Journey: Into The Never-ending Way

Chapter 9: Where Words Take Us

Words!

Pictures!

These are the carriers of meaning. They build the concepts that are imagined and distributed by our brains. They conjure up emotions in which our mental responses move life drama.

Cultural influences and media sponsored voices, speaking out of earthy neighborhoods, testify to community supported thinking and behavior that is purported to yield the greatest benefit for a successful life in earthy neighborhoods.These earthy voices are heard and honored in the choices people make in pursuit of their life's drama.

This scenario was played out in Andrew's life. He was going to his father's church and youth group where the Word was well published. Yet, his brain was working out of words and pictures (neighborhood adventures) that caressed him with a flashier rush. He was challenging Mr. Church with buckets of jungle juice, pillaged alcohol from the neighbors' liquor cabinets. He was one of the guys and no one could touch them.

These lies loomed large in his brain. Flying shadows, that guard the earthy brain gobbled up the imperishable seeds before they could take root. He continued his forage into perceived benefits of the drama he was forcing into his earthy neighborhood.

The Father's Way is ignored by people who don't understand its benefits, choose to ignore the Word,or label it as myth. The people who walk the earthy cultural path are convinced that earthy neighborhoods—governed by space, time and matter—are the only life experience that they will have. Their minds are set on what their body-brain understands and demands.(Romans 8:5)

As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.(Matthew 13:4, NIV)

At his core their was something hidden. As a result of growing up around Christian values he couldn't ignore the feeling that it might be true. But, he loved himself more, a self-love that needed constant radical feeding to cover up an anxiety that lurked in the shadows of his mind. His anxiety was kept quiet with drinking, dope and wild parties.

He'd experienced a brief wink at the Father during his first trip to Jamaica. However, Andrew had some well-hardened pleasure categories that hadn't yet been broken. They didn't allow the Word to take root and grow a new set of words and pictures.

There are many people whose thinking categories are well formed by protective caps, defined by cultural voices pushing out from a large array of earthy sources. When the heat of the majority opinion,which supports perceived reality, makes them sweat any Word roots that might have given earthy guards the slip and produced a little plant are soon scorched away.

Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched and they withered because they had no root.(Matthew 13: 5-6, NIV)

When Andrew returned to Boston with his revitalized Christian attitude he soon found himself in the weeds. He had reinvested in drinking, dope and parties that fed his body-brain self. Old  mr. self was still in charge and his earthy neighborhood's weeds were choking out the Word he'd winked at in Jamaica.

The best of new year's resolutions are usually chocked out by the weeds that naturally grow in earthy neighborhoods. That is not to say that earthy neighborhoods are filled with weeds only. There are many people who live out of good intentions and come to the aid of people in need. After any outlandish disaster the news media are happy to expound on any number of wonderful responses. That's great. Earthy culture has its bright spots, which are able to give cover to darker movements.

Andrew's life experience was being fed by more immediate desires. These earthy desires were being fueled by the anxiety over the feeling that his body wasn't being fed and the brain's reward centers were not being acknowledged with real earthy food. Word chocking was in progress.