De-scaling our eyes — GoT Logion 34

logion 34

If the blind are leading the blind
they will topple together into a pit.

**

I love how so many of the logia
spoken by Jesus, like so many of the
wisdom sayings spoken by teachers
across time and culture,
bring it back to the body.

Body is not simply a convenient metaphor.
Body shows up in the great teachings
because body is the pathway.

But, what’s up with the able-ism, Jesus?

Mute, deaf, paralyzed, and here, blind.
Always, it seems, associated with lack?

Would Jesus be cancelled by popular culture today?
There’s a question to sit with.

My two cents, I believe the answer is no.
It may be convenient
to dismiss this teacher’s calls
to serve neighbor and earth
rather than serving self and money
by pointing out how politically incorrect
or un-woke his words can be.
But convenience is killing us.

Anger, self-righteousness and resentment
are killing us.

Obliviousness to privilege
and addiction to comfort
are killing us. All.

These are the kinds of spiritual blindness
we suffer.

Like scales over the eyes of our heart.

Scales or callouses, inherited and developed,
to protect something vulnerable within each of us.
A place of pain or insecurity.
A memory, lived or passed down.
Trauma.
Not enough.

So tender to touch that we protect it at all costs.
Fighting. Fleeing. Flooding & freezing.
Anything but
feeling.

Collectively, this is…
the story of white-body supremacy.
the lie revealed in late-stage capitalism.
unquestioning tribalism.
progressive self-righteousness.

This is the human race
poking one another in the eyes,
leading each other into a pit of lonely,
uprooted and despairing.
____

I grew up hearing bible stories
where Jesus would encounter someone
who was hurting, or had some disease,
or some physical disability.
Jesus met these people with
compassionate listening,
and the healing power — already present
in the people he encountered — would emerge.

I don’t remember a lot of stories about
the people who were comfortable
and well served by the status quo
coming to have their internal
healing power made known to them.
It seems, in their comfort, they didn’t allow
themselves to see they, too, were sick.

Are you coming to know
how sick you are?

Are you beginning to see
what you didn’t see before?

Tending and listening deeply to your body,
it seems, is the path.

And maybe you’re one who
has been blessed from an early age
to know the kind of suffering
that helps you see clearly.

If so, I hope you’re lighting lampposts
— by simply being -
because your light may keep others
from falling into the pit.

Service. Story. Community.
Creativity and curiosity.
Feeling, grieving and empathizing.
All things working together in these bodies,
lighting the path that leads
not to the pit, but to the feast that is
Enough. Together.

*