Talking With Jesus
Most days I use my time in the barn with the straw fork and shovel as my meditation time. I'm there with my critters and we're all together doing that circle of life stuff. I'm tossing food for the horses' front ends, they in turn turn out poop for my fork and shovel. When the mice scurry from the haystack the barn cats pounce with feral glee.
Today, part way through the chores I took a break. A little time to savor the clear morning, bright sunlight with just enough tinge of cool to make it superbly comfortable.
Next thing I know, I'm standing right next to Jesus. I figure it's as good a time as any to get some philosophical questions answered. So I jump right in and say:
Jesus, why do I have to work so hard?
He thought for a moment and replied
When you work you demonstrate the love that you have for your family and your people. You work so hard to keep this beautiful place where your friends and your family all gather together in love.
I'm thinking this Jesus talk is good stuff so I go a little deeper.
What about the money being the root of all evil thing, what about that?
Jesus said:
That's not what was said. LOVE of money, is the root of all evil. When money is loved before God, before our fellow man, that is where the problem lies. You seem to love your animals and your people far more than you love your money. Money is simply something that is. Use it well for good things and the glory of God and there will be joy.
I'm really starting to get into this now. I figure it's time to go even deeper.
Jesus, can you tell me the meaning of life? I'm at a personal crossroads right now and I'm often confused, scared and conflicted.
He thought for a moment and said:
We make our own meaning. I make mine and you make yours. Now, if you please Señor, I must finish my work on your irrigation pipe. Hasta la vista, y muchos gracias for the fine pie and coffee.
Big Brass Blog
posted by The Minstrel Boy at 9:02 AM
33 Comments:
Oh, that was beautiful!
Blogging is not a form of art, but if more bloggers start writing like that, it'll become one...
Fucking beautiful!
Can you send Jesus my way? I'm kind of at a crossroads myself.
the parking lot of any home depot works beautifully for me.
Good morning, Minstrel Boy.
I am assuming from your narrative that you did not take the opportunity to ask Jesus for his work papers.
It is precisely this kind of oversight that puts our country at risk from foreigners and all the harm they do to our nation.
Fortunately, I called the INS and they said Jesus was picked up near a border crossing by a contingent of Minutemen from the Lou Dobbs Auxiliary Unit out of Lubbock. He was handed over to Homeland Security, which rendered him to an undisclosed country in the Middle East, where he'll undergo enhanced interrogation techniques administered by a gentleman who goes by the nickname "Pontius."
Those interrogators can be so creative.
Anyway, yet another threat to our way of life has been neutralized. God bless the USA.
The Dark Wraith will now head down to the shopping mall to do some recon for terrorists plotting to blow up Victoria's Secret.
(It's the thong underwear those terrorists hate, y'know.)
LOL! That was great, mb.
This one is going places.
Great piece.
Well...how's the plumbing?
lol. Oh Stevie. You had me going. I was holding my breath waiting for how you'd end this post. You didn't disappoint. Nice.
That was a great post Minstrel. Inspiring, amusing... the whole deal.
Beautiful, haven't been over in a while. Good to see you still have that ole sense of humor goin' on, Bro.
...and Jim sent me.
Peace,
=RD=
Thanks for a chuckle at my lunchtime break...
If I believed in Jesus, I would definitely make a delicious lunch of tacos and enchiladas in His Presence my first order of business.
wonderful post.
now if he would have only been a she it would have been perfect for a little heathen like me!
(one of my rare rhymes)
The Dark Wraith's comment is the best! LOL!
- oddjob (who suspects Jesus' actual answer to the last question might have been something along these lines:
He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
- Micah 6:8 (New International Version))
That was very good MB, funny and insightful. I have to agree with tart about if I believed in Jesus I would make him some food, but I might lean more toward some black beans, but really it would be up to Jesus.
he was quite pleased with cherry/raspberry pie and blue mountain coffee this morning. had i been able to offer more work i most likely would have kicked down with something good.
with lots of tapatio sauce splashed all over it no doubt.
oh, and i almost forgot.
yes oddjob, i think that real jesus would say something exactly like that.
Great writing from a man of many talents.
Great post!Too bad the Wraith sent Jesus away befoer I could hire him to help me with this table I am refinishing.
Good evening, Seventh Sister.
It wouldn't have worked out, anyway. Most woodworking activity—traditionally done, as it was, by carpenters—has been outsourced to much cheaper, far more efficient facilities in the Far East.
We found through time-and-motion studies that having carpentry work of any kind done by Mexican rabbis was, shall we say, time-intensive. Studying tapes we secretly made of workflow, the greatest loss in efficiency came when someone looking for a place to sit would ask, "Is this seat saved?"
Well, you can imagine what happened then: an hour of deep philosophical discussion about whether or not salvation can be attained by handcrafted wood products. Complicated side issues abounded; for example, "Does conscious perception of entity-state endow the perceived with consciousness of its own; and, if not, how then could any object, inanimate or otherwise, have epistemological valence to the observer?"
Needless to say, it works out better from a managerial perspective if we have tables finished in China, where the workers are still in a state of relatively silent confusion about how Communist principles of egalitarianism could possibly comport with a work ethic that motivates them to work toward middle class status.
Things are going to get mighty tricky when one of those Chinese workers posits the obvious: it is from the middle class, not the proletariat, from which revolution is seeded, which means that the Communist Chinese government might very well be attempting to revitalize the revolutionary spirit by deliberately setting up the conditions under which a class of relatively comfortable elitists can flourish and thereby foment class consciousness in the proletarians who will execute the antithesis in rebellion against the emergent classist society.
Thank God, the workers in Guangdong factories haven't been talking to each other on the assembly line very much, yet.
The bottom line is clear, though: we need to secure the borders. The last time an empire suffered the ramblings of someone named "Jesus," we ended up with widespread wine drinking and way too much broadcast bandwidth devoted to men who comb their hair straight back while they preach. This time, it could be worse: the "Jesus" our friend Minstrel Boy encountered could walk away from his passion for finishing tables and open a combo Mariachi bar/Liberation Theology Reading Room type of business. That's about the last thing we need when America is facing decisions about how much of the world's food supply to appropriate for ethanol-fueled cars driven by suburban Yuppies who haven't even the slightest clue that the cars are pig-butt ugly.
The Dark Wraith could say more, but he has an appointment with a certain secret society dedicated to establishing a new world order controlled by shadowy men who use Old Spice cologne and wear curiously loose trousers.
Wraith, I've read to half way thorugh your 4th paragraph and when I can stop laughing long enough, I'll finish reading the rest of it.
Wraith,
Had me laughing out loud!
never could get behind the old spice, plus, that whole world domination thing, new world order, all of it simply cut into my day far too heavily.
now if they had been wearing clubman bay rhum
things might have been different.
oh my, now you've got me remembering brut, or english leather and feeling , hummm, warm
but then again, i'm old enough to have fond high school back seat memories of hi karate !
old, i am! my mind just wandered way off of the topic! : )
No, no, Sherry. This is not off-topic.
Good Heavens, I remember well the Hai Karate commercials; however, I could not for the life of me figure out what those women were going to do to that guy that would prompt him to go all Japanese on them, but I figured it must have been something he feared greatly.
It would be somewhat later that I would conclude that I should have heeded his cautionary tale. As it turned out, he wasn't fighting off the women, after all.
You see, at the age of ten, I decided it was time for me to shave for the first time. I did so with one of those old-fashioned, twin-blade affairs, the engineering marvels that had the screw-thing at the bottom that opened the double doors at the top of the razor so the blade could be dropped in. That part of the ritual was pretty cool: open the doors, drop in the Persona 74 blade, then screw the doors back down.
Slathering on the Barbisol was neat, too. I looked at myself in the mirror with all that white foamy stuff and hollered, "Mad dog! Mad dog!"
The shaving part wasn't so swift. Lots of blood. Copious blood, in fact; but I knew that was part of the rite of manhood: guys bleed for fun.
Anyway, I got through that part and wiped the residue of shaving cream—pink with blood as it was—off my face.
That's when it was time for the really cool part.
Yes, Sherry, we're talking Mennen Skin Bracer aftershave. It was green, and it was in a curved, short container (that I would learn much later in marketing class was designed to look like a booze flask).
I cupped my right hand deeply, and with my left hand I poured what could conservatively be estimated as a quart of that gloriously green, manly-sweet liquid into the recess of my right palm.
I had seen the commercials: you're supposed put the bottle down, brusquely bring your hands together, then slap your face silly with the aftershave.
I did so.
Immediately, the wonderful aroma filled my nostrils; seconds later, the spiritually awakening coolness welled up; shortly thereafter, "Oh! Oh! My face! Oh! Oh! My face! My face! It's going to burst into flames! Oh! It already DID! My pimples hurt! My face is moving on its own!"
My eyes were watering; snot was bubbling in my nose and throat; and, yes, my arms were flailing about like I was some kind of Kung Fu master who could bring the Four Winds to bear upon the inferno that had become the skull that was protruding through what little remained of my facial skin.
By this time, Mother had heard the commotion and was beating on the bathroom door: "What's going on in there, FatBoy?"
I turned on the water full blast. "Nothing, Mom. I'm just washing my face," which I was, indeed, doing by that time, trying as I was to end the torment in a dousing of cold water.
"What's that smell?" Mother bawled.
"I think some aftershave spilled. I'll clean it up."
"You'd better," she said as the floorboards in the hallway creaked with her departure.
The pain in my face was starting to subside. After a while, I stopped sloshing water on myself and just sort of leaned on the edge of the sink. I recall thinking to myself, "So that's what 'invigorating' means."
It wasn't long after that incident that I started drinking coffee. Within a few months, I was shaving every day. I never again used aftershave, though.
That guy on TV in the Hai Karate commercials should have stopped using the stuff: people can get hurt when your arms are flailing around.
That's what I think, anyway.
The Dark Wraith looks back fondly.
oh that was funny and sweet.
i was trying to remember the other men's scents from back then. it drove me crazy til about 2 a.m. then i remembered, jade east and canoe.
remember the commercial, "can you canoe?"
oh my! : )
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!!!!!!
(Simultaneously feeling TONS of sympathy! Poor guy!)
So THAT'S what "invigorating" means!
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
- oddjob
Good morning, Sherry.
Moving completely off the topic, your last comment brings to mind something I published almost a year ago: "Humor That Won't Be for Everyone."
The Dark Wraith apologizes in advance.
mercy sakes. i need to write a post about my straight razors. . .
ah, can you canoe? not with me you don't! i liked it.
but then i do have an odd sense of humor. it gets me thru the day! ; )
Sherry--
I concur on Canoe. Unfortunately, I'm old enough to also remember those commercials...
Oh yea, canoe was my fav back then followed closely by english leather and brut. The guys who drove the 57 chevys I wrote about in A Lesson Concderning Gravity, some of the boys I grew up with in TinyTown practically tuned their glass packs to the point where the girls could tell which one was driving by. The each had their certain cologne, too, so we could smell them coming down the hall before we saw them.
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