I have long had a deep conflict with the image of Jesus. It didn't take many years for me stare at the traditional picture of Jesus Christ, and glance at my own father standing near the picture on the landing leading into the kitchen before I saw the contrast between the images. On the one hand as a teenager my own father was, to people the world over, the epitome of a man. I had seen him do extraordinary things among ordinary people caught up in the humdrum dance of convention many times before I was seventeen (17) years old. And looking into his eyes when he was angry and raging, or laughing deeply, or looking at Mommy with love, understanding who she is, and wanting her, or see his countenance as he gave counsel stood in stark contrast to the feminine picture, on the wall, I was told was the image of Christ.
I had to say it aloud. There was no way a man such as Jesus was sissy like. It didn't make sense to the sensibilities of a boy raised by a man to become a man. So I did the most logical thing. I stood in front of the picture in the family room and spoke the words out loud! It was quite a moment. There was a stunned silence in the room as those present stared at the picture and me. Doubts raced in my mind stirring up fears of hell, judgment, and condemnation but I couldn't back away from this. Not if I was going to be a man one day! So I spoke it again and began to answer the questions that started first from Mommy.
Here is an image of a man, a savior, a teacher, the Messiah who never had sex, never married, and was a Rabbi 2000 years ago, and I am supposed to fashion my masculinity around this concept of manhood, and around his life of celibacy, power, and spirituality and take on Christ-like attributes to become a Man of God in the 20th century? How can that be when I stand in front of the image of Christ the Church has deemed to be his holy likeness, and he looks like a girly-man? It was too impossible an idea to grasp as the son of my father, Herbert L. Woods! My father was a man who loved Mommy, and protected us from all dangers including the white man and Jim Crow. The sissy didn't live within Daddy's essence, and my little teenage mind couldn't bring these contradictions together.
As a descendent of both the African and Indian nations the ethnicity of Jesus holds an importance very different from white Christians because I don't have protect a tenuous hold over altered truths. I got older in my my thinking and recognized the obvious. There were only two fair-skinned peoples in the Land of the Blacks: the Romans and the Greeks. I lived in Africa, and Africa taught my spirit about spirituality from the Land of the Blacks. The differences are profound. There are solid reasons such a powerful man arose from her soil. A picture of a man from that continent speaks volumes about powers that have never been captured in the Euro-pictures of Jesus. To draw a fair likeness about a man who was never drawn from the people he came from shifts the power of his teachings. To be a white, and European trying to shift that power in his direction directs the power away from him into the illusions of power in ways my white relatives are just beginning to grasp.
If I had not called into the question the essence of the artist's intention, and the intention of the Church, and the old colonial powers what kind of man would I be now? Would I have found my voice, or been capable of receiving the things I am receiving now? Would I have developed access to the spirit world as it is now? Those are good questions I will never know the answer to because I chose to walk the path that opened up as I opened myself to the mysteries behind the illusion of holiness and pretense.
Gregory E. Woods,
Keeper of Stories
Can you have a Merry Christmas?
Amen My Brother - very interesting and the notion of being open is just as profound. How open are we? God said it. I believe it. That settles it. This is one of those hard topics to respond to because of belief systems and the mental energy fields that have been constructed. To talk of the history of the church and the illusions it created to gain power and separate man and womb man from their source causing them to believe they needed this picture/image/ savior – middleman - was and still is big business. I’m sure I will be criticized for even this comment.
ReplyDeleteAs a matter of fact THE CHURCH is one of the most powerful organizations in the entire world. Yet many will never call into question because as did Job – they believe that losing one blessing (housing, health care, education, freedom, car, job, etc.) is a blessing lost and that means every blessing lost...not realizing the power of fear and it's ability to create self-fulfilling aspects of the imagination. As far as a ‘sissified’ image – I think more of us are coming to understand the balance of our masculine and feminine sides – our own androgynous nature and the power that lies within non-violence. I am under the humble opinion that violence can only bring violence. There may be the temporary illusion of satisfaction, however, the seed planted will grow.
May we pray for wisdom, for many will respond to everything that is going on from a position of hopelessness or what I call learned helplessness and do nothing. Their response, it has been prophesied and that is the way it will be. Even Nehemiah told folk they had a choice…”the blood is on your head”. - Emilio Williams