For Mum...

It's a question that the lost, the lonesome, the desperate, the confounded, the most unwitting of confidants will ask in situations of personal crisis: what would Jesus do?

In considering a hypothetical response to such a query, we must first ask: what did Jesus do?

I mean, what did Jesus do? Really?

It’s been largely verified by today’s brightest, most thorough scholars of antiquity that Jesus did exist.  However, discounting the highly descriptive passages of the New Testament and its authors’ presumed collective and final authority to use direct quotation marks – these guys didn’t just paraphrase – when expressing his Divine status and teachings, there is no other record to suggest Jesus was more than a mere man.

For midnightly-blog’s sake, let’s just say he was an inspirational guy. A spiritual and charitable man. Like Gandhi or Bono.

So what about these miracles he’s allegedly performed? That is to say, if Jesus didn’t carry out acts of God, where did these claims come from?  Were these rumours circulating at the time he lived? Did he know about them? Did he entertain them? Perhaps he started them. What does that then say about his so-called morals?

Suppose they started after Jesus’ lifetime. Who decided to flavour his story with impossible doings like calming a storm, curing lepers with his touch, multiplying fish and bread, etc?

What are some of Jesus’ lesser known miracles?

Did he walk on hot coal?

Did he scull a gallon of milk in record time?

My favourite Jesus miracle is turning water into wine.

Namely so, because he did so at the insistence of his mother. Mary liked a good celebration and asked him, so as to avoid a social faux pas and downer on a wedding. Jesus obliged after some initial resistance.

Would this be classed as a selfish use of Divine powers? Consider this: he brought joy to people and harmed no one. But God, being omniscient and the only one in those times who knew about science, would have been well aware wine destroys brain cells and alters one’s personality and can incite anger, carelessness and social irresponsibility. Yet, drinking was a significant component to the ordination and post-celebrations of holy matrimony; widely practised at all meals and meetings in this historic culture. What excuses and meanings can one derive from this sanctioned boozing?

God and Jesus condone wine?

Mary was quite intimidating when sloshed?

God was terribly busy inventing mangoes at the time? Like a school boy eager to finish his homework so he can go outside and play cricket with Dennis and the older kids, but, to his surprise, gets really into his studies and works away well until dinner time?

......

I think, Jesus loved his Mum more than anything or anyone else in the whole world and thought he ought to show her-- bless all mothers, Happy Mother’s Day!

The World of Wes in a Nut-Shell

A friend recently shared this piece of writing by Michael Chabon on Wes Anderson:
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/jan/31/wes-anderson-worlds/
I re-read sentences several times over. To totally comprehend his meanings and impossibly good grasp of language, structure and metaphor. To marvel at his deeply-considered comparisons and well-justified arguments. He's so on it.

I particularly liked his openings paragraphs regarding childhood, the paradoxical power of scale models and our adult longing / futile efforts to re-capture that same world perspective. Also, he's found the words to describe what I've only felt, beyond my own understanding, and have wanted to explain to audiences who don't 'get' Wes - that sedateness that somehow speaks volumes about characters' emotions; that his rich, precise mise-en-scene creates a doll-like world, an ideal world setting (like that of a child's game/view or adult's nostalgic recollections!); that the juxtaposition (work of art!) shows us that these broken characters don't fit in this ideal world:

"Anderson, like Nabokov, understands that distance can increase our understanding of grief, allowing us to see it whole. But distance does not—ought not—necessarily imply a withdrawal.... the teeming, gridded, curio cabinet sets at the heart of The Life Aquatic, The Darjeeling Limited, and Fantastic Mr. Fox - often cited as evidence of his work’s “artificiality,” at times with the implication, simple-minded and profoundly mistaken, that a high degree of artifice is somehow inimical to seriousness, to honest emotion, to so-called authenticity.... indeed I would argue that artifice, openly expressed, is the only true “authenticity” an artist can lay claim to."

Seriously, bravo.