These are my thoughts about the Wild Goose, aka the Holy Spirit. This is a total fabrication on my part or maybe She whispered it in my ear. Anyway. I woke with the whole story already in my head – all I had to do was write it down. I commend it to you as part of this month’s Synchroblog about the Wild Goose.
***
Once upon a time, many, many, years ago as time is measured by men, but only yesterday in the celestial calendar of heaven, Creator God, more familiarly known as Abba, and the heavenly hosts were sitting around with their feet up talking of this and of that.
Michael, a very outspoken archangel, said, “You know, You really need to do something about those people on earth. You put them down there, and gave them laws to live by, and gave them a perfectly wonderful planet to live on, and they keep making bigger and bigger messes.”
“I know,” sighed Abba, “I suppose I’ll have to send someone down to see if they can be redeemed.”
“Well, don’t send me,” said Gabrielle, a stunningly beautiful archangel. “They didn’t even pretend to listen to me the last time I went.”
“No, I’ll have to go myself,” Abba replied. “My problem is that I’ll have to go as one of them, and there’s too much of me to fit in one person. Men are strong with great leadership ability and women are soft and loving. I’m both of those and more. In order to do the job right I suppose I’ll have to go as one of each.”
***
And so in the fullness of time, twins were born to a Jewish woman named Mary and her husband Joseph, and they called the boy Jesus and the girl they called Jessica.
The children were happy and grew to adulthood with their earthly parents. Jesus worked with Joseph in the carpenter shop and Jessica helped her mother with the housework. They knew that they were on earth for a purpose, and they understood that their real parent was Abba who had poured lots of the Abba’s selfhood into both of them, but they were fully human as well and could not escape their human natures.
Jesus told everyone, all the people from their village, that they needed to be better human beings, to help each other, to take care of the poor, and to worship Abba in heaven. He tried preaching in the synagogue and on the corner, but the people of Nazareth got tired of listening to him. Jessica also undermined him, because just when he got really worked up and started pointing out the sins of most of the people, she would interject, “Bless their hearts,” and would pass out hugs to everyone around. Her loving ways took all the sting out of his sermons. And so they began to argue and fuss.
When they were 33 years old, finally Abba had had enough of their bickering and sent them into the wilderness to work it out between themselves.
“People have got to be told about their sins so they can repent of them,” Jesus said.
“Bless their hearts,” replied Jessica.
“That’s just what I’m talking about. They don’t take me seriously when you go all soft and loving like that!”
“But that’s what Abba is,” Jessica answered. “All soft and loving, no matter what.”
“Men just aren’t all soft and loving! I have to show them how to treat each other better. That’s the only way they will be redeemed,” he said.
“The only way they will be redeemed is if someone gives up everything for them, I’m afraid,” she answered.
And because she was a woman and an expert in compromise and acceptance, Jessica proposed an accommodation.
“I’ll make a deal with you, Jesus,” she said. “You can go your way and teach everyone. But you have to take this bracelet with you – see it says ‘WWJD’ – for What Would Jessica Do? And you always have to remember to think like I think. Teach them how to be kind, and how to take care of the poor and the widows and orphans, and how to love and serve Abba. They won’t like hearing it from you, and you’ll be lucky if you last a couple of years. They’ll come and kill you – you with your martyr complex. And I’ll go away and you’ll not hear from me again in this life.
“But when you’re dead – yes, and even after you’ve been raised from the dead, you’ve got to agree that then I get to come back as a Spirit, and put love in their hearts. And I will be with them always.”
***
Here are other bloggers who are also participating in this month’s Syncroblog.
- Anna Snoeyenbos – Wild Goose Festival – A Spirit of Life Revival
- Lee Smith – Goose Bumps: Opportunities Everywhere for Offense. A Fair and Objective Review
- Ryan Hines – 30 Years Later – “Controversy” at Wild Goose
- Karyn Wiseman – Flying With the Goose
- Kyla Cofer – I went to the Wild Goose Fest and came back in love
- Brian Gerald Murphy – Born Again (Again) at Wild Goose
- Chris Lenshyn – Chasing the Wild Goose
- Cherie at Renaissance Garden – Wild Goose Return
- Deborah Wise – Wild Goose Chasing
- Custodianseed – “every day they eat boiled goose”
- Will Norman – Back from the Wild Goose Fest
- Martin at Exiles in NY – Greenbelt and the Wild Goose
- Kerri at Practicing Contemplative – Waterfowl in My Life
- Allison Leigh Lilley – Chasing the Wild Goose and Catching the Wild Goose: Thanks and First Thoughts
- Abbie Waters – Jessica: A Fable
- Steve Knight – Why Wild Goose Festival Was So Magical
- Tammy Carter – Visual Acuity and Flying
- Michelle Thorburg Hammond – I heart Jay Bakker and Peter Rollins
- Matthew Bolz-Weber – Remembering Wild Goose
- Paul Fromberg – Celebrating Interdependence Day
- David Zimmerman – Wild Goose Festival: A Recap
- Dan Brennan – U2, the Wild Goose, and Deep Freedom
- Mike Croghan – The Wild Goose is Not Safe
- John Martinez – The Table
- Callid Keefe-Perry – Gatekeeping the Goose
- Eric Elnes – The Inaugural Wild Goose Festival: Recovering Something Lost
- Shay Kearns – The Power of a T-Shirt, Apologizing to Over the Rhine, and Public vs. Private (Part One)
- Glen Reteif – Duck Duck Goose
- Peterson Toscano – I’ve Been Goosed, What I Carried Into Wild Goose, and What I Blurted Out at Wild Goose
- Seth Donovan – About More than “The Gays”
- Exiles in New York – Greenbelt and the Wild Goose
- Tammy Carter – Visual Acuity and Flying
- TSmith – What I’ll Take From Wild Goose
- Dale Lature – Wild Goose Reflection
- Steve Hayes – Wild Goose Chase?
- Minnow – Grace Response
- Christine Sine – Encounters With A Thin Space
- Jeremy Myers – Giving Up the Wild Goose Chase
- Robert – Thoughts On the Inaugural Wild Goose
- Anna Woofenden – Slippery Slope Reflections
- Wendy McCaig – Loosing The Goose
- Joey Wahoo – Into The Wild
- Rachel Swan – goosed
- Patricia Burlison – I Called Life
- Jason Hess – While At the Goose
- The Bec Cranford – Wild Goose
- Anthony Ehrhardt – Chasing The Wild Goose on Independence Day
- Joel DeVyldere – So Lost at Last-(In the Woods)
- MK Anderson – Listening To The Wild Goose
- Jamie Arpin-Ricci – Wild Goose Fest
- Unfinished Symphony – #5 – The Last Post … for a while
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