This Is What Jesus Looks Like
The past two weeks, I have removed, relocated, boxed, and stored any number of images of Jesus, the “Blessed Mother”, various saints, and more. While my own feelings toward organized religion, including that of my husband’s mother, are a wee bit hostile (understatement), the one thing I can say about my mother-in-law’s faith is that she lovingly sent money to people she believed were helping the poor, even when she probably didn’t have it to send.
In many ways, I have felt my own faith heritage has been both a blessing and a curse. The church of my childhood and most of my adulthood unquestioningly and abundantly sends money wherever people are hurting or in need. However, the legalistic aspects of both of these systems of religious belief often left me feeling the methods and rituals were more important than the original purpose.
It has become a habit of mine to point out that what we see on Sunday morning has absolutely nothing to do with Jesus. Therefore, my feelings toward anything “church” have become very disconnected from my feelings about the human being that was Jesus of Nazareth.
And then I see a post like this one over at Trey Morgan’s website.
And this one.
And all I can say is this MUST be what Jesus and the apostles looked like. Forget the pretty windows. Forget the little trays of crackers and grape juice. Forget the warm bathtub waters of a baptistry. These people are feeding hungry, desperate human beings and doing everything in their power to heal them. Jesus did those very things.
These people get it.
If you read Trey’s website, you will notice that he has a paypal donation button on the right side of his page.
I am about to hit that button, because this is the image of Jesus I want the world to see. Not some halo enshrined angelic entity created by Michaelangelo. Not some White Knight wielding a flaming sword and cutting off heads.
This is the face of Jesus.
Allowing
One of the most powerful lessons I’ve had to learn in my life is that my way isn’t necessarily the right way or the only way.
Shocker, isn’t it?
The other thing I’ve had to learn is that others can be right even when their right is different from my right.
There is usually more than one right way……
…and the world doesn’t come to an end nor do heaven’s gates slam shut just because someone uses a different right way.
On my spiritual journey, I’ve had to do a lot of allowing: Allowing myself to change my mind about what I believe, allowing myself to realize (and…gasp….ADMIT) that maybe others were right 20 years ago when I thought they were completely wrong, allowing others to remain where they are and not attempt to pull them along on MY journey, allowing them to have an opinion that is different from mine and not attempt to convince them otherwise, and on and on it goes.
It hasn’t been easy, nor all that successful. It’s certainly not in my nature. It has required a lot of patience over the years from those I care about. I can be a real wench when I’m convinced I’m right.
I’ve done a lot of “beating over the head” in my 42 years of life.
I’m pretty sure I started that favorite pastime as soon as I could mutter my first words.
And as I sit back and recognize the many recent changes that have occurred in my ways of thinking, most without my really asking for them, I realize that there is a force in the universe that leads us where each of us needs to go, be, or do at a particular time in life.
Sorting through my mother-in-law’s papers has re-opened my eyes to this. She wielded a mighty pen in the name of traditional Catholicism, right to life legislation, seat belt privacy (there’s a contradiction if I ever saw one), and no sex education in schools. I find myself wavering between a tinge (okay, a LOT) of bitterness (my views are quite different in many ways), and respect for her passions…..allowing her to be what she needed (needs) to be and respecting her own version of rightness.
That same force that I believe opened my eyes to other perspectives is the force that led me to walk away from a church rather than try to change it. The awareness in my head said very clearly that their ways are right for them and that while I might disagree, it’s not my job to change them. They are beautiful people who do many good things in this world. Leave them alone and let them be.
And so, I did. Sorta.
Yet I have much work left to do on that whole allowing thing. Too often I find myself criticizing their beliefs, methods, procedures, and more. It makes me wonder what’s still at work inside of me if I feel the need to be so defensive about my own beliefs and critical of theirs.
I guess when the time is right, I will be ALLOWED to figure it out.
How’s that allowing thing working for you?
Some Days Others Say It Best
There are days when someone else says exactly what I’m thinking in a way that I might never be able to say it. Here is a perfect example from Truth Over Tradition: Finding God After Leaving Religion.
Enjoy.
Magnum PI DejaVue and a Jail Break at the Farm
We had a jail break yesterday. Apparently our horses, Buddy and Shorty, both lacking anything important resembling manhood (studhood?), were quite upset when their female pasture companion for the last month had to go back to her home way out in the country.
I didn’t realize just how upset they were…..
….Until I returned from picking up HorseGirl from cheerleading camp only to find my baby girl running up and down the barditch between our farm and the football field and acting like a lunatic. Then I saw them….the big beasts that had just busted through my pathetic attempt at a horse fence. They were enjoying the munchies available on the other side of the road…..visitor’s side concession stand.
I slammed on the breaks, hollered at HorseGirl to jump out and get her horses, backed up that minivan and jumped out with her.
HorseGirl hollered at my baby to go get halters. Meanwhile HorseGirl and I did everything in our power to keep the nutless wonders contained and calm. Belly scratching was working pretty well…until Buddy decided to move and my sandal clad foot decided to be under his 25 year old hoof.
Forgive me Father…I know not what I said, but I’m pretty sure it probably wouldn’t be suitable in church…..if I ever went.
Pretty sure my mom wouldn’t approve either.
Halters arrived, horses were under control, and HorseGirl led them both back to their jail…er…uh….pasture. A little feed, and our adventure was over….I thought.
A few minutes later, my hubby calls and asks if the horses are out. I told him, “Not anymore.” He said he was listening to the police talking about horses being out and trying to find them.
I looked out the window and saw no less than two cop cars driving by. HorseGirl was trying her best to hide until they drove away. I figured they were trying desperately to find the “loose” horses and in an attempt to relieve their desperate search, I walked out to give them the scoop.
The first police car had already driven off, but the second one, unmarked yet obviously a police package car (I know this from my years of being a sheriff’s daughter—valuable and important information for life), was still driving slowly. I waved. He rolled down his window. I didn’t recognize him. Strange– because I know almost everyone of any authority around here. It makes me feel important.
I gave him the whole ugly story, including the part about the agonizing pain on the top of my foot, then stuck my hand out towards him and introduced myself. He obviously needed to know me. Had he been bald and wrinkled, I might have been less forthcoming, but this older dude was still sporting a good amount of hair that was actually still on his head, plus he had a thick salt and pepper colored ‘stache on his top lip.
Since I consider myself quite a connoisseur of attractive older men, I had dubbed him worthy of knowing me. He reciprocated the introduction, handed me his card, and we parted ways.
Five minutes later as I looked at the name on the card, I had a serious dejavue moment.
Serious dejavue.
Flashback to 1980. I was about 12. We had a fun lady coach for junior high athletics. She always commented how her husband looked like Tom Selleck/Magnum, PI. He came to a few of our trackmeets, and most of us agreed. At the ripe old age of twelve, we all helped her admire the deliciousness that was her man.
Time passed. Thirty years to be exact. As the CSI photo enhancing computer in my head did its amazing aging work, I stood there realizing that I had just had a personal encounter with Magnum. Him. That man who was once the spouse of my coach.
Poor sucker.
Next time I see him, I have to tell him. HAVE TO. It’s a desperate obsession.
Am I weird or what? Do any of the rest of you remember this?
So yeah….crazy horses and a huge dose of dejavue. Turned out to be a good day, I’d say.
A Tale of Many Paradoxes
Things have continued to progress this week as I sort through the many artifacts and memoirs found in my in-law’s home. Also continuing are the a-ha moments and the reminders of my mother-in-law’s many passions.
…and the paradox of contradiction so many of her passions hold.
It fascinates me that a woman who is so passionate about the right to life movement is also very anti-government regulation when it came to seatbelt laws. Even late into her seventies she would sit across the street from the local Planned Parenthood office with her right to life poster. She sent letters to every Catholic congressman scolding them for their Democrat views on abortion. And yet, a couple of days ago when I took her back to her house to pack a few more things, she gave me that look of disgust when I reached for the seatbelt to buckle her in.
It fascinates me that someone who was such an avid co-producer and preserver (with my f-i-l) of locally grown food was quite the cheerleader for the proposed nuclear waste dump site near our community. (Thank God we were deprived of that one.)
It’s both a fascinating and fortunate-for-me paradox that this beautiful lady who carried no less than eight babies, delivered six live births, and saw five of the most handsome men on the planet into adulthood is very outspoken against anything that resembles sex education in the schools.
And the one that strikes me as most ironic and yet which links us in so many ways…..
This amazingly passionate woman so fiercely believed in maintaining all of the traditional Catholic ways. She wrote letters to priests and bishops. She stood up strongly and with great conviction in the face of people who weren’t very nice to her, and eventually walked away from her church home because it didn’t seem right to continue participating in something that didn’t align with her conscience.
Then a few years later, she acquired me into her family: Staunch Church of Christ and anti-Catholic, right-to-lifer who prefers women have freedom of choice (no legislating morality for me), total seat belt advocate (hey, it’s a safety issue, not a morality issue), health educator who participated in teaching the sex ed classes at school, grateful user of non-hormone birth control methods (yes, I really did use something–if I hadn’t, there might be 15 instead of just four!), and the real kicker……
A daughter-in-law who ultimately left “The Church” because of it’s refusal to change at a rate with which I was comfortable. Or maybe it was because I changed and the church couldn’t, wouldn’t, or wasn’t supposed to keep up with me. Either way, it seems sort of funny that both of us walked away from a church, yet for reasons that are so polar opposite .
So many conversations have gone unspoken or unheard (if they were spoken) because it has always been easier to ignore the differences than to engage in a passionate hurtful debate. We have instead simply chosen to love (or sometimes tolerate) one another. Our common link is a gorgeous hunk of a man whom she birthed, I caught, and we both adore.
And for the record, I was, of course, ALWAYS right. 
