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I, of course, do not claim any ownership of the references and
quotes taken from: The Bible, Hughes'Poem Goodbye Christ, or Act 1,
Scene 3 of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.
Please Don't Say GoodbyeThis isn't what I wanted for my people,
not at all. I wanted happiness- well being. I wanted
them to live their lives knowing that one day, regardless of the
sins they've committed in life, that theywill be forgiven, and
welcomed into a loving home.
Why have they forgotten?It seems that I have fewer and fewer
places to be- Fewer and fewer gather in my name. I didn't
ask for billions, millions, even crowds or full rooms. I asked
only that two or three gather, so that Imight be with them, to help
and strengthen them.
There are, here and there, those that catch the attention of the
masses, bringing what I tried toteach back into focus. Ghandi,
Martin Luther, one of those Popes, Pius -the Tenth, I think-, Even
littleAimee McPherson, and the Mother- Theresa. They tried to show
the world what it means to love eachother. Each in his or her own
way.
Ghandi's focus was illness, specifically lepers. He tried to
teach the world, that even the least ofits people were worthy of
kindness and caring- Of love. I was glad to welcome him as my
brother,even though I could see the effects of Godse's hate
rippling forward, beyond the initial shock of his
crime, to allow people to forget what they had been taught-
forget the love shown to them.Pius and Aimee, though I didn't
always care for their methods, brought people back to my
flock, that I thought lost. There are so many now (more than two
billion, and growing). So manypeople that it's almost too much to
go after every single one of them, even though I do my
best.Sometimes it is only what those souls, still living their
day-to-day lives among men, can do, that willconvince my lost lambs
to come back.
Aimee, my dear sister, gave her husband to call out to the
missing pieces of myself in HongKong, and then spent her life in
tents, sometimes filled to overflowing, sometimes empty of all but
afew, telling people about my life, and how I tried to teach the
world to live and love.
Our brother Pius had both an easier and harder time of it. He
challenged himself with changingthe habits of the masses and a
corrupt system, the head of which was his seat. He and Martin,
beloved
souls, could see that trying to buy what is already yours is an
exercise in futility and sought to changethings as best they could,
in the short time allotted to them by our Father.I love them all,
and welcomed them with glad, open arms when it became time for them
to join
me in His house. Even though, at the same time, I wept to see
their work being demolished almostfaster than it had been
built.
There is one now, who calls to me. He is saddened at the state
of his people, all of them. He's apoet, my dear Langston, and I can
feel his pain as he writes to me, Goodbye Christ... Goodbye?Never!
I'll not be leaving until there are none who call to me for love,
whether it is to be given ortaken. I see though, as his hand
skitters across the page, that he sees the things that I do, almost
asthough he were reading my mind, Listen, you did alright in your
day, I reckon- I don't know aboutthat. It seemed that for every
person who saw my light, another three of four were there to
condemnhim. And, even though, I think that Father scared the hair
straight off their heads on that last day...
Earthquakes and sudden darkness tend to do that to people. I
can't help but feel, with that part of methat was meant to feel the
feelings of man, so that I could teach to each, as Man, in a way
that Fathercould not, that they deserved that fear. I could take
the verbal degradation- and death, regardless of myfear, was
something for which I was prepared long before I left the safety of
His home. Outrighttorture, however- The part of me that is all Man,
and feels the things that Man feels, and understandsthings in the
way that Man understands them, felt a little bit of pleasure in
knowing that while manywept for my death, many more were fearful of
my return to life, at the hand of Father. They ghostedyou up a
swell story, too, But it's dead now,/ The popes and the
preachers've/ Made too muchmoney from it./ They've sold you to too
many. My heart breaks to listen to his thoughts, even though I
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Goodbye,Christ Jesus Lord God Jehova,Beat it on away from here
now.Make way for a new guy with no religion at all-A real guy
namedMarx Communist Lenin Peasant Stalin Worker ME-I said, ME!
Go ahead on now,Youre getting in the way of things, Lord.And
please take Saint Gandhi with you when you go,And Saint Pope
Pius,And Saint Aimee McPherson,And big black Saint BectonOf the
Consecrated Dime.And step on the gas, Christ!Move!
Dont be so slow about movin?The world is mine from now on-And
nobodys gonna sell METo a king, or a general,Or a millionaire.
Well- this was a challenge. I wrote it for a class, in which we
had to choose between an essayand a creative writing exercise... I
hate essays. I was bound from choosing the same author as my
first
paper (Twain), but found myself equally inspired by Mr. Hughes,
even though I tried to channel a bitof Mr. Twain and J. California
Cooper, while writing. My main objective was to write this piece
fromthe viewpoint of Christ-the-man, and keep it from becoming what
some might consider a religiouspiece. All of my references to
literature (Luther's 95 Theses, The Bible, The Merchant of Venice)
werekept deliberately vague, as were references to culture
(Ghandi's murderer, MacPherson's church tentsand missionary work),
because the point was not to make Christ literary, or a social
history buff- Onlysomeone trying to work his way through his
thoughts, and, later, Hughes', as they came to him.
I like to think that He would agree with Hughes on many of his
points, sadly watching as more andmore people forgot or never
learned His teachings of love. I also like to think, that the part
of Him thatis Man, would understand the way we work and think-
Would understand that we don't mean to beawful (not all of us
anyway), we just need to have goodness shown to us the right
way.
