I’ll Have Jesus–Without the Fries, Please

Sometimes I feel like a spiritual slut. I don’t mean to be. It’s just my nosy nature. I have to peek into different ideas and philosophies just to see if there’s something there that I want. Sniffing around in the bakeries of the blessed. That’s what I do.

I was introduced to eastern philosophies by my mother, at a young age, but they were way too quiet and uneventful for me. I developed a consuming fear about the possibility of oblivion upon death (a strange thing for an 11 year old to obsess about–and an early indication of turbo powered ego inflation). I was comforted by spiritualist books which promised an ectoplasmic existence much like this one. That was a palatable consolation for awhile.

Then I met the Baptists. I failed on more than one occasion to disguise my horror at the way they based their entire actuality on stories that seemed less plausible than Mother Goose. They prayed for me. I guess it worked because last January I was baptized in a non-denominational Christian church. But something still wasn’t adding up to spiritual understanding, bliss and contentment.

It was the supersizing of Jesus. It was the bumper-stickered frenzy of the believers. I even heard one of them say that when she couldn’t get a timely appointment for her daughter at the doctor’s office, she bullied the receptionist using her “believer” status. WWJD? I think he’d be pissed, that’s what I think.

Now that I’ve been a wife, mother, worker, grocery shopper, bill payer, shoulder offerer, aka, adult for a while, the tranquility of the eastern religions lures me. So does the practical grace and simplicity. I also like the way they embrace Jesus, the man, as well as Jesus, the Christ. The difference is explained very simply in the book Grist for the Mill by Ram Dass, a “far out” spiritual thinker of the seventies who sought enlightenment through meditation. The Gospel of John is quoted in the Toltec inspired book, The Four Agreements. Can we all say open mindedness? Unfortunately, we all can’t. 

Once again, Jesus was about peace, love and humility–a simple existence of basic goodwill. And once again people had to turn him into a commercialized commodity used by the masses to manipulate, control and castigate other people. They have Jesus parading through his life with a cartoon cast of thousands, all performing superheroic and supernatural feats instead of just telling the simple story of a simple man. I realize the Bible was written during the unfortunate time when there was no American Idol to satisfy man’s deepest yearnings for entertainment but come on.

Personally, I need the quiet truths about Jesus and I’m more than willing, as was he, to accept the quiet truths of any people who search for what lights the spirit’s way. That’s what Jesus did–pure and simple.