A certainty worth walking in the rain for

By Dale Short My car's in line at the lunchtime drive-thru and a light mist of rain is falling, when suddenly someone taps on my passenger-side window. The noise is so tentative and reverent that I'm only mildly startled before rolling down the glass. The lady looks to be in her early 5 s and her facial features hint of an !sian heritage. "#ello," she says to me with a polite smile, and adds incongruously$ "%e may all be in great danger." Through the window she hands me a small color maga&ine and a couple of brochures. I thank her for them, and she waves goodbye before walking forward to the ne't car in line. The headlines of the publications she's given me ask bold (uestions about life, death, and eternity, and give references to )ible verses that supposedly answer the (uestions. They're not necessarily the verses I would choose as answers, but this is beside the point. The point is that, in the moment, I'm *ealous of her. I wish there was one earth-shaking truth I'm so desperately certain about that it compelled me to take to the streets in the rain, handing booklets to strangers in hopes of forever changing their lives. %hat I have, instead, is a mental grab-bag of smaller truths that I've accumulated and sifted through during a + -year span of reading, discarding some and keeping others as more convincing material comes along. Take a topic, any topic. The biggest one, for me, is ")eyond earning a living and eating and sleeping, how should I spend my life, #ow can I keep from mistreating other people, who sometimes mistreat me," -n that sub*ect, the best guide by far that I'd recommend is what's sometimes called "The .efferson )ible." Thomas .efferson--who, /ord knows, was no saint--had the idea of putting the direct words of .esus from the 0ew Testament into one small book for easy reference. #e e'plained his reason for doing so, in a letter he wrote to .ohn !dams$ "In e'tracting the pure principles .esus taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to themselves." -uch.

The beauty of .esus's teachings, when taken without authorial commentary or digressions, is their simplicity. !nd yet we're told in the scripture that a common response of his followers who heard the teachings face-to-face was a worried look and the reply, "This is a hard teaching." 0ot meaning that the words were hard to understand, but hard to achieve, what with 1a2 the inescapable fact of human nature telling us that "Turn the other cheek" is nonsense, and 1b2 an e'isting religious, economic, and governmental framework that re(uired behavior e'actly opposite to what .esus demanded. 3or my two cents, no better moral system than the direct words of .esus has ever been devised for surviving on a globe with 4,56 ,4 5, 78 other people at a time when basic resources of food, water, and clean air are shrinking by the day. 9erhaps the crowning beauty of those teachings, for me, is that even if you don't believe .esus is the :hrist and spend your life following him, *ust following his principles will make you a better person who does much less damage to the earth and the people around you. !nd many of those teachings are remarkably similar to what was taught some 5 years before .esus by a man from the #imalayan foothills named ;autama )uddha. !s with :hristian teachings, there are entire libraries interpreting the tenets of )uddhism and their application in daily life, but their essence is so compact that it could fit on a brochure with several panels to spare. !s the )uddha's current representative in the world, the <alai /ama, sometimes phrases it$ ":ompassion is more important than religion." !n idea that's no more popular now than it was back then. !fter all, why was .esus killed, The acceptable answer is because -ld Testament prophecy said he would be. )ut I'd bet money that 9ilate and his cohorts didn't spend a lot of time studying the -ld Testament prophets. They killed .esus because he disrespected their religion and denounced the violence in their political system. =o he had to be made an e'ample of, or else the general public might start getting ideas too. )ut, I digress. I was talking about the lady in the rain. If you're ever in the line at a drive-thru and an old guy with a white beard taps on your window and hands you a photocopy of something that looks like this, please know that he means well. !nd if the ideas make sense to you, he hopes you'll pass it along. )ecause the lady is right. %e are all in great danger. >>>

(Dale Short is a native of Walker County. His books, columns, photos, and radio features are available on his website, carrolldaleshort.com. His weekly radio pro ram !"usic from Home! airs each Sunday at # pm on $ldies %&%.' (", streams live online at www.oldies%&%'fm.com, and is archived afterward on his website.)