Plain Jesus: The Turnaround ( i )

1. Plain Jesus: The Turnaround (i) Death of an Illusion

2. Some jesus sayings • The one who loses his life will find it • Take up your cross and follow me • Give all that you have • But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also. • Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple • Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falselyon my account. • For the [shared] joy that was set before him, he endured the cross

3. The ego • Disclaimer: this is only one way to define the ego (and Freud wouldn’t like it) • The illusion that I am a self that is essentially separate from others and so I need to protect myself from others, desperately seek approval and significance, and be terrified of death

4. True self • We are fundamentally, inextricably connected to others, to God and to the environment around us. We are essentially welcomed and loved. • Loving ourselves, loving our neighbours and loving God are one and the same thing – and this is the central and orienting invitation/purpose of our existence • Honours individuals and individuality as a unique manifestation of a part of the whole (waves in an ocean)

5. Death to ego • Loving our ego – holding fast to the illusion of the separate self blocks our ability to love – makes us keep slipping into self-defense, self-protection, self-centredness, self-justification, and fundamental anxiety and loneliness. • (Healthy loneliness is the pang, the longing to experience the connectedness that is our birthright, free of the illusions that cut us off from the experience)

6. Original blessing • We are created in the image of God, made for interdependent relationship, and fundamentally connected. • “We affirm the goodness of God at the heart of humanity, planted more deeply than all that is wrong.” • Prior to and deeper than “original sin”

7. Original sin • The tendency for communities and societies to embody and “make real” the ego illusion – the separate self that needs to live afraid and anxious, competitively striving for its own protection • We all live as if the ego illusion is real – therefore we are always needing continually to be “saved” – turning from the illusion to the truth • “living sacrifice” • Central Christian rituals are reminders of our need for ego death – baptism and Eucharist

8. How do we kill the ego? • Understanding it all as an invitation to life and love • Embrace discipline, surrender, and sacrificial love as invitation to life/love • Receiving unearned love kills the ego (experiencing love or solidarity when we are broken, when we fail, when we suffer, when we are empty) • Falling in love with what is around you while knowing you are a part of it all kills the ego • Being in nature and remembering that your ego doesn’t matter kills the ego

9. Mary Oliver I go down to the shore in the morning and depending on the hour the waves are rolling in or moving out, and I say, oh, I am miserable, what shall— what should I do? And the sea says in its lovely voice: Excuse me, I have work to do.”

10. Imagine… • Imagine: that if there was no hate, if we loved each other, we loved one another, that there would be no war between us (Cree expression and likely inspiration for Lennon) • Instead of all the possible questions that could counter this view, what if you just tried to imagine it?