“Pizzaonia Emerging”
Courtesy of the Pizzaonian Art Institute, Abe Straction, Curator
Continuing the debate on “the Jesus letters” and the beat goes on….
So much of the criticism about the letters from Jesus that are sent to me and published in “The Pizzaonian” stem from the fact that Jesus does not sound like Jesus – at least not like people expect him to sound.
I have always found this interesting since to my knowledge none of the critics have ever actually heard Jesus speak. So what is Jesus supposed to sound like? Actually, the answer is left to our imagination and, most importantly, what we need him to sound like. The fact that God or “Our Savior” could talk and sound like an ordinary human being is beyond the pale for most Christians.
Jesus, Ordinary? Can’t be. Here we can get into a bit of sacrilege as defined by orthodox theologians. How can an ordinary man be our Savoir? Well now knowing what he is, he can’t. But what about all of those years when he was in the process of discovering who he was meant to be. That very phrase “meant to be" will raise some eyebrows.
A couple of years ago, I would spend quite prayer time with Jesus, and an interesting thing began to develop. Aside from the obvious of knowing he is, from our Christian perspective, the Son of God, was it always that way for him? For me, aside from being “the savior of the world” this quiet and interesting and very human man began to emerge.
I know that many Church councils have met and debated over the years the nature of who and what Jesus is and what he knew about himself from the beginning of his life.
What we have left in very unctuous terms is defined as the risen Jesus. Very little is left of the normal, human Jesus that was, and is still here with us. It seems to me; we give lip service to the fact that he was God in human form, but there is that word again, God, which makes trying to grasp this itinerant carpenter who changed the world as a being like us virtually impossible to grasp.
What became important to me is for Jesus not only to be my Savior, but my friend. A human friend who talks with me and lives with me day to day and shares my experiences, and yes a Jesus that writes me letters from time to time to let me know what he thinks.
Brother Giovanni
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This and that and other random thoughts that occur to us in Pizzaonia.......
Every one claims to respect creative people. What they cannot stand is to be with them. Creative people by their very curiosity and inquisitiveness about all things usually drive their less interested peer’s nuts
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What makes our time different? Information? God knows we have enough of that. Just about everyone feels a bit uneasy about the time we live in, the question is: What is that uneasiness about? Some of us will never know since we manage to keep busy enough to avoid answering the question.
Volumes could be written without a definitive answer. Maybe that is the way it has always been. The answers are better left to history. That seems a shame, since for those of us living in our time, not having an answer is not going to do much for us.
Common sense tells us we have to do better than this. If for no other reason, there is urgency to our time that suggests we better have some answers and damn soon.