Author: Wesley White

“But we,” began Peter, “we left everything and have followed you.” 

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look there has to be an easier way
when we hitched our star to yours
that’s supposed to have value
for us as well as for you

if this way is going to be marketable
you’d best figure out
how to sell the comfort angle
without daily attention

heaven sounds like a good outcome
but it keeps having growing pains
every time it is about to come on earth
and we have to open a still larger door

this is fair warning
back off your stringency
or we’re out of here
raise us or get out of the pot

---

It is very difficult to get past the suffering and death part of new life. This is something any addict who has given up every other thing for a next fix will affirm.

This falls in the “impossible” realm of what we can do on our own.

It is easy to fall into a binary way of dealing with spiritual matters that divides things into body and soul, into the nothing I can do and the everything G*D can do. This means we need to be careful not to submerge our needed agency into being a pale image cast on some cave wall.

It is easy to claim that one move we made toward health and whatever is beyond that is all that is needed. In this way we insulate ourselves from ever having to make another adjustment. Our life can settle in to “what’s in it for me” and that’s all we need to know.

And we are back again to a previous scene with Peter affirming that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, but one who was exempt from the consequences of such a location. Let’s hear it for Peter whose rockiness, trying to block a river, reveals the impetus of the river with the eddies around its resistance. Such a block helps clarify the underlying gravity that pulls the river on.

If discipleship is primarily a quid pro quo arrangement, the energy needed to be as expansive as its avatar will constrict. This is a basic understanding of the Constantinian conversion of Christ’s way from persecuted to privileged, from non-violence to violence, from invitational to required. Even though it took 300 years to shift, this question is instrumental in continued schisms.

In the previous posting there was a typo in the last stanza.

It should read

when asking zero step questions
it is of very little help
to respond three big stages
down the way

The language and imagery for the 12 Step Program is taken from Russell Brand’s book, Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions.

Jesus looked at them, and answered, “With people it is impossible, but not with God; for everything is possible with God.”

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the rich don’t make it
all the way to heaven
on their present path
of self-presents

without a first step awareness
that “you’re a bit fucked”
our eyes will mysteriously
find themselves averted

without a second step agreement
that we could be elseways
there is not much room or time
to stop a spinning wheel

there is then no third step open
how then might you think
you’ll get off this wheel
all by your little lonesome

when asking zero step questions
it is of very little help
to respond three big stages
down the way

---

If money, property, or other accumulated asset doesn’t talk, how will we be able to do an adequate triage of who most needs our healing service. If we don’t have this to soothe our soul in times of trouble (at least we have enough to have more than someone else), what difference does a next-world salvation make?

It can’t be said in too many different ways, there is no sure sign of assurance in a world that is continually moving on. At best a deepening relationship with one another and a however-named source of strange attraction of one-part-to-another and between yesterday, today, and tomorrow caught red-handed in the act of moving on has enough fuzzy-logic presence to intrigue and beckon.

Money is the easiest surface on which to draw a Mammon-G*D line. But it goes much further into our ideation. Each time we find our bedrock jostled, we involuntarily respond, “How then will I be healed? How then may I be saved? How then is life meaningful? How then will our picture be focused? How then will I hear a voice identifying a holistic path in the wilderness?

All of these are found between partners, not in one or the other or any byproduct of one or the other or, even, both.

In this way we might broaden the teaching, “Sōzō is communal—in and of and beyond an ordinary-of-days. Impossible alone. Expected when partnered. Live it into being.”

Now, on to the possible!

“Then who can be saved?” they exclaimed in the greatest astonishment.

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looking on fortunate others
knowing our own plans
fractured and faded
we project consistency
in both directions

upward always and onward
those with the most more
have too much to fail
even their bankruptcies
bring advantages

with heaven already on them
how could they miss heaven’s mark
such a construct
simply doesn’t compute
we don’t get it

---

The disciples have been shocked before by Jesus’ actions, directions, and responses to them. It has not just been the crowds that have been amazed.

In the realm of such mysteries as parables, multiplications of bread, and various healings we can claim to be out of our depth and come to simply accept that which goes beyond our usual experience is foundational.

However, when it comes to the place where we swim, within an economic system, here we have enough immersion to have our foundations shaken. Here we think we know what we are talking about.

In the first part of Mark, σῴζω (sōzō, be safe/healed/saved) was present in some diminished setting of illness, possession, or nearing death. Remember the man with a withered hand, Jairus’ unnamed daughter, a hemorrhaging woman.

We are now well into the second part. Where once sōzō, salvation, showed itself in the giving and receiving of health and life, now sōzō shifts away from “salvation from death to salvation through death” (LaVerdiere-2₁₀₂).

The shift from preparing fisher-folk to go out with a staff and a cloak to find hospitable spots from which to radiate health has morphed into preparing their being to be hospitable spots from the non-attached spot of suffering, death, and next life.

This is the sort of quantum shift that more and more people are seeing as needed in this world—a next line and stage that a few will take in advance of additional people joining through time and setting out on whatever a next Axial Age will later be termed. This is more than a generational shift. An invitation to sōzō is on the loose.

It is easier for a camel to get through a needle’s eye, than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” 

---

practice as many impossibilities
as you can before noon
or supper or bed
and still there is no
camel going through
any needle’s eye

no one possessed
gets out under the auspices
of their own bootstraps
or they wouldn’t
have been possessed
in the first place

the poor search for riches
the rich search for heaven
both lose their bearings
the poor poorer
the rich richer
unpartnered death spirals

---

My own bias is to have this verse come before v. 24. It has a sense of sorrow about it. A man asks an important ethical question and can’t deal with the import of the response. How sad that property, wealth, privilege, prestige of any economic system hold spirit in such a tight grasp.

This is not simply a hyperbolic statement, but a realization of how difficult are good news and fishing. We are back again at the foot of a mountain where the disciples have been thrown for a loop by trying to heal through a technique of repeating what worked last time.

It is one thing to look for places where hospitality welcomes the throwing out of possessive demons and quite another when people who show such promise, as this man seeking a larger life, in the final analysis fall short of being able to take a needed next step. In the first instance there is great rejoicing, in this scene there is a resigned sense of deaf, mute, blindness closing down any glimmer of changed behavior.

Our fantasy of waking up a lottery winner without ever buying a ticket is of the same nature as someone who is a winner in the economic calculus of success and who refuses to see their personal benefaction as based on the besting of others. This is one of those journeys that takes the longest stay in the wilderness to go deep enough for a retreat awareness that can look the temptation of “more” in the eye and rejoice in “enough”.

Here we are facing the old choice about belovedness. Is it a free ticket to the best of all possible worlds? Is it the entrance fee to a wilderness of temptation in the presence of beasts and angels?

The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “My children, how hard a thing it is to enter the kingdom of God!

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possessions are not
the only catch point
for a larger present
to be hooked fore and aft
into living presence

appreciation easily erodes
with every learned control
over self and others
and we are coded
for dominion

heads do not rest easy
with dreams of more
addicting our fantasies
driving our ambitions
erasing our connections

there is much to not do
to not claim hospitality
to not restrict hospitality
to not limit mercy
to not presume mercy

for every catch
a release
constrained by caughtness
resisting release
ease is not easy

---

There are some commentators who suggest that verses 24 and 25 are reversed. Regardless of which comes first the combination packs a punch.

It is difficult to enter the presence of a Wisdom-oriented G*D that moves as she will. That which we have come to rely upon shifts right under our feet. We become disoriented when our theories of how the world works turn out to no longer have a bearing. From dominion and land we presume privilege and power, control over our lives as we dance around a golden calf that gives the answers we desire.

Again and again such a constructed world comes crashing down. It is difficult. And that is an understatement.

Whether then or now there are fantasies about having our cake and eating it, too. In recent days there has been an adjustment to the American tax code that greatly benefits those with property. Here is a description of the difficulty—Swanson₂₃₁.

While you are digging around in this scene about giving everything away, you might listen in on discussions about levels of taxation in the United States. Sometimes those who oppose taxes argue that taxes are too high because there is corruption in the federal government. There surely is such corruption, but it exists in equal measure in the corporate world, or in any world you would choose to specify. But the argument against taxation gets interesting, at least in terms of this scene in Mark’s story, when the argument for lowering taxes swings to the notion that “it’s your money.” Which side of this argument would the young man find himself on? Why?

Then Jesus looked around, and said to his disciples,“How hard it will be for people of wealth to enter the kingdom of God!”

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many possessions
carry weight
whether used
or lost track of

their gravity
pulls attention
whether seen or not
into their center

their shininess
blinds to any value
other than their own
bright star

a goody in hand
is better by far
than anything afar
beyond grasping

to swim in one’s own
removes an ability
to breathe
in any other picture

---

As the propertied man went gloomily away, Jesus looked around and found there were yet trails of “stugnasas” that had not left with him.

A gloom of doom has settled over the disciples, perhaps, particularly, the Twelve.

Teachers are particularly aware of teachable moments and so the hidden ideas of the disciples needs to be addressed then, and now.

“Did you also have a hoarded hope that your reward would be great? Well, let’s be clear—It is impossible for those who treasure possessions to move beyond them.”

As Mann₄₀₂ puts it:

The teaching on wealth in the conversation which follows certainly goes far beyond exhortations to almsgiving and certainly (so far as Jesus is concerned) contradicts any unqualified assertion that wealth is a sign of divine blessing. For the rich the difficulty lies in making a choice between caring for wealth and caring for the things of God.

In spite of a basic good-will toward the person seeking a moral compass that will work in life’s experience and whatever might be beyond this life and even Jesus looking upon him with a love that was the equivalent of Jesus’ love of G*D and Neighb*r, there is no automatic way to deal with a new norm of holiness that puts any form of blessedness in front of an appreciation for journeying with others into a wilderness that can only be appreciated on its own terms. Privilege and power lead us to turning back before we have had a wilderness retreat from which we return changed.

What seemed so easily said, “Extend love to the poor”, reveals the underlying sadness of not being able to choose for one’s heart’s desire—life in fullness. To be open to the mystical not bounded by the rational is to be open to change how and where we look.

But the man’s face clouded at these words, and he went away distressed, for he had great possessions.

---

it’s turtles all the way down
today and tomorrow
names for nascent turtles
for their time and turn

as much as we work to gather
comfort and ease
for some later protection
this is as nothing

it is harder to give
ease and comfort
in a zero-sum game
we fear is rigged

our fondest hope founders
day after day
on simple solutions
reversing course

---

Askers of questions are often dismayed at the responses they get. As questions often mask an idea, when a response doesn’t match up with the often sublimated idea there is disappointment at the realization that we are not justified in our position. Sadness can be expected.

The Greek here is στυγνάσας (stugnasas, to be sorrowful), which may be a good word to bring back into a depressed society.

Listen to Swanson₂₃₂ describe his experience with these sorts of questions:

… we misunderstand this scene about giving everything away if we forget that we do not, not for a minute, believe that the young man should give everything away, at least not if the young man were our own son. Watch interpreters carefully. When faced with a passage like this one, they valorize self-denial mightily. They urge similar self-denial on the part of the audience. And then they go home and plan for their retirement, or for their child’s career. I teach American undergraduates. They are a good lot, devoted to lives of service. I also talk to the parents with some frequency. Their parents are also a good lot, concerned for the well-being of their offspring. Parents sing a regular refrain in these conversations. It begins something like this: “But what can you do with a major in … ?” It does not matter what word comes next. If the major field in question is biology/pre-med, no one asks. But any other field can be a cause for concern. I teach religion. You can imagine the questions I get asked. So far no parent has said, “I hope my daughter picks up dying people off the street for no pay.” Why not?

The possessions in question are specifically land, property. It doesn’t matter if it is land possessed by an individual or an Empire. In the end, land is for the benefit of all, dominion does not work here.

Jesus looked at the man, and his heart went out to him, and he said, “There is still one thing wanting in you; go and sell all that you have, and give to the poor, and you will have wealth in heaven; then come and follow me.”

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peering searching
laser-like gaze
sees accumulated good
hell-proof armor
thickening immobilizing

assessing assaying
clear-eyed evaluation
focuses on repentant action
a spirited can-opener
reducing toning

claiming calling
bell-pealed alarm
strips all yesterdays
eternity-revealed prescription
selling voiding

offering beckoning
soul-tuned song
keying a locked treasure
denying an eternity
joying rejoicing

---

Love is many splendored. Trying to parse it too closely turns into vivisection in search for a soul. Here we simply note that ἀγαπάω (agapō, dearly loved, greatly welcomed) will again show up in reference to the partnered acts of repentance: to love G*D; to love Neighb*r.

The depth of this deep gaze into another does not stop with loving another “as we find them”, but goes, in the words of the songwriter Fred Kaan, to love them “as they may become”.

In this way love is able to not only support, but amend.

Before us we have a loveable person. That is all that is known at this point. Recent Bibles spoil the fun of reading these ancient stories by titling sections. In this way they spoil the action.

We’ve seen people come up to Jesus before—a wild man in the land of the Gerasenes, a leader of a synagogue, a woman to touch his garment. The only difference here is that we are dealing with the ethics of living, rather than the physics of living. In this realm the only thing that can satisfy is a baptismal metanoia or turning around that comes with a shift of focus from accumulation of precious seeds to an extravagant sowing of them.

We are now shocked to learn that a usual marker of success, wealth, is a barrier to going any further than we now are. It is a block to what we may become. If we can read this without the spoiler alert of a heading, it may be a needed shock to whatever our current addiction may be. Now we can again choose a less-traveled road.

“Teacher,” he replied, “I have observed all these from my childhood.”

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everything I’ve done
particularly
all those good bits
count
in my favor

I’ll claim it all
especially
those naughty bits
transformed
now by confession

I’m looking beyond
specifics
already completed
toward
tomorrow’s assurance

this day by day
evaluation
wearies my judgment
searching
unto an extended warranty

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“I’ve met all the prerequisites for your course. Now I want your syllabus and be able to glean from it what I need for a final exam. Thanks, in advance, for your synopsis of your teaching as I have more enriching things to do than come to class on a regular basis.”

And we come to an important point of presence.

Where are we going to show-up as there is no substitute for experience? That blanket statement is particularly important for woo-woo disciplines such as religious studies. To even go through the motions of processes (take what you have seen and heard and go, be hospitable) and rituals (prayer) is to be affected by whatever power they have.

As creatures with a built-in bias of partnership, simply being in the presence of another builds in strands of relationship. The more there are the stronger the bond. This is most revealed in troublesome relationships that become so difficult to break.

We are also at a point of revelation.

The invoking of the very best of our tradition is never sufficient for keeping up on a journey to new life. Every tradition brings value, but never enough value to simply be repeated and expect the same return in a different time and setting.

It is important to not murder (within the group). It is also important to grow this understanding to the murder of hope as well as that of breath. It is, likewise, important to expand a restriction on murder beyond the group. This expansion even goes beyond a category of human to include other living beings, including the earth.