Dean

And who should come out but Dean? Past the west transept of Sacred Heart is the whole section that leads into the sacristy and the porches, north and south, leading outside. I am on the northern porch, scribbling in my journal and looking at the large tree outside of the church, the one that seems to be the only relevant thing. That’s the tree I come to look at when the Mass is just too much, when it seems to have nothing to do with reality.

Dean has come out of his hidey hole n the sacristy. I didn’t even know he was here. I wave, and he comes over. We begin what is the longest conversation Dean and I have ever had. Yes, Eric is fine. It’s important that he even brings up Eric, or that I ask. “It was his birthday yesterday, we didn’t too much in the way of celebration…” And honest little paragraph that says several things about his relationship to his roommate and my relationship to him. That is, he has let me in on the roommate, the boyfriend.

I have done some thinking about this. It is not that I like Dean a lot, but that I like him at all. That means a lot. As you get older and more aware of the people you sincerely dislike, you realize how important it is just to like someone at all. Dean is honest with me. Let’s think of this: if, for some reason I had to know the most personal hidden aspects of his life, well then, I know them” just like that. I have seen him stand in church, running things and talking impressively, legs spread apart arms folded over his chest, looming. And I have seen him in a gay night club sitting on another man’s lap, having his shoulder stroked. And he had seen me writing in my precious journal. And that’s important to me. If I had one thing to tell people, one thing that defined me to myself as myself, it would be myself as a writer. And there, he has seen me as a writer. Right there. He knows it.

I’ve been lied to my whole life: by friends, by parents, by priests, by the television, by professors. The whole world is busy lying to you, and some how you have got to be wary with out being bitter. Dean is not a liar. Not to me at least. He is beginning graduate school the same time I am, going to school at night, like me, with prospects of almost gainful employment during the day, like me. Unlike me, he is not a storyteller, has never been an actor, and isn’t dramatic about any of this. He’s understated. Dean is always very Indiana, very Midwestern, thin, sort of pale, understated about the things he says. There is ambition and excitement behind him. But, like a good young white man from the heartland, he is appropriately embarrassed about both.

Tisha B'Av

After they had traveled for the waxing and waning of three moons, on the third new moon the Children of Israel reached Sinai. And if you have ever walked with God you know how it is to pass through light and shadow, shadow and light again before you reach the holy hill. God came to them in smoke and fire to give them his Law. But Israel said to Moses, “Let God speak to you and you may speak to us and declare what the LORD has said.” And God said that if anyone but Moses and Aaron stepped on Mount Sinai they would die. He said they must not approach the mountain lest his power break out and destroy them. So Moses made aliyah, that is, he ascended into the darkness alone to meet God.

Now after a time the Children of Israel, in fear, said “Where is the God who let us out of Egypt, where is Moses. He must be dead.” And so they petitioned his brother Aaron the high priest who made the Golden Calf, or the Golden Mask. And Aaron built also an altar for it, and the people worshipped this Golden Calf, and this was the Ninth Day of the month of Av, Tisha B’Av, which begins the last season of the Jewish Year. It is not wise to blame Aaron for providing a God Israel could see, nor is it just to blame the Israelites. Moses was goen, he was lost in dark cloud. They were all alone.
Often I have felt alone and abandoned of God.

How often have we all turned to Golden Calves?

Every time we do, quailing in fear, it is the Ninth of Av all over again.

And this was the first time Israel turned from God, and God smote them. Av means father, and he is the Father, and his children had disobeyed. Hebrew Fathers do not forgive, and they do not forget.

They punish.

So Tisha B’av is a time of retribution and sorrow.
After Tisha B’av comes Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the year. But Tisha B’av is the time of mourning when Israel celebrates how far he has gone form God, and all the times of separation and sorrow. Tisha B’av is a three week Ash Wednesday. The first day, the Ninth of Av—which fell this year on August 14th, is a day to eat raw vegetables and boiled eggs rolled in ashes. Jews never do a thing by halves. The entire Book of Lamentations is read. The whole nation is given up to sorrow. And as a Kabbalist, I celebrate… no… to commemorate this time: Tisha B’Av.

Tisha B’av is the time of the destruction of the Temple. When the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem six hundred years before Jesus, it was on Tisha B’Av, and seventy years after Jesus, when the Romans destroyed the Temple again, this was also Tisha B’Av. So Tisha B’av is the destruction of the Holy Temple, and the scattering of the Holy people.

Ah, but it is also the beginning. Every destruction is a beginning, or why celebrate it? Modern Judaism would not exist, sadly, if the Temple had not been destroyed and the diaspora occurred. And it is true that Judaism really would not have begun if not for that first exile under the Babylonians. This was when most of the Tanakh and much of what is now called Judaism took a solid form.

And the meaning of this? A deep meaning, for in these three weeks as my life goes from one thing to another, I am heartily aware of my own temples and idols that must be destroyed, have been destroyed, and of all the things that are lost. We have all felt the sting and the smite of God’s hand. Now is the time to deal with this. And now is the time to make aliyah, like Moses, and rise into the dark cloud to meet what we feared. God said, “”They will die if they touch the mountain! But if they do not touch the mountain they will never know God. That is much worse. They will spend their life chasing calves.

in the beginning that bitch-- that cross eyed hag, screamed creation into being
don’t act surprised--you always knew it was that way. They took you and locked you in
sunday school and told you it was an old man because that’s the story old white men like to tell
but you know it was Her and now she haunts your dreams and steals your seed and
screams in your ear and that’s why shit’s the way it is.
dress her up and call her Wisdom, call her Mother Mary
but Astarte is still quite happy to take your children and the red on her lips
is not from revlon. No
denying her only makes her all the more frightening
and like any woman of any good character she will not be denied
but
in the begnning
in the beginning
with a note, with a prick, with a single
“ah!” the song began and grew louder and louder and went to a blinding scream--
you thought-- the light, how sweet is light--
a blinding radioactive scream that shattered everything that lived
only nothing lived
and that’s how everything began

old jews, old jews, we’re all old jews
old jewish men they saw Her hand and made it look like theirs
fathers and sons, fathers and sons
and holy spirits, threes in one
the Catholic church, down the street
on sunday morning must repeat
i do believe i do believe

but crossed eyed hags must be received.

and what did she do before she screamed?
for years and years she sat alone and kept no company but her own
and where she sat was darkness, and it was good and she called it nothing but preferred
it that way
and they etell you bullshit about the light, and having you running to it
but there was none of it. She did want it. Not back then
and under raven wings she brooded, floated over water and exuded everything you know or are
afraid to know. She made the stairs, she made the stairs that spiral down to
your nightmares
she made the snares, she made the snares and punched black holes like polar bears
in the screen of the whole wide world
she rode the snake, she rode the snake and then she did not hesitate to fuck the snake to fuck the
snake and if you ever really take a notion to stare into Her face
you’ll have to scream and then--
that-s when we run and make up something comforting
and become old jews, old jews, we’re all old jews
old jewish men they saw Her hand and made it look like theirs
fathers and sons, fathers and sons
and holy spirits, threes in one’
the Catholic church, down the street
on sunday morning must repeat
i do believe i do believe

but crossed eyed hags must be received.

they make a man twice as scary take the root and take the berry, worship not these other gods
but follow me on canaan’s sod, the only thing i want from thee is faith and love
unendingly
all i want is your only son
slain on an altar
everyone must prove their love to me-- you loved me faithfully
we’ll let him live
the christians say-- in exchange you can have mine
all just, sweet fathers would do the same
sacrifice their boy who came to the slaughter, as a lamb
and isn’t that sweet, here again
a father who killed his only son and made you drink his blood
it’s done-- the height of religion and a white man’s need
but the hag still needs to be received


old jews, old jews, we’re all old jews
old jewish men they saw Her hand and made it look like theirs
fathers and sons, fathers and sons
and holy spirits, threes in one’
the Catholic church, down the street
on sunday morning must repeat
i do believe i do believe

Auschwitz and armeggedon
school house shoot out at eleven, three crusades and bishops councils
crucifix, remember Rounceville
bloody ice cream, lemonade
the poor, unfortunate chambermaid
who on her knees cleaned up the floor
and on her knees, she did much more and more and more
than she was paid
now wipe your mouth sweet chamber maid
and you with all your Catholic guilt
who held the chalice and then spilt
your seed in a laundry room somewhere
with the girl you met behind the stair
and Protestants Zwingli, Knoxie John
for all their rationale and song, tossed in their beds and they were fucked
by Lillith till she’d had enough
and spewed out demons from her crotch
who sailed in ships and minds they tossed
and witches burned
and niggers hung and churches
sang old funeral songs
and God became a dreadful man
no smiling here, no rhyming.... no, and the whole pattern is lost.
ashes, ashes, ashes, and green tattooed numbers
and the feel of your tattoo, and the feel of your tattoo
and three hundred years later in this room the feel of your tattoo, and the warmth of your skin
and the warmth of your sheets
in this sexy room
the serpent blooms
and the hag screams again

old jews, old jews, have you heard the news
that everyone of us is an old jew
and fags who take it up the ass
you know that hate has got to pass
the fags, the fags, the fags, the fags
but each one of us takes it up the ass
sooner or later
in this life
and believe the lie that paradise
is bought at a price, bought in blood
from a man like a nigger hanging from wood
old jews old jews
and catholics too
on sunday morning they repeat
i do believe i do believe

but

the screaming hag will be received

When Annie comes to visit she brings two bottles of white Merlot and a case of Labatts. We drain the wine and finish half the case in a night, laughing and smoking and drinking until one side of my face is numb. Often I go to visit people and have the dullest time in the world. I’ve even gone to visit folks in large cities and been bored out of my mind for my entire visit. When Annie comes we sit on my floor in my room with a little bit of liquor and some Burger King and have a great time. I guess it’s the person. Or the people.

When a friend comes to visit, especially one who’s not normally around, I remember how odd I am. I remember because Annie points it out, laughing. What’s that? Oh, yes, I suppose keeping your socks and underwear in your desk is strange. I guess most people don’t keep a coffee pot in their closet. When someone says, “Want coffee? “ And you slide open the closet door to reveal it percolating…. Yeah, that is weird.

She must be back by the afternoon, so I go to church alone. I had contemplate not going at all, but knew I would regret it. Mass in a large Catholic church can be considerably improved when one is hung over. It’s even better when there is no seating left, so you hang around in the vestibule looking at the ceiling and singing hymns loudly to yourself. Dean was there. Apparently Notre Dame is much like a roach motel (or like my own alma mater for that mater) Once most students come in, they can never really seem to get the fuck out. I’m not complaining. I hoped he’d be around. Did I talk to him? No. Did I want to or need to? Not really. Did I just want to know he was still here? Yes. Does that make sense?

It does in my world.

The Mass seemed to last three times as long, but I liked it. I did not like my headache. I did not like not like not being able to find the aspirin until later that day.
Later that day I sit in bed smoking cigarettes and drinking Labatts while I drift off to Joseph Campbell videos from the public library.

School starts next week. My God, can you believe these people would actually not only let me earn my Masters, but be trusted with TEACHING kids? Tsk, tsk, those poor fuckers don’t know what they're in for.

I dreamed of many things last night, most of them only pertinent to me and all of them heralding good things. But what may interest you, or scare you, is that you were there. In
my dream. You were walking around my apartment, all over the place, too big to beallowed, just as I remember.

Well, anyway, I had just talked with one of my professors, and as I ran, excited about some news, into the kitchen I stumbled and looked down to see I’d accidentally kicked you in the head. You had been sleeping in the middle of my kitchen floor and now you looked up at me, little brother, blinking and hurt. I didn’t stoop to stroke your head or say that I was sorry. I didn’t ask if you were okay. No, I just looked down at you and said--
though there was concern in my voice (I thought) “You should be more careful where you lie down.”

And I remember how your transparent green eyes looked at me with hurt and shame. And on waking I realize that was how it always was between us...

SONG IN THE BLOOD- Jacques Prevert, translated by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

there are great puddles of blood on the world
where is it all going? all this spilled blood?
is it the earth that drinks it and gets drunk?
funny kind of drunkography then,
so wise,
so monotonous,
no,
the earth doesn’t get drunk
the earth doesn’t turn askew
it pushes its little car regularly, it’s four seasons,
rain, snow, hail, fair weather,
never is it drunk
it’s with difficulty it permits itself from time to time
an unhappy little volcano
it turns,
the earth,
it turns with its trees, its gardens, its houses
it turns with its great pools of blood
and all living things turn with it and bleed

it doesn’t give a damn the earth
it turns
and all living things set up a howl,
it doesn’t give a damn,
it turns
it doesn’t stop turning
and the blood doesn’t stop running

where’s is it going
all this spilled blood?
murder’s blood, war’s blood,
misery’s blood, and the blood of men tortured in prisons,
and the blood of children calmly tortured by their papa and their mama
and the blood of men whose heads bleed in padded cells
and the roofers blood if the roofer slips and falls from the roof
and the blood that comes and flows and gushes with the newborn
the mother cries,
the baby cries,
the blood flows
the earth turns
the earth doesn’t stop turning,
the blood doesn’t stop flowing

where’s it going all this spilled blood?
blood of the blackjacked,
of the humiliated,
of the suicides
of firing squad victims
of the condemned
and the blood of those that die
just like that
by accident

in the street a living being goes by with all his blood inside
suddenly there he is,
dead
and all his blood outside
and other living beings make the blood disappear
they carry the body away
but it’s stubborn blood
and there where the dead one was, much later
all black
a little blood still stretches
coagulated blood, life’s rust, body’s rust
blood curdled like milk, like milk when it turns, when it turns like the earth like the earth
it turns with its milk, with its cows,
with its living, with its dead,
the earth that turns with its trees, with it’s living beings, with its houses
the earth that turns with marriages, burials,
shells, regiments, the earth that turns and turns and turns
with its great streams of blood.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO YAHWEH?

Such is the nature of comments, and the nature of all things in general, that my friend Jenny’s statement got me thinking about so many other thigns I hadn’t initially been thinking
too much about when I wrote the blog passage to which she was responding.
I began Kabbalah study around the same time I was reading God by Alexander Waugh. The point he makes in the book is an essential point to reading the Hebrew Scriptures, one that slapped me full in the face:
Remember Yahweh? Remember the desert god who lived on a mountain top and told Abraham to sacrifice his child on Mount Moriah JUST BECAUSE HE WANTED TO FIND OUT IF ABRAHAM WOULD DO IT? Remember the guy who helped Rebekah lie to her husband to get Jacob his inheritance, and let Satan bump of Job’s kids for the sake of a
wager? Remember the Yahweh who opened the earth and swallowed any Israelites who argued with Moses and Aaron? The Yahweh who bumped off the Amelakites and sent bears after children because they made fun of the prophet Elisha for being baldheaded?
Remember him? He was vain, megalomanical, often detestable, inscrutable but... ah,not for the faint of heart. And never boring.
What’s more, he was a mythical God. He was A VERY REAL GOD.

The ancient Hebrews told their experience of God mixed with thier own personal prejudices, and this became the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings: the Tanakh. To a Christian, be he Protestant, Catholic, be she either liberal or conservative, this set of writings is called “the Old Testament” a title indicating it’s uselessness, and usually ignored except for
when it comes time to pull an obscure, often racist or sexists comment out of its contexts and into the modern world.

I have said, “Do you remember? Do you remember?” and given a long hosts of the attributes of Yahweh, but most Christians will have to confess they certainly DON’T REMEMBER Yahweh doing these things. The mightiest scholars of Jewish Scripture in the Christian world tend to be laymen, often outside of the ministry or active church participation. Most Christians remain woefully ignorant of Jewish Scripture, which is a mystery considering it composes the bulk of the Bible. We are, quite frankly, embarrassed by Yahweh. We have made for ourselves a god who is all good, all knowing, all the time, without flaw and... completely alien to our experience of life which is full of flaws. The Jews were dealing with the world they knew and divinity as they experienced. Often the writers of the Scriptures were irreverent as we know reverence. Many of them paint God in a flatly nasty light. The authors of Scripture are often far more like the old world equivalents of Aldous Huxley, Virginia Woolfe and Tennessee Williams than any priest, or for that matter, modern rabbi. And they were writing with humor. Yes, a few Jerry Falwells may have had the last say, but they did not have the first, and their words are not the ones you hear overwhelmingly.

Why is it important to approach the Bible as a Jew? Firstly, because Jews wrote it and who reads it in a vivid fashion still. Secondly, because this was just the way how Jesus approached Scripture and if we are to understand Christianity, truly, we’d better understand what Jesus talked about. For in the end it was Tanakh he was preaching.
Well, then the question is really: how do we approach this book? I would say approach it as a Jew. If the Bible is repugnant--and in the end analysis even your most conservative Christian will have a problem with Yahweh--it is because it has been read in the wrong way. To an observant Jew the Tanakh is not an old book, a long prologue to the Gospels. It is the Gospel. Studying Torah is salvation. It is God’s gift to the world, and it is alive not when read in a cursory fashion, but when read in a lively way, taking it seriously, seriously enough to debate it, disagree with it, reshape it’s words. In Kabbalah there is the idea of playing with letters. Often in rabbinic tales rabbis make the words of Torah fly about the
room and change patterns. Whatever miraculous or mystic implications those tales may have they possess one practical lesson for anyone who would take the Bible seriously:

Do not be afraid to get your hands dirty!

thank god!
i had begun to think i’d never see you again
i had begun to put that hope far far away
and then, there you
who i love dearly
were only a few paces away
and you did catch my eye
as you were walking by
or was it the other way?
whatever
love and friendship
honesty and openness were in that gaze
one simple look,
one little smile from you
opens up the world of possibilities like that day
two years ago when i walked in the building and there
like my old friend you stood waving at me
and do you remember when you twirled that broom
thinking no one saw?
and you dropped it
it was All Saint’s Day
and though the rest of them missed it
this saint saw you
i turned away before you caught my eye
but this last time
i did not turn away
and you…
you caught me
you have me.

today i saw you but i turned away
you think i hate you only
i’ve already said all there is to say
and no other words will conquer the silence
of your tongue
there is no way i can take us back to what is gone
when you held me and i held you and
there was love and hope between us
but you thought i was a saint
and i thought you were reliable
and being with you took me through so many
trials and yet
whenever i see you from the corner of my eye
or looking back at me
i
cannot help but love you

I wish neither to be called an activist or a liberal. I wish to be a Christian. I would be content to attend Mass, make few waves, say very little, take out my teeth and sip my tea by eight o’clock. Only I cannot. This faith compels me to say and write things which I feel people should already know anyway.
On one side of the country the Catholic governor of New Jersey admits not only to having an adulterous affair, but an affair with another man. He speaks of all the pain and confusion he experienced growing up and how he has finally come to terms with his homosexuality, but is now resigning from office. On the other side, an order comes down in the state of California, that the four thousand plus gay marriages performed by the mayor of San Francisco are now invalid. And now it comes again to my attention that, out east, there are splits in my very own church over the ordination of our first openly gay bishop. Gene Robinson. Whole parishes have divided. Dioceses have formed divorcing themselves from the Episcopal Church.
But for all of these great matters happening far away it boils to what is before my eyes in South Bend.
For the first time in a long time I saw Dean in church (The Catholic one that was my old parish) on Sunday morning. Two years Dean mowed the lawn, kept the ground, cleaned the church, laid out the hosts, cleaned the chalices, led people to their seats, swept the porch, exhausted himself as a servant in that house. But I never saw him attend as a member of the parish and only last weekend did he come with his boyfriend. They ducked in and ducked out, careful to show little sign of affection for each other. As much as I—now not even Catholic—complain about the little welcome I find there, there was even less for Dean. I feel.
And now we come to the core of the issue. When, in the churches, we speak of gay rights we make it all very rhetorical. We keep it up in the air. We talk about gay people as if there were “out there”. But the gay people “out there” are not the ones we are concerned about. Not really. The only gay person who cares about what Orthodox Judaism has to say about homosexuality is a gay Jew. The only gay man who cares about how the Catholic Church treats gays is a gay Catholic. I am not talking about us taking a radical or an unbiblical stance toward homosexuals. No: I am saying that we must respect our brothers and sisters beside us in the pews who happen to be homosexuals. The spirit in most churches and mosques and shuls in one that shows little respect for a large segment of people beside us in the pews, behind us in the choirs or, for that matter, above us in the pulpit.
I have heard a lot of rhetoric spewed by conservatives about what God says about homosexuality. God says a great deal about a great many things, but I find very little in Scripture he said about gays. In fact, Jesus said nothing. And there are many people who like to say—my bus driver told me this—that God doesn’t like gay people, like gay things. Well, maybe God talks to them and tells them these things, I don’t know. All I know is that God does like a fair person, a just person, a heart full of charity and loving kindness that does not fear things different from himself.
I know this: In the twenty-fifth chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Christ gives a parable wherein he divides all mankind between goats and sheep. The goats receive condemnation and the sheep salvation and joy. The test for who is a goat and who is a sheep is not how much they tithed in the church basket on Sunday, or how good of a Baptist, Catholic or Anglican they were. What it boils down to is” When you saw the least of your brothers and sisters, did you treat them as if they were me? Because they were.”

Now I would ask this question to certain people: When you stand before God: and you will—we all will—and he asks you why you didn’t recognize him in people who were not the least, but, in many cases, the best of his brothers and sisters, and the only reason you chose not to recognize Him in them is because they were gay: in that hour, before God, what will you say?

She Said to Solomon

lover,
so close i'd call you father, brother,
brother it's no bother
don't hesitate to come to me
as day follows the morrow
so when you leave i am left all hollow
the space between these young thighs
sighs for the memory of you
longs to encompass you
i am all like your private house
the door wide open
waiting for you come inside me
and this room at evening
under the white blue moon
is just too big, this bed too empty
unless you come and fill it.
your scent is better that the musk of perfume
your scent is better than the heated garden in late June
your body,
over me
is my delight

It is not penitence that I have trouble with. Penitence is necessary. It is the Catholic spin that it was given while I grew up. Maybe a sping that is all over Christianity. That there is shame and lots and lots of sorrow in pentinece. That penitence has anything to do with feeling bad. That if you only feel guilty enough and make the right ceremonies, then you have repented. If you begin to feel better about yourself, the nthe penance was real.

Ah, but this is all bullshit. Tonight at early (early, early) morning prayers I read of the concept of return in Kabbalah, that the right heart is the heart that is always returning to God, and as I read about this I am filled with the same longing and the same prayer I was when I began to read the Quran. (You must always begin Quran by saying the phrase: "In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate..."

The prayers that well up out of the heart are: purify, bring peace, bring peace, purify desires.

Growing up I was taught that if we prayed for these things, God would give them.

It is only now that I am beginning to think that what God really intends is for to not only desire these things, but for us to do them ourselves. Peace and love are what we must cultivate with hard work, not what God hands out to people who beg enough for them.

I thought: there is no time to write this down. There are things to do. But it is just turning two in the morning and this busyness has cost me my joy and my sanity for the last few days. It seems the busier I get, the less time I make the less time I have. And then, maybe we can actually MAKE time. For it seems when I stop a while, to acknowledge the world, there is always time and peace enough to get done that which needs to be done.

So here I am at one of my favorites times. Early, early in the morning. A steady rain shot with pan flashes of lightning is breaking the unwelcome weather. I am still coughing from a bit of lemon cake that went down a half hour ago, and in her sad voice Patty Griffin is singing from the CD player

Isn't it hard sometimes?
isn't it lonely?
how i still hang around here
and there's nothing to hold me...

THE NICENE CREED

I don’t really like saying it, and usually when the time to recite it comes, I’m not inside of the church, I’m in the vestibule writing in my journal. Today I was in a pew, with several other people. I chose not to say it. I don’t care for the Nicene Creed. I’ve never felt right about a whole house full of people muttering a pat statement of things they believe in—amazing, incredulous things—as if this matters.

Around the fourth century, which is to say when Christianity had bee around for a good three hundred years—several things. It became first acceptable, then fashionable, then crucial (if you wanted to escape death) to become a Christian. Every bishop and every church began fighting—in a most un-Christian manner—about whose Jesus was the right one, those who lost were killed or denounced, the scrolls and holy books powerful people didn’t like were banned, the ones that were liked became the Bible and any jackass could be a Christian.
And now any jackass is.
And after that , to make it nice and simple, so that no one could disagree, a bunch of disagreeable bishops got together and drew up the Nicene Creed. If everyone could agree to this, everyone would be a Christian. Simple as that.
And yet, for three hundred years before this, Christians raised the dead, worked miracles, witnessed the power of God and were held in awe (often mixed with fear and repugnance) by the people around them. For three hundred years before anyone mouthed the words “I believe” or had a definite doctrine or dogma there was something that definitely held Christians doggedly together. They gave their lives for something. They loved something more than the world, and it is not contained in the cold lines of the creed recited every Sunday. Belief is not enough.
And over fifteen hundred years later we have Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, just to name a few, who all agree to this Creed and yet don’t seem to agree with each other (let alone love each other) at all. The Catholics split from the Orthodox over a single word in it, but the Orthodox have this creed too.
As we progress into the twenty-first century anyone who ever thought Jesus meant anything to them might want to concentrate less on “I believe, I believe” and more on, “I love, I love, I dedicate, I am dedicated. I know. I know.”