umm...before the word...

I thought I might just say a couple of things that have helped me—in reading; in thinking; in life:

I don’t know anything.

And the place of “I don’t know anything,” is the place where all things are new. Because if I know it, then it’s not new any more—not “news” anymore.  Jesus stands at the doorway between what you know and what you don’t know, ushering you into a new world— a new creation. This eternal newness becomes increasingly clear when reading John's gospel, because Jesus never answers anyone’s question directly. He can not abide assumptions, presumptions, and “what you think you know.”  
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The other thing is:

Everything is WAY MORE connected.  Less separate.   Way deeper. Infinitely deep. Which is another way of saying:  resist the urge to disconnect. To cut and isolate. To flatten things to one dimension—one perspective. (Take it from a cyclops like myself—you turn into a monster when you see the world from one perspective). It’s why there are four gospels, after all. To see from different points of view. For example,  Mark’s gospel is short, lean, and fast.  It’s almost as if you can hear the Romans banging down his door as he scribbles down the story of Jesus. Whereas John’s gospel is like reading Steinbeck or Dostoevsky. It’s insanely, miraculously, creative and beautiful and personal.  
Try to understand that each word connects—just like your life—to its neighbors, which are in context to other sentences, paragraphs, chapters, books, and eventually the whole overarching story. Each part is just as important to the whole as the whole is to each part.

So, the word. 
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It is not like the written word. Like grammar. The greek word is Logos—which I say in my heart all the time now. It is something like “truthful speech. “  But more than that.  It’s like a Way of Being.  A way of being in the world. A way of being human—a real human.  John seems to be saying that Jesus—the logos—was what God spoke into the void. To create everything.  It’s like the origin of consciousness—the light of all man.  It has some connection to consciousness itself—behavior itself—“how to act in the world.”  We all stand at the cusp of the unknown at every moment. Potential lies before us—the void. And depending on how we act; as we hover before it; we can create heaven or hell, light or dark, blessings or curses.  It’s like, you can either live—exist—act—speak—BE—in this singular, truthful, giving, loving, bright, spontaneous, courageous, vital way…or…not.  And John is saying that God—who we are the image of—spoke the Logos into everything.  But it is hidden—shrouded from us.  The light of all man. But man can not see it.  And John is not saying it in a finger-wagging kind of way, like, “You should choose the light.”  He is saying that’s just how it is.  And that’s just what man does.