Reincarnation – Was Jesus of Nazareth My Big Brother? – VM Franck
“I am the little sister of Jesus,” the young Caucasian man said. Dressed in time-faded jeans, a tee shirt and Hush Puppies, he slouched on a couch in a cottage on the grounds of the Miramar Hotel. Overly thin with blondish-brown hair and wearing Superman glasses, he epitomized the look of a writing nerd. It was the third day of workshops at the Santa Barbara Writers’ Conference. Thirty-plus aspiring writers and the famous author/writing instructor were stuffed into the livingroom of the cottage listening to other writers read their work.
With halting uncertainty the author read his story about an eight-year-old girl who endured ongoing sexual abuse by her uncle. She survived the violations by focusing on the picture of Jesus on the wall over the bed. When the workshop ended for the day I waited in line behind his other admirers. When it was my turn, I told him how his story profoundly impacted me. Looking a bit nervous he said he was afraid that since he was a guy writing about a little girl, it might offend the reader. The opposite was true. He and his insights are still with me thirty years later. His words that day wandered about in my thoughts for a long time. After years of germination an idea presented itself–I had been Jesus’ little sister Ruth in another incarnation. The revelation startled me. Could it be true?
Raised Christian, I was baptized and gave my heart to Jesus at the age of seven. At the time I considered it a wonderful thing to do. I could not understand why everybody didn’t believe in such a beautiful soul. It was my task to help save everybody, my Sunday school teachers and the minister told me. I must spread the good news. A very conscientious child I drew their instructions into my very spirit. I didn’t want anyone to be damned to hell because I failed to tell them about Jesus our divine big brother. In Sunday school every week I received my Bible lessons and memorized the assigned scriptures. I did not believe in reincarnation. We were taught it was a myth. To corroborate this, Hebrews 9:27 was sited: It is given unto man once to die and then cometh the judgment.
During the eighteen years I attended Sunday school, I don’t remember ever hearing anything about Jesus having biological sisters. Mary was a virgin after all and supposedly remained that way. Even so, after the writer’s conference the idea that I had been Jesus’ little sister wandered in and out of my mind. I looked up Jesus’ sisters in my concordance and discovered that the Bible mentioned two, though not by name. I then remembered it had been explained to me that these would have been Joseph’s children from a former marriage. Well now, anyone who knows men knows that in a marriage they rarely want to be chaste, even old men. The likelihood that Mary and Joseph did not engage in sex is not reasonable. However, when I was a kid I didn’t know how strong the sex drive was for men. As a little girl I was taught sex was something to be endured if you wanted a husband. Endured! A man was allowed to enjoy it, but not a woman. For crying out loud.
In my mid-forties I mentioned to my New Age spiritual friend/teacher that it came to me I had been Jesus’ little sister Ruth. She gave me a channeled book about Jesus’ life and family. It talked about his sister Ruth. Good grief. Inspired to write a book about my life as his sister, my first thought was that my current extended family, most of them born-again Christians, would disown me. More importantly, I didn’t want to hurt my mother. She had already been through too much heartache. I didn’t want her to feel she had failed with me too. Regardless, the idea teased at me. When I finished the book I was working on at the time, I realized the next one needed to be about my life as Ruth.
Once I was ready to begin the book I waited, hoping the story would unfold. It was my desire to channel it, or that my memory of Jesus’ lifetime would return. It didn’t happen. I had to write it like my other books, where moments of insight intermingled with hours of slogging out the story and perfecting it by rewriting almost ad infinitum.
I set the story in two time periods, the first one present day. Raven, the female protagonist is based on me of sorts. There are similarities and differences. Raven’s story is written in first person, Ruth’s in third. Whether or not any of it is true, there is no way for me to know. That’s why I present it as fiction.
Here’s a brief window into my story. You can decide for yourself if it’s true.
Despite my upbringing, as an adult I did not believe in him nor was I ever likely too. But something happened that night in the community center that set it all into motion–the learning who I had once been and why I loved Tad this time around. As my current and past lives unfolded, lives entangled in love, murder, passion and peace, I learned the truth about Jesus.
A professional artist and skeptic, as I began painting murals of Jesus’ life I did not know I had been part of it, that female as well as male members of his team existed nor that I had been one of them. Spanning two time periods my quest led to my first husband, who according to available history, never married, my second husband, considered the rock, and the accepted yet misleading doctrine my brother Jesus/Yeshua was supposed to have taught.
Not only was I an integral part of that long ago life, so was my brother Demmy, which was why he committed such atrocious crimes this time around. When it was discovered Jesus’ “second coming” wasn’t what people expected, not everyone was pleased, especially not my brother Avery, a fundamentalist Christian minister. As I discover who these people are today, the story turns romantic, even violent.
My story is not a religious one. Religions are often forged by those seeking to control others. Mine is the revelation of our lives then and now and how the present is unavoidably woven from the past.
Have you ever wondered who you might have been in some other lifetime? Were you anyone famous? Think about it. It is possible. When you think of the things you are working through this lifetime, do some of them make little sense unless you consider them through the lenses of time, past lives and the need for personal growth? At the least it is fodder for writing. At the most it could bring you to an understanding of who and what you are, insights which might otherwise never be realized. Freedom lies in the ability to explore possibilities. I’m exploring mine. I suggest you think of joining me by considering your own “true” story, if the idea tugs at you, like this one did me.
While not everyone is a writer, life abounds with possibilities. If you consider them they can trigger a natural high. If you push yourself to fulfill them, they can become your life’s purpose. For me nothing brings more enrichment than making it so.
About the author
V. M. Franck grew up in a highly religious working class environment. After working at a series of unsatisfying jobs, in her late twenties she earned a B. S. from Oregon State University. Thereafter, she worked with abused and disadvantaged children. A family tragedy changed her perceptions permanently. She wrote and published a book about its impact on herself and her family. She met Philip, who had always wanted to be a writer. They married and moved to the mountains to write full-time. She is currently writing her eleventh book. All but one of them are works of Visionary Fiction. She is also an exhibiting artist with her own online gallery.
Visit her website: whereartmeetstheheart.com
Her works of Visionary Fiction include:
On Wings of the Echohawk
Tater’s Maters of Hootenanny Flats, Part 1 The Mater’s Series
Resurrection Rose, Part 2 The Mater’s Series
Final Entry, Part 3 The Mater’s Series
Jesus’ Little Sister Ruth
In Ways We Can’t Imagine, Part 1 The St. Germaine Chronicles
The Pacifist’s War, Part 2 The St. Germaine Chronicles
Once Without Dying
The “excerpt” is actually a brief write-up about the story, not part of the story itself.
Oh – sorry for the oversight, Vi! It’s fixed now.
Thanks muchly, Saleena.
Thanks for sharing your amazing story, Vi! You ask interesting questions and explore fascinating possibilities.
Thank you, Robin. These are the types of things I ask myself when I approach all of my writing.
I am touched by your story, and I do not doubt what you feel and know to be true. It takes courage to share that with the world. Thank you.
Thank you, Christina. Yes, it took courage, but sometimes in order to be true to oneself, a person must do that which is difficult. I have not shared this book with my family members. If they find out about it, so be it. My mom passed in 2009, so I do not have to worry about this getting back to her. She was a dear woman. She has moved on to enlightenment.
A couple of years ago when my cousin tried to “save me again”, I ask her not to expand on her current beliefs to me, because it triggered severe PTSD. She kept pushing. So I told her I thought that Christianity, like the other major religions of the world, was mythology. She hasn’t spoken to me since. I just got tired of her judgementalism, her need to always put me down. When we were little giggly girls, we were friends. She and the other highly religious members of my family offered no comfort whatsoever after my brother committed murder. My parents, sister and I were devastated. The greatest courage I had to muster was when I wrote a book about what that event did to my family and how religion and my extended family failed me. My brother said in his confession, “Religion has ruined my life. I have never had any fun,” and he sobbed.
The need for courage comes in doses. I’m grateful for all I’ve learned.
Wow, intense. It utterly baffles me that the sublime spiritual messages in much of what Jesus taught and represents can be turned on its head by his supposed followers. It is one of the greatest tragedies of the last two millennia. I too am spending my coin as a writer contributing to heal that.
Victor, in some ways I think it’s like the game of telephone that kids play, where one person starts with a given message and passes it on to the next. By the time it reaches the last person, it is very different. I think when we each hear and see things, we internalize them, and pass them on in our own words and with our own interpretation. Plus of course, it’s like the writing of history…the victor often tells the story in ways that benefit his legacy, and that often has little to do with what actually happened.
We are all one thing…all sisters and brothers. So of course this idea should be explored, especially if you feel that your particular connection was biological/literal. So glad you’re doing it!
Thank you, reanolanmartin. The exploration is complete. It culminated in the book Jesus’ Little Sister Ruth, which is now available through my publisher. If more comes to me I will write it. In the last few months I did have a vision of one of my guides bringing Mother Mary to me. But until something else happens I’m letting it sit.
Ah, the sorrow religion causes. I’ve left quite a few people behind in my search for enlightenment. I think mythology protests your comparison to Christianity, but it’s a great answer. Thanks goodness for fantasy and visionary fiction. I am so glad you laid your courage bare on this platform.
Christina, thanks for your honesty. It seems when we seek higher ways, those who are content with the status quo will often feel threatened. It is my belief that we can never know for certain when our own judgement obscures the truth and when it points to it. Each of the greatly enlightened ones, like Jesus and Buddha, did the best they could to show the way. The beliefs that grow up around them are individuals’ opinions that they and others come to see as truth. How can we truly know what is mythology and what is not? One thing I am sure of is that as long as we approach others with compassion and kindness, we have reached some level of enlightenment ourselves. When a person lays themselves bare, they often invite attack. However, I’ve been attacked, even when I was shy and innocent and hiding in the corner. So I might as well be transparent. I have nothing to lose.
So much I could say on your theme here, Vi, but it especially struck me that, with all the research and thought I’ve given to the “Jesus family” in my work-in-progress, The Elect, I’ve overlooked the role of his sisters. It does have me wondering.
Having been raised Catholic where much of their construct hinges on the Mary-as-Virgin hypothesis and thus Mary could not have had other children, it’s been amazing to discover how the theologians danced around the places where the New Testament talks about Jesus’s brothers and sisters. Blessings on what your vision has revealed to you and kudos for writing about it. If the rabid fundamentalists insist that you wear the red badge of courage, wear it with honor,
Victor, I will be interested to read you book, The Elect. Logically and anthropologically speaking the roles of families were paramount in past cultures. It would have also been true of Jesus and his family. His sisters would have been important to him. One of my problems in getting at the truth of this is that I’m such a skeptic about everything. I have an “oh, yeah, right” skepticism about everything. This was born of the church I was raised in where everyone knew they were absolutely right in their beliefs and some of them were so unkind and even brutal, and then they supported those beliefs with chapter and verse from the Bible. At fourteen I was a sweet, innocent girl, but was called a “harlot” by the minister from the pulpit for wearing lipstick. Yet, his wife dyed her hair.
If you think about the Mary-as-Virgin hypothesis, even if God had impregnated her without the penetration, after giving birth she would not be a virgin. The hymen would have broken when Jesus exited the birth canal. As a woman who never wanted kids, if God decided I needed to have one, and I was being conditioned to have one anyway and told it was a wonderful honor, on some level I would have thought that God was a rapist. If the family unit is sacred to God, then why would he do it that way? Why not employ Joseph to do it? Was a woman good enough, but a man wasn’t? That would mean women should be in charge. Yet, men were. It’s all doesn’t follow.
Last night after reading your comments, I looked for the channeled book about Jesus’ family that talked about it all. My spiritual teacher at the time gave it to me. It said his family was members of a branch of the Essenes that allowed the men to marry and have families and that the women were seen as equals. I was going to recommend it to you. But I can’t find it. When I finished writing the story I was burned out. While I can’t imagine giving it away, still, it does not appear to be on my bookshelves. I can’t remember the name or the author for some reason or the title, and yet, it was important to me at the time. It provided confirmation of what I thought was true.