Paul Speaks: The Prison Letters: The Lost Books Series, #1

By Mark B Matthews

Paul Speaks is a jailhouse paraphrase of the so-called "captivity letters" written by Saint Paul the Apostle while in prison: II Timothy, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon, and Ephesians.

 

This "Lost Books" series starts with the teaching of Paul. It is followed by Buddha Speaks: The Lost Sutra, which is a jailhouse paraphrase of a lost sutra known as Atthakavagga or The Book of Eights. The series is made complete with the paraphrase of another lost book: The Gospel of Thomas in Yeshua Speaks: The Lost Gospel.

 

At the end of Paul Speaks is a brief essay with the title God's OutLaw: A Breif History of the English Bible. Here the author tells the story of William Tyndale who was first to translate Greek Scriptures into the King's Englsh. For this crime the good scholar was forced to face the pain of death. 

 

This volume of prison letters also includes the Lectio Divina Study Guide. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: BigHouse.Press
• Release date: Sep 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201680909

Mark B Matthews

Artist, author, blogger, voice talent, web designer, and podcaster; Mark Matthews is part maverick, part mystic. "I live a magical life outside the consensus reality" he writes, "I embrace wonder and beauty. I stand in awe of the Great Mystery which binds everything together in Oneness." An early adopter of Bitcoin, Matthews is a big advacate for open source money. His article The Seperation of Money and State was published in 2013 forecasting the sea change that was coming: "honest money demands honest government."   As a boy growing up on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Matthews lived through the 1973 stand off between AIM and FBI. It was at this time he earned the nickname "Wasaka" (Wah-SHOCK-Ah) which is Lakota Sioux for "tuffy."  Soon Wasaka discovered his talent as an artist and all his work is signed with his Indian name.   After the family moved to Alaska, he would go on to illustrate the Foxfire magazine for the Nanwalek High School, a remote "bush" village on the tip of Kenai Peninsula. Wasaka now resides in the beautiful artist community of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. You may see him sporting a steampunk hat in the local coffee shop if he isn't kayaking down the Buffalo River. 

Book preview

"Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it—then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters."

~M. Scott Peck

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Considered ‘Holy Writ’ for 2000 years, these letters of the Apostle Paul were composed in captivity but the study of this text can form the basis of your own spiritual liberation. It is my hope that with new light your old paradigm of Christianity will give way to a new vital reality that is beyond theology, a church beyond a building, and the Divine Source beyond the god of theism.

‭(8/22/2021)

BIGHOUSE♖PRESS

Foreword

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As you know, this book is not the Bible. It is just the letters Paul wrote from prison. It is not formatted in the way you might expect a modern Bible to be formatted. There are no numbers in superscript at the start of each verse, for example, nor will you find any Red Letters, only letters written from captivity by a man who proclaimed liberty and true freedom in the name of someone Other than himself.

The best way to read these letters in one sitting, as you would with any other letter you might receive from a friend. After all, if you want to be a friend to the God of the Bible, there is no better way to do it. Perhaps you can find that this God wants to be your friend too, but I wouldn’t bet on it. As long as you are stuck in beliefism, the Alliance of Heaven remains defined by a religious tradition, dogma, doctrines, snods, cousils, kings, and popes, preachers, parents, and saint Paul.

Furthermore, this is not a translation. As the author of this work I want to make this fact very clear. I am not a scholar of languages, nor am I any sort of academic. In fact, English is my only tongue. In short, I am woefully unqualified to have written or published a book of this nature. This is merely a jailhouse paraphrase from Old English to a more contemporary form of American vernacular. One, I hope, speaks to you.

This work was done from behind bars at Arkansas’ Washington County Detention Center. Each week I mailed handwritten letters to my mother, and I added those paraphrase pages to my correspondence as they were being produced. I knew my mom was worried about me, and so I started this project as a way to encourage her. Soon it became a spiritual practice for me, and a means by which to reclaim my faith.

The crowbar hotel was my ashram, my monastery, and these letters of Paul became, for me, the Word of God. My socially constructed ego was told to shut up and go sit in the corner of my jail cell and stay there. I no longer needed that ego voice in my head. I no longer needed justification or validation, and my own deceitful intelligence (which I once trusted implicitly), was now banished and not welcome to return. 

While I was waiting to go to prison, I spent three months in the hole. During that time I employed the spiritual practice known as Lectio Divina (Latin for Divine Reading) and focused on understanding the sacred scriptures with pure devotion. This ancient method of communion with the Divine Source was traditionally a monastic practice. For me, the clink  was not only a retreat from the world, it was the gateway into the Kingdom of God. It was my ecclesia, my temple, my buddha shrine, my pagan feast at the new moon, and the only outward extension of the true altar—my heart/soul. My whole day was spent reading the scripture, then in deep contemplation and prayer asking for guidance as I paraphrased the text. In effect, I was channeling Paul in my own words.

It was a labor of love and the result of those effortless efforts are what you now have before you. Please reference the supplemental section of this work for the Lectio Divina Study Guide. It is the best method I have found to turn text book knowledge into a rubber meets the road personal experience. In order words, it helps you get past beliefism and scepticism and opens you to receive mysticism right from the Source.

If you happen to know, as I did, that you need to convert your intellectual beliefs about the Bible into genuine faith, then this method is for you. It will help move your knowing from the head to the heart, where it belongs. Then, with glad and sincere faith, everything you do will be done wholeheartedly.

This is true religion, to be engaged in the world. First, to stop sinning, I define sin as blame, then get go and blame no more. Second, change your mind and head in a new direction. Adopt a win, win strategy as you drop the hot coal in your hand. This means dropping old ideas of God or gods, guilt, shame, and sin. All the stuff that hurts you and hold you down. All the moral fear of some false authority called the church, just drop it. You don’t need that, I told myself, so I just allowed all my biased views, religious precepts, and orthodox convictions to just fall away.

In reading these letters of Saint Paul, you can do the same. Just open up to this as new information, hear it for fresh and new as if for the first time. Listen in such a way that you are willing, ready, and eager to go in a new direction as you are led by Source and as you get guidance from Spirit and our Lord of Light.

Amen.

Remember, our intellectual purchase of truth is always tentative, and self-serving. But no matter, Truth is not a concept. Truth is a Person (as a concept, it is a mere prison). We don’t know Truth unless and until God makes the LIGHT known to us. Always remember, God looks for the LIGHT-hearted, so be that. Jesus said they are worshippers the Father seeks.[1]

Preface

Something is missing in most of our lives. At the deepest level of our being something remains strangely unfulfilled. This is what has become popularly known as The Meaning Crisis.[2]

We try to compensate for this by having things and doing things. Things to wear and things to do. Things to believe in. Any-THING to avoid the ambient pain of our existential dilemma. Any-THING to shore up our eroding sense of self.[3]

Part of what is missing is beauty, bliss, and belonging. That and other stuff the left-brain doesn’t understand and simply chooses to ignore. Therefore we seek entertainment but it is fleeting and hollow. We join cults hoping to reclaim the family we lost or never really had. We indulge in pleasures of every sort but no peace or joy can be found. There must be a better way, we tell ourselves.

As a last resort, we turn to spiritual practice and the way opens up before us. The voice of socially constructed ego told us it was a meaningless waste of time to contemplate and sit in silent meditation. However, as we apply ourselves in earnest devolution, something happens we did not expect: we open up to the beauty and mystery all around us.

We find the joy that was always there but we didn’t know, and could not perceive, because our discursive thought drowned it out. With joy comes new serenity. A peace that defies understanding comes flooding in, and our need for belonging is satisfied.