Sabbatical 2024

What?! Blasphemy! Hang on a sec. Before you cook my grits, let me explain this obvious click-baity title. When I say "god", you could ask "god of what?" See, I believe there are two worlds that we occupy. We have the objective world that we all share. And we have the subjective world that's all ours. We tend to focus on the objective world and get caught up in the drama going on out there. But we often tend to neglect the subjective world. That one isn't as exciting. There isn't much going on. Or is there? We have surprisingly very little control over the objective world. That's the realm of big G God, and we play a minute part in it. But we rule and reign our subjective world. We are little g god. In there, we get to choose who enters our heaven and who gets thrown into our hell. Now, how do you play god? How do you know if you are a fair and just god? Some turn to philosophy, some to holy books, clergy or rituals. We all start with the programming ...

"What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called the Messiah?" and they respond, "Crucify him!" -- Matthew 27:22 So I watched a video from Jonathan Pageau. He's a Christian iconographer who studies religious symbols. You can watch the video to get the details, but he is 100% certain the Olympics ceremonies were depicting The Last Supper, not the festival of Dionysus. His insight is really good. It's worth a watch just for the history of the symbols, even if you don't like the story he's telling. I was thinking about this a bit and some ideas popped in. Let me try to noodle them out. So what happened in the ceremony? A lesbian took the place of Jesus at the table. She embodied Jesus, the Lord of the Christian tradition. And what happened to the religious community? Angry cries of blasphemy. Now let's go back to the actual last supper. At the behest of the Pharisees, Jesus was tried, convicted of starting a rebellion and was crucified. And what go...

I have a sabbatical morning routine. I get up, I take my pills. I put on the coffee, heating up yesterday's leftovers if there are any. I sit in my chair and start thinking about what I want to blog. And, like clockwork, my cat Cosmo jumps up on my lap and sticks his face in mine, demanding to be petted. This morning, I was trying to dream up some big, all-encompassing abstract talking point. And Cosmo was having none of it. He said, "Nope. You're gonna pay attention to me." I think we need reminders like this. We get so caught up in the world drama. I know I want all the problems to be fixed, all tensions to be resolved and paradise to come. And, for whatever reason, it's not happening. Coming from a Pentecostal background, I was taught that God is sovereign over all. And when problems come, we offer up our prayers and watch the miracle happen. The trouble is, I've never seen that. My prayers seemed to not move the needle one bit. The most poignant case in my...