GET BACK IN YOUR BOX!

When the Catholic Church treats Jesus like a Bad Dog, It Misses The Message And Quashes the Spirit

We had a pet dog who was full of joie de vivre as a puppy and got into everything.
He was what they call "crate trained" meaning the official training method for outdoor potty
training and keeping him in line was to punish him by putting him in his crate, where he also
spent the night and was let out in the morning. He knew this was where he got to retire to his corner time out if he was caught chewing shoes or peeing on the oriental rug.

'Back in your box!' my mother would yell and sheepishly, tail between his legs he crawled into his crate. This was always a bit annoying because we couldn't play with the dog then-and felt his pain.

This became a joking metaphor for anything my mother didn't like about anything any kid did- you dated someone she found putrid "Back in Your Box!" or you didn't all the way mow the grass and missed a spot "Back in Your Box!" It became such a joke that the siblings started using on each other- you stayed out too late-back in your box! Your skirt is way too skimpy and your butt looks too big-back in your box! Sometimes this got ridiculous in the extreme but was so obviously ridiculous it was well understood as a joke.

Does the church do this a bit to Jesus? Does the church stand in Judgment of Jesus and the Holy spirit rather than the other way around? Does the church like tidy rules and restrictions outside the man-made boundries of which transgression cause everyone to shout- no! You cannot do it that way! Only green vestments this day, pink that day and only this posture or that pose for lifting up the eucharist. Against the rules! and they retreat to stuffing Jesus in the Box, at the Holy Tabernacle, like he is a Jack in the Box that can be stuffed back into behaving-and anything outside the lines evokes cries of "Back in Your Box!".

Jesus for example, could not ever speak powerfully through a woman at the pulpit in a Homily-Back in Your Box! Jesus, it is assumed could never want to be consecrated through a woman- Back in Your Box! Jesus couldn't use a one armed priest-how is he going to pose properly lifting the eucharist-back in your box Jesus!! Jesus could never want a priest to actually know what having his own children would be like rather than baptizing everyone else's alone (as if one precluded the other)-Back in Your Box Jesus! Now everyone on your knees chanting something in Latin some saint in the middle ages made up in Latin and give me twenty!!

When the dog wasn't in the box he was romping and playing, giving people licking kisses washing their feet, demonstrating affection to the neighbors (even the neighbors' cat). If he was Lassie he could have saved someone from a burning house if he wasn't in the Box.

When the Holy Spirit came down on the people at Pentacost, which was an already Jewish holiday where people were gathered, the first instinct of the people was- they are all drunk-they all started talking in languages not their own in a reverse sort of Babel- and were given understanding beyond the normal protocol. This is how the Holy Spirit looks- it looks drunk to the uninitiated, unbaptized by the Holy Spirit- it looks outside the lines, a bit unruly, and the orthodoxy always want to shout "BACK IN YOUR BOX!"

But in the end the Holy Spirit always prevails- because it is far holier, far higher than all the rules- and most definately, Bigger Than A Breadbox.