Vandal With a Handle

This blog should keep us watching for the great people we miss because we do not expect them where we find them. Samples:

What I realize now, each night as I stand behind the counter of my little shop, years later on these beautiful Summer nights, is that I was dealing with one of the one people in about ten thousand that I would actually consider sane. He had figured out a truth so profoundly obvious and yet so painful for the rest of our vain, silly selves to accept: we are not truly defined by the things that we allow ourselves to be defined by. We are not our jobs, we are not our clothes, we are not our cars, we are not the opinions of others, or even our own opinions of ourselves. These things are ephemeral and shifting, chess pawns to be traded and sacrificed before the king that is the higher Self. These things do not have the power to make or break our happiness any more than we allow them to do so. They are labels which we were taught to adhere to early in our lives, in order to make us obedient and hence less difficult to control; they are sticks and carrots treating us as pack mules, and the truly daft thing is that we allow our lives, nay, demand that our lives be led this way, thinking that the better sticks and bigger carrots of promotions and new cars and home refurbishments will make us more than pack mules.

And furthermore:

John understood that a man’s greatness flows forth from the confines of his heart, that it is to be found nowhere outside, and certainly not on any line of an IRS 1040 form. Perhaps he even understood, like Jesus and Lao-tzu and Buddha, that he could change more people into good and great people by leading with his quiet, dignified example than with the soapboxes and megaphones that are the trade-tools of loud, blathering, discontented fools everywhere. He certainly knew that finding a job you loved involved not a better job, but rather learning to infuse love into whatever job it is you do. A lot of lawyers are detestable, angry, bitter, avaricious people, despite the fact that they make eight times as much money as convenient store clerks. A few convenient store clerks are really somewhat content being unimportant. At the end of the day, who’s really better off?

My first reaction to the blog was "This guy is too good to be where he is." Then I deduced that I had not yet heard what I read. Read the whole article here and don't miss this one while you're there. Really. Don't.

Laudator Temporis Acti has an interesting post on comparisons of Jesus and Seneca. We may never know but the question is tantalizing, "Was Jesus a bucolic and simple teacher without learning of the larger world or did he know anything of the broader scholarly world?" Certainly it is possible for different teachers to arrive at the same thought without any collaboration. I would guess that the learning of the synagogue in NT times included some study of contemporaries.