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Friday, July 6, 2018

For Sunday, 7/8/19 "A Prophet is Not Accepted....."

Mark 6:1-13 (NRSV) states a prophet is not accepted in his own country, among his own people, even among his own family.  I know and understand this now.  Once I accepted that truth for my life and being, even as Jesus did for himself, I became "free of encumbrance" to those entities.  I became considerably freer to speak my mind and my heart.  I was free to embrace the mystic within me and speak the words God's Spirit desired me to share with the world around me.  I no longer had to be toe to toe in obeisance to a person who proclaimed their self God's Prophet for an entire religious tradition and movement. 

The freedom God's Spirit gave me, hard won over the course of seven years of intensive individual psychotherapy and individual spiritual direction with a professor of interfaith spirituality since leaving the faith tradition in which I was raised, now enables me to say the following:  "You never had a right to expect me to be a follower in lock-step with your theology, you never had a right to expect that of me as a member, you never had the right to expect that of me of one of your ordained ministers, you never had the right to expect that of me as one of your World Church appointed ministers.  As a result of such expectation toward many, you are suffering the consequences of such expectations and you will continue to suffer until you embrace the task of reconciliation with all the billions of diverse souls who live now -- and have ever lived and saw God and Jesus not in quite the way you think they should.  May you embrace the task and journey toward reconciliation with God's great and grand diversity throughout all the world in a manner you should have done from the very beginning of your movement.

Lastly for a people who chose to place in power a wannabe dictator like POTUS 45, an unwell man who wants the American Democracy to make him POTUS for Life, who considers it treasonous if you and I do not grovel in adoration before him -- ask yourselves how much longer you are willing to live with his lies, his falsehoods, his failed promises, his willingness to victimize and traumatize others -- especially very young children by tearing them from their parents' arms, using their trauma as a means to excuse his racism and his demonizing of others for his own failed policies and executive orders.  Look at yourselves, examine your spiritual self, and then ask yourself if truly he is what you want to emulate before the World.  If not, have courage to be the prophet -- the prophet that is not accepted.

Brad Shumate
Free of Encumbrance
Eugene, Oregon USA        

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