I had anticipated in the middle of this misery to offer some hope this Christmas eve, but I may have to take the long way round to do it. With AI sucking the effort out of every living thing, it may seem soon that the long way is the only way if we’re going to cleave to some sense of what being a real human being actually is. The realest human being I’ve ever glimpsed is also a God, paradoxically, and it’s the untameable elements to him I’m cleaving to today, not just his baby form.
I need the God that a nanosecond after being baptised is booted out into the desert; no synagogue, no Torah, no fretting elders unless the rocks, sand and hills became such things to him. It’s going to be ghastly out there. I’m well pleased with you my son, now off to the Gulag with you. The spirit drove him out into the wilderness, there’s an urgency to the affair. There’s a pace, a tempo; from dove to scorpion in one fell swoop. And out there in the baked, barking, belligerent desert circles the adversary. The moment Yeshua’s affirmed he’s tested. In the buzz of news so bad I can barely stand straight in it, I need a sometimes tough, stark teacher in a tough, stark time. There’s love there, but it’s a whittled mandate, lean not florid. That’s who I’m leaning on this Christmas.