The Parable of the Talents

Today I woke up at 8:20, scarfed down breakfast, and raced downtown to my overeaters anonymous group. I love that meeting! Its raw, and fresh. The people are supportive and brutally honest. There is freedom and people there have good boundaries. We go around in a circle, each reading a page in the big book and sharing about where they are. When people share, they keep it short, and no one gives them stupid advice (you aren't allowed to cross-talk). I really liked this black guy that was there. He read really slow, and only read a paragraph, which probably everyon was grateful for. Two things he said that I loved "Now I can tell you that I am an A-hole, because I want to ask everyone who sits around meditating, trying to listen to God, "What did God say to you?" and they say--Nothing!" He also said when he calls up the people who know him real well, they will listen to all his justifications and fear about the future, then say "Lenny is any of that true?" He will say, "No." and then they will hang up. He like that because he doesn't get away with BS. Another lady said that the bigges lie she believes is, "If I don't do it right it will kill me." And "Abstinence is not abstinence unless it is done with love." I like that too. This other lady I adore has a lot of pain in her life right now. She talked about it and I started crying about it. The kind of crying that is not connected to personal pain but spontaneously bursts out of an intense feeling of empathy.


I was full of spiritual energy, and rode down to the salon to get my bangs trimmed. I started reading an artical that gripped my soul and thrashed it around a bit.

Rolling Stones 16 April 09 Written by Ethan Hawke about Kris Kristopherson.

The reason it jumped out at me so much is it connected some things I had been thinking about with the parable of the talents (I preach on it next sunday and am starting to get ready.) This guy went to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, became an army officer during Vietnam, went through Ranger school, became a helo pilot, taught at Wespoint, and begged to get sent over. Then he started hearing the stories. Men learning to brutally murder on command. Men pushing POWs out of helicopters and stomping on their hands when the caught the rails on the way to their deaths. He did a 180 and moved his wife (high school sweetheart) down to Nashville to become a singer-songwriter. He worked as a janitor at Columbia Studios for eight years--enough time for his wife to leave him. Somehow he was flying Helos on the weekend for some commercial firm. He landed a Helo in Johnny Cash's back yard and demanded to have Johnny Cash listen to his song. Johnny Cash loved it, and it became the hit, "Sunday Morning Coming Down." Everyone started recording his songs. Gladys Knight, Jannis Joplin, Elvis Presley, Carly Simon, Kenny Milsap, Isaac Hays, Marrianne Faithful, Percy Sledge, Bob Dylan. He had an affair w/ Janis Joplin, and wrote Bobby McGee for her. Then he started making all htese movies. He made the best move at the time, A Star is born, and the worst flop ever, Heaven's Gate. He lived hard, burned with intensity, plummeted. In the intervie he said "I heard a guy on teh radio refer to me as 'washed up.' I had no idea. I was in a blessedly stupid state of shortsightedness, not allowing doubt to paralize me." He quoted a line from William Blake. "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." I can't really remember what my writing coach said once, but it was something like, "Put it all out there, hold nothing back." That reminds me of something that Bob Dylan said, "Things are handed down when you are ready to make use of them. You wouldn't recognize them unless you had come through certain experiences. I am a strong believer that each man has a destiney." Then there is Luther saying, "Sin Boldly."

I guess what I am thinking about the Talents is that the ruler couldn't give the man who hid the talents anything, because he knew he wouldn't know how to make use of it. The point was to leave it all on the table, risk it all. This brings me to something I saw on John Hendrix's website, "The less you gamble, the more you lose when you win.." I wrote him to talk about it. I asked him about what he thought about that tieing into the parable of the talents. He wrote, "I think you always lose what you dont risk.. i lost the biggest single bet of my life tonight and dont regret it for a second.. gambling makes you alive, it makes you feel like a person, even great apes dont gamble. rewatching old episodes of "The Wire" and i'm reminded of PrezBo's great line "no one ever wins, one side just loses more slowly." so why play the game? because its the only game to play. and you only lose if you dont play. and then there is nothing else.. so you play." The other thing the article talked about was how both Bob Dylan and Emily Dickenson were fully realized artists, but one maintained meteoric fame and the other's life passed in obscurity...but the fact that they both threw everything out there was the point. You only lose if you don't play. And then there is nothing else. So you play.