Jesus drank wine and communicated with ghosts and spirits.  Wine was not a sommelier thing for him.  He communed and communicated.  Ancestors, wisdom, the deep spiritual depths...  It was a way for him to relax, to calm himself.  Wine was simply palatable or not.  What mattered was that it was a spiritual beverage, a clear sign of God's covenant and His support of human joy, not just work all the time.  Wine was a way to quiet down certain humanified parts of his mind, to return to nature, the birds, the trees, the water, the ground, the smells and feelings and all that of the communions not visible to the eye.  Wine was going home, and even sometimes almost like sitting at the left hand of Abraham.  Sometimes it made you sleepy, as with all things, good and bad, but...


They wouldn't have known what to do with him, of course not.  Maybe it's not so much that they were bad men, trying to trip him up, simply, though there was a lot of wickedness in their behavior toward him, but that they did not understand him.  He was too much of a genius for them.  It wasn't his original intention, by any means, to be a genius, to confound grown responsible men, and he strenuously avoided doing so.  Go and tell no one;  just let me teach.

And a teacher is always generous with people.  He's not there to make them feel stupid, to tell people they are wrong, no.

When he gets into lesson mode, he speaks in parables and with thoughtful phrases aimed at the ignorance, the closed habits of their minds.  There's that Pharisee in the third row, aggressively stupid, and Jesus turns him around with the story of the Good Samaritan.

And he's teaching what needs to be taught.  We don't need algebra at this particular point, we don't need grammar or a science lesson, we need the true real pith of opening up minds, to relieve them of the burdens of ignorance.

Live the simple life of a teacher and you will be okay, and everyone will be okay.

And this particularly says a lot about the kinds of empires that try to rule over us and tax us, (which is done in many ways, sometimes by fostering the greed of bankers who make so much money they leave the rest of us workers behind) govern us.   Let a bad man have too much power, look out...

Everyone gets so hyped up about the perfection of an incorporated system, that's the time we need a Jesus Christ.


(Still, they don't know what to do with him.  What would he have thought about the whole religious structure built up in his name?  Okay, sure, thank you for keeping my words and deeds alive, but, you know, keep it fresh, keep telling parables, keep on people being ignorant, hard-hearted, evil by not being good, by being covetous, etc.  It's about the spirit of teaching, not bowing down to an authority who has a more direct line on my suffering.)

Writing is not a convenient thing.  It's distantly akin to the rugged troubles that prophets go through meeting with burning bushes and God's voice on mountains, with traversing long walks to find disciples.  The timing is not convenient.  That it does not pay is inconvenient.  That you need another job to support yourself is inconvenient.

Of course, it goes without saying, it was a terrible burden upon the man, Jesus Christ, and probably all those around him, being so sharp and feeling all things so mightily.  Maybe being amongst publicans and sinners was a relief for him, from being a prophet, a special one, high strung.