Mah heels need some serious bruising!

Today's reminder from Jesus to quit with the vice grip:

“Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life." (Jn 12:24-25)

There's a song I really love that includes the lyric:

So, God, bruise the heels we've dug in the ground
that we might move closer to love
Pull out the roots we've dug in so deep
Finish what you started; help us to believe
- Jars of Clay, Eyes Wide Open

Believe what, exactly? That the death we experience when we let go of ourselves does indeed lead to a better rebirth.

Actually, that's not quite right. The thing I'm letting go of when I let go of myself isn't even me. It's all the misunderstandings I've accumulated about myself and about others, and all the armory and reflexive panic I tinkered up for myself in response to those misunderstandings.

The paradox is that the more I let go of control, the freer I am. It is indeed a kind of dying to relinquish my idea about how the world works, about who I am, and it's an ongoing pain the in the tukhus. Yet, every time I force myself to die a little bit, I am freer and better and more myself on the other side.

On the way down Tabor

From today's Gospel:

As they were coming down from the mountain,
he charged them not to relate what they had seen to anyone,
except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
So they kept the matter to themselves,
questioning what rising from the dead meant.

Of course Peter and John didn't understand anything that happened on Tabor. How could they? Rising from the dead had to be a metaphor because it simply could not be literal.

This is one of Jesus' things he does: say things and mean them. And it's one of our things we do: hear Jesus and think he must mean something other than what he plainly said. I think we can be forgiven for our confusion - a lot of those parables are kind of opaque. Narrow gates, who understands 'em, eh? Amirite?!