Of course, writers are self-loathing.  Hard for then to find reward, any kind of ready gratification, beyond the act itself.  Rely on the connections, the rearrangements, the calls that run through the cells and the chemistry of the brain, to correct itself, to realign.  To get the serotonin to match up with the dopamine, to get the wine in the head back in balance, which comes from a fresh sip of insight.

 Jesus, one of the first writers.  There he is in his hometown.  Nazareth.  At the synagog gathering, whether it was indoors or out, whether they had resources then for a scroll or not.  He reads from Isiah.  And then he sits down.  And, being a writer, creative, penetrating, full of great imagination, he spouts off the logical implications, spiritually, of the reading of this piece in the great story of Isiah.  He's fine with it.  He has begun to teach.  This is his beginning.

And the townspeople, then as now, as no-one likes a writer, not the business man, not the socially integrated, not the obedient, not the follower, in need of dismissing, do not like it.  They will not, as the voices rise, turn out to stand for it.  No, not from this guy, even if he's family, even if he's a steady fixture of the community, as much, if not more, than anyone.

So, they seize him, take him to the cliff at the edge of town.   And they know what they are going to do, given this over-reaching, given this unconventional extra-talmud commentary...

He, Jesus, it seems, didn't want to do it either, to offer his thought, his extra two cents...  but, somehow, for reason, he goes for it, he must.

He passed through their midst.  I wonder if there was something in his demeanor, as he was a writer, barely capable of acceptance, of being kind to himself...   "Go ahead.  Throw me off the cliff.  You'd be doing me, and yourselves, a favor..."  Then, they saw that he was sincere.  Real.  And they might have mulled over, and pondered what he had spoken.

The Rejection at Nazareth.  Luke 4:16-30.  Father James Martin, S.J., tells the story in his book, Jesus, A Pilgrimage, a good resource, from the local library.


Show me then a writer who likes herself, himself.  who does not have to maintain a certain suspension of disbelief, a sense of humor, a kind of resignation to the thing of the task, as it appears as a unknown daily chore or torture...  A fatalist in an arid desert he can only abandon to...

"Well, stop that. Be kind to yourself.  Make humor out of it.  Count your blessings..." a  voice says...