What if
Hell is now
And it will
Eventually be over?
What if
Eternity is peaceful
For everyone?
What if
You do not have to choose
Between the cessation of pain
And the continuation of existence?
What if
Kind actions are enough
To establish eternal safety?
Can you find freedom
In this possibility?
Dear Conscious Beings,
Every year it bothers me all over again that many who believe in the physical resurrection of Yeshua first grieve His physical death on ‘Good Friday’ before celebrating the resurrection of the Firstborn a couple of days later. It seems incongruous to me to take the words of the ‘good news’ accounts seriously without integrating the following exhortation from Yeshua Himself: ‘But turning to them Yeshua said, “Daughters of Yerushalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.’ (Luke 23:28) In the midst of Yeshua’s indescribable suffering, He insisted that His death was not something to be mourned!
Through my repeated efforts to synthesize the various clues in the bible about eternity, I have gradually developed a perspective that the ‘first resurrection’ allegorically described in Revelations actually began to happen at the moment of Yeshua’s death: ‘The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the set-apart {from cruelty} who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs, after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many.’ (Matthew 27:52-53) … That glittering little statement harmonizes well with Yeshua’s assurance to the repentant thief crucified next to Him that ‘today you will be with me in Paradise.’
Before Yeshua reconnected the spirit of the twelve-year-old girl with her recently deceased body, He stated that she was ‘sleeping’ (Luke 8:52), which He also did when informing His disciples that their friend, Lazarus, had succumbed to his severe illness (John 11:11). It seems increasingly clear to me that before Yeshua’s pivotal Sacrifice, everyone who physically died entered a state of suspended consciousness, which can be best described as a type of spiritual sleep. From the parable of the ‘sheep and goats’ (Matthew 25:31-46), I extract the guideline that everyone who lived practical kindness is given a personal estate in the eternal realm, whether they had any intention of honoring Yeshua with their compassionate deeds or not. I am now confident that all who qualify for inclusion in the Kingdom countryside or capital are currently living an existence of abundant ‘shalom’, while those who would be too cruel to their neighbors to be tolerated in a such a pleasant world stay in a state of unconscious sleep until earth-time is complete and the final reckoning of all actions as yet unaccounted for takes place. What happens then is not yet written in stone.
Shalom shalom,
A Student of Spiritual Mysteries
Dear Conscious Beings,
The first biblical mentions of giving and of ruling happen in the same sentence: ‘And Elohim made the two great lights–the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night–and the stars. And Elohim set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And Elohim saw that it was good.’ (Genesis 1:16-18) The greatest of these light-givers is the ‘star’ that is close enough to us to transmit life-fuel and warmth as well as illumination. That imagery so clearly echoes Yeshua’s definition of most honorable greatness as the person willing to serve others who are ‘reclining at table’. Our Master-Teacher defined spiritual obedience by ‘love’ and love by feeding those who need support.
By contrast, Yehovah’s warning at the time of Samuel that… ‘These will be the ways of the {requested human} king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots… And he will appoint for himself commanders… He will take your daughters… He will take the best… and give them to his servants. He will take… and put them to his work. He will take… and you shall be his slaves.’ (1 Samuel 8:11-17) … seems like a grim prediction of the pattern that continually reemerges in the context of obsessive wealth and power. Such ‘ravenous wolves’ are blinded by their inevitable emotional starvation and their insidious insecurity only gets worse the more resources they try to protect.
Each and every one of us has a divine commission to become a life-giving star. Loving your neighbor as yourself simply means caring about which ever person is standing or sitting or laying next to you moment by moment. The ‘Good Samaritan’ was only next to the wounded stranger for a few steps, but that was long enough to make him the next person next to him. Closeness provides an opportunity for the transfer of essential warmth, and I bless the power and purpose of the proximity planned in so many places across the USA this weekend. May each and every one of those human stars give and receive a rainbow spectrum of vibrant light in their pursuit of peaceful brotherhood.
Shalom shalom,
A Student of Holistic Equality
Dear Conscious Beings,
I am giving myself permission to search the scriptures for signs of khesed ~ goodness, kindness, and faithfulness ~ with a focus on kindness as I can discern it. Yeshua’s exhortation ‘Take care then how you hear, for to the one who has, more will be given…’ has been ringing in my ears for months, encouraging me to pay attention to what I already have and to care about the truth sounds that I can perceive.
In another instance, a similar statement was recorded as ‘Pay attention to what you hear: with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you.’ … and elsewhere that exhortation was expanded into ‘Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.’
It is intriguing to me that merciful generosity is so directly associated with our capacity to hear complex wisdom. ‘Seek and you will find…’ whatever you are looking for… in the bible… has become my guideline for biblical interpretation. This collection of recorded observations and stories is simultaneously messy and inspired, historic and incomplete, and one can synthesize almost any perspective out of its conflicting content. Since there is no way to establish any absolute proof for anything, at least not without ignoring some degree of personal logic or experience, I might as well wade in once again with the intention of finding evidence that strengthens my unfolding hope for an eternal future of complete peace.
Shalom shalom,
A Student of Nuance and Potential
There is
A goodness in you
Worth
Nourishing.
There is
A reality in you
Worth
Being faithful to.
There is
A consciousness in you
Worth
Being kind to.
Dear Ambitious Hearts,
Much has been made of Yeshua’s words about humility and sacrifice, yet there is another thread within His dramatized instructions, one that is more complex than simply denying your own desires in favor of serving the Kingdom of Heaven. While there are warnings about not protecting your own life at the expense of fulfilling the Father’s purposes, there are no statements actually rejecting the natural human desire to become powerful and earn a great reward. Quite the opposite, as Yeshua repeatedly gives directions on HOW to become great in a holistically beneficial way. Consider this compilation of His words about human greatness:
“Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven [after enduring persecution]… O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire… Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven… You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant… But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil… Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.” (Matthew 5:12, 15:28, 18:4, 20:25-26; Luke 6:35; John 14:12)
One of the books that left the deepest imprint on my heart is called “Dare to Desire” and I invite you to dare to desire greatness in the way that Yeshua dreamed of His kingdom partners becoming uniquely magnificent. I have been learning to grieve the tragic arrogance expressed in the disciples’ recorded rejection of serving tables in favor of the more ‘honored’ preaching (Acts 6:2), since Yeshua spoke so much about the significance of feeding the most vulnerable. It is going to take a lot more cultural transformation until ambitious people are eager to be the ones doing the literal serving, but I dare to dream of a time when the process of providing healthy food becomes the center point of spiritual restoration and greatness.
Doing my best to stay faithful in the little things,
One Aspiring to Exceed Yeshua’s Miracles
Dear Offspring of Adam,
In the midst of Yeshua’s Sacrifice Process, He spoke to the women who were grieving His painful death: “Daughters of Yerushalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children…” It is intriguing to realize that our Master-Teacher did not consider His own suffering the most significant that would ever happen and that He did not encourage grief about His own death. This scene also set another milestone along Yeshua’s pattern of highly valuing the presence and contributions of women.
Decay became physical when the first man ate the knowledge fruit before he was ready to handle it wisely. That death influence began to end when the Only Truly Divine Man ate physical death on a dead tree. When the Word of Life was nailed to the vanquished knowledge tree, He became an eloquent signpost guiding us towards the process of endless resurrection.
So please stop focusing on Yeshua’s pain and learn to care just as much about your own. Please stop emphasizing humanity’s historic lack of trust in the intentions of their Creator and choose to celebrate each time you are able to trust the goodness of Elohim’s heart. Please look beyond your current weakness to the potential in your essence for joining Yeshua in His eternal mission to release new life into our world.
Working on uprooting ancient condemnation forces,
A Student of Visual Messaging
Dear Life-givers,
The dramatic language of the Bible makes it easy for one principle or another to get exaggerated beyond its beneficial position in the synergy of wisdom. I have often wondered why even Yeshua seems to have used simplistic statements in His teachings, and the best reason I can come up with is a combination of His chosen humanness, the vocabulary that was available to Him at the time, and the interpretive memories of those who recorded the text that is available to us now. It is essential to look for the overlap zone between contrasting extremes to find the narrow path that leads to a functional life.
Life is more than food, yet life does depend on food. We don’t live by bread alone, yet bread is also necessary. Faith must extend beyond what we can see, but we must not close our eyes to what we can see. The peace that Yeshua gives extends beyond our understanding, but we are not meant to limit the extent of our reasoning. We are encouraged to care about the kingdom work of comprehensive compassion even more than we care about family, but family must also be taken care of. We are exhorted to invest most of our treasure into eternal constructs, but the present also matters to the One Who Is Present. Hoarding for long-term security or honor while others suffer is defined as spiritually toxic, yet your stewardship responsibility includes fully developing your own potential.
All of these contrasts are repeatedly present in the spectrum of the Bible’s complicated content. Even just the core instruction to love (in action and emotion) Elohim, self, and others involves multiple angles of overlapping interests. Elohim directing us to care about Them implies that They care about Themselves; since we are made in Their image, it is natural and logical for us to also care about ourselves. Elohim’s desire to fellowship with Their Creation is abundantly expressed in Scripture, so obviously They care about us as individuals, and we should follow that example. Elohim’s insistence that our compassion should extend to those who persecute us indicates that They care about Their Creation as a whole, so the pain of every individual must matter to the collective. Only synergistic wisdom can empower us to effectively lessen that pain.
Practicing trust in the midst of anxiety,
An Advocate for Integrated Reality
Dear Offspring of Women,
Yes, obviously the disciples of Yeshua continued to legitimize the patriarchal culture that they grew up with, and that hierarchical thinking clearly shaped their perception of the partnership that Yeshua desires to have with His collaborators. The problem with this simplistic mentality is that it perpetuates the tragic inversion of Creation’s original patterns, as symbolized by the serpent’s physical devolution into a creature without legs.
I don’t think anyone who takes the Genesis story of humanity’s ‘fall’ seriously considers the ongoing conflict between deceptive entities and the offspring of the first woman a good thing, just as the costly pain of childbirth and the struggle to produce enough food for our decaying bodies to stay alive is definitely not an ideal situation. So how did the associated inversion of men gaining a position of dominance over women ever get interpreted as a crucial cornerstone of communal righteousness?!
Yeshua’s pivotal demonstration of trust in the divine process that was beyond His current understanding brought about the beginning of a resurrection power capable of transforming the entirety of our existence. However, His physical resurrection was only the beginning of a complex transformation that seems to have gotten a bit delayed in a variety of ways. Just as our bodies are still in a state of physical decay while living on earth, so the suppression of women’s wisdom and strength has not yet been effectively reversed. I crave being able to experience freedom from decay in every aspect of my existence, not just in my spiritual condition, and in a similar way, I can no longer stomach the idea that my womanhood makes my humanity inferior to any extent.
Sincerely rejecting subservience,
An Advocate for Complete Restoration
Dear Seekers of Peace,
The New Testament could have been very different if Yeshua’s disciples had avoided two pivotal errors. Firstly, if they had believed Maryam’s message, their first meeting with their resurrected master-teacher could have been back where they started, on the shores of Galilee, instead of huddled together in a locked room. Tragically, they persisted with their dominant cultural practice of ignoring and suppressing the voice of women, no matter how experienced, insightful, commissioned, or informed the women actually were.
Secondly, if the disciples had truly understood the caregiving heart of Yeshua’s message, they would not have separated the responsibilities for the spiritual and physical nurture of the group, thus failing to prioritize the holistic well-being of the widows and orphans in their midst. Both listening to the voice of women and making their support the most significant assignment of any leadership would have steadily diffused the hierarchical patriarchy that has continued to undermine lasting peace ever since, in line with Yeshua’s exhortation that the normative authority exercised over other humans should “not be so among you”.
Faithful service with childlike humility is the standard of greatness in Yeshua’s community, and the greatest demonstration of that would be the prioritizing of everything that benefits women and children. Even Yeshua’s statement about divorce can easily be reframed as an emphasis on the care of women: If a woman had someone else to take care of her, then the first husband was encouraged to formally release her from her previous commitment; however, if a woman did not yet have someone else to provide the basics necessary to her survival in that cultural context, then Yeshua was strict in the guideline that a husband must not abandon his wife. Considering the caregiving instincts woven into the heart of femininity, does it not make sense to first benefit those who can more effectively nurture the whole group?!
Shalom shalom,
A Student of Empathetic Individuality
Lighthearted Letters 