Category Archives: Salvation

Baptism as Transformation: the Celts, the Romans, the Upanishads

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We have entered, in the ecclesiastical calendar, the beginning of Epiphany, the season of the manifestation and revealing of the ministry of Jesus. In all four traditional gospels this beginning is marked by the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist.

The practice of baptism likely grows out of the Jewish tradition of mikvah, a ritual immersion in water for repentance from sin, which opens the way for hope and realignment with God. This passing through the water for cleansing and change resonates with the work of John the Baptist, baptizing for the forgiveness of sins.

The baptism of Jesus, then, can be seen as his own identification with the human condition of separation and a symbolic act of washing it off, emerging, and revealing his true oneness with God. In the three synoptic gospels, Jesus sees heaven opening, the Spirit descending as a dove, and a voice saying, “This is my beloved Son.” In the gospel of John, the Baptist also sees this manifestation and affirms that Jesus is the Son of God who will baptize people with the Holy Spirit. Depending on the account, this beginning of ministry unfolds further in Jesus’s temptation in the wilderness, where he rejects all power, glory, and addiction to physical desire, in favor of faithful service. Only then does he call his disciples and initiate his ministry of preaching and healing.

For Christians in the early church, baptism became a ritual that marked the death of a broken humanity and the emergence of a new person as a follower of Christ. The practice now, two millennia later, means much the same, a symbolic gateway between an old self and a new being, a new way of life.

There are many ways that baptism is practiced. Immersion, partial immersion, pouring, sprinkling, infant, adult believer’s, is it a rite, is it a sacrament, is it simply symbolic – I guess it’s no surprise that the Christian church, over twenty centuries, has bickered and bantered, sometimes even to death, over the correct and authentic way to baptize.

Growing up in what was known as the Old Mennonite Church – as opposed to the General Conference Mennonite Church, where I suspect people smiled and laughed more – baptism was done by pouring. Rooted in the adult believer’s baptism tradition, for us baptism happened only when we reached the “age of accountability,” meaning we were old enough to understand and be convicted of our sin, seek to repent, be baptized, and thereby enter the body of Christ. Most commonly that “only when” turned out to be twelve years of age.

Accordingly, at some point in seventh grade Sunday School, my classmates and I were each presented with a card asking whether we were ready to repent, be baptized, and become a member of the church. You can imagine that it was hard to say no, especially for me, growing up thinking I was the little engine that should.

Confession for me generally involved wrenching acknowledgment to my parents of some truly petty misdeed. And so I felt compelled to confess to my mother my decision about baptism – a misdeed only in that I did not completely trust that it was real. She, of course, became uncomfortably emotional about it, exacerbating my underlying guilt with the uncertainty.

Pouring – representing the pouring out of the Spirit on believers – involved an elder in the congregation pouring water out of a pitcher into the cupped hands of the pastor, who then released the water onto the head of the supplicant, kneeling beside all the other twelve-year-olds in front of the congregation. I was so nervous and uncomfortable that the sound of the water running off my head, big droplets hitting the carpet, startled me into laughter. You can imagine what that did to a hyperactive conscience.

Suffice it to say that, in the heavily suppressed and private way of a blooming adolescent, I suffered mightily thinking that I was a fraud and not truly saved. I did not feel different. Being a pretty good kid, I did not act especially differently. I did not feel forgiven, I could not tell if Jesus had really come into my heart, I felt like I was supposed to be telling the world around me daily that I had been saved and that they should be, too. I did not want to do that. And I felt pretty guilty about all of it.

There is so much I remember with great affection about my church, a true community of faith. I wish that the invitation had been a little more real and less mechanized. But truly I know now that what I brought to the table simply came back to me in that experience. While I wish it had been different, I trust that it has been useful in my faith journey.

Somewhere around 1990, this and other quandaries nudged me into an exploration across global religious traditions. In my lifelong quest to know, to connect with, and to serve God, I could not let go of the notion that our Creator and Sustainer surely spoke in all places at all times.

For more than thirty years, I have read Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, and other scriptures, as well as Sufi poetry, and writings of the Christian mystics. All have led me to a richer and more satisfying understanding of my faith. I have not abandoned biblical scriptures or my core commitment to following the way of Jesus. But I have come to view everything about the life of faith as a journey of transformation. Baptism, for me, clarifies in that light.

A passage from the Katha Upanishad, written by a Hindu sage over 5,000 years ago, captures for me the essence of transformation:

In the secret cave of the heart, two are

Seated by life’s fountain. The separate ego

Drinks of the sweet and bitter stuff,

Liking the sweet, disliking the bitter,

While the supreme Self drinks sweet and bitter

Neither liking this nor disliking that.

The ego gropes in darkness, while the Self

Lives in light.

Discovering the disconnect of the small self, individual and isolated ego, from true Self, the person created and already inhabited by God, has led me away from trembling uncertainty about salvation and toward a joyful and fulfilling engagement of transformation.

What does this mean, day-to-day? It means that I practice being somehow more than my body, able to watch the way my separated, hungry, and fearful ego behaves and interacts with the world. It means I can watch and release my ego bound urges to defense and anger. I can see, with compassion, the driver who cuts me off as someone overtaken by their own anger or attachment to power, or just someone who made a mistake, the kind I make on a regular basis. It means, I hope, that I can do things for the satisfaction of doing what I am called to do, neither shying away from nor seeking recognition, letting go of insistence on specific outcomes. It means I can see when my passion gets in the way of relationship, learning to recognize the circumstances where I might run off the rails. It means I can sometimes set aside my selfish filters and soak in the whole true beauty of the person in front of me. It means, perhaps most importantly, that I can forgive myself and others with compassion, knowing that I am loved by something so much bigger. And I can share that love in service with others.

Interestingly, and refreshingly for me, this journey of transformation also corresponds harmoniously with Celtic Christian spirituality. From early times, the Celtic Christians believed in original goodness as opposed to the still dominant Augustinian belief in original sin. Pelagius, a Celtic contemporary of Augustine in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, argued that humans, made in the image of God, were free to choose whether or not to sin. There was no denial that we were prone to fall off the path. But there was trust that the image, the goodness of God, was our true center and we could return to it. Augustine argued that the sin of Adam and Eve tainted all humanity for all time and that humans were helpless in their sin. The pope at the time initially sided with Pelagius. But Augustine appealed to the government of Rome, which banned Pelagius, and the pope eventually fell in line. Pelagius was branded a heretic. Such are the ways of Christendom.

But the debate continued in the northern British Isles and this Celtic Christian tradition still thrives there and beyond. John Philip Newell, a theologian, prolific author, and sometime leader in both the Church of Scotland and the Anglican Church, is a leading contemporary proponent of creation spirituality.

I find it interesting that Celtic Christian spirituality traces its parentage to St. John, and the more reflective gospel attributed to him, while Roman spirituality has maintained the hierarchical line of Peter as the first pope, with Matthew its gospel standard. The Celts hold as a central image John leaning on Jesus’s breast at the last supper. They say that John, the presumptive but never actually named disciple whom Jesus loved, listened to the heartbeat of God – such a beautiful image for a life of faith.

So what does all this have to do with baptism? In the dominant Augustinian lineage, the one of age old Christendom, the one in which most of us were raised, baptism signifies salvation from a desperate and unshakeable state of eternal damnation. The only solution to this terrible state is through faith in the atoning act of the crucifixion, meaning – let’s be honest – the required bloodletting and tortuous murder of God’s supposedly only child. Baptism in this lineage is a drowning, a putting to death of the evil self, resurrected as a new and perfected being only because of the atoning sacrifice of Christ.

In the Celtic Christian tradition baptism is more like a welcome home to the true and eternal family of creation, a celebration of the image of God at the heart of every living thing. A believer emerges from the water cleaned up and shining, having recognized and washed away the effects of a fearful and falsely disconnected ego.

While it may seem odd, I understand the heresy of this for both church and state. These “powers that be” simply cannot deal with a cohort of its minions experiencing that much freedom and joy, especially without their permission and mediation.

“The ego gropes in darkness, while the Self lives in light.” Such amazing wisdom. Freedom and true joy are found in the choice to be free of the ceaseless judgments and grasping of ego, resting instead in the capital S Self. From the Celtic perspective, we could say that the small s ego self is not a different being. It’s just not awake to its true connection to God. I believe, with the Celts, that the difference between small s self and supreme Self is a choice we can make. The journey of Jesus through baptism, the various temptations in the wilderness, followed by his ministry is a beautiful example of this transformative journey. And it is a journey each of us can choose.

Close your eyes for a moment. Imagine yourself as a young child in the Garden of Eden. You are sitting by life’s fountain. If you look up with the innocent eyes of an ego that does not know its connection to creation, you might see what you believe is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. You might become afraid, knowing suddenly that you will die. You might fear that there is not enough to eat, and you will starve. You might believe that no one else cares.

In our fear, friend, we fled the Garden, grasping what we thought was power to protect ourselves. We exercised it in violence, greed, and the oppression of others – a failed attempt to save our isolated selves from what we believed to be our certain end.

Close your eyes again and imagine your Creator calling to you. “Dear child, I have created and placed you in the garden of beauty and goodness. Look, you are beside the fountain and under the Tree of Life. Everything you need to enjoy life and love is here. Don’t be afraid. You are not alone. We and everything and everyone around you are one. Here, let’s pick up this little frightened ego of yours. I love it as my own. There is no need to kill or destroy it, or anything else. Let’s just carry it back where it belongs, here with your family and your people. We’ll be right here under this tree with everything you need, beside the fountain that flows with the water of life. Look, here’s a blanket. Let’s have a picnic.”

And baptism? Well, as we say here in New Mexico, water is life. So many ways to know and love it:

  • Healing water
  • Peace like a river
  • Fountain of life
  • The shore
  • The acequia
  • Parting of the waters
  • Crossing over
  • The Living water

I don’t believe at all that the water of baptism is for the drowning death of anyone made in the image of our Creator. No, no, never.

O let all who thirst, let them come to the water. Let them come.

© Jerry S Kennell

Welcome to 2025

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Welcome to 2025. What do you think it will be like?

  • Will it be the most interesting year ever?
  • Will it be the happiest year ever?
  • Will we achieve world peace and an economy that serves all the people?
  • Will the globe get warmer or cooler?
  • Will we heal division?
  • Will we start a civil war?

Here’s what I think. I think our national imagination is moving powerfully and rapidly toward destruction of the current order, whatever that is perceived to be, and replacement, for a significant block of time, with violence, rubble, and chaos. Increasingly I read about people on opposite sides of a sociopolitical spectrum arming themselves, convinced that they must engage in violence either to achieve change or to fend off aggression from the other side.

I see the photos of death, despair, and ruin from Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan and I am shaken by the  possibility, moving toward probability, that we will begin to see the same pictures of destroyed cities and ruined landscape, with the displacement of population, crippling of health, education, and physical infrastructure, and accompanying starvation and disease in our own communities. I see shifting coalitions of armed militia and vigilantes abandoning law and decency to force their beliefs and burn out their hatred on the bodies of the despised and vulnerable. I see leaders encouraging and endorsing this violence, allying themselves with other powerful and narcissistic patriarchs across the globe.

Regularly I hear people talking, in decreasingly hypothetical terms, about leaving the country, taking their money, and running.

Perhaps this is pessimistic foolishness. Perhaps it is my suckered response to media hype, both liberal and conservative. Perhaps it is a manifestation of the fearful little aspect of our humanity that is drawn to look at disaster.

No matter. The important thing today is the choice about how I will live my life, regardless of the cultural backdrop. Will I stand and resist? If so, will my resistance include violence? Will I duck and run, even to the point of leaving my country? Will I stick my head in the sand and do nothing to prepare for a world that I don’t want to think about or see?

I am pleased and comforted, though not surprised, that beacons of light appear to guide us, the brighter for their stark contrast to the darkness that threatens. Jimmy Carter’s death on December 29 brings reflections on decency in leadership, courage to stand against the grain of misused power, and the holiness of works, large and small, for compassion, peace, and justice. Photos of him standing in blue jeans and cardigan at Camp David with Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin or kneeling on a roof with a hammer for Habit for Humanity, remind us of and invite us to choices for light and life, the choice to join and stand with others in faithful and compassionate community.

The film Bonhoeffer, which I viewed on New Year’s Day, tells a story of deep faith incarnated in teaching and action, the gathering of saints who became the Confessing Church, standing aside from and in contrast to the forces of darkness that swept up the German populace in the 1930s.

While I have not been in his shoes, I take exception to Bonhoeffer’s choice to join the effort to assassinate Hitler. I am, after all, a tribal Mennonite, grounded in a commitment to nonviolence. But I am also humbled and ashamed that many, perhaps most of my people in Germany at that time, chose to duck and run, to put their heads in the sand, or even to welcome Hitler’s regime. Bonhoeffer’s example of courage to stand for something so much brighter and better, at a time when that stance meant almost certain death, is powerfully instructive as I consider the offering of my life today.

There is no day when the right choice is other than love – love expressed in standing with the oppressed, feeding the hungry, and healing the broken. But there are days when the light of that choice shines out more clearly because of encroaching darkness. Join me, stand with me, let’s share the strength that, together, can make us that bright beacon today and for all the days ahead. Let’s shine that light as resistance to the power of evil and as loving invitation to transformation, a better path, for all who fall under its spell.

© Jerry S Kennell

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Salvation Is Not What You Were Told

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Jesus saves. Boomers grew up hearing it and seeing it on signs by Baptist churches and on the marquees of city missions. The subtext was this: You were born a “sinner.” You “committed” things that were called “sins” because your nature was “fallen.” Jesus was nailed to a cross, suffering and bleeding as a sacrifice so that God would forgive your “sins.” God needed that blood, in fact the blood of his only son, or He (God, who remains He in the more oppressive parts of the cult) was not going to save your soul and would send you to hell, burning in eternal fire.

Other Protestant denominations presented maybe a softer version, but the intent was still the same. Jesus died for your sins. God be praised, because if this plan for salvation hadn’t come along, there would have been no hope for anyone for the past two millennia. At least before that there was provisional animal sacrifice that counted as kind of a beta test of the system until it was perfected.

Sacrifice appears in cultures all around the world, going back ten thousand years, and who knows how many more, before there were drawings on cave walls and, eventually, written language. The gods and spirits had to be pleased and appeased to assure good crops, success in hunting and warfare, and fertility. And generally there had to be a priest or other officiant who was called out by the gods and the community as an acceptable intercessor between sinful or simply vulnerable humans and the deity. And to this day, there are those who find solace in some form of the practice.  

For centuries, Christian scholars and theologians have argued and refined the meaning of Jesus’s sacrifice, but the central concept has held on tight in the consciousness of the Christian tradition. The idea that his death was sacrifice for atonement has remained central.

That’s a funny thing, and probably the biggest reason that Western Christianity is sliding with increasing speed into the landfill of forgotten culture. This is truly a shame, because this whole blood sacrifice thing is not what Jesus spoke about or intended for his followers. His real message has been largely ignored. This also is a shame, as this message has huge relevance for our times.

Jesus addressed an oppressed citizenry during an era of powerful foreign military occupation and, as now, an increasingly irrelevant religious cult. And his message was this:

  • He announced his campaign with Isaiah’s language about release for the captive, recovery of sight for the blind, and declaration of the year of Jubilee, a season of economic rest and readjustment to make sure no one suffered at the bottom of a disparate social order. No wonder Rome had few qualms about killing him.
  • He spent his ministry healing people, often saying people’s sins were forgiven. This is grossly misinterpreted to mean that “sins” were the cause of illness and disability. He was quite specific that this was not the case. His intention was to buck a religious cult that used this system of never good enough to keep the populace obligated. No wonder the cult leadership had few qualms about killing him.
  • What he was really saying is, your “sins” have always been forgiven. You have not been accused; you have been called. The important thing is to learn from errors and grow up.
  • Healing, kindness, sharing with those in need, and absolute nonviolence were the entirety of his message. Love each other. And when you do that, you, just like me (Jesus speaking here), are a child of the Spirit, a true child of your Creator.
  • To make this concrete, he continually invited followers to join him as a citizen of the kingdom – let’s say country – of heaven. This was not imaginary or symbolic. It was a complete change of life – one that should seemingly have been acceptable in any religious or political context because it was so non-offensive. The powers, however, would have none of it because it put people in control of themselves, outside the system of sanctions and rewards, outside the winner takes all economy used by political and religious institutions alike to keep people subjugated.
  • This turning, this move of primary citizenship out of a state of oppression and into a state of freedom, characterized by compassionate community, was the whole call to and meaning of salvation. Zaccheus was saved, for instance, when he made the turn from a life founded on the economic oppression of others through manipulation of tax gathering, to one of sharing. He was relieved, saved, from the burden of his oppressive way of life, finding true satisfaction in joining a community of fairness and love.

Our times, like many, share much with the times of Jesus. The religious cult – in the current western situation, all variants of Christianity – has become irrelevant, grasping at straws to keep its numbers strong and its economic resources flowing. And we can see government collapsing around us as it jockeys for position in the world and has lost touch with all but an elite that is shrinking in numbers as it increases in wealth.

The genuine religious invitation, the invitation to conversion, is the invitation to step out of the institutional rat race of wealth and power and step into true humanity. Government and institutional religion might choose to follow. More likely, they will close ranks and resort to violence to regain what they perceive as lost control.

The thing about the choice of true conversion is the deep sense of satisfaction and peace found by those who choose to turn. Somehow our Creator hardwired us for connection, kindness, and mutual support, not for an attachment to power and gain which can never be fully satiated. What a joy, to consider and make the turn away from grasping and oppression and toward nonviolent and compassionate connection. You and I are invited to make that turn and live that life.

The biblical narrative tells of two trees in the Garden of Eden. But I believe there was only one, the Tree of Life, with its fruit in every season and its leaves for the healing of the nations. We turned it into the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil when we let fear take control, turning us away from sharing community and toward grasping individuality. The call has always been to remove the false mask of isolation and fear, and to come back to trust in a community of kindness and connection.

© Jerry S Kennell

Worthy Is the Lamb

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It’s the Holiday Season in the United States.  Lights, music, trees, the gusher of retail dollars and – Messiah sing-alongs.  Yes, as a member of the Taos Community Chorus (tenor until faced with a high A), I am participating.  How many times, how many places?  And yet these texts from Isaiah and Revelation, set to Handel’s exuberant music, continue to inspire and thrill.  May the abuses and domination of all twisted religious expression wither and perish.  Please, dear God, save this glorious music.

One of the most powerful choruses is based on a surreal image from Revelation 5:12: “Worthy is the lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.” (NRSV) Or in the King’s English used by Handel, “Worthy is the lamb that was slain.”

The obvious reference here is to the glorification of Christ, crucified by the threatened powers and resurrected in an immutable assertion that life as intended, the true spirit of love and compassion, can never be conquered, whether by evil intent or physical demise.

But it seems to me there is more in the phrase.  As we journey from our experience of scarcity and fear under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil; as we begin to know and trust it as the Tree of Life, there is always a lamb to be slain.  The Buddha asserts with certainty, life is duhkha.  We will suffer.  The innocence of the lamb will be ravaged.  We can delude and harden ourselves.  There will be sickness.  There will be abusers and victims.  There will be war and hunger and loss of loved ones.  And in the end, we will die.

No lamb avoids the slaughter.  Worthy is the one that faces and embraces it.  It’s not that some perverse deity requires blood to be satisfied.  It’s that we don’t pass the test of life without dying to the lies.

We can paste over it with Christmas presents and walls of security and comfort.  We can mask it with youth and pleasure.  We can pretend to fend it off with walls and guns and warehoused kids at the border.

Or we can make a different choice.  We can die right now and get on with the real thing.  Die to fear.  Die to domination.  Die to greed and anger, our selfish anxiety and hoarding.  In the end, it avails us nothing.  Why not end it now?  Why not make the choice, today, to shed all of this and replace it with the giving and receiving of blessing, honor, glory and power?

So let’s sing it, clear and strong.  Worthy is the lamb, the lamb that is slain:

  • The family turned back at the border. Worthy is the lamb.
  • The youth taken by opioids in the towns along the Ohio River. Worthy is the lamb.
  • Christine Blasey Ford.  Worthy is the lamb.
  • The “deep state” public servant, courageous enough to blow the whistle. Worthy is the lamb.
  • Jamal Khashoggi. Worthy is the lamb.
  • The Walmart shoppers in El Paso. Worthy is the lamb.
  • The Syrian hospital patients in the sights of the Russian warplane.  Worthy is the lamb.
  • The indigenous environmental activists killed by governments and corporate thugs in Latin America. Worthy is the lamb.
  • The young women lured to hotel rooms and private jets by promises of open doors to the future. Worthy is the lamb.
  • You and I, friend, when we die to all of this, die to our comfort, our greed, our fear and embrace the cross that leads to real life. Worthy is the lamb.

Worthy, worthy is the lamb that is slain.  Blessing, honor, glory and power be unto her.

Worthy.

 

© Jerry S Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden.  Feel free to quote, as useful, with proper reference.

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Jerry Kennell provides spiritual direction in person and by Skype at Two Trees Center for Spiritual Development.  Contact jerry@2treegarden.com or by phone or text to (970) 217-6078.  Click FOLLOW to be notified of future posts.

Creation

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Creation is amazing.  Things keep happening on a seemingly infinite scale from small to grand, subtle to nuclear, still to beyond the speed of light.  What’s it about?  Where do we fit in?  Our vision is so limited and, given the immensity of the whole thing, we mostly just ignore it and go on our way.

Going on our way, however, is exactly our problem – or better put, the problem of “our.”  The premise of Two Trees in the Garden is that, under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we became conscious, we woke up to “I”, “my” and “our.”

The “going on our way,” the “going” and the “way” of “our,” all happened on a road of fear.  We believed ourselves to be alone and separate.  We became aware of death.  The response of “I,” “my” and “our” was greed and a grasp for power and control.  Anger, deceit and violence became our tools.

But “our way” is not the way of creation, of true reality.  It is only halfway.  It is not whole.  It is “self”-deceived.  We don’t know it, but true reality is that we are under the Tree of Life, not the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which is only our limited misperception of the real thing.  And that real thing, the real tree, is love, goodness, beauty, relationship, peace, the surprise of creation, rest and enough.  Why would we not want these things?  How do we get there?

It’s been called by many names, this turn from “self”-deceit to connected reality:  enlightenment; awakening; conversion; second birth; born again.  And in our despair, we look for any one of these (they are all the same) as some sort of magical elixir that, if we can only reach it, grasp it, experience it, will make us happy and solve our worldly fears and woes, maybe even save us from death.  And it always seems elusively just beyond “our” reach.

But it’s not elusive at all.  Yes, it is beyond “my,” “our” grasp.  The problem is that we are grasping at nothing to be grasped.  And we are missing everything.  Because enlightenment, awakening, conversion, second birth, being born again are the simple choice of turning from deception and coming home to reality.  And “reality,” is “not grasping.”

Creation, friends, is the impetus, the impulse, the word of love breathed infinitely and eternally into the void.  And we are part of it and with it, not separate, as our fear – the fear that is “I,” “my,” “our” – would have us believe.  And our fear is only that, a belief upon which we act, resulting in our unhappiness, the unhappiness of “our.”

Alas, what must “I” do to be saved?  It’s so simple.  Confess.  Confess and submit.  Confess that you, the real you, are connected to and one with the great I Am, the love and exuberance beyond all knowing that is part and parcel of all you see, unfolding with joy and confidence into all you cannot perceive.

It’s a piece of cake, a walk in the park, a look into the eyes of the beloved.  When deceived “you” lets go of grasping and submits to real everything, you are alive, awake, born for real under the Tree of Life.

© Jerry S Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden.  Feel free to quote, as useful, with proper reference.

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Jerry Kennell provides spiritual direction in person and by Skype at Two Trees Center for Spiritual Development.  Contact jerry@2treegarden.com or by phone or text to (970) 217-6078.  Click FOLLOW to be notified of future posts.

God With Us

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Earlier this week, a man I had never met handed me one of those “Don’t wait until it’s too late on the highway to hell” tracts.  “This is for you,” he said, and quickly exited the campus where I am working this year in Guatemala.  He had been staying at our guesthouse.

Not a word of relational greeting, not a gesture of farewell, but, for him, an act of faithful mission accomplished, the first in a busy day ahead, I presume, in a foreign land.  Duty bound and driven.  I offered simple thanks and walked to my office, watching my emotions flicker between mild surprise, adrenalized offense, the dim glow of dormant anxiety, some reflective affirmation for a life of commitment and compassion for what seems to me a misguided purpose.

The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus have been touted for centuries as the defining events, the sin qua non of Christianity.  There is no denying their powerful drama.  And a million words have been used to amplify, to give religious meaning, to add utility and certainly worldly power to them, whatever anyone may or may not think regarding a greater divine purpose.

Where Christianity as it has overwhelmingly been known leaves the tracks for me is in blood sacrifice and redemption.  The history of our human enterprise of religion is rife with efforts to appease and manipulate the gods.  In this view of the crucifixion, Christianity finally trumps all with God swooping in and sweeping aside the rest.  Finished at last with every failed attempt of the imperfect priest, God sticks it to his own perfect incarnation.  At last, blood that is good enough to cover your sins and mine, if we just believe in time.  And watch out for that devil, stealthily tricking you into delay until it’s too late.

There is, I believe, a healthy alternative.

Come, oh come, Emmanuel.  God with us.  God dying with us.  The God in us willing to live, and if necessary die, alongside our suffering neighbor.

The distinctive call of the true Christian, the follower of Jesus, is the recognition, as with the Buddha, of suffering as the nature of our existence.  And when Christianity really gets it right, where Jesus really got it right, is in the commitment to engage, to join in the suffering of others as the doorway to transcendence for all concerned.  In that light, the crucifixion and resurrection stand as powerful metaphors.

I am reading Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad.  If you have read it, you will understand that I am waking at night with stark visions of unspeakable horrors inflicted on slaves to assure economic privilege and access to wanton depravity.  And I live this year in a country where hundreds of thousands of indigenous passed through and died in a similar hell for the same reasons as little as 30 years ago.  Last week ICE raided a dairy farm in Upstate New York, Syria used chemical weapons against its own and stories of atrocities surfaced from every corner of the globe.

There is no greater hell than the one created by human forces of fear, greed and power, served fresh daily to millions of the innocent on our planet Earth.  We need no other.  A tract of the Gospel, of all things.  It’s difficult to think of a more twisted profanity than scaring the suffering with hell in the name of Jesus.

The crucifixion of Jesus, the lynching of Black folk in America, the trafficking of women and children for depravity and profit, the bombing and burning of anyone to crush a perceived enemy with fear.  There is quite enough blood with far too little redemption.

God with us comes in the hands and feet of those who walk with the suffering in the face of fear, who accept the cross, the noose, the rape and castration, the bullet and blade of every human prince of darkness.  God with us is the resurrection of community in the face of oppression, the dance of kindness under the Tree of Life.

© Jerry S Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden.  Feel free to quote, as useful, with proper reference.

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Jerry Kennell provides spiritual direction in person and by Skype at Two Trees Center for Spiritual Development.  Contact jerry@2treegarden.com or by phone or text to (970) 217-6078.  Click FOLLOW above to be notified of future posts.

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What Is Truth?

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In 2010, Jehanne De Quillan published The Gospel of the Beloved Companion:  The Complete Gospel of Mary Magdalene.  De Quillan is a member of an independent religious order rooted in the Languedoc region of southern France.  The order claims a spiritual lineage to Mary Magdalene, who is said to have come to the region in the first century, bringing with her an original Greek text of her own version of the story of the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus.

In the early twelfth century, Jehanne De Quillan’s community translated the text into Occitan, the common language of the Languedoc in those times.  They claim to have protected both the Greek and Occitanic versions of the text in the centuries since.  The hidden nature of that protection stems from the early thirteenth century Albigensian Crusade and ensuing Inquisition, a twenty-five-year reign of terror unleashed by the Roman Church in this region, aimed at rooting out and destroying an elevated apostolic status of Mary Magdalene and other perceived heresies.

De Quillan claims, for the first time, to present a modern English translation of the original Greek Gospel of Mary Magdalene.  She does this with the permission, but not universal support of her community, which fears reprisal and persecution even today.  Reading the text, that fear seems justified in the shadow of a centuries old religious patriarchy.

The clear and consistent message of Jesus’s teaching in this gospel is simple, yet deep and very beautiful.  It is this:  The Kingdom of Heaven is within you, a seed of the Living Spirit waiting to be discovered, nurtured and cultivated.  And it is to be lived into the world outside you.

The fruits of this cultivation are described in a lovely vision of a tree at the close of the gospel, with eight levels separated by seven guardians, each to be overcome and left behind before the fruit of the level can be consumed, allowing ascension to the next.  These levels and gates are:

  • level one, the fruit of love and compassion, hidden by the guardian of judgment and wrath
  • level two, the fruit of wisdom and understanding, hidden by the guardian of ignorance and intolerance
  • level three, the fruit of honor and humility, hidden by duplicity and arrogance
  • level four, the fruit of strength and courage, hidden and defended by weakness of the flesh and the illusion of our fears

At the completion of this fourth level, the guardians are replaced by lessons or truths to be learned and fully embodied through the consumption of the fruit of the associated level:

  • level five, consumption of the fruit of clarity and truth, yielding the clarity and truth of our soul with the understanding that we are truly children of the Living Spirit
  • level six, consumption of the fruit of power and healing, yielding the power to heal our own soul
  • level seven, consumption of the fruit of light and goodness, yielding freedom from darkness and a resulting fullness of the light and goodness which is the Living Spirit
  • Having completed these seven levels, the eighth level is granted, which is described as a fierce joy in knowing and being embraced fully by the grace and beauty of the Spirit.

All else is folly.  In this narrative, Jesus is even more explicit than in the canonical gospels about this folly and the oppression practiced by dominant religion through laws, rules and dogma.  At one point, for instance, when challenged about the importance of circumcision, he responds that if God wanted males circumcised, he would cause them to be born that way.  And in his closing admonition to the disciples at the last supper he says, “Tell others of what you have seen, but do not lay down any rules beyond what I appointed you; and do not give a law like the lawgiver, lest you be constrained by it.” Mary Magdalene 35:22

The Gospel of the Beloved Companion reads at heart like a truer version of the Gospel of John.  Why do I say truer?  Somehow it hangs together better.  Whereas John is told by a narrator, this gospel is told in first person by someone who was not only an eye witness, but an intimate participant in the life and teachings of Jesus.

There are simple things.  De Quillan points out, for instance, that when the various events and their locations – which are sometimes different than in John – are plotted on a map, they make more sense in terms of the walking distances of the day.  We don’t have John’s mysterious “disciple whom Jesus loved.” It is unambiguously clear that this is a story told by a woman, Mary, also called the Migdalah, or tower, who is the beloved companion of Jesus.

There is nothing sensational about any of it, and the message at every turn points to the teaching about being born of the Spirit, living as a child of the Spirit, experiencing the Kingdom of God.  But it has a much more whole and human feel throughout:

  • Without making any particular point of it, it is simply clear that what we know as the wedding in Cana, where Jesus turns water into wine, was actually the wedding of Jesus and Mary.
  • It is clear in this gospel that Mary Magdalene is the Mary of the Mary, Martha and Lazarus household, and they were essentially home base for Jesus during his ministry.
  • There is a different and gender balanced inner core of disciples who consistently understand the message of Jesus. This core includes: the original disciples Thomas and Matthew (referred to as Levi in this book); Mary, Martha and Lazarus; two women called Salome, one of whom is the mother of Peter and Andrew and the other who is the woman we know as the woman at the well; and Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, who seem to be close friends.
  • The gospel does not try to disguise tension between this group and particularly Peter and Andrew, who challenge Mary at several points, indignant at the idea that Jesus might have told Mary, a woman, things that he did not tell them, or that she, a woman, might better understand the core message and teachings of Jesus than they did.

All of these very human interactions give the book an air of authenticity, as opposed to a story that was augmented or glorified in an artificial manner to prove the divine and extraordinary nature of Jesus.  Jesus is clearly someone sent by the Living Spirit with a message and invitation to his human companions that they, like him, are children of that Spirit.  He invites them to own it and live it.

I say authenticity.  To be clear, when I read this, it rings true to me.

OK, so you may ask the sardonic question of Pilate, which appears in this gospel just as it does in John, “What is truth?”  That is an excellent question when it comes to any scripture and, for most of us, especially the traditional biblical scriptures, which, as we grew up, were presented as ultimate truth.

Let’s ask it again today.  What is truth?

  • Is truth a canon of gospels, letters and visions written and rewritten to suit the tastes of a male hierarchy of patriarchs, three centuries after any fact and in league with the government of Rome?
  • Is truth the Gospel of John, which when read side by side with the Gospel of Mary Magdalene does not hang together with nearly the same consistency and authenticity? I come away from the reading with a sense that John, while certainly a unique and lovely book, was a redaction of the Gospel of Mary Magdalene intended to make it palatable and acceptable to a patriarchal church.
  • Is truth what appears in the traditional gospels to be a systematic denigration of a woman, the only person who consistently in all the narratives stayed by the side of Jesus through his trial, crucifixion and resurrection – the first one to whom Jesus appears and speaks? The institutional church, from the days of canonization forward, has painted Mary as a demoniac and whore.  Her only redeeming quality in that picture is that she is repentant.  I find it more likely that the portrayal of her as someone possessed by seven demons was a male redaction and upending of the vision Jesus gave her of the seven gates to be conquered in the journey to complete experience of the tree of the Living Spirit.  And the casting as a whore seems the ultimate stake of death, hammered through the heart by a male power structure that could not bear the possibility of a woman being the closest disciple and companion to their savior and champion.

What is truth?  By now we know that truth is not historical inerrancy of every word of the canonized scripture.  The inconsistencies are too glaring, the contradictions too complete.

Truth, capital T truth, seems something quite other than facts which can never be firmly established.  Even if, for instance, the Greek text guarded by this spiritual community in Languedoc turned out to be a first century original, there is no guarantee that it is factually true.  Anyone can write a story.

Truth, it seems, is something entirely other than proof positive.  So what is it?  Jackson Browne touches it for me, somehow, in a line from a song titled The Dancer:  “I don’t know what happens when people die.  Can’t understand it as hard as I try.  It’s like a song I can hear playing right in my ear, I can’t sing it.  I can’t help listening.”

Truth, I believe, is the song sung in a quiet heart.  It is as much a sound as it is an object.  Jesus, in every portrayal, whether canonized or otherwise, is consistent in this.  He says that the children of God, the children of the Living Spirit, are the ones who truly hear his words, who understand them and live them from their hearts.

Truth is the abandonment of wrath and judgment in favor of love and compassion; the eschewing of ignorance and intolerance in favor of wisdom and understanding; the forsaking of duplicity and arrogance to take on honor and humility.  Truth is the journey of the soul toward embrace and union with the light and joy of the Living Spirit.

May we quiet our hearts.  May we hear the song.  May we follow that sound to the Tree of Life, with its fruit in every season and its leaves for the healing of the nations.

© Jerry S Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden.  Feel free to quote, as useful, with proper reference.

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Jerry Kennell provides spiritual direction in person and by Skype at Two Trees Center for Spiritual Development.  Contact jerry@2treegarden.com or by phone or text to (970) 217-6078.  Click FOLLOW in the upper left menu bar to be notified of future posts.

The Super Bowl, Election 2016 and God in America

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It was a whizz-bang week – the final presidential candidate debates before the New Hampshire primary capped off by the 50th Super Bowl.  God bless America, Lady Gaga, Coldplay, Beyoncé and certainly Peyton Manning.  And fighter jets.  And the pyrotechnics.  And Wilson.  And Hyundai.  And CBS.  And the pill that remedies various colon related issues that prevent us from success in our daily conquest.

The Western Christian narrative of God and humanity has been one of separation and not connection, a fierce, frantic and fearful individualism.  A whole host of problems arise with this.  First, there is the underlying sense of alienation and isolation, resulting in chronic anxiety and uncertainty.  We are never quite sure, short of less than satisfying dogmatic formulas, whether we are safe or not.  Am I forgiven – enough?  Am I saved?  Is it really possible that God hears me when I pray?  How can I get that right and be sure?  Is there even God?

The flip side of the uncertainty is vain over-confidence.  I am all-powerful.  I can do anything.  The world is my playground.  You just don’t get it.  Get out of my way.  Stupid you if you don’t have enough.

Oscillating between these two poles, we exhaust ourselves.  The existential angst is never relieved, the material satiation is never enough, the domination is never complete.  We are a sometimes weary people in need of greater and greater assurance, no matter how shallow or hollow the language, no matter how sensational the show.

There are those that would say this separation, this individualism, is exactly the triumph of the West – that our belief in the power of the individual and the application of that belief in the material realm have created all that is good in the world.  We have imposed order on chaos, driven out superstition with real medicine, turned raw materials into comfort and pleasure and, through accumulation of wealth transformed into overwhelming force, assured the safety of humanity.

Certainly much that is good has been accomplished.

But back on the panic side of our void, our concept of prayer remains characterized alternately by begging or claiming – as if we are constantly but inadequately grasping at something that is not quite ours.  We need demonstrable proof, sure results.  The tornado lifted when it came to my house.  Or it didn’t because I didn’t pray hard enough.  Superstorms and terrorist threats are God’s judgment on “the gay lifestyle.”  We dash about and shout our certain proclamations.  And we allocate more money to put a material or military patch on the mess to keep it all from falling apart.

Presidential politics in 2016 reflects the fever pitch of our bifurcated anxiety.  It’s as if the deep underlying infection of isolation and desperation is finally forming a boil, a small and intense festering that burns under the thinnest layer of decaying skin, ready to burst.

The infection is spiritual.  It is not religious.  It is not political.  It is not tied to one economic system or another.  One candidate epitomizes the bluster and desperation.  And only one comes close to naming the underlying spiritual vacuum and disconnect that rules our discontent – the fire that drives our fever toward the threshold between morbidity and mortality.  When Senator Sanders pulls back the curtain masking unfettered greed, he touches, without fully naming, our great hunger and despair.

I am not suggesting at all a vote of any sort.  No party, candidate or election can salve the infection of our soul.  Nor am I recommending that we shut off the Super Bowl.  But I am inviting us to see, to understand, to absorb and to embrace the nature of the illness.  And I am suggesting we can cure it with a change of orientation.

It is our isolation that fuels our insatiable hunger.  And it is our underlying narrative of separation that walls us off from the deep satisfaction and power of existence.  Believing conquest and satiation to be the elixirs of at least happiness, if not eternal life, we drive pedal to the metal toward the brink of extinction.

There is a different way, a different orientation, a different direction in which to look.  The forest sages of ancient India captured it so clearly in the Upanishads.  Through the practice of stilling the mind and quiet observation, these sages document a Self, immanent and transcendent, that is the loving essence of each one and every thing.  It is as if the flashing stream of still pictures that create the illusion of motion has been stilled, and the space between revealed to be something entirely other, a space without fear, a limitless expanse of satisfaction and creative bliss, a place beyond need or desperate grasping.

No matter what or how much it consumes, the separate ego is never satisfied.  And our belief that we are disconnected beings in a world we increasingly understand as only material, accelerates us exponentially toward exhaustion and annihilation on the wings of glittering despair.

Mastery of our lust comes from understanding and turning away from isolation and toward connection, away from insatiability and toward satisfaction.  It comes from abandoning fear in favor of trust, and willful grasping in favor of willing service.

And, ultimately, it comes from embracing our true Self, the Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source that is the light, the eternal energy and limitless love we begin to glimpse between the moving frames of our desperation.  We are not separate and fallen.  We only blind ourselves with the fear born of our limited consciousness and chosen view.  We are Spirit, experiencing the material.  Touch without owning, look without lusting, enjoy without hording.  There is enough.  Our greatness already is and has no vital connection to anything at all in the halftime show or ads or victor yet to come in Super Bowl 51, no critical dependence on the outcome of election 2016.

Embrace it under the Tree of Life.

© Jerry S Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden.  Feel free to quote, as useful, with proper reference.

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Jerry Kennell provides spiritual direction in person and by Skype at Two Trees Center for Spiritual Development.  Contact jerry@2treegarden.com or by phone or text to (970) 217-6078.  Click FOLLOW in the upper left menu bar to be notified of future posts.

Syria, Guatemala, the Twin Towers and the Tree of Life

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Syrian and African refugees are flooding Europe.  Foreign ministers of the EU huddle in angst to find a solution to the crisis.  A little boy lapped by the waves on the beach captures our heart, a heart that we believe helpless to solve either the hostilities of the terrorist threat or the plight of the poor.  Meanwhile thousands upon thousands of Central Americans flee gang and narco-violence only to be housed in detention centers for children in Texas.  We, with Hungary, dream of a better wall.

In 1954 the US Central Intelligence Agency, in league with United Fruit Company, Congress, President Eisenhower and the US Department of State, overthrew the democratically elected government of Guatemala.  The New York Times, Time Magazine and the rest of the major media of the day swallowed the manufactured anti-communist rhetoric, reporting persistently and with favor what in reality was a thin charade of a military coup against a very democratic regime.  The agricultural land and labor of the indigenous people of Guatemala were the true prize.

Alas, it didn’t work out so well and ultimately required millions of dollars of arms, annually, to support successive regimes of oppression in the slaughter or disappearance of an estimated 250,000 Guatemalans, mostly indigenous, in the years between then and the early 1990’s.  Today, US and Canadian mining and agricultural interests quietly pursue the same business, in league with governments to engineer trade pacts that pave the way for the interests of wealth at the expense of the powerless.  We are blind and complicit in our convenient comfort.

The Guatemalan people, once again last week, spoke up, peacefully and successfully, to unseat the latest propped up corrupt president – a seeming victory.  But let’s read the history.  Anyone elected who intends to act in the best interests of all the citizens of Guatemala faces North American defamation and, as likely, murder for their efforts.  The best interests of all the citizens of Guatemala do not align with the insatiable hunger of the powers that be.

Greed fuels the engine of power abused.  Violence and despair are its polluted exhaust.  And there is no limit to the sophistication and depravity of lies and destruction that, unchecked, may be served up to keep that turbine whirling.

Fourteen years ago this week, these same powers co-opted the destruction of the World Trade Center towers as the demon of terrorism to mask yet another generation of violence in the Middle East.  The bitter fruit of that story is no different than that of Guatemala.  Hundreds of thousands, mostly civilian, lie dead (only thousands of our own, a cynically acceptable return on investment) in an ecological, social and political waste land that cranks out profits beyond the pale for military and oil contractors.  And the embedded press, as always, missed the story entirely, serving up the dulling Kool-Aid® of terrorist threat to a complacent and willing public.

Time will tell whether the demise of those buildings and lives served only as serendipitously convenient cover or whether, just like in 1954, this was an orchestrated sleight of hand to camouflage greed beyond imagination.   No matter at this point.  Violence and greed breed poverty and oppression, paving the way for trafficking and profiteering of all kinds.  Terrorists, drug lords, pimps and gang leaders are no more than a distracting by-product.  The immigrant crisis in Europe and the United States is not the problem of those that are fleeing.  Nor is it the result of the immediate violence that pushes these poor people, at last, to embrace the risk and humiliation of their plight.  Rather, it is the fruit of the soil tilled by the heart of greed.

There is no political or military solution, friends.  There is no magical system or policy.  And our Band-Aid® social and relief programs address only symptoms, not the disease.  There is only our willful refusal to connect the dots all the way back to the root and make the choice for which we are responsible.

When we are stuck in the fear of death under the metaphorical Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we respond with greed, violence and the abuse of power.  We do this as individuals.  And the heart we choose as individuals becomes the collective heart of our institutions of commerce, religion and government.  These work together seamlessly to mask our bottomless fear, hunger and despair.

When the individuals at the helm of obscene wealth and its political, covert and military minions come to terms with the empty depravity of their abusive choices; when we as citizens of privilege are willing to face our complicity in blind addiction to comfort, we may find and embrace the solution to both the misery of the oppressed and the wake of violence that flows in to fill the void of our desecration.

We are neither helpless nor irreparably fallen.  We have a choice.  There is enough.  We are each and all responsible.  When we turn to live under the Tree of Life, we choose to embrace rather than oppress the powerless.  We refuse to create an enemy that masks and justifies the violence of our greed.  And we harvest the fruit of goodness instead of the bitter and rotten fruit we feed to the refugees of our depravity.

Conversion and salvation are not the easy mouthing of the name of Jesus.  They are, rather, the conscious and practiced choice of maturity, of becoming the true Self of compassion and kindness we are intended and able to be.  Come Lord Jesus.  Come Mohammed, Buddha, Krishna and Aunt Susie.  Come you and me, with nothing but the desire to heal our hearts, in rest and sharing under the Tree of Life.  It is there, for our choosing, at the center of the City of Our Source, with its fruit in every season and its leaves for the healing of the nations.  (Revelation 22: 2)

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© Jerry S Kennell, Two Trees in the Garden.  Feel free to quote, as useful, with proper reference.

Jerry Kennell provides spiritual direction in person and by Skype at Two Trees Center for Spiritual Development.  Contact jerry@2treegarden.com or by phone or text to (970) 217-6078.  Click FOLLOW in the upper left menu bar to be notified of future posts.

O Holy Night

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Something extraordinary happened in the birth of Jesus.  No one bothers to write tales of wonder about the birth of most of us: confounding tales of deep simplicity and wild extravagance; no room at the inn and choirs of angels; the politicos already attuned to the threat to power.

We come looking for a savior and king.  Something in us yearns for the perfect leader, the one who will make it all right, with enough for everyone, the end of death and sorrow and pain.

But the prince of peace would not be king.  He said to serve each other the way we have been served.  The supposed savior said it is, in fact, your own faith that makes you whole.  The one who shines a light on the path to the Tree of Life said that you – you and me – you are the light of the world.

And the one slaughtered on a cross did not call us to receive salvation kneeling at the foot of that tree.  The way of Jesus calls us all the way to the terrible end hanging from the top, nailed to the gnarly limbs of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil:  a death by submission to connection, by willingness to release the isolation of ego; death to fear; death to selfishness and the violence it engenders; the overwhelming death of embracing the pain, fear and sorrow of life without turning away, without running to hide, with no father or regiment of angels to take us down from that hanging before the last ounce is wrung out.

There is a barrier, a chimera, a lonesome valley and dark night of the soul that stands in the road between the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life.  We must ultimately walk it by ourselves.  No one is born again without the lonely death on that tree.  No one finds the other end of that path by staying stuck on their knees at the foot of the cross of Jesus.

O Holy Night.  Be born again: born through every step of pain and suffering; born to the last wretched and lonely breath, stolen by the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Be born to your true light, the light of your life.  Walk as a companion and not a king.

Blessed Christmas.

© Two Trees in the Garden.  Feel free to quote, as useful, with proper reference.

For Christmas this Year, Let’s Let Jesus Off the Bloody Hook

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For Christmas this year, let’s give Jesus a gift.  Let’s let him off the bloody hook.  Somewhere between the Sermon on the Mount and Paul’s letters, “Follow me” turned into “I did it all with blood sacrifice.”  Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 – 1109, sealed the deal with his writing on the satisfaction theory of atonement.

And ever since, we’ve been killing him (Jesus) softly but surely by piling on the sins of the world, Sunday after Sunday.  Data tells us he’s almost half dead now, under the load.  Barna Group relentlessly counts the beans of evangelical angst, documenting the slippage of the “churched” through the door to become the “unchurched”, searching for just the right moves to get’em “churched” again.  Their latest book, Churchless:  Understanding Today’s Unchurched and How to Connect with Them, documents that the “unchurched” segment of the US population has grown not just steadily, but at an ever increasing rate from 30% in the 1990’s to 43% in 2014.  For Barna and company (A better book title might have been Clueless.), it seems a daunting task to stem that tide, given what they see as the relentless bashing of Christianity by godless unchurched culture.  A small first step might be to get rid of those repelling and out of touch churched and unchurched labels.

Let’s let Jesus off the bloody hook.  Lots of folks have tried to redeem atonement by turning it into “at-one-ment.”  Too little too late, I fear, but the sentiment is useful.  I believe with all my heart that Jesus was “at-one” with Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source.  And I believe “the way” to which he persistently called the people of his small corner of the world in his time is, indeed, the path forward – the very same foundational path forward whispered by the breath of life in all places and all times.

But we – you and I and Aunt Suzie – won’t find that path by continually “casting our burden upon the Lord.”  (If you are sufficiently unchurched, that phrase of evangelical atonement might be unfamiliar, and I promise not to use it again.)  We will find it, metaphorically, in our own journey from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil to the Tree of Life.  We will find it by changing the way we view ourselves and the world around us.

“Salvation,” another hopelessly abused and by now nearly dead word, is really just our choice to grow up and move along that path.  A bloody choice?  Well, let’s be honest.  Turning from the fear and separation of the metaphorical Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is very threatening to power, at least to the misused power of twisted politics and those that wield religion to mediate your redemption and mine.  Taking personal responsibility for growing up to compassion, confidence and responsible relationship – becoming the Adult of God (Creator/Spirit/Mind/Source – not an old man in some heaven) that we become under the Tree of Life – taking that personal responsibility and acting on it generally, at some point, puts us crosswise with the powers of fear.  Witness Jesus as the Romans nailed him to a tree, or Dietrich Bonhoeffer and six millions Jews up in smoke in bloody Christian Germany.

I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.  Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal offerings, I will not accept them, and the peace offerings of your fatted beasts I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen.

But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
(Amos 5: 21-24.  God I love my old Revised Standard Version.)

Want to be saved?  Stop going to war.  Want to be saved?  Take care of the planet.  Want to be saved?  Don’t even think about killing the food stamp program.

Want to be saved from “sin and death?”  Stop nailing Jesus to the tree and crying salvation.  Grow up and choose it.  Forgiveness is not a gift that was given in the bloody slaughter of the Lamb of God.  Forgiveness is a state of being.  No one can give it to you. You must truly embrace it for yourself.  And then move on.

Move on, move on down the road.  And consider a gift to Jesus this Christmas.  Take him off the bloody tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the tree of fear and hate and twisted power.  Clean him up, like the Good Samaritan would.  Clean him up and walk with him, even through the valley of the shadow of death.  Walk with him, all the way to the Tree of Life.

© Two Trees in the Garden.  Feel free to quote, as useful, with proper reference.

Jerry Kennell now provides spiritual direction by Skype.  Contact jerry@2treegarden.com.