James, what is your mission?

 Hey, James. It's me, Jon. The fella that just helped you out of the deep gravel. I gave your blog a follow and wish you the best of luck on your travels. It's cool to see a guy doing what he loves with purpose. I'm curious though, as we didn't get much time to chat, what exactly is your mission?

Best

Jon

My reply:

 Jon, just read this. So glad that you found me online. You were a real godsend.

I have always believed that there was a way to have a joyful life and I have no complaints but I never felt expert at finding it. I've searched and searched and searched and searched and searched my 70 plus years.

My belief that there was a way to live a joyful life stemmed from what I thought I witnessed in my father biological, and in what I saw in the life of the man jesus.

My many decades of study lead me back to seriously trying to understand, learn from, and master the man Jesus in the four canonical gospels. I have zero interest in christianity. Christianity is the project of 10,000 minds or more throughout history on going.

My interest, my hope, my faith, was that the more I could understand the man jesus, the more I could find that way of living joyfully.

And I have. In a world that I consider objective hell, I have a joyful Abundant Life inside me regardless of what's going on outside me.

Do I know Jesus perfectly? That's impossible. The gospels by every objective scholarly documented photographed measure are at Best in approximation of some of what Jesus was and taught. And the words and agenda of the gospel writers.

But what I do know is that with my intention of using the gospels as my best possible source for catching glimpses of the man, and choosing to learn from and embody as much of what he was as a man as possible, I have found the joyful path.

And the primary reason I care about that is I can't stand the needless suffering and joylessness in the world. And in figuring out how to find and walk the joyful path for myself, occasionally people encounter me and maybe I can help them do the same. That's my mission.

Disciple James