<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Jesus Incognito<div><br></div><div><h1 class="title" style="margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 21px; font-weight: normal;"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3">Don’t tell anyone, but I love Jesus.</font></span></h1><p style="margin-top: -8px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 10px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 18px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); ">I love his big dark Jewish eyes, so full of suffering soul,<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">like an unemployed poet’s, and his thick sensuous Jewish lips,<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">and his kinky curly hair, just like mine, uncontrollable despite conditioners,<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">and the way he always argues with everyone<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">and will go to hell for love.<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">He’s just like that Buddhist god Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion,<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">except his name is easier to pronounce.<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">When you’re in trouble it’s hard to remember to yell for Avalokiteshvara,<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">but “Oh Jesus!” arises naturally<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">every time a crazy driver hot-dogs past me on the freeway.<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">I know I should say the Shema when I’m about to die,<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">but will I be able to remember Hebrew at a time like that?<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">I don’t want to die saying “Oh shit!”<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">I’d like to leave my body consciously, like a Tibetan lama, sitting in full lotus<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">with my head turned toward where I’ll reincarnate next.<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">But let’s be realistic: I probably couldn’t meditate enough to become enlightened<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">in the however-many years I have left.<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">Jesus seems easier. All you have to do is love everyone.<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">Well, <span style="line-height: 1.4em; ">seems</span> is the key word here.<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">Sometimes the more you try<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">to love people, the more you hate them.<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">Maybe it would be better to try<br style="line-height: 1.4em; "><span style="line-height: 1.4em; ">not</span> to love people, and then watch the love<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">force its way out of you like grass through cement.<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">Anything is better than organized religion.<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">I don’t like the singing in churches — all those hymns in major keys.<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">I don’t think religion should sound so triumphant.<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">It should be humble and aware of the basic incurable pathos of the human condition,<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">and in a minor key and sung in a mysterious ancient language, like Sanskrit or Hebrew.<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">Is it OK for me to love Jesus but not be Christian?<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">I could try to open my heart and give away all my possessions.<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">It’s not that different from being Buddhist, after all, except for a history<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">of witch burnings, the Inquisition, the subjugation,<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">rape, and pillage of indigenous peoples all over the world,<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">not to mention twenty centuries of vicious antisemitism. That’s a lot to overlook<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">to get back to a baby born among animals to a Jewish mother, Miryam.<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">And what about that other Mary, the sexy one? Jesus, I don’t believe you died a virgin.<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">I think you needed to taste everything human, to inhabit the whole mess:<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">blood, shit, flies, regret, envy, why-me.<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">I owe you and all the other bodhisattvas and sages <br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">and newborn babies a debt of thanks<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">for agreeing to come back and marry yourselves<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">to our painful predicament again and again —<br style="line-height: 1.4em; ">and I do thank you, bowing to the infinite directions.</p><div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Alison Luterman</div><p style="margin-top: -8px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 10px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 18px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.4em; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "> </p></div></body></html>