Day 125a: Pausing in pre-dawn Peace … (September 01, 2019)
After a fitful 5+ hours of sleep in the cab of the aforementioned truck, I was once again up and at ’em well before the break of dawn. It was indeed still incredibly early at the time, and yet somehow Highway 15 was once more already filled with a horde of cars & trucks and vans racing somewhere (“Who are all these people and where the heck are they going so fast at this otherwise peaceful hour?!?), a fact that inspired me to pull over soon thereafter into the calm confines of the at-that-hour abandoned Battlefield Baptist Church grounds, where I lay down under a swaying tree and dozed until the proper dawn …
“When I look at the clues that indicate the nature of Jesus Christ – humbly born in a barn to parents of questionable social standing who had a spotty ancestral lineage, reared in a rough neighborhood and learning a mean trade, owning little and surrounding himself with base &/or unattractive cohorts, and then even dying a shameful death – I find his entire approach fully unable to in any way fit into the modern church’s methods use to try and “win the world.” In truth, Jesus’ whole approach could easily be described as patently nonthreatening or completely non-manipulative. Indeed, he led with the weakness gentleness & self-sacrifice in each & every step of his life … And so we are to remember: it is only truly Christian to humbly Do Good for others; always and to everyone – especially to those who do evil to us. It is only truly Christian to love our enemies as if they were neighbors, our neighbors as if they were friends, and friends as ourselves. It is only truly Christian to be gentle and merciful and forgiving to all, and to never make a boast of those qualities (or any other virtues, or even our love of God), but rather to always show that we love the Divine by humbly trying to Do Right by everyone nearby – not tithe allegiance to the church or condemn its nonbelievers or rebuke the heretics or adorn any man-made social statures, but simply love and care and give and serve every single being within reach, in every moment we have to reach them. That is the only way to follow HIS Way – that is the only way to be truly Christian, at least in any way that truly matters.” ~ inspired by Gayle D. Erwin & Charles Dickens
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