Jesus…..my way.

The paternal side of my family was fervently Catholic….Italian Catholic.  I remember that as a small girl still unable to grasp this religious doctrine, I was given a card shaped like a church entrance.  When I opened the “doors” of this card, there was a picture of Jesus (as rendered from an anglo-saxon perspective).   The neat thing was that when you opened it in the dark, his eyes glowed!  At that time in my life, it was just a neat thing to see, and Jesus and I would huddle together in my closet often.   I talked with him; he became the “imaginary friend”  that innocence blesses onto children.   As I grew older and became more conscious of the surroundings of the St. Luke’s church the family attended, I recall vividly one of my thoughts : This is NOT the kind of place that Jesus would have ever taught in!  I was taken aback by all the gaudy (at times frightening) statues, elaborately dramatic reminders that we all somehow must be made to feel ”guilty” even from birth, and there was even a somber, dark-clad patriarchial figure behind a black curtain  to whom I had to “confess”?  But I did not yet understand the motivation of my own protests.  My parents had me go through the catechism and communion, but they did not press me after that to continue going to what to me was….I guess I would term it today, as an adult, a “sacrilegious” place.

As years went by, I felt the essence of his simplicity and compassion around me; as a friend, a teacher, fully human by way of being fully enlightened.   Isn’t that the way it should be?  I later understood deeply what he must have felt within when he turned the tables of the moneychangers because that is just how I felt when, as that consciousness in St. Luke’s church awakened in me, I shuddered to the bone.

Jesus, like many other enlightened beings that have touched our tiny planet and have touched our souls, was for me (and is still) a man who understood the stillness of the soul within humankind…that quiet inner voice…the part that knows that we are all far more than we have been led to believe.  He teached that the concepts of balance, yin/yang, masculine/feminine must manifest in our world to manifest our paradise .   He demonstrated the peace that could be found when one recognized and sloughed off the illusions of this world and sought their own Truths from within.  He understood that in order for mankind to be fully human, the balance of natural occurring dualities must first occur.  He demonstrated this by bringing women into the fold of his ministry.  Jesus and his Magdalene together fully demonstrated the concept of reflection;  Jesus recognized Mary Magdalene as the the sacred feminine that she was and saw it as the intuitive, nurturing reflection of himself .  In turn, Magdalene recognized Jesus as the strength of the masculine reflection of herself.  They were indeed companions in the truest sense.  The portrayal of the crucifixion of The Christ, to me, is among other things a metaphor for the “death” of the Light and the “rule” of the Dark.  We today, in 2007, are coming into the midsts of those teachings again.   There is manifesting a great tug on this planet (and extraterrestrially) between the forces of Light and the forces of Darkness.  Personally, I would say that this time, the Jesus’ and Magdalenes of our world will win the battle and draw back the veil  of darkness and let the Light shine upon us all.

The Jesus I know talked with the little child, silently, in the closet of that little child’s room.   This is Jesus…..my way.