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YESHUA
His name was Yeshua, the legitimate, not immaculate,
scion of a young Jewish couple named Miriam and Yosef and surely
a brown-haired, brown-eyed Middle-Eastern man, sun-bathed and beige,
raised in the traditions of Abraham and Moses, David and Solomon and
the way of the shepherd, seeking the guidance of a transcendent, 
immanent, sometimes merciful God

Neither king nor messiah but carpenter, mason, teacher,
philosopher, humanitarian, agitator, an itinerate rabbi with a small
group of friends, Galilean, crude-speaking, intense and rabid, adoring
and faithful, not cloistered or withdrawn like an Essene community,
apocalyptic and dark, suspicious of the spirits of comfort and joy but
more like a spontaneous “Reform Congregation” sure that the future of
the Hebrew condition in the land of Judea, a dangerous place in a dangerous
world, lay not in the power of the secular state nor the rigorous rituals of
religion and law, but in the everyday practice of kindness and service,
taking care of one another in the sacred milieu of infinity, eternity and
cycles of life, in the deserts, the meadows, the clear running streams and for
better or worse, the imperial cities of one empire or another, but free of the
burdens of ceremony  and doctrine and the sad manipulations of identity, 
belonging and control of the soul

He was a savant and a sage who preached until he couldn’t among the tribes 
that he knew, asking all who would listen to trust the Holy Spirit and believe 
LIKE him, not proclaim him a savior and begin believing IN him! 
Betrayal and crucifixion, though not in his plan, were calculated risks and 
normal responses to his subversion of power and wealth and tradition and
the unfortunate narratives of the Judean blues!    

The crazy complexities and the fictional trappings of global 
Christianity and its evangelical offspring in America today - arrogant,
political,  militant and righteous, vindictive and cruel; addicted to the
concepts of conquest, conversion and relentless litigation for religious
control of our nations and states, of our bodies and minds; to the 
gut-wrenching image of the impossibly delicate crucified figure, 
to the Scandinavian good looks of Christ in a portrait or walking on
water - are OUR crosses to bear in these precarious times, but believe 
me when I tell you they have nothing to do with the clear moral 
teachings, the spiritual transcendence or the common sense sermons,
bathed in poetics both Aramaic and Hebrew, of Yeshua of Nazareth: 
Galilean, Israeli, softly serious and warm, a cool Hebrew dude
who, religion aside, we could all get behind!
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