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Knowing Not
The way I see it isn’t the way it has to be seen and sometimes we lose the other part of our conversation, the part that is supposed to help and encourage, or even insult and hurt the other person in the room - like a ghost wrapped all in his white sheet but is smart enough to keep it secret until it’s time to say Boo - and even then, although someone knows that Boo is a surprise and it scares, gives fear, or explodes into something that means you are as empty as the body-less floating sheet or you have come up with a good cure by culturing a laugh or a prayer or a scream or whatever seems to be appropriate and helpful in the moment.
 How to not know what I know? How does one undo the skill of the word, the genius of creativi-ty, or history or story or faith? How can I be just Being who I am without being obnoxious or insistent that others walk MY line or accept MY answer or direction? Jesus was so spectacu-lar because He was a story teller and He knew how to pull up the simplest example or story to fit whatever type of crowd He was peopling at the moment, and yet, not losing who He was.
For us, we must learn to believe we don’t know what we know or believe by instinct because behind our belief of a certain experience or topic is a whole pile of getting there, assuming, creating, responding , laughing, crying, bemoaning, cursing, and sharing my story, my belief, to all those who are standing there, sitting there, and maybe forced by just being present to have to listen to what I believe and think, and it may not have a thing to do with the price of eggs - a diddly-squat my dad would say - to anything relevant in their lives. I often think this being a woman raised with all the opportunities in life, with horses and dogs, and scrambled eggs on Saturday night with tons of bacon, yet with a weight problem, and because I was fat and unpopular in my pre-teens, I counted on a fad of getting autographs of famous movie stars back in the 50ties when movie stars signed autographs on studio photographs (No selfies, no throwing things into the crowd, no suffocating photographers waiting at doors, whichever one they would enter or exit. ) One surmised or trusted what came through the US Postal Service, although probably movie star agents did the signing, like Marilyn Monroe. I still have that one somewhere in a plastic box with a photo of Farley Granger, a heart throb briefly.
One of my dearest friends, who was killed in the second airplane to jam the big towers on 9-11, Berry Berenson, showed me the horrors of being hounded by paparazzi whenever she and her movie star pals entered or exited anything. What a nightmare that seemed to be. And I’ll never forget - many of you probably have forgotten - Hands Across America - which I partici-pated in while visiting Berry in California. I was holding hands with her and some of my favorite actors, but the point was making a statement about peace and love and not being “movie star-ish". It was humans helping humans, and for a minute, the paparazzi left them alone. There are so many under stories about real people who play fake people in character roles of movies, TV, on the stage. They are human with the same challenges, angst, and love problems as the rest of us, if not more, because everyone wants a piece of them, thinking they are owed a touch, a selfie, a signature, - be it movie/TV star or sports star or any kind of celebrity or person who accomplishes something wild and crazy or - it could become sort of a “career” without accomplishing anything - like the awful Kardashians family who have, it seems, fake bodies, which have been enhanced by the most expensive body adjusting doctors in the world. How frightening that seems to me. Their body is going into a grave just like the rest of us.
Those paparazzi who think they know the stars just because they bumped up to them with their camera in their faces - and call them by their first name. There is no dignity in that - better would be sitting in a still empty studio with giant cameras and sheets of white and gray and black before a Jack Robinson or Richard Avedon.
Jesus seems so gentle, so calm, so in control, so anxious to heal and touch and encourage and change the lives of each one He passed on the roads He walked. He would never be al-lowed to do that today, in this time, no matter where He went. He would have no control nor way of meeting and greeting and praying and touching and healing and giving hope one on one. One on One/ Not even One on Two or THREE. He is My Jesus. He is Your Jesus He is the Jesus of everyone who reads this and everyone who worships on Sundays or any day of the week and that multiplies all over the world. His office would be jammed packed and who’d get in first or last - the wealthy? the sinful ones? the prisoners? the liars, the truth sayers? the teachers, the preachers, the bishops, the priests. There is only One above all on earth who I would hope to be able to hold His hand and that would be the Pope. The first of the church.
Imagine what it would be like if Jesus showed up tomorrow in Times Square or in Canterbury Cathedral or the desert monument for Abraham or even at a McDonalds? Can you imagine the cameras and crowds and selfie-nuts all trying to touch him, to photograph him, to be seen with him, to be able to say he looked at me or he touched my hair or something…? it would be crazy, and it could never be like it was when Jesus was on earth 2020 years ago. Never. How would we be able to hear him, to know him, to touch his robe, to pray with him, to listen to his word? Would it be more like the deceased TV evangelist Billy Graham - you’d have to go to a stadium to see him? Who would be His agent? Who would control the crowd? Who would bring him a drink of water - or would it be ginger ale or a coke? How would we all deal with his Com-ing Again? All that we learned and read about Him in the days 2000 years ago, would be shat-tered and scattered and ruined. The thousands and millions of masses of people one sees just flying over Sao Paulo or Calcutta or the monster cities jammed packed with people, mostly poor and starving and faithless - how would He get to them??
Believing you don’t know what you know or believe, or how to tell a story relevant to the mo-ment, be it for humanity or the dog (I always talk to my dogs), or the ocean, (I always thank the oceans and rivers when I’m by their side), how then to not know what we know. Hmm.
OF course as one ages, if you don’t exercise your brain continually with new ideas and con-cepts and conversations, then that part of the heart and soul begins to fade and one gets be-hind the today, the contemporary, the freedom of opinion about anything and everything
and then one drags his feet behind the story which could have been something worthy and funny and happy and hopeful for the friend or person in need for the moment. In this sad case, one truly has forgotten what one knows.
Jesus trusted his tales as undercover ways of making sense to His listeners. Jesus wasn’t worried about whether He was speaking psychology (He probably didn’t take that in school), or tales of woes or joy that He had heard as had grown up. Those memories of experiences He had in the 30 years He had been on earth, we know nothing but that He was presented at the Temple and His first recorded outing was at the Wedding at Cana. (It’s amazing how much art has curved and tightened and given life to our vision of what Jesus looked like, what He did, and who He had around him in what kind of dress and sandal.)
Richard Rohr wrote about “biases”- self-knowledge, and our being in denial that maybe we don’t really know what we think we know, though we think we have known some things forev-er, and we certainly may not know how to present what we think we know so it is beneficial to someone else, and not just winning like with the 3 pointer basketball goal, or an extreme kick slipping by the goalie in soccer Or wearing the most talked about dress to a luncheon or tell-ing the story when one attempted to climb Mt. Everest or Denali or Mt. Sinai - where the result is appealing or appalling but the long days of doing it and suffering and fussing and wondering if it wasn’t better to go back down because one was a coward - those things that we skip over in a good tale that is often filled with that denial.
Brian McLaren wrote: “When you aggressively attack people’s familiar ideas, they tend to re-spond defensively. People think they know what they know because they have experienced it, and that road that got them there was either horrific or tough or beautiful - and that embraces whatever your response might be. It’s you, interpreting the You-ness in the experience or conversation.”
Jesus basically told stories. Not necessarily stories about His experiences, but simple, short and to the point stories about life to give people a chance, a straight line to understanding, a possibility of being able to apply it to their own problems and ways of thinking, and finding out hay, I’m OK, You’re OK. Remember that book? And if there is something a bit off-kilter, not balanced, in my thought or story, well, maybe I can adjust it by listening to this man Jesus who is all for me and you, and for all those with me and around me. And we can learn something simple to better this earth right now.
~ Rev
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audrey@audreytaylorgonzalez.com
www.audreytaylorgonzalez.com
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