JESUS

1

When I was a kid I got kicked out of the Brick Church Sunday School

It was a dance

I provoked and acted up

I got hustled off to the Garden Room

Shrugged it off week after week

Jesus was a name in hymns

2

Church was then a place

Where adolescent me met girls

That was my learning curve

Jesus was not involved

3

Then religion reached me somehow

I won a Bible Prize at Exeter

I imbibed theology at Williams

Even so Jesus was not a factor

4

Once at Williams, I ended up at a Christian Conference at a place called O At Ka in Maine

Somehow I ended taking a bread and wine communion

I didn’t pay much attention

But the sacrament was a Jesus-body-and-blood affair

5

Later that summer, I was a counselor at Jim Robinson’s New Hampshire camps

Walking one day, I had, what I now know was, an awakening

I was drenched in the inexplicable advent of a freedom so all-embracing that is has never left me

Still I did not relate this to Jesus

6

I went to Union Theological Seminary after Williams

There was lots of piety there but it did not move me much

The rag tag community some of us had there was more in spite of than because

I got hired as Director of an Exploratory Journalism Program in Chicago

I left Union with a sense that grace supersedes freedom but almost no thought of Jesus

7

Then came a decade of excitement, success and growing angst

I made a target of the Church, an easy mark

I made a name and I wrote books that people bought

Finally gave it all up.

For I knew I had no honest core belief

8

The next decade we lived in Stockbridge, Jonathan Edward’s old exile town

I gradually lost my church connections and along with them my old career

I turned to music and decided to write a folk oratorio with a working title “Jesus: God’s Outlaw”

It was well received but it was my mind at work not my heart

9

Jump 40 years or so and I am in the Big Apple

I have a fund of ideas and experiences but few connections left

I offer myself free to every new President of Union Seminary but receive nary a response

I have already concluded Jesus is not the person the Creeds celebrate

10

Jump to the last five years, my 80s, still in NYC

I have for years been seeking and receiving guidance from Abba

(The One to whom Jesus prayed and who he commended to all in the first chapter of Mark)

I have already imagined Jesus as a child in communion with Abba, learning what to teach and what is to come

These stories are within my Kindle Trove

One day it occurs to me to add Jesus to my list of guides

I call on him

11

I hear a chuckle and my name. Almost immediately I am thrust into a physical interaction between my moving hands and my entire upper body with an emphasis on my heart

Of course, I wanted what he called energy

It came forth in profusion

Since then, Jesus has become my best friend

As he is to anyone else who calls on him

He helps in every possible situation

We do not discuss the past I have shared here

We could

But there is no need

He knows

Jesus is the universal teacher-healer I envisioned intellectually back in Stockbridge

Now Jesus is my heart-intended friend.

12

So yes I have a theology now but it is simply that Jesus is the mentor and friend of all

His home is Heaven

His parent is the One who is beyond our capacity to understand, of Whom we all are part.

Our common co-creative task is to lead the world away from self-destruction

And to bring all other Souls to see just who they are

So they will know the regimen back Home

Jesus will be there to help just as he is here for all of us

Here and now