By Annmarie Early

They’ve come back to me like lightening—the stories of Jesus that I learned of long ago.  Biblical stories of events that were once only on paper came alive in my 20’s where I felt their power and their haunting call. I met Jesus in a powerful way and the stories were about Jesus and his life. But this time it is different.  The stories are searing in their message and demanding in their stance.  They are stories directed at me and Jesus is pointing the way. Everything means everything.  Now means now. Leaving literally means picking up and going without any idea of what that might actually mean in my daily life.

Have you ever thought about what it was actually like for the disciples?  Jesus meets them one by one and they know that he has something to follow, something to say yes to.  They recognize something within him that allows them to drop their nets (Drop what they are doing. Drop what they call their career.  Drop the life they’ve been living and creating) and to follow him. Can you imagine? Someone showing up in your life who is so compelling that you notice and know and you simply walk away from the life you are living—house, career, family, income, reputation? What?  When you say it like that it is crazy.

 They literally left everything and simply followed.  How did they eat?  Where did they rest their heads?  How did they get money?  How must it have felt when the parables washed over them and they just didn’t get it? What in the world did they experience with the crucifixion? If they were human like me they must have questioned, doubted, wanted to walk away, felt fear, even in the midst of knowing deeply within them the rightness of the path they were walking, they felt.

 I’m coming to realize more and more that this is what awakened living requires.  I don’t know how it will come for you, but for me it is a relinquishment of so many known categories created by what I thought I was— my You (the ego).   It feels like I let go of a whole host of layers to take a breath and finally relax to only realize there is more.  These days the layers seem more subtle—meaning more sneaky—and I can’t even find a finger hold to anchor me to what’s known.  It feels like a moment by moment relinquishment—I feel my You rise and I want an answer.  I listen deeply and broadly.  I breath. I yield.  I enter stillness and rest there, in the unknowing and the mystery. And I say that literally.  I don’t know.  It is a mystery. The only thing to do is to Be.

 As I wrestle deep within me—acknowledging that my mind simply can’t figure out what is ahead—I also feel the steadiness of rightness, of abiding.  The undoing is the path forward and there is no return.  Once you say yes and begin to follow the beckoning call, there is no turning back.

 It’s a good thing the disciples had one another for they could grapple and talk together.  Even though they didn’t “get it” most of the time, they stuck with it.  Could it have been that the very process of gathering together— walking, eating, sharing, laughing– was what Jesus knew they needed to go forth and carry the good news?  It was the very act of gathering and being together in the presence of Jesus that became the teacher.

 Come, follow me.  Such simple words on paper and such crazy words in practice.  Follow what I did and do it like me.  Live from the awakened place in every aspect of your life.  Let go of the packages.  Free yourself from the expectations and enter the stillness of knowing within you. Gather with others in that stillness and live from there.  For, when we follow, we undue what is unreal and we allow real life to infuse us and we will never, again, be the same.