fair. Merciful is to have, feel and show compassion, that sense of viscerally feeling the pain of another and being moved to help. Being humble is knowing yourself; the good and the bad, for both cut through every human heart.
All Christians-from the most fundamental to those left of the progressives-are connected to the other as a sister and brother in the mystical Body of Christ. It is a dysfunctional family in the USA and past time to liberate Jesus from the bondage of institutional patriarchy for no church owns Jesus and no religion owns God.
HOW do we get there? It begins with imagination; where all human creativity is birthed.
In 2003, I read an article in Presence Magazine written by a pastor of a church in Berkeley. I no longer remember what he wrote, but he inspired me to email him a few of my theological questions. He replied something like this;
I once gave a sermon that began with the story of Rabbi Hillel, who lived 100 years before Jesus walked the earth.
Rabbi Hillel understood the Hebrew understanding of Hokema; Holy Wisdom; The Feminine Divinity, was the same as the Greek understanding of The Logos: The Word.
It was Saints John and Paul that understood The Logos: The Word was Jesus.
So with a little imagination you can imagine that before Jesus walked the earth a man, he was already a she; The Word, Holy Wisdom, Hokema, the feminine divinity.
I gave that sermon to a mainline conservative congregation. It didn't go over well…
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