Luke 11:1-14 | A Translation-Turned-Paraphrase by Tom Gaulke

Peace, all. Here's a translation-turned-paraphrase of this week's lectionary reading. On your phone? 

Turn it horizontally and this'll be a bit easier to read. 

Use freely. Drop a citation.  

Peace, all. 

Tom

[ image source ]

On Lifting Up the Words of the Heart

It came to be that Jesus was praying in a particular place.

Words from the heart ascending, Jesus finished,

returning the space to its silence–though, not for long.

For, in a similar manner, a learner who followed Jesus

lifted up words of his own.

“The teacher known as ‘God is Gracious’

[which is often translated as John] taught his learners

who followed him how to pray,”

said this learner.

“Jesus, could you do that for us?”

Is it possible this learner didn’t realize that,

in the form of a question,

his words were also a prayer?

Perhaps.

And yet, it was a prayer that Jesus was happy to oblige.

From the one who asked of him, Jesus widened his frame,

speaking still to the questioner,

but now also to everyone.

And this is what Jesus said.

“When you lift up your words as I have lifted mine,

begin at the beginning,

and affirm:

‘First Ancestor, Great Great Grandparent,

Father & Mother [πάτερ] & Love Who Birthed All;

Even your name is sacred.

Special. And set apart.

Distinct. Uttered in Holy of Holies alone.

Only known fully in the realm of the Most High One.

‘May that realm–your reign–the Presence of Love arrive

here.

And now.

As bread:

a gift–earned not by blood or sweat of brows,

but by tastebuds longing and bellies’ desires to be made full.

As release:

from wrongs done by us,

wrongs done to us–the dissolution of chains,

of bonds; by loves’ paralysis fractured, shattered,

stomped into the ground; amends made freely;

oxygen’s return as mighty rushing Wind

when heart’s fire lies gasping strangled

beneath blankets soaked through,

drenched in guilt, in shame.

As renaissance. Rebirth!

The New.

Dawning Day. Crowning & cries. Beloved arriving.

Holy and One. Debt and debtors are no more.

No more.

Yes! May it be so!

That this realm, this reign, arrives among us.

Here. Now.

And may we be kept from the realms that would lead away from it

as we lie in wait.’”

~ ~ ~

On Shutting Neither Up Nor Down

These words ascended. When they were gone,

silence again took place.

Again, Jesus turned to them all.

And this is what Jesus said.

“Can you imagine a friend, one you know and trust,

one to whom you might turn in your time of need?

Can you imagine arriving there?

At midnight, hungry and knocking?

‘Could you give me three loaves?’ You ask.

‘It’s not just for me. Some guests have arrived where I stay.

And I’ve got nothing to set on the table–

to meet the longing of their tastebuds

or the desires of their bellies to be full.’

The door shuts more tightly. And locks.

‘Don’t fill my space with your pain,” says the friend.

‘Shop’s closed. Kids are in bed. Nothing for you here, bud.’”

“I’m telling you,” Jesus said,

“Friendship won’t get this guy out of bed.

But you know what will?

Keep on him.

Bang on that door until your knuckles bleed.

That ‘friend?’

He’ll rise up.

And you know what?

Keep on him.

And he’ll give you as much as you need.

This is what I’m saying:

Ask. And it will be given.

Seek. You’ll find.

Knock. And the door will be opened for you.

For those who unite their hearts and voices,

demanding in such a way,

often find their lack, their need, their hunger, their absence

met with fullness, grace, and greater good.

Those who seek in this way are often surprised.

Or they are happened-upon

by something quite beautiful

which has been seeking after them.

Those who nearly knock the door from its hinges?”

Jesus continued.

“They often discover an opening, a passage,

a pathway Not Yet seen or known:

into banquet halls, tables filled with food,

a feast for all who hunger.”

Finally, Jesus took a Breath.

And this is what Jesus said.

“Now. Think about yourself.

And about your kids!

If, hungry, they asked you for a fish,

would you instead give them a snake?

What if they asked for an egg?

Would you bring them a scorpion?”

They were nearing an end.

“If you,

who have been pushed down and twisted into the earth

by the pain and weight of the world,

know how to give good gifts

to those you call your own,

imagine:

How much more will our First Ancestor,

the Great Great Grandparent,

the Father & Mother & Love Who Birthed All

gift the the Spirit–

the Breath, the Wind, the Fiery Flame Dancing

that is Holy–

to those who come to be,

praying at a particular place?”

Next, Jesus was liberating someone from a demon that was oppressing him.

Love, Reaching | Thomas' & Jesus' Touch | April 2025

Peace, all. I preached Sunday. And this not the sermon! Not at all. That said, I had some surplus notes that I wanted to put somewhere. So here we go. Last week, it was meaningful to reflect back on 15-20 years of sermons on Thomas & Jesus. Wild. Thinking this may develop into a project. We'll see. Anyhow, keep fighting the good fight, friends. 

These reflections are based on a translation of the Easter II text that's posted here. 

Peace, Love, Liberation. 

~Tom

A Translation of John 20:19-31 | Easter 2 | April 2025

 John 20:19-31 | A Translation

Use freely. Copyleft.

[ image source ]

When it was evening

on that day–

the first day of the week– 

and the terror (φόβον) they felt 

toward their own–

toward their own people, 

toward their own neighbors and schoolmates, 

toward their own family in ancestry and in faith–

when that terror 

had fastened tightly

the doors

where the disciples were staying,

Jesus arrived.  

He stood. 

In the middle.

He stood in the middle of everyone. 

And Jesus said: 

“Peace be with you (εἰρήνη ὑμῖν).”

~~~

After saying this, 

Jesus showed them [too].

~~~

His hands.

His side.

Therefore, 

the disciples?

They rejoiced!

For they had seen.

The Lord (κύριον)!

The Lord! 

~~~

“Peace be with you (εἰρήνη ὑμῖν).”

(Jesus said it, again). 

“As the Father has sent me, 

I send you, in the same way.”

Having said this, 

Jesus breathed (ἐνεφύσησεν). 

Jesus breathed

on them!

Jesus breathed on them

while saying: 

“Receive

the Holy Spirit,

Blessed Wind,

Sacred Breath

(πνεῦμα ἅγιον).”

~~~

And then Jesus said: 

“If you let go of the sins of any,

if you let them loose,

untangle, untie them,

release them like a helium balloon:

well, then:

they are gone

let go

released

un-tangled-and-tied

set free

(ἀφίημι). 

If you hold onto the sins of any:

they, too will 

hang around,

hang on

hang onto

stick

be bound

(κρατέω)

?

~~~

Thomas, 

one of the twelve (δώδεκα)

(who was called twofold/twain/twin (Δίδυμος))

was not with them

when Jesus arrived.

“We have seen the Lord (κύριον).” 

The other disciples were telling him. 

As disciples do. 

“Unless I see

in his hands

the marks left by those nails”

Thomas replied, 

“and put my finger 

into the places

those nails penetrated,

as well as my hand

into his side,

I will not come to trust (πιστεύσω).”

After eight days

Jesus’ disciples were inside.

Again!

So was Thomas, this time. 

The doors? 

They were fastened tightly.

Still!

Nevertheless, there, 

Jesus arrived.

He stood. 

In the middle.

He stood in the middle of everyone. 

“Peace be with you (εἰρήνη ὑμῖν)!”

Jesus said. 

And to Thomas?

“Put your finger here.

See?

My hands! 

Reach out your hand!

Put it here.

Into my side.

Do not be voided 

of trust (ἄπιστος). 

But filled with it (πιστός).”

[Be filled.

Again.]

“My Lord.

My God!” 

Thomas responded. 

~~~

“Because you have seen me,

have you trusted me (πεπίστευκας)?” 

Jesus asked him. 

“Blessed/happy/full

are those who have not beheld with their eyes

but who have been filled with

(or beholden by)

trust (πιστεύσαντες),

nonetheless.”

~~~

Jesus did a ton of other signs 

while around his disciples.

They’re not written in this book.

But these ones are,

so that you may continue being gripped by (and filled with) trust

by Jesus

a messiah!

And Jesus, 

the Child 

of

the God,

and that through

trusting (πιστεύω)

you may hang onto (or be held by) 

Life (ζωὴν)

in/with/through

his name (ὀνόματι).

Solidarity Bones | Palm/Passion Reflection | 2025

Peace, all. Here's a rambling thing for Palm/Passion Sunday this year. Hope its helpful. 

Peace. 

-Tom

[ Bone Chapel | Évora, Portugal | My Photo ]

“You know that the rulers of nations have absolute power over people and their officials have absolute authority over people. Y’all better not be like that.” ~Jesus, Matthew 20:25-26

“I remember standing on a street corner in Selma during a voting registration drive. The black [voters] lined up before the courthouse, under the American flag; the sheriff and his men, with their helmets and guns and clubs and cattle prods; a mob of idle white men standing on the corner. The sheriff raised his club and he and his deputies beat two black boys to the ground. Never will I forget the surge in the mob; authority had given them their signal.

The sheriff had given them the right–indeed, had very nearly imposed on them the duty–to bomb and murder.

And no one has ever accused that sheriff of inciting a riot, much less of sedition.”

~James Baldwin, “Black Power (1968),” The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings, (New York: Vintage International, 2011), 100-101.

“The Christian does not ask ‘What would Jesus do?… [Rather, the Christian] asks: ‘What is [Jesus] doing? Where is [Jesus] at work?’” The Christian “is concerned not about good and evil in the abstract, but about [people] who are lynched, beaten . . . It is not enough to know [percentages]. These facts must be translated into human beings . . . Through Christ the poor [person] is offered freedom now to rebel against that which makes him other than human.” 

~ James Cone, Black Theology and Black Power (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books).

Protestantism and Repression, Religion and Desire

Peace, all. Here's another clip from the hope book! Hope you dig it. Turn your phone sideways for easier reading. Lots of love. Lots of longing for liberation. ~Tom

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Protestantism and Repression, Religion and Desire

In the early 1980s, after having earlier rejected his faith of origin and, then in turn, having rejected the self-identified “dualism” or “new fundamentalism” expressed in his liberationist faith, Alves decided to take a detour. He would revisit that fundamentalism of his youth as an academic task, and he would write a bit of an alternative to these dueling dualisms. The first task he tackled in his book, Protestantism and Repression. The second emerged subtly in What is Religion?

In his 1981/1984 (Portuguese/English) work What is Religion?, Alves offers a presentation of religion that is both anti-dogmatic, as well as un-dogmatic, to the core. Here, for Alves, faith and hope are nearly one in the same. Hope, again, has to do with desire. Yet there is a departure from Alves’ first works.

In 1972, Alves held that hope “is the presentiment that imagination is more real and reality less real than it looks. It is the hunch that the overwhelming brutality of facts that oppress and repress is not the last word. Itis the suspicion that Reality is much more complex than realism wants us to believe; that the frontiers of the possible are not determined by the limits of the actual, and that in a miraculous and unexpected way life is preparing the creative event which will open the way to freedom and resurrection.”

In this sense of hope, there is in Alves a conviction and even a defiance tied to emotion—and still something (if only traces) of belief. Further, faith here is to be moved (emotionally and physically) by such convicted, believing, and defiant hope: “Hope is to hear the melody of the future, and faith is to dance to it.” There is something contained in faith of premonition, conviction, and rebellion. But in What is Religion?, faith for Alves appears to become less of a convicted belief, and more of a desiring risk: “And the reader, perplexed, in search of a final certainty asks, "But does God exist? Does life have a meaning? Does the universe have a face? Is death my sister?” to which the religious soul could only reply: “I do not know. But I ardently desire that it be true. And I make the leap unreservedly. For it is more beautiful to risk on the side of hope than to have certainty on the side of a cold and senseless universe.

“It is more beautiful to risk on the side of hope than to be certain on the side of a cold and senseless world.” It is subtle, but by the 1980s, as he slowly trades in the theological for the theopoetical, presentiment for the moment (the not quite certain hunch) becomes outweighed by the wager (that which we bet on—and live by—not because we fear risking hell with Pascal, but simply because we wish the contents of faith to be true, because to us it is beautiful). Belief in gods is traded for the desire that a god might exist and that the world might be kind. “Prayer is the sacred name that we utter before the Void.”

In Protestantism and Repression, after hundreds of pages of describing what Alves sees as the problem with fundamentalism in Brazil, Alves finally concludes, “Is there a way out? I don’t know. [It seems to me that] those who already possess the truth [those who claim to be certain] are destined to become inquisitors. Those who have only doubts are predestined to tolerance and perhaps to burning at the stake. That is why I see only one way out. We must consciously and deliberately reject truth and certainty before they take possession of us. We must make our own the sentiments of Lessing: [choose striving toward truth and never truth itself].”

Alves becomes anti-dogmatic and poetic not because of a disdain for theological constructs. They had helped him survive some very difficult years. Rather, he becomes anti-dogmatic because, in his experience, rigid theological constructs were quite literally harmful to the bodies of believers, and became weapons in the hands of corrupt (and even well-meaning) authorities. Ultimately, they led not to freedom, but instead became the opium den of the enslaved. They encouraged that even the most persecuted become “saved” and thereby better adjusted to the feeling of their chains, believing that their prize was in the blessed beyond.

~Thomas R. Gaulke, "Hope in the Key of Saudade," An Unpromising Hope: Finding Hope Outside of Promise for an Agnostic Church and for Those of Us Who Find it Hard to Believe (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2021), 65-67.

Clairvoyance & 'Scientific Sight'

Peace Friends. Sharing a little more from the first book, An Unpromising Hope. The language is a bit clumsy, but I'm hoping some of it may apply to the present. We'll see. Please note that for Westehelle 'scientific sight' is not the same as 'all science that ever existed.' It's something else. If the concept interests you at all, I encourage you to read his essay “Scientific Sight and Embodied Knowledges: Social Circumstances in Science and Theology.” Modern Theology 11.3 (1995) 341–61. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0025.1995.tb00070.x . I've got a PDF of it that he gave me permission to share indefinitely, and I am happy to do so upon request! Peace. ~Tom

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Bloch’s Loss of Clairvoyance & Westhelle’s ‘Scientific Sight’

Yet, for Bloch, why is there no clairvoyance? Why can we no longer catch a glimpse of what is to come? A piece of our seeing as in a mirror dimly, is the frames we have inherited. Indeed, our lenses help us to perceive, but only by way of their distorting function. And we have mistaken our method of observing-distorting as truth itself, or as true perception. Westhelle calls this way of perceiving scientific sight.

Scientific sight, he explains, first emerged at the wedding of colonization and scientific exploration. Going into a new habitat, scientists would observe species. They would then categorize these species, simultaneously encapsulating them into two-dimensional sketches or diagrams.

A sketch itself (the representation of the observed object, of the spectacle), would be copied and recopied, then, by way of the printing press. This representation of the observed object (the spectacle), produced by the observer (and not the one spectated), would then become universally available for the consumption of other eyes in nearly all corners of the colonized world. This practice happened more frequently as technology advanced.

The representation, reproduction, and universal distribution of a spectated object became something of a Platonic ideal form of the object. To scientific sight, this other on the page was held as truer than the other’s account of herself. This becomes evidently dangerous when the colonizer/scientist begins to define indigenous people in the Americas, in Africa, and so on. There, as elsewhere, scientific sight silences and distorts those it wishes to represent.

Scientific sight in the colonizing world becomes the truth. Scientific representations become so well trusted that if an objectified person wished to deviate from her own idealized sketch (her confining caricature—often as one who is meant to be detained/enslaved) she would become something of a transgression—or she would be caught in transgression—and one that requires a hefty penalty. To de-conform is to be abnormal. To become abnormal is to transgress. To transgress is to be criminal, to be labeled as illegal. To be criminal is to be potentially crucifiable.

Drawn, defined, described, and contained, the other to empire is taxonomically put in its place. In its place, judgements are made about inferiority and superiority. Policy and legislation reflect these judgements. Such science aids fascist ideologies (such as Hitler’s eugenics) and, as mentioned, worldwide colonization. Such sight aids fascist ideologies today. Certainly Bloch and his family were targeted by such science. He, defined as a Jew by rising fascist power, was subject to the fascist definition of what Jew or Semite meant and to the appropriate punishment for existing as a transgression.

Thomas R. Gaulke, "Hope in the Key of Heimweh," An Unpromising Hope: Finding Hope Outside of Promise for an Agnostic Church and for Those of Us Who Find it Hard to Believe (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2021), 11-13.