My Brother Jesus

About two years ago, my brother was in a play and starred as Jesus. I had a DVD of the play for almost a year and never watched it until this afternoon. I took it down to watch it with Carole my neighbor. She knows all about the Bible and I know very little so I thought she could help if I had any questions. Plus My Sweetie had no interest in watching it. I really didn't know what to expect.

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I don't think I've talked about my brother much here although I have spilled some stuff in some of your comment boxes. In a nutshell: In the years before Dad died my brother had a really nice house with a wife and two kids. He was a junior partner at Dad's insurance business, was a member of a civics organization, a Cub Scout leader and a Little League coach. After Dad died he took a long bad ride on the white powder train. After his nose blew out, he took to smoking the stuff. I cut off communications with him at this time because as everyone knows, the personality has been replaced by the drug. He lives in North Carolina and I live in Texas, so most of this was out of sight and out of mind, but I got phone calls from his wife (they were separated of course) and heard of sightings from my friends. And I had many long sad conversations about him with Mom. Before he ran the business into the ground, he sold it and once that money was gone (he had already blown through his inheritance), he was evicted and lived who knows where, occasionally showing up at some unlucky old friend's house asking for food or whatever.

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Well, one of those old friends said, "I'll take you in and give you a job but: 1) you can not drink or anything else, 2) you must study the Bible with us every night and 3) you must attend church with us on Sundays.

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Whatever your personal beliefs about churches or religions (and I know what most of yours are), this worked for my brother. He cleaned up his act and reconciled with his wife and kids. I thought it was all an act and kept my distance, but after a year or so, I saw that it had "taken" as they say in the south. I tentatively started talking to him again and that was a few years ago and now we are friends.

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I guess I must have had the DVD since either June or September of last year when Mom gave it to me on one of my visits to N.C., but for some reason I just didn't feel up to watching it until just now. Carole, who is awesome, invited me over to watch it on her TV which is as big as my truck. So watch it I did, and although I am not a Christian, I found it very moving. On many different levels.

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And yes that's a screen capture of my brother from the movie.

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And now, on the lighter side: My tongue has always been terribly tangled by tongue twisters and tonight I discovered that I cannot say "Splenda® goblin." (Please don't ask me why I was trying to say it, it's too stupid and I won't tell you.)