I have inherited Mother's "Living Bible," a paraphrased version of the scriptures, as well as Ms. Vera's (second MIL) New King James Version. I have my cousin Fred's remarkable gift of the NKJ Study Bible that he used to prepare many of his excellent Adult Sunday School Lessons and, also, one of his Methodist Hymnals.
One Bible on this shelf was given to me by a valued customer, during business hours, the day she moved away from Jacksonville. She was Primitive Baptist. Most of our conversations had involved the subject of speaking in tongues. She was appreciative of my open-mindedness. I know that all things are possible.
I see a few of my (required) Bible Study Bibles, the NIV and the New Revised Standard Version, there on the first row. The Pentateuch is sitting out of place. I have another bookshelf for non-Christian religious volumes. It was given to Wayne and me by a Jewish friend who owned and acted as a traveling salesman for Franel Optical, a wholesale company, after many spirited discussions. The beautiful book is written in both Hebrew and English.
I have a brand new (easy to hold paperback) King James Bible in my beloved Cambridge Edition. I impulsively gave my well-used one to a man who was learning to read at thirty-six years of age and was confused that there were so many and different translations of The Scriptures. I told him to use the Cambridge for it comes closer to true translation than any other. Then I handed him mine and we read. Sitting nearby in this picture is a copy of the King James 1611 Edition that I studied in college.
Also, behind the Bibles that we can see, I have the black zippered Bible of my childhood with the beautiful watercolor insertions and my Baptismal date notated. (By Immersion, Easter Sunday, 1952)
There is a white zippered Bible, too; the one presented to me as a child in Vacation Bible School for having memorized the most Bible verses. Also, there's a small New Testament. I won it in an essay contest in 1954.
Behind the second row, I've saved copies of the books inscribed by the Essenes (and others) onto the Dead Sea Scrolls – googled and printed out via my computer many years ago. They're all together in a folder. I also own them in paperback. I have a second Apocrypha stored in the back, too.
So you might be asking why a person with obviously well-read and annotated Scriptures on her bookshelves and a fair amount of Biblical knowledge under her belt would be undertaking a new project of reading and studying. You know from my Goodreads reviews that I already read many religious and philosophical books.
The answer is the evolution of the institution of the American church; the torn condition of our country (belittling and blaming the religious and vice versa); the rampant quoting and cartooning of scriptures out of context on social media; the confusion about what spirituality even means; the reasons behind the question of why church leaders no longer seem to act as spiritual advisors; the realization of the fact that some in organized religion talk through both sides of their mouths, espousing liberal changes in church dogma publicly while resisting change privately; as well as other questions and concerns about hatred, bigotry, delusion, deemphasis on education, and an incendiary political climate.
I've been re-visiting churches, just as I did a decade ago, for over a year off and on. In my last Bible Study session, several years ago, the leader of the discussion said that he was tired of hearing "What would Jesus say?" and was ready to hear, "What would Jesus do?" Or was that vice versa?
Either way, it made no sense to me because I am a proponent of personal relationships. I would rather ask, "What would Jesus have ME to do?"
Is He recorded in the Bible as actually having broached this, my inquiry? What was the ancient prophecy regarding how He would act, think, and teach in the future? What did He say about similar events when He was alive? Did He take any actions relating to my personal questions? Did He point the way, abstractly, for me? Has the institution of the church failed to take notice that reality is very different in the modern world and some answers must be found through extrapolation and/or prognostication?
So I am busy on a three-pronged personal mission that might just last the rest of my life. I am beginning to seriously study the Prophets, to re-read the recorded words of Jesus, those printed in red, and to try to wrap my head around the history of the churches of both Jerusalem and Rome in order to get a handle on how and why the Roman church evolved in the ways it did. Enlightened by God? Manipulated by uninspired and self-serving mere men? A little of both?
I won't speak of or write about this quest again. I feel as if I am compelled to do research for my own self-knowledge and in order to clarify my own actions in dangerous and confusing times. The older I get, the more attuned I am, transcendentally, to the events around me. The Epiphany I had as a fourth grader and the realistic "Sea of Galilee" dreams of my childhood produced an adult who understood that the Great Mystery was more than all the gurus, bishops, and scientists in the world could ever solve and that there was a grain of truth in everything concrete that any of us would ever learn.
