This is a piece I wrote several years ago during a time of my Soul’s ferment.  It is not a religious statement by any means.  It is quite the opposite.  While I was indeed raised in a religious culture and have degrees in theology, and philosophy, and philosophy, blah, blah, blah. (Not a big deal at all.  I just wrote and bunch of papers to get another piece of paper to hang on the wall.)  This was a search for Truth.

This is also an experiment with a new pulgin to automatically posts WP offerings to the blockchain of Steemit.  I found it at scottyeager on Steemit.  Click on scotty’s name and find the article.  Now let’s see if it works. 🙂

The Spirit of the lord is upon me.
Because He anointed me to preach the Good News to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the Captives,
And Recovery of sight to the blind,
To set free those who are oppressed,
To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.
(Luke 4:18-19)

I believe in and receive the anointing to bring the Good News to the poor. But what message shall I bring? I have little use for a message worn and tattered by time and culture’s change in context. The Message, the Truth is eternal but the voices carrying it fade in the breeze. They lack relevance to my habitation and pattern. They lack a quickening resonance which sets the heart aflame.

The messengers are full of answers to questions I have not asked. They are either unaware of, or avoid that which lies dormant, a weight carried in the bowels of my being. But I am poor. How long since the yearnings of my heart have motivated me to action, either right or wrong? For the most part I remain stoic as the poor, smiling through teeth clenched in resignation. Resigned to the idea that dreams may indeed be just fantasy, That the “glorious” yearnings of my heart were merely the function of biology.

There are as many ways to be captive as there are to be poor. My poverty and captivity is that of the heart and mind. The stagnation that manifests on the material plane is neither hopelessness, laziness, nor fear. There is no dream to motivate and inspire belief and creativity. It has all been done before.

I am imprisoned within the trite, opaque walls of a stereotype. To succumb, to ride cynicism as a lover is the way many go. She is a loyal bitch, yet bitch she is. Or I could write out the story as a morality tale. Do this. Don’t do that. Perhaps the Law could help me regain my honor. Then I could write books and give speeches to the unwashed. I could become a hollow Wizard and refuse to face the Witch.

But, one is as much a prison as the other. Morality as rules, is a tyrannical pimp. To exchange one captivity for the other is vanity. To give one’s soul for the illusory comfort of the current zeitgeist is profane. Is there no other path? I would that I might find it and show it to my children. O’ that they might dwell in creativity, well outside the walls of stereotype.

But today my eyes are shut and the pathway eludes me. I am blind as well as captive. I see yet I do not trust my sight. Past visions once sharply defined on my horizon, shimmering in the heat of my want, were false. Some are easy to dismiss. Some were truly immoral. Some caused pain and loss. Others were “right” and “good” yet I found myself lacking in the midst of their abundance.

Surely it was I who lacked. Surely I am the mirage. The eyes through which I’ve seen have failed me. O’ for the eyes to see and the ears to hear!

But how am I oppressed? Do I not possess food, shelter, friends, and opportunity denied others? If I am oppressed it is the oppression of the mundane, the stereotype, and the false. It can take many forms. Religion, morality, achievement, addiction, and rebellion all can deaden the soul’s cry for life. They can oppress, smother, and wear down the captive’s capacity to live as if freedom were possible. It is the living “as if” that allows eternity to break into time and create an alternate plane of existence here. He said “the Kingdom is among you. Can you not see it?”

The captive moves between the polarities of good and bad, opposite sides of the same coin, the medium of exchange in the economy of the soul. But good and bad are deceptive propositions. The game of good vs. bad is a distraction. For there is none “good” but the Maker. The soul is neither good nor bad. It is either living or dying. It is either moving toward viability and life, or moving toward the impossible and ruin. The soul is addicted, bound to ritual, a particular morality, or it is free.

The Law is oppression and death. Creativity, Being, and Life are the Soul’s true habitation.

Just when is the favorable year? On whose calendar is it marked? Do the poor get a copy? Are the captives kept in the loop? Is there a braille edition for the blind? Do the oppressed have access?

Should then the stories prove true, time is an illusion and there is no favorable year or month or week or day. The Creator is either on our side or He is not. Perhaps the measurement has to do with our perception that time is made of the same stuff as eternity, that somehow eternity is endless time. Perhaps it is that we need some sense of perspective that measuring the stuff gives. But in the end all of eternity is for us and not against us. It must be. So that every year is the favorable year and every month is the favorable month and every week is the favorable week and every day is The Favorable Day of the Lord.

It is surely true that our poverty, captivity, blindness, and oppression are all of our own making. It can be, but it is not necessarily acts of volition, but rather our ignorance and immaturity in tension with the innocent and fierce Soul’s longings for Life.