Blog 817 – 11.17.2017

The Choking Kind

If I have written this blog before, I hope you will pardon me, friends. I will try to add a few new wrinkles and refine the point. But, it is a thought I have often about a certain travesty I have committed myself and observed in my life. There was a MoTown song in the nineteen sixties by the title, “Choking Kind”, I believe, where it was sung that a certain lady’s love was that kind, the choking kind. And, no, all you folk still struggling with those murder and mayhem issues not the kind where you wanted to choke the life out of her but that her love was so demanding of complete and utter loyalty of devotion and attention that it allowed no room for any other loves even lesser loves if there even is such a thing.

Of a certain politician of recent and current history, I need not name names, it has been said that he takes up all the oxygen in the room. His ego seems to demand attention and requires “a whole lot of love.” That reminds me of one of my favorite creatures, the beloved dog, who will race across a field or around a house just for a pet, pat, or a kind word, so starved for your attention and affection. I always think of people like that, for such a long time I was one, as damaged and broken, for they seem to be always in need of ego stroking and emotional support. They do not love themselves so they would suck all that thought to be missing element in their lives out of you. It is often displayed in a way just the opposite of what you might think. They may appear to all the world to love themselves too much, as if it were possible to love anyone even yourself too much, but the reverse is true – they hardly love themselves at all for some misperceived undeservedness or past infraction the details of which are often vague or foggy.

I believe it to be lies, all lies, whispered to us by the great enemy of our souls, that satan I call “ego.” And, yes, the little “e” I use on purpose for he/she is a puny, paltry enemy undeserving of a capital letter name, a snake in the grass who does not love us and wants us devoid of love from any source especially our own heart. This criminal creation of man would have us sing songs like, “all out of love” or “I’ll be glad when you’re dead you rascal you” to ourselves and others rather than, “the greatest love of all.” I love you, I love all my friends, I love myself, and I love God as I perceive Him/Her/Me/Us to be, but none more or to the exclusion of any others. I happen to believe that any restraints on love are arbitrary and artificial and detrimental to the lover and loved alike. We were meant to live and love the way my sweet daughter Emily did and sang – with all the stops pulled out.

There is as I have mentioned before in the last garden scene in the story of Jesus’s great sacrifice and resurrection a “touching incident” that speaks to a point that is often missed. Three women who loved Jesus and not only followed him all the way, even risking arrest or death themselves for being seen his friends and followers, to the cross but to the tomb to hastily put his body in the ground. Passover rules required a speedy burial in this case. The story goes they came back Sunday morning hoping to anoint his body with perfumes as a token of the sweetness of their undying love for him. There was no need for this as he had already had his feet washed and wiped by the forgiven woman’s tears and hair and been anointed by her with costly perfume, so costly the treasurer of the group, Judas, made note it should not have been “wasted” but sold to help the poor. Be careful being overly concerned with money, the lack of it or the abundance of it both being deceitful. That kind of thinking never ends well, but often as it did in Judas’ case, at the end of a rope or with his bowels burst forth from a terrible fall, neither end a pretty one.

Back to the loving ladies in the garden, two Marys and Salome (There are three stories in that, I will try to write them someday.) the ladies hoped to get the guards to roll away the heavy stone so they could anoint the body. The guards were gone, the stone rolled back, the body gone. The mother Mary, and Salome left distraught. Mary Magdalene, whose relationship to Jesus was as all are unique, lingered pondering in her heart as his mother and Salome what all this might mean. She came upon a man, her eyes full of tears, she did not recognize him at first, but when she heard his voice she recognized him at once and wrapped her arms around him. It is here that the translations and interpretations often garble the story. Friends that is not unique to this story. Some have Jesus saying to her, “Do not touch me, I have yet to go to my Father.” That is ridiculous really on several counts. First, she was already hugging him and secondly he according to several other accounts hung around several days before “going to be with his Father and ours.” Even a silly concept that, I think. The dying thing had cleared Jesus’ head of all those silly notions of separation – “Father, how could you forsake me” indeed. The resurrected Jesus surely knew that God never would nor could forsake anyone for “In Him/Her we live, move, breath, and have our being.”

So what was Jesus really trying to say to Mary Magdalene and to all of us, smarty pants? He was saying, “Don’t hold me so tight, you are choking me. You are already loved by Love just as I am. You don’t need me so desperately to feel loved. Heaven and all the love you need is inside of you.” Pretty presumptuous of me, putting words in Jesus mouth, but no more so than all the Bible writers who presumed to speak for God. You be the judge of whether or not I got it right. Try listening to the living God yourself rather that trusting even the best interpretations of the so called holy books. The living book or bible is the one we should read and trust. We all carry a copy writ large and indelibly in our hearts.

I think Jesus’ left the stage as we all will when our part here is done. I can hear him saying, “Greater works than I have done you will do because I go to the Father.” Makes one wonder if all this hubbub was what he intended at all. I mean really his primary purpose in life, death, and life as ours is was to bring a message from home, “Papa loves you, always has, and always will, no matter what.” Well, that is the gist of it. Ask Him or Her yourself if you don’t believe me.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White