In today’s reading in church, Jesus says that you have to hate our mother, father, sisters, brothers, and yourself to follow him. Okay, if Jesus’s way is love, why all this hate. Does the meaning of hate differ from the way we use it today? I do believe that is the interpretation, but I find it interesting that the use of the word isn’t often discussed in the context of Jesus’s teaching.
I talked to Judy about how I feel about Mike. In some ways, my feelings are unchanged. I am often not thinking of him; I am always thinking of him. He has been in my life forever; it feels like it was all a dream. I know when I do think about him, I choke up. Some part of me understands what has happened and feels sad about it. That’s for sure.
Through it all, I know that I am lucky: Lucky I had Mike in my life and lucky in my current circumstances, having to go on with my life without him. My niece Shivani lost her husband after a few years of marriage. They had plans. These plans for a future together have been lost. Mike and I had our future. The basic structures of our lives were in place; the rest was window dressing. Not that I don’t feel sad about losing that. Mike was so happy here in Hawaii doing what he was doing: deacon at the church, board of directors of Habitat for Humanity, and spiritual director for the diaconate program. It was only going to get better. It is the loss of his joy that makes me feel the saddest. I don’t even understand what has happened to me in this whole process. It’s not that I don’t think about myself. I don’t know what to think. It’s all an illusion. It’s too slippery.
I talked to Elijah as he was leaving to go home to Hilo this evening. His mother asked me to help his brother, who has delayed speech. They live too far away for me to work with him every week. I told them to play my audio file while he slept, which teaches phonemic awareness. Elijah said he had played it on and off. Nonetheless, he shows some improvement in his speech and a great deal of improvement in his ability to understand what is said to him.
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Musings:
In today’s sermon, the priest said the path to Jesus is complicated. Very. Now I was not raised with a religious orientation, but I was raised with a moral one. My father was more of a philosopher than a minister. For me, this means he didn’t work from a given set of rules handed down from some authority but struggled with the question of what is right and wrong within himself. He taught this to me, for better or for worse.
The path to Jesus in the sermon today referred more to our deeds than our faith since the reading was on behavior. In Christianity, the emphasis is always on how we treat others. The question of how we treat ourselves is not discussed. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. It says we should hate ourselves, and the source of love for us comes only from Jesus.
I don’t think you can treat others well unless you also consider your welfare. As I have said before, taking my welfare into consideration does not preclude sacrificing my life for someone else. (I know this is not conventional thinking, but I don’t think we ever do anything that is not in our own ‘interest.’)
I would say the narrow path is in finding your way between what is best for ourselves and what is best for others. I would say this is an incredibly complicated path. It is always looking for what is optimal for all concerned. It is looking for the win-win.
How to deal with situations when someone we’re dealing with doesn’t operate that way? What if they’re into a win-lose scenario? Some people only consider themselves to have won if the other party has lost. That’s their criteria. Sounds like a very tiring way to live.
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