Kurt Vonnegut died recently.
Author of 25 books, at least by my count, including Slaughterhouse-Five, Jailbird and God Bless you, Dr. Kevorkian, Vonnegut's last book, A Man Without a Country, turned out to be thoroughly autobiographical. I read it while on a plane a couple of weeks ago.
Typically, it tends toward the profane at points. If you can live with that, it is worth reading, even if you don't agree with him and I expect some readers here will find much with which to differ! But, that's okay, isn't it? Only reading what confirms my bias is not healthy.
I found it hilarious at points (what does that say about me???). And, I agreed with his consistent emphasis on kindness and the "Golden Rule."
Here's just a snippet to give you a feel for his direction.
Enjoy!?
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Quoting Eugene V. Debs as he begins. . .
"'As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I'm of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.' . . .
"How about Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?. . .
"For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.
"'Blessed are the merciful,' in a courtroom? 'Blessed are the peacemakers in the Pentagon? Give me a break!" (pages 96-98).
"But if Christ hadn't delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its language of mercy and pity, I wouldn't want to be a human being.
"I'd just as soon be a rattlesnake." (page 81)
Jack Kervorkian, Kurt Vonnegut, Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Upton Sinclair, even Malcolm X and John Carlos ...
ReplyDeleteYes ... John Wiley Price
They were all troublemakers who threw us against a wall and forced us, at least for a moment to deal with our stunning and even inbred DNA of hypocrisy.
They demanded, against our will, that we live vicariously through another's soul's experience and another soul's pain - and that other soul was always at a place we didn't want to be - or even want to acknowledge existed.
To know true compassion is to come into perfect union with God, Jesus said. To get inside another's body - to get inside another's experience and literally writhe with them in unabating pain is what Jesus both modeled and demanded. It is ... "to know God."
More often than not, he didn't wait for them to come to him - he went to them. He didn't just go to them. He lived with them and slept with them. He even took on their mental illnesses and felt them INSIDE HIS BRAIN jabbering, challenging and hissing 24 hours a day. He could not have healed them or interceded for them in any other way - it was not his nature.
The sick, the poor, the "different ones" in Jesus’ time – the ones “outside the camp” were in places no one would go. They were there year after year - after year after year.
Ten years later, they were still there. They would never ... just go away
Like gnats glued to your arm on a hot day on a Louisiana bayou
Then in Heaven, when you met them again, your eyes were suddenly blinded with the radiance of a thousand stars ...
You had it wrong ...
You were actually the gnat on their arm
They were put on the same road you traveled so you could imbibe in God's heart right here. They were the ones actually carrying you to your ultimate destination.
Most of the time, you didn't even notice them, and that's ok, because they always noticed you, and that was the key.
Thanks for this post, Tim. Thanks for sharing your heart. Powerful insights.
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