Magic Santa Jesus

I think this is the actual image on the wall in Sunday school. Why is Jesus so pale? He was a Jew in the middle east!

I had great fortune in receiving the most benign introduction to Christianity that you can probably get in the West.

I went to Sunday school for a year or two, ages 4 to 6 - before my mom had a distancing from the United Church. She didn’t want to spend all her free time baking brownies for fundraisers and collecting mittens for the poor, or going door to door asking for donations. My mother has never been a very good salesperson for anything, not even eternal salvation.

This makes her sound like a jerk, but my dad had already given the Church the finger after being forced by his mother to attend and be a “good” boy well past the time his practical skepticism had turned to resentment.

“Man-made horse shit” was my father’s final world on religion… and really, he’s not entirely wrong. So my mom made a choice to stay home in her robe and worship the Lord with cups of black coffee, cigarettes and the crossword… which I think the Lord is probably okay with, to be honest.

That left me with 2 years of colouring pictures and playing games and being told soft, safe stories about this dude called Jesus who was the son of G-d, but also kinda G-d too and really liked kids (but not in the bad touch kind of way), and animals and was kind of like a magician because he could walk on water and make infinite bread and fish

…but you couldn’t call him a magician because that would make Ms. Luckworth the nursery school teacher purse her lips into a thin white line and say no, of course Jesus wasn’t a magician, he is our "Lord and Saviour".

There was no such thing as magic and Jesus made miracles, but for some reason there were no more miracles and I thought that was too bad because miracles sounded kind of like magic and magic sounded pretty great to me.

There is one picture of Jesus in particular that stands out as the epitome of magic animal-whisperer Jesus. In a renaissance realistic style, Jesus is shown sitting beneath a tree surrounded by all kinds of animals that all just love being in his presence. The birds and squirrels are actually perching on his shoulder and arms. They’re not trained, they’re not even there because Jesus has tasty morsels. He’s so amazing that the animals want to be around him...

SOLD.

This Jesus guy sounded AWESOME.

Then we were gone from the church - all the amazeballs Magic Santa Jesus you can handle, NONE of the judgement, exclusion and shame.

#WINNING.

(While writing this I went to search for the magic animal whisperer Jesus to see if it was as I remembered from childhood. I found one similar enough to possibly be the same image and was surprised to have an actual emotion reaction to seeing it again after all these years. It’s a feeling of connection, joy and grief and a deep, deep longing… for a source much, much bigger than Jesus.

I think it’s because it is associating an image of divinity with nature in a way that is nourishing and loving and respectful. It’s an image of divinity in the shape of a man being kind to animals and not trying to dominate or subdue or profit off them.)

From ages 6 to 20 I’d not given much thought to religion or belief. The awe of creation had been instilled in me early on through uninterrupted periods of independent nature study. (Also known as being sent outside because I was driving my mom crazy.) There was a universe of amazing in my backyard - new spring buds and worms and birds and insects…

Yes Black Jesus! Why does he still have relaxed hair?

I wonder how the first humans felt about spring or when the ice retreated and they saw again (or maybe for the first time) deciduous plants and trees. Can you imagine how magnificent and awesome it would be to live your life in ice and snow then watch as a dead-looking grey-brown branch burst open a bright green bud?

I understand how red and blood is associated with life - specifically mammal life and the menses cycle and birth, but oh how that bright yellow green, almost neon shoot of spring growth signals life and rebirth. How easy it is to worship the Earth and Their cycles as an image of divine abundance.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the colour of spring green is the colour of the heart chakra. The bridge between body and soul. We’ll see a shift in our evolution when we can finally understand how the Earth and all plants and animals here are our equals - our responsibilities to nurture and steward and care-take - not dominate and enslave for our benefit. Future generations will look back on us as monsters.

Nice. A little bit “Morgan Freeman” Jesus.

I became Earth connected long ago - through the simple process of observing and feeling the magnificence of the Universe right with me. Everything has wisdom to share - even a clover mite going about it’s clover mite business can teach a child who is open to be taught.

Watching a clover mite crawl up my arm was a lesson in perspective that has influenced my whole life and was probably, looking back, the first moment I ever felt the immersive, all encompassing feeling of being part of a unified conscious collective much, much larger than myself.

I watched fascinated, as this mite made it’s way up my arm, weaving in between my hairs… “It’s like he’s in a forest and the hairs on my arm are like trees… We are like mites on the skin of the Earth… I wonder if the Earth knows that I’m here? I know the clover mite is here, maybe the Earth knows me too… what if the Earth is a smaller part of some bigger gigantic thing - like a cell or an atom or something in a much, much infinitesimally bigger organism… would it know that I’m here? Hello? I’m here! Hello! Hi! It’s a really great place here - how are you? Hello!”

I was six. I was six and felt known and seen by the universe, by a Beloved Presence that I could feel with my heart.

Never underestimate what children can understand. They don’t have the words and concepts to explain what they know - but they still know. Even now, I continue to be taught by that moment. I’m sure that I add embellishment and additional understanding to that event in retrospect - but here, right now; forty years later and I’m still talking about it and still plucking meaning from it.

I think there is infinity scale - infinity big and infinity small and everyone and everything’s perspective is always right in the middle between the two. It feels like another piece of the “middle way” - we’re not the top or the bottom - no matter how arrogant or self-effacing, there is no one at the “centre of the universe” - we’re all participating from the centre in infinite scale and everything is just perspective.

I’ve wondered about truth in this regard for awhile… What is truth when everything is just perspective? I don’t mean opinion - like the “my opinion replaces facts” in this current ‘Trump era alternative facts’ environment of bullshit. I mean that our lives, upbringing, beliefs and experiences lead us to different perspectives and very different truths and I think this is the way it’s supposed to be.

This is the way we learn more about the wholiness of creation and the world we live in without having to actually experience many, many different lives and situations to enlarge our perspective. Every life lived, every personal perspective is the opportunity to experience another universe.

Imagine for a minute that all of creation is a ball of shit and the ball is covered with an infinite number of tiny maggot egg dots. Each egg dot represents a life perspective - a different truth. Each egg dot knows it’s perspective of the shit ball from their particular vantage point - from their particular egg dot location. They spend their little egg lives rooting in that particular area of the shit-ball and are intimately familiar with it’s taste and texture and they know what to expect from the ball where they are. That is their egg dot truth. The egg dots around them probably all have similar experiences and similar perspectives of the ball.

However, an egg dot on the other side of the shit ball has a completely different set of experiences with the ball. Maybe the ball gets bumpy on the other side, or changes colour, or maybe there is some sort of corn or nuts stuck to the ball on that side. If one of the corn-side dots comes over to hang out with the no-corn side, no-corn dots think that corn-dot is full of shit, or exaggerating or telling lies… or maybe they think corn-dot is just too weird or different and makes them uncomfortable for bringing this wholly new and “other” idea of the shit ball to them.

"A shit ball with corn? Inconceivable! Heretic! Kill them!"

Our purpose as egg dots, is to embrace and encompass as many dot perspectives as possible on the ball. Our purpose as egg dots, is to be open to, listen to and integrate as many other different dot perspectives as we possibly can.

They are all truth.

They are all experiences of the holy sh!t.

Our truth is to have as complete an understanding of the holy sh!t as we can and we can’t do that without all the dots - even the uncomfortable corn-shits on the other side.

We are not supposed to convince each other that there is corn, or there is no corn, or that corn is the truth and no-corn is not the truth. What we are to do is hold both corn and no corn as acceptable and lovable. Hold them together in our wholiness. Our experience as dots creates our perspective and our perspective is our reality and our reality is our truth.

What I hope we can learn to do better, is to not put so much stock and importance in our little area of shit. Yes, it’s holy sh!t, but it’s ALL holy sh!t - it’s holy without corn and nuts, and it’s just as holy with corn and nuts. It’s all part of the same shit ball - so why not just be open to learning more and enlarging our own perspective of the shit ball instead of proclaiming the superiority of no-corn and demonizing corn shits?

It doesn’t mean we have to accept without reservation every truth we encounter from every random egg dot on the shit ball - we have discernment for a reason. There is still wholiness. There is still only loving inclusion. What I hope we can do better is to take those truths that strengthen the wholiness and integrity of the shit ball and lift up every egg dot to it’s full maggoty potential and reject those truths that exclude and fracture and divide the egg dots into corn and no-corn, have and have not… Us vs. Them.

Us vs. Them is a believed truth based on the false perspective that my area of the shit ball is separate from yours - that my experience of the shit ball made me different from you.

It’s not true. All egg dots are the same to the shit ball.

It’s all holy shit to the shit ball.

Magic Santa Jesus

You may also like..