“Stop!” bellowed Tony.
Ego froze, standing on one foot, arms akimbo.
“That’s what I have been doing already, whatever I want, and it hasn’t been freedom at all.” Tony’s anger surged. “All my ‘freedom’ did was hurt people and build walls around my heart until I couldn’t feel anything anymore. Is that what you mean by freedom?”
“Well,” Ego said as he lowered his arms and planted both feet firmly on the ground, “freedom always has its price.” He held the last syllable and let it echo off the structures before continuing, “Mr. Spencer, look at history. Some people always have to die for some to be free. No government or state on your planet came into existence without the necessary shedding of blood. When war is needed and justified, it is peace that is the sin, and if that be true for the government, it must also hold true for you as an individual.”
Tony didn’t know exactly why, but he felt Ego’s logic was sick and twisted. Ego saw his hesitation and quickly continued, “Look to Jesus, Mr. Spencer. Your freedom cost him everything! He gave his very life to set you free. This man went to God and cried…” Again Ego became theatrical, turning skyward with eyes closed as if in the deepest pleading and intercession toward heaven: “Dear God, pour out all your wrath, all the anger you feel toward this vile and wicked creation, for the myriads of disgusting activities of wretched humanity, pour out your just and holy fury, the bow of your wrath bent and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bending the arrow at their hearts, pour your righteous wrath instead on me. Let me bear your cruelty, the just deserts of their wickedness. Burn me with your eternal fire instead of them, that your sword of divine justice that is brandished even now over their heads would fall instead upon me.” And with that Ego bowed his head, as if a mighty edge would cleave his being in two.
His words rang into the distance. There was silence.
“So, then tell me,” began Tony, his voice stronger but his tone soft. “Did it work?”
Ego snapped back to attention. He had not anticipated such a question. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, did it work? Did Jesus bear the wrath of God successfully? Did it work?”
“Of course, it worked, this is Jesus we are talking about.” He didn’t sound completely sure.
Tony pressed the point. “So God poured out all his wrath and anger on Jesus instead of human beings and his wrath and fury were forever satisfied? Is that what you are telling me?”
“Exactly… well, not exactly. Great question, though, Mr. Spencer, excellent question. You should be proud of yourself for thinking of such an ingenious question.”
He was stalling and Tony knew it. “Well?”
Ego fidgeted, alternately putting weight on one foot, then the other. “Here is how you have to look at it, Mr. Spencer, and I wouldn’t be explaining this to just anyone. It’s rather hush-hush, you know, belonging to the category of assumptions better left unspoken, but it can be our little secret. You see, the truth is God is rather difficult to get along with. His creation”—he raised his palm, indicating Tony—“has disobeyed him grievously. As a result, the wrath of God is now a constant part of God’s being, like an ever-burning fire, a necessary evil if you would; and it continues to burn with an eternal flame, consuming everyone and everything that does not accept and appropriate what Jesus did. Are you following?” He raised one eyebrow, which stood out starkly on his pasty face, looking to Tony for agreement. “Well, regardless, you must always remember that the one constant about God is his anger and righteous wrath, which he has already fully poured out on Jesus. So if you want to escape the wrath of God, you have to become like Jesus, surrender your life and live like Jesus did, holy and pure. Be ye perfect, even as I am perfect… That’s in the Bible.”
“So, then,” Tony said as he looked at the dry and desolate ground at his feet, “there’s no hope for someone like me; that’s what you’re saying. I don’t have what it takes to live like that, like Jesus, holy and pure.”
“No, no, that is not true, Mr. Spencer. There is always hope, especially for someone who tries as hard as you, who is as special as you. There is just no certainty, that’s all.”
“Then you are telling me that relationship with God is only wishful thinking, nothing to really stand on, just a possibility?”
“Please, don’t discount wishful thinking. Almost everything in your world was manufactured by wishful thinking, Mr. Spencer. Don’t sell yourself short. In your wishful thinking, your hoping, you become very much like God.”
“For God so loved the world…,” challenged Tony. It was part of a verse that Tony remembered from somewhere.
Ego dropped his gaze dramatically to the ground. “That is so incredibly sad, isn’t it?” he said and shook his head.
“Sad?” Tony refuted. “It isn’t sad. If it’s true, it’s the most beautiful thing I have ever heard! God loves the world! That means God loves those of us in the world. God loves me!” The realization ignited his anger, which flashed bright, and he embraced it, spewing it on Ego. “You know what? I don’t care what you want. You are liars and your lies are demonic…”
“Shush!” shrieked Ego, who regained control quickly and smiled broadly. “Mr. Spencer, we don’t use that word around here. That is just old-school mythology. We are not those… those ugly, detestable, and miserable creatures! We are sent here to help. We are spirit messengers of God, guides of light and grace, commissioned to ease your way and lead you into the truth.”
“A bunch of liars, that’s what you are! What right do you have to be here, any of you? I demand to know, by whose authority have you claimed a right to be here?”
“Yours!” echoed a booming voice from inside another building, the grandest in the settlement. Startled, Tony took a step back as the door slowly opened and a huge man stepped out. An odor of pungent waste and sulfur emerged with him. Tony stood stupefied, face-to-face with… himself, except much bigger. The man towered over him, probably close to ten feet in height, but otherwise it was almost as if he were looking in a mirror. But as Tony looked closer, little details were off. This giant’s hands and ears were slightly too large, while his eyes were a bit too small and unbalanced. The mouth was too wide and the grin was askew. He carried himself with authority and confidence.
“Sosho,” muttered Grandmother to the giant, standing close to Tony’s shoulder. “Wakipajan!” By her tone, the strange words were not compliments. Tony was grateful for her presence, glad she offset some of his intimidation.
“And who are you?” demanded Tony.
“Come, come, Mr. Spencer.” He laughed, folding his arms across his expansive chest. “Surely you know me. I am your superior self, all that you had hoped and wished to be. It was you, with the help of a few of your benefactors, who empowered you to create me. You fed me and clothed me and over time I have grown stronger and more powerful than even you imagined, and it is now I who have been creating you. Birthed as I was in the deepest recesses of your need, you were first my creator, and I was in your debt, but I have been diligent and have repaid you many times over. I now no longer need you for my existence. I am stronger than you!”
“Then leave! If you no longer need me for your existence, pack up and leave… and take your cronies with you.”
This amused the big Tony. “Oh, I cannot do that, Mr. Spencer. This is my territory; this is my life’s work. You may have set the foundation, but it is we who have built upon it. Long ago you gave us our right to be here, sold to me your birthright in exchange for safety and certainty. It is you who now need us.”
“Safety and certainty?” contradicted Tony. “Is this a sick joke? I’ve never known either one.”
“Ah, Mr. Spencer, not the point,” prompted the other, his voice almost hypnotic and monotone. “It was never whether you actually had any true safety or certainty; it only mattered that you believed you did. You have a magnificent power to create reality from suffering and dreams, hopes and despair, to call from within the g
od that you are. We simply guided you, whispering what you needed to hear so you could realize your potential and create an imagination from which you could manage your world. You survived this cruel and heartless world because of me.”
“But—” Tony began.
“Anthony, if it weren’t for me,” the bigger Tony interrupted and took a step toward the smaller, “you would be dead. I saved your miserable life. When you wanted to snuff out your existence, it was me that talked you into living. I own you! Apart from me you can do nothing.”
Tony felt his footing giving way, as if teetering on the edge of an invisible cliff. He turned toward Grandmother, but there remained only an outline of her presence; she was fading. A curtain was drawn across his sight, and everything clear and tangible over the last few days lost clarity and color. The ground leaked a dark visible poison, rising like loose marionette strings around him, constricting his ability to see clearly and think lucidly. A ravenous despair consumed the delicate pieces of his heart that had begun springing to life and sucked them into the well of deep loneliness that had always scarred his heart. Grandmother vanished. He was alone and blind.
Then he felt the breath on his face, kissing him with the sweetness of an intoxication. The fragrance pushed out and replaced the foul stench that had dominated. And then he heard the whisper, “You are utterly alone, Tony, just as you deserve to be. It would have been better if you had never been born.”
It was true, he thought. He was alone and deserved it. He had killed the love of everyone who had offered it to him, and now he was nothing more than a dead man walking. The admission swept through him like the last crumbling walls of a stronghold. Fingers of icy dread slipped like bands around his chest, penetrating through the flesh, reaching for his heart to squeeze until it no longer beat. He froze, stone from the inside out, and nothing he could do would stop it.
And then he heard in the distance, but drawing near, the sound of a little girl’s laughter and singing. He couldn’t move and was barely able to breathe. She would never find him in this inky darkness. She wouldn’t even know he was here. “God,” he prayed, “please help her find me.”
He saw a flicker of movement and light far away, but it grew, as did the singing, until she was standing directly in front of him, perhaps all of six years old, raven hair tied back from smooth olive skin by a wreath of tiny white flowers, a white trillium tucked behind one ear. She had stunning brown eyes and was all smiles.
So he wasn’t alone. She could see him. The palpable sense of relief loosed some of the tension in his chest and he took a bit deeper breath. I can’t speak, he thought.
That elicited a beaming grin. “I know that, Mr. Tony,” she said, laughing, “but sometimes it’s the thought that counts.”
He felt himself smile. Where am I? he thought.
“We, Mr. Tony, where are we? We, Mr. Tony, we are not alone.” And she twirled in her dress of flowered blues and greens as if onstage, finally taking a deep and slow-motion bow. Her presence was innocence and warmth, and he felt the icy weights ever so slightly lighten. If he could have laughed out loud he would have.
We, then… where are we? He again thought the question.
She ignored him. “Who are you, Mr. Tony?” she asked and cocked her head to one side in childlike inquiry, waiting for his answer.
A hopeless failure, he thought and felt his chest tighten with the attending despair.
“Is that what you are, Mr. Tony? A hopeless failure?”
A litany of successive images tumbled through his mind, all in support of his self-accusation, validations of the judgment against him.
“Oh, Mr. Tony!” she exclaimed without any sense of incrimination. “You are so much more than that!” It was an observation, not a value statement.
So who am I, then, he thought, if more than just a hopeless failure?
The little girl began to hop-skip around him, moving in and out of his view while touching her fingers in no particular order as if keeping a count. In a singsong voice, she declared, “Mr. Tony, you are also a mighty warrior, you are not alone, you are someone who learns, you are a universe of wonder, you are Grandmother’s boy, you are adopted by Papa God, you are not powerful enough to change that, you are a beautiful mess, you are the melody…” And with each phrase the ice chains that seemed to bind him loosened and his breathing deepened. Thoughts arose that wanted to argue and deny each statement, but as he calmed, he chose to simply watch her dance and listen to her sing.
What did she know? She was just a little girl. Regardless, her words carried power, of that he was certain, and they seemed to resonate in his frozen core. Her presence was like springtime unfolding, the thaw that warmed and invited new things. She stood directly in front of him, leaned in, and softly kissed his cheek.
“What is your name?” He was finally able to find a whisper.
She beamed. “Hope! My name is Hope.”
Any reserve he had left broke and tears splashed to the ground. Hope reached up and lifted his chin until he was looking deep into her incredible eyes. “Fight him, Mr. Tony,” she whispered. “You do not fight alone.”
“Fight who?”
“Your empty imaginations that raise themselves up against the knowing of the character of God. Fight them.”
“How?”
“Get angry and tell the truth!”
“I thought anger was wrong.”
“Wrong? I get angry all the time, at everything that is wrong.”
“Who are you?” he finally asked.
“I am the one who relentlessly loves you,” she said, beaming, and stepped back. “Mr. Tony, when you find yourself in the darkness, don’t light your own fires, don’t circle yourself with a blaze you have set. Darkness cannot change the character of God.”
“I thought Grandmother left me… right in the middle of the battle.”
“Never left. Your imagination hid her from view. You were lighting your own fires.”
“I don’t know how not to do that,” confessed Tony.
“Trust, Mr. Tony. Trust. Regardless of what your reasoning or emotions or imagination are telling you, trust.”
“But I am so not good at that.”
“We know. Trust that you are not alone, that you are not hopeless.” She smiled and kissed his cheek again. “Mr. Tony, simply trust your mother’s word to you. Can you do that?”
“As best I know how, I will,” admitted Tony, more to himself than the little girl.
“It only takes the smallest desire, Mr. Tony. Jesus is very good at trusting. He will make up the difference. Like most things that last, trusting is a process.”
“How do you know so much?” asked Tony.
She grinned. “I am older than you think.” A third time she waltzed her breeze-driven dances in a circle around him and a third time leaned in to kiss his other cheek. “Remember this, Mr. Tony, Talitha cumi.” She stepped back, then leaned forward and touched her forehead to his, breathing deep. “Now go,” she whispered, “and be angry.”
And he felt it come, like the roll of an earthquake, the tremors coalescing to a roar as his anger tore a hole into the darkness and scattered it like a murder of startled crows. Tony had been dropped to his knees, and with a grunt he heaved himself back to his feet. Grandmother stood where he had last seen her, impassive except for a hint of a grin that lit the corners of her mouth.
“You are a liar!” roared Tony, pointing a finger up at the grotesque image of himself. “I don’t need you anymore, and I revoke any right that I have ever given you, any right to have any say or authority in my life, and I revoke it now!”
For the first time he saw a break in the confidence of the other, larger Tony, who staggered and took a step back. “You can’t do that!” he stormed back. “I am stronger than you are.”
“That may be true,” refuted Tony, “but you can go be stronger somewhere else. This is my property, this is my home, and this is my heart, and I don’t want you here.”
&nbs
p; “I refuse!” The other stamped his foot adamantly. “You have no power to make me leave.”
“I…” He hesitated, then plummeted headlong. “I don’t stand here alone.”
“You!” screamed the other, raising his fist. “You have always been alone… totally alone. I don’t see anyone here, do you? Who would want to be with you? You are alone now and only worthy of being abandoned. I am all you have!”
“Liar!” yelled Tony with fury. “You have told me these lies all of my life, and it has produced nothing but heartache and hurt. I am finished with you!”
“You are alone,” hissed the other. “Who would lower themselves to be with you?”
“Jesus!” It surprised Tony to hear himself say it, out loud. “Jesus!” He said it again and added, “And the Holy Spirit and the Father of Jesus.”
“The Father of Jesus.” The hulking creature spit the words. “You hate the Father of Jesus. He killed your parents; he crushed your mother.” He took a step closer, gloating. “He murdered your only son, took him screaming and kicking into oblivion. He ignored every prayer you prayed. How can you trust such an evil being who would kill your innocent son like he did his own?”
“I don’t!” bellowed Tony, and as he said it, he knew it was true.
A look of triumph crossed the monster’s face.
Tony lowered his gaze, glancing quickly again at Grandmother, who still stood like a statue, unwavering. “I don’t know him well enough to trust him, but Jesus trusts his Father, and that’s good enough for me.”
The false Tony, large and formidable, began to shrink. His features caved in on themselves, his clothing hanging loosely from his body, until he stood a mere shadow of his former self. He became a caricature.
Tony felt a sense of peace, like when he was in the presence of the little girl. “So do all these other wall-keepers answer to you?” he asked the pitiful shrinking man.