a reply to:
FlyInTheOintment
You're most welcome, and thank you for chiming in, then gonging out. You can't unring a rung bell and it tolls for thee also.
Strangely, where the rubber meets the road with torque and really goes places fast and far-reaching in their implications and significance is to be
found in the smallest of human interactions in relation to both others and ourselves, like some sort of involution of innerspace and the exploration
of the sacred in the "mundane". Then it all lights up again, and we come to appreciate the need for a compassionate heart, particularly in relation to
our enemies who are most in need of our love.
It has a playful and creative dancing like quality to it, and a certain joyfilled mirth, humor, and charm.
It's important I think to imagine that "they" are all rooting for us, after the ordeal - like coming to understand the truth of the parable of the
Good Samaritan or The Prodigal Son as the case may be.
Meaning, story, and framing and context, are decisive, and there's great power at the tip of a tongue harnessed by wisdom and truth, and Spirit.
In ancient india they spent a lot of time considering the first cause and the first principals in human affairs and it was the same in ancient Greece
(Virtue) until Socrates drank the poison. Jesus would have been aware of Socrates and of the 3 truly wise men from the East, Lao Tsu, Confucius and
Buddha who lived contemporaneously to one another or very close, about 500 BC.
That first impulse and movement to compassion that caused the unknown and mysterious stranger to stop on the road (when the others passed on by) and
lend help to the stranger in need - there it is, but the context in which this was delivered to it's hearers, is also the point at which it cuts to
the heart, or ought to. What did Jesus say after the intrepid lawyer who wanted to justify and prove himself in the listening of his esteemed seniors,
answered Jesus' question "who, of these three men was a neighbor to the man in the ditch?"
Go, and do likewise.
What a riot!