My mentor, friend, scholar, teacher
Sat with me on the couch as we watched

The amazing tribute to Shakespeare on
The anniversary of his birth 450 years

Ago. I put my arm around my professor and
Thanked him for introducing me to the Bard.

As I hugged his shoulders, he giggled and
Jiggled his pear-shaped body which died

In his study at the University of London
While he was on an exchange program for

Professors twenty-five years ago, but that
Didn’t stop us from having a jolly good time.

Two local elders sat at the outdoor table
on an overcast, cool, damp night.
Young adults were barely able
to corral their children taking flight

around the yard, on the swing,
climbing in and out of the log house,
jumping up and down on the trampoline,
scurrying around like a mouse

looking for some bits of cheese.
The backyard movie was about to start,
so parents shouted, “Come here now, PLEASE!
The Christmas movie is about to start.”

Parents fortified with libations
filled their holiday plates
and chatted about neighborhood information
with a little gossip thrown in — necessity’s sake.

The two elders having surveyed the scene
finished their cookies and wine
and quietly nodded to each other without being seen
that to leave would be just fine —
to head home and put out Santa’s mulled wine.

From a distance, it looks
magisterial way up on the
rock, above all other houses.
It faces south with windows
built on a curve to catch the
sun from dawn to dusk. Majestic
people must live there looking
over the landscape, cityscape,
McDowell Mountains to the east
to the South Mountains to the
White Tanks to the west. The
magistrates watch the rest of
Valley residents as they make
their way through the city day-
to-day and on the highway. The
couple and their chocolate lab
hike up the hill to see how close
they can get before being turned
away — broken gate, long, pot-
holed driveway, abandoned house,
broken windows, rotten floors,
tattered carpet, beer bottles in
the fireplace, a dirty mattress
on the floor, used condoms, beige
appliances with frayed electrical
cords, a deep swimming pool with
dirt rings and a broken diving
board on the bottom. “I’m not go-
ing in for fear of falling through
the floor and I’m getting the
dog away from this broken glass.
I’ll probably have nightmares,”
his wife says. On the way back
down, the man stares down on
the top of the chimney of one
of the homes. “Look, dear. An
owl…. Oh, no. I’m sorry. It’s
another one of those fake ones
to keep birds and other critters
from getting on top of the chimney
and maybe down into the house.”

Starting to jog, he
thought about what he had heard.
Was he perceived as an old man?

Could be, but who cares?
He’s out in nature and sun
and on a fun run.

Hiking sticks in hands,
he jogs slowly down the trail
glad to be outside.

He moves for cyclists;
he says to have a good ride;
one says, “Good to hike.”

He thinks to himself,
perception equals what’s real,
as he starts to jog.

The good doctors of Ivy League Divinity Schools have concluded that Jesus wasn’t an uneducated, backwoods/backwater, itinerate preacher/healer, but was a pretty well-educated artisan who worked in the bustling trade center of Sepphoris, a city of significant Roman influence just four miles from Nazareth. According to the scholars, Jesus must have known three languages to get along successfully in his occupation in that cosmopolitan environment.

He probably stopped for happy hour at one of the fine bistros lining the streets before high-stepping it back to Nazareth with hopes of one day moving to Sepphoris, buying a little condo in an upscale/gentrified neighborhood and exploring what pleasures the big city might afford an up-and-coming entrepreneur.

Well, not that last part, (That would be closer to what my story would be.) but what are we to make of all this — that historical inquiry into the life of Jesus up until recently got most of it wrong and that what was thought to be a significant influence on Jesus forming his core value system of defending the poor and calling the powerful to account couldn’t have been because he actually was what one today would call middle-class and not a poor kid from the sticks and that his relatively well off sociological/material/economic circumstances were somehow overcome in his fight for the plight of the poor and oppressed against the rich and powerful which eventually would lead to his crucifixion?

Maybe. And that would be interesting.

Or, might it be that the quest for the historical Jesus, while a worthwhile endeavor because knowledge is always good, will ever and always be the quest for a ray of light in the darkness of antiquity and will stymie scholars and will go on and on and will never be done (thus securing job security for professors in divinity schools and seminaries)?

Regarding the usefulness of historic accuracy, for instance, I recall a visual example of the quest for the historical Jesus in a drawing of what Jesus probably really looked like as a first century Jew in an article from several years back in a popular scientific magazine. According to the researchers, he would have been fairly short, a roundish face, olive to brown skin, dark brown eyes and thick, curly black hair — not exactly Sallman’s Head of Christ or Christ at Heart’s Door, nor the image of Jeffrey Hunter, the blue-eyed, all American, white, Hollywood hunk who played Jesus in the movie King of Kings. Such a historic physical portrait has been helpful as I continue to conjure an image of Jesus, although because of my childhood scripting, Sallman’s ubiquitous take keeps sneaking in.

And might it also be that the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith ever and always will be metaphors touching the very soul of what it means to be hopeful, loving, caring, merciful, compassionate, peaceable, just humans proclaiming the Realm of God in a broken world and that, ultimately, love wins as revealed in the image of the Triumphant Lamb?

Maybe that, too.

And the journey continues and the dude abides.

In the good, old days (just yesterday) of the Republic,
the one percent of one percent called the shots from
outside of government through donations and lobbyists
and often they won.

Now, they are the elected and nominated and appointed
government and the American people are the victims of
the art of the con.

As questionable as those good, old days were, in time,
we will look longingly and lovingly to them while wishing
the other candidate had won because right now only
the one percent of one percent are having any fun.

             He
            cOnned
             Load
        upon Load
             Of
	     Whites --
             Millions
          of Angry whites
             Not seeing the light,
        just Wanting out of their plight.
             Only…they may rise to fight
        the oNe who claims he’s always right.

The hollow one who looks like a fat
flamingo squawks fast in a staccato burst
of swamp nonsense that draws laughing
critters off the banks into the water.

The cunning one who looks like a turtle,
moving slowly, deliberately, saying one
thing, meaning another, crawls in with
eyes just above the surface of the swamp.

The friendly, smiling, dark-plumed one
perched high on a branch, looking down
on the swamp whistling that he is above
it all sees his prey and dives in.

Vanity Fair
has inflamed
the Hollow Man’s hair.
It’s standing on end
after a review
equating his restaurant
with a donkey’s rear end,
or something like that,
which, of course, was intended
to offend,
and let it be of note,
to get the Hollow Man’s goat, ‘er
donkey, ‘er ass
and it happened fast.
The long-standing feud
always elicits a reaction
from the Hollow Man
who can’t pass
on a distraction
from anything important
like an intelligence briefing.
So he twitters while seething
and starts his bleating
leaving the magazine editor
to do his own “gotcha” again
tweeting.