43 Comments
deletedOct 30, 2022Liked by Greg Olear
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
Oct 30, 2022Liked by Greg Olear

Greg, Funny piece of prose. Well done.

I like the description of Jesus getting that look from Mom when the vino is gone.

Expand full comment
Oct 30, 2022Liked by Greg Olear

Of course Jesus was a mage. We need some "good sorcery" now to defeat the ritualized evil of MAGA and the Christofascists (they are seriously performing evil magic!). Great piece!

Expand full comment

Amusing piece Greg, being born a Catholic, attending the usual brass knuckled Sister Marie…holy water, Father…Sominex style truculent faith education, I seriously doubt Jesus would have approved!

As for the Opus Dei ignominious fuckery like Leonard Leo,.Alito et al., it’s hard to imagine a man of love and compassion would approve either.

Thanks for the great Sunday read!!

Expand full comment
Oct 30, 2022Liked by Greg Olear

I love your interpretation of Jesus at this very famous wedding. I have hope that your grandkids will be saying, “Imagine, it took until 2015 to legalize gay marriage.” Cheers to you, your family and the happy couple!

Expand full comment

Had one of her offspring said, "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" to my mother, it would have earned them a slap. I never got that part.

Expand full comment

How do you change a light bulb for a Jewish mother?

Don't worry about me, I'll just sit in the dark.

And as we all know, Jesus had a Jewish mother.

Interestingly enough, I have seen this "Jewish mother" stereotype all over the world in so many different cultures. Thus the joke becomes less anti semitic and more universal.

I don't get why the Son of God would even perform miracles in the first place. Were people so dense that they needed such parlour tricks to get them to believe in this man and what he was saying? I mean what he was saying should be enough to stand on its own (or not).

Anyway, thanks for the lovely story and blessings on your cousin and his partner. To Life!

Expand full comment

"But we are lucky to live in an enlightened time".....are we?

For example, in NY state the electoral agenda is "vote status quo on crime" vs "vote for abortion", "vote for gun proliferation" and "GOP wet dream nuttiness". THIS is the "sophie's choice" tradeoff the highly efficient "democracy" has set up for it's constituents. In tribal terms the choice is "gain red" vs "harm blue".....heads u win tails i lose. We are being played. The whole country is turning HARD RIGHT. It's only being normalized and getting worse still! Thanks Brandon!

Expand full comment

As an Italian-American, I feel compelled to ask the ultimate question: ‘Whadja eat?’ (This is brilliant & fun, Greg. )

Expand full comment

Nice. Thanks. Long term, committed, and loving relationships are good for society, unlike the sexual predations hidden for so long by both the Roman Catholics and the Southern Baptists.

Expand full comment
Oct 30, 2022Liked by Greg Olear

Greg Absolutely a great post.

And

Its got to be the water

as the

planet goes HARD RIGHT.

See todays AP news on Israel

The fundamentalists calling for Death

Increase their political power

Expand full comment

Agree wholeheartedly with your wedding interpretation. This is the story that got me rethinking Jesus - I mean, who’s really going to leave everything to follow an itinerant dude who’s constantly railing on others about missing the mark? Not I! This Jesus was firing on all cylinders. He wasn’t just “preaching”, he was partying, laughing, connecting - living fully. And imploring others to get past the ick inside so they can recognize their own potential to do the same. What a tragedy, for all of us, that the dominionist Justices are actually the “Pharisees, Sadducees and chief priests” doing their best to keep us from doing just that.

Expand full comment
Oct 30, 2022Liked by Greg Olear

Too bad your Jesus has been crucified by his own “followers” this time. Christ would not be welcome in any Christian church that I have knowledge of these days.

Expand full comment

I like your version of that story!

I have lots of gay friends who NOW are happily married; I cannot imagine what will happen to their lives if the Stench Bench does its nasty business as anticipated. I just hope there are sufficient numbers of these married couples in our country to matter at the ballot box. I also hope their friends and family members will be sufficient in force and number to make a difference at the ballot box.

Expand full comment
Oct 30, 2022·edited Oct 31, 2022Liked by Greg Olear

As a gay Italian, I can confirm most all of this. Weddings are BANANAS! I also have a theory that Italian mothers actually transform into Jewish mothers sometime in their mid-70s or so. Mine, at the tender age of 90 this year, is full-out Jewish mother now. It's all guilt, passive-aggression, and "did you eat?" A lot of her requests for service around the house start with, "if you think of it..." Well, at 64, I DON'T really keep things stacked up in my head anymore like I used to, so, "if I think of it" may never come. I will generally get on something she wants done right away, with her in the background saying, "oh, you don't have to do it now!"

And on Jesus: here's a guy that spent three years collecting, and then almost exclusively, hanging out with 12 guys, and the OG fag hag, Mary Magdalene, and I'm supposed to believe Jesus has an issue with the gays? Bitch, please!

Expand full comment
Oct 30, 2022Liked by Greg Olear

Greg, I would like to share some stuff I learned about this story. I'm a professional Christian and I love sharing new things about familiar passages with my congregation and watching light bulbs go on. It doesn't always happen, but pretty often - enough that I don't give up. I'm fortunate that my tiny church can't afford boot me and hire someone else! I am also fortunate that they love me and are willing to listen to interpretations that excite me. Here goes:

The people to whom this story was told were Jews steeped in the prophetic history of Israel. The prophet Joel speaks of "the day of the lord" when God's messiah will come and all will be upended, shook up, and laid back down along the lines of God's intended justice. In Joel 3:18, the prophet says that the mountains will flow with sweet wine.

The amount of water held in the jugs Jesus transformed is about 120 gallons. That's a LOT of wine! For those present at that wedding who remembered the prophet's promise about abundant amounts of really good wine, they may have paused and thought, "Hey......". Or they did that the next day when they had sobered up and wondered where the bridegroom came across such a fine vintage. Some probably brushed it off but some may have gone and asked some questions.

Also, no one other than Jesus' mother - who definitely gave him THE LOOK imo (lol) - and the servants knew who did this. Jesus' mom and the people at the bottom of the social pile. Not the wine steward, not the host, not the bridegroom, not the guests; just the people that everyone would overlook. They knew.

These two angles 1) a potential fulfillment of prophecy and 2) the secret getting out to people no one would think "worthy" of having it fill me with joy. It says to me that God doesn't forget us and that God gives us reminders of that all the time if we pay attention. Thanks for sharing your experience, for indulging me, and for doing what you do.

In my opinion, I think Jesus would not only have attended your cousin's wedding, he would have brought a thoughtful gift that blessed their union and danced and sang and closed down the venue. I'm so glad they had this and that you got to be there. And I pray that we will all do what we can to make sure this sort of celebration is not a one off or a thing of the past. I firmly believe that an open, loving future is God's intention for humanity and it breaks my heart that there are people who are so afraid of it. They are really missing out.

Expand full comment