"I Sound My Barbaric Yawp"...

                    I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world. -- Walt Whitman, American Poet

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We live, move, think, feel: all within or under the paradigm of inevitable indifference: this is both the outer and inner limits of our existence... Except for a few short years, and only for a lucky some, we automatically know this: we experience it in our physical frailty, in our limited knowledge, in our limited resources, and in our search for something more: for some sort of "out"... For many of us we relax into a religious framework that defines and assures us of some sort of likely continuity in our breathing: "Sure. I'll stop breathing someday. But, I'll wake up in Heaven and be with God and my family again." 

​Unquestionably, this is a grand hope and a grand vision: if it is yours, don't stop!

​I ponder the mystery of Jesus / Yeshua bar Alaha (in his native Aramaic, roughly translating as Jesus of the Beloved), who, like us, also lived within / under the very same paradigm: and a life likely comparable to that being experienced by the peoples of the poorest nations today: a life of barely tolerable misery: food, resources, safety, and health always compromised... (unless you want to pretend that he was a rich dude of his era)... 

​Within the context of privation, Jesus of the Beloved, experienced his life: within the context of a people, the Hebrew, he interpreted his relationships and the beliefs which illuminated his mind and activated his heart. He chose his beliefs from within the context of a culture oppressed by a foreign power, marginalized by competing grafters, and minimized in every assumption of worthiness...

​This question of worthiness or value cuts to the very heart of the inevitable indifference paradigm, does it not? The patriarchy that still rules the roost, makes these choices of worth and value for us, almost without thought; while Jesus of the Beloved gives every evidence of a deeply contradictory stream of radical thought: in fact, as I like to, one could identify him as the first barbaric yawper... And! he steals from the rich to give to the poor: G-d, in the Hebrew Scriptures, identifies himself (Itself) as: I am that I am... Jesus, the barbaric yawper, identifies, in a not-subtle-thievery-at-all, also as I am... and going further in explicating the meaning with Way, Truth, and Life... And! this yawper didn't claim the title as his alone: but has welcomed every person and all of history, past, present, and future into a yawping affirmation: I am! I am! I am!

​As we stare into the void, we have both the opportunity and the obligation, to proclaim our chosen / conferred dignity: I am a person! Sure, on both a cosmic and practical scale, inevitable indifference is the obvious way of things: but deeper, there is yet another working way... The working way of Yeshua of the Beloved does not have an obvious goal beyond that of the absolute importance, worth, and value of the person: read his Beatitudes! Read chapter twenty-five of Matthew's Gospel, or the parable of the Good Samaritan... in every one, personhood is at the heart of his teachings: the personhood of every "I am!"

​Inevitable indifference always manifests the whim of the foreign oppressor, the competing grafter, and the wrong assumption of worthiness. Into the only-too-obvious face of inevitable indifference, Yeshua of the Beloved, shouts his barbaric yawp: no longer just an I am, but now a rEvolutionary "we are!" To be a person is to be an evolutionary revolutionary: we have discovered-uncovered the way, truth, and life that indifference does not accept... And, to be clear, the way, truth, and life is precisely here: we build it by our beatitude way of living: we fine-tune our economics, politics, and culture by a beatitude critique: we build our sacred life, from breath to rEvolution... As it turns out, there is only the appearance of a void: neither energy no consciousness ever dies! (It transforms.) Our personhood mirrors the quantum mystery of Universal Personhood (variously called God, the Trinity, the Oneness, Allah, Brahma, Jesus, Krishna, Divine Mother, Spirit, GrandParent, etc.)  that is at the heart of the Universe: thought Is, but so is the Thinker... It is inevitable... and no longer indifferent... 

​So, go ahead and add your barbaric yawp to the grand chorus! I am! We are! Persons without end!