“So death wins?” Tony knew what he was really asking, and if this Jesus-man was really… who he said he was, then he would know, too.
“Sometimes it feels like it, doesn’t it? But no, life won! Life continues to win. I am living proof.”
“So you’re not just a myth, then, a children’s story? You really expect me to believe that you rose from the dead?” He wanted to hear him say it.
“Ha, it takes a lot more faith to believe that I didn’t. That I was beaten unrecognizable, hung on the torture cross, speared through the side into the heart, buried dead in a tomb, and yet somehow resuscitated, unwrapped myself, rolled away a ton of rock, subdued the elite temple guard, and started a movement that is supposedly all about the truth of life and resurrection, but actually based on a lie? Yeah, much easier to believe.”
Tony glanced at this man, his words framed by edges of humor and triumph, but the canvas a portrait of grief.
“It’s just a story!” Tony exclaimed. “A story to make us feel better or fool us into thinking that life has some kind of meaning or purpose. It is a morality fable told by weak people to sick people.”
“Tony, I rose from the dead. We broke death’s illusion of power and dominance. Papa God loved me to life in the power of the Spirit, and demonstrated that any ideology of separation would forever be insufficient.”
“You know that I don’t believe any of this, right?” Tony snapped. “I still don’t even believe that you exist. I don’t know what overcame me. I mean, sure, there was a Jewish guy, a rabbi named Jesus who did a lot of good and so people made up all sorts of stuff about him doing miracles and even rising from the dead, and they started a religion, but he died. Like everyone else, he died, and death is death, so you can’t exist. You are nothing more than my mother’s voice echoing somewhere in my subconscious mind.”
“You almost convinced me,” Jesus stated with a touch of sarcasm and laughed. “What you are in the middle of at this moment, Tony, is called a crisis of faith. More often it happens in the moment of your physical death, the event, but since there have never been formulas governing relationships and you are not actually dead yet, something special and mysterious must be afoot.”
Tony was surprised. “Are you telling me that you don’t know why I’m here?”
“No! Papa hasn’t shared that piece of purpose with me so far.” He leaned in as if to share a secret. “He knows I like surprises.”
“Wait. I thought you were supposed to be God?”
“I’m not supposed to be God, I am God!”
“Then how come you don’t know why I am here?”
“Like I said, because my Dad hasn’t told me.”
“But if you are God, don’t you know everything?”
“I do.”
“But you just said you didn’t—”
“Tony,” Jesus interrupted, “you don’t think in terms of relationship. You see everything through the grid of an isolated independence. There are answers to your questions that will absolutely bewilder you, make no sense whatsoever, because you don’t even have a frame of reference that would allow them.”
Tony was nodding, appearing as bewildered as Jesus had suggested.
“Part of the wonder of me, always God, joining the human race, is that I was not some actor added to the cast of characters, but literally became fully human as a forever reality. I never stopped being fully God, fully the creator. It is true now and has been since the beginning of time that the entire cosmos exists inside me and that I hold it all together, sustaining it, even now, right this moment, and that would include you along with every created thing. Death could never say that. Death holds nothing together.”
Tony was shaking his head, trying to understand yet at the same time resisting internally.
Jesus continued, “So, yes, I could draw upon my knowledge as God to know why you are here, but I am in relationship with my Father, and he hasn’t told me, and I trust him to let me know if it becomes important for me to know. Until then, I will walk this out in real time and space with you, in faith and trust, and see what surprises Papa has in store for us.”
“You are absolutely blowing my mind!” Tony raised his hands and shook his head. “I am so confused.”
“That was the easiest answer I could give you,” Jesus said, chuckling, “that might even begin to make some sense.”
“Well, thank you for that!” Tony retorted. “So, bottom line, if I understand you correctly, you are God, but you don’t know why I’m here.”
“Exactly, but my Dad and the Holy Spirit know and if I need to, I will also.”
Tony was still shaking his head as he stood up and brushed himself off. How could this be a projection of his internal subconscious? They were talking about things he had never even considered. It was all so baffling. Slowly they turned and began again working their way up the hill.
“So let me get this right,” Tony began. “There is Father, that’s your Dad, and you would be the Son?”
“And the Holy Spirit,” offered Jesus.
“So, who is the Holy Spirit?”
“God.”
“This is a Christian thing, right? So you are telling me that anyone who believes in you believes in three gods? Christians are polytheists?”
“There are lots of folks besides Christians who believe in me. ‘Believer’ is an activity, not a category. Christians have only been around a couple thousand years. As for the question about them being polytheists? Not at all.”
Jesus stopped and turned once again to face Tony, indicating that what he was about to say was significant and important.
“Listen carefully, Tony. There is only… hear me carefully: there is only one God. The darkness of the choice for independence has blinded humanity to the simplicity of the truth. So first things first—one God. As much as they disagree about the details, and the details and disagreements are significant and important; but the Jews with their sects, the Christians of every stripe and color, the Muslims with their internal diversity, all are in agreement about this: there is only one God, not two, not three, not more, just one.”
“Wait, but you just said…,” Tony interjected, but Jesus held up a hand, stopping him from finishing.
“The Jews were the first to put it best in their Shema: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord!” But the Jewish Scriptures speak of this ‘one’ God as a plurality. ‘Let ‘us’ make Man in ‘our’ image.’ That was never intended as a contradiction about God being only one, but an expansion of what the nature of the ‘one’ was like. Rooted in the Jewish understanding was that essentially, and I use that word carefully, essentially the one was singular in essence and yet a plurality of persons, a community.”
“But…” Again Jesus raised his hand and Tony quieted.
“This is a gross oversimplification, but the Greeks, whom I love dearly, beginning especially with Plato and Aristotle, got the world consumed in thinking about the one God, but they didn’t get the plurality part, so they opted for an indivisible singularity beyond all being and relationship, an unmoved mover, impersonal and unapproachable but at least good, whatever that meant.”
“And then I show up, in no way contradicting the Shema, but expanding on it. I declared in the simplest possible terms, ‘The Father and I are one and we are good,’ which is essentially a relational declaration. As you probably know, that solved everything, and finally the religious got their ideologies and doctrines straight and everyone agreed and lived happily…” Jesus glanced at Tony, who was looking at him, his eyebrows raised in question.
“I’m being sarcastic, Tony.” He grinned as they again turned and continued to walk.
“To stay with my story, in the first few hundred years after my incarnation, there were many, like Irenaeus and Athanasius, who got it. They saw that God’s very being is relational, three distinct persons who are so wonderfully close we are oneness. ‘Oneness,’ Tony, is different than an isolated and independent ‘one,’ and the dif
ference is relationship, three persons distinctly together.”
Jesus paused.
Tony shook his head, trying to grasp what Jesus had said. This was a conversation like none he could remember, and that bothered him. He was intrigued but not sure why. “Would you like to know what happened next? Where things went sideways?”
Tony nodded and Jesus continued.
“The Greeks, with their love for isolation, influence Augustine and later Aquinas, to name only a couple, and a nonrelational religious Christianity is born. Along come the Reformers, like Luther and Calvin, who do their best to send the Greeks back outside the Holy of Holies, but they are barely in the grave before the Greeks are resuscitated and invited back to teach in their schools of religion. The tenacity of bad ideas is rather remarkable, don’t you think?”
“I’m starting to realize that,” admitted Tony, “but I’m not sure I understand any better than when you started. It’s all fascinating but irrelevant to me.”
“Ah, all you need to know is this: at the heart of all existence is a great dance of self-giving, other-centered love—oneness. Nothing is deeper, simpler, and purer.”
“That sounds beautiful; if only it were—”
“Look, we’re here,” interrupted Jesus. The pathway entered a grove of trees and narrowed until only wide enough for one person. Tony led the way, grateful that the trail did not deviate. As he broke from the trees and into a glade, he realized he was alone. The clearing butted up against a massive boundary of stone that stretched almost out of sight. An earthen stairway climbed up to an insignificant mud building, a hovel, maybe large enough for two rooms but from which the entire valley could be viewed. He made out the silhouette of a woman sitting on a wooden bench and resting against the wall of what he presumed was her dwelling. The Jesus-man already stood talking to her, his hand lovingly resting on her shoulder.
As Tony climbed the hundred or so steps he could see she was an elderly round woman, jet-black hair falling in two braids wrapped in faceted cut beads of many colors. She wore a simple flowing calico dress, tightened by an ornate belt of more beads, and a sunburst starquilt blanket draped around her shoulders. Her eyes were closed, her face upturned. She was an Indian, a Native American or First Nations woman.
“Anthony,” greeted Jesus as Tony approached the pair, “this is Wiyan Wanagi. You can call her Kusi (kuen-shee), or Grandmother, if you prefer. You have some things to discuss. She knows why you are here, so I will leave you for a time, although I am never absent.” In less than a blink, he was maybe not gone but not visible.
“Thank you, Anpo Wicapi,” she said tenderly.
“Sit!” She motioned to the bench and space next to her, not opening her eyes, her voice deep and resonant. He obeyed. They sat in silence, she with her eyes shut, he looking down the expanse of land that lay like a mantle beneath them. From here he could almost see to the far wall, at least a few miles away, and to the left, clearly discernible, the ramshackle homestead where he had woken. So this desolate place was supposed to be his heart, if what he had been told could be believed. It was not exactly home, but not exactly hell either. The latter felt truer at the moment than the former.
They were silent for what seemed hours, but was probably only a dozen minutes or so. Tony was not used to either stillness or quiet. He waited, an internal pressure building.
He cleared his throat. “Do you want…”
“Shhhh! Busy!”
He waited again until he couldn’t help himself. “Uh, busy doing what?”
“Gardening. So many weeds.”
“Oh,” not wanting to admit that it made no sense. “And what exactly am I doing here?”
“Agitating,” she replied. “Sit. Breathe in, breathe out, be still.”
And so he sat, trying to be still on the outside, the rush of images, emotions, and questions rising like a slowly flooding river. He lifted his right heel off the ground, a habit, until his foot began to bounce up and down. He did not even notice this nervous attempt to control inner energy and tension.
The woman, without opening her eyes and barely moving, reached over and put her hand on the bouncing knee and it slowed to a stop.
“Why you running so fast?” Her voice was soft and young for the body that produced it.
“I’m not,” he responded. “I’m just sitting here like you told me to.”
She didn’t move her strong and calloused hand and he could feel warmth spreading from her touch. “Anthony, why do you always think invitations are expectations?”
He grinned. He knew he didn’t have to answer, that she already knew his thoughts. Invitations were expectations. There was always an agenda, sometimes obvious, often hidden, but always. Was there any other way to live in the world? But her question left him wondering.
“So, we are just sitting here, then,” he mused, not expecting any response.
“No, Anthony, not just sitting… praying.”
“Praying? Who are you praying to?”
“I’m not praying to anyone,” she replied, her eyes still closed. “I am praying with.”
He tried to wait awhile, but it was not his habit. “So, who are you praying with?” he asked.
“With you!” The woman’s face folded into a smile, the reflecting afternoon light hiding in and then softening the crevices of her face. “I am praying with you.”
“But,” he said, shaking his head as if she could see him, “I’m not praying.”
She smiled again but didn’t speak.
They sat for almost an hour, he mentally tossing his concerns and fears into little imaginary boats that in his fancy he set afloat down the tiny creek that ran not far from where they sat. He had learned this in an anger management class the courts had mandated. One by one they sailed out of view, each taking a little of the load, until there were none left and he sat in the comfort of this woman, breathing in deep a clarity of air. He couldn’t explain it, but he again felt… safe.
He was the first to finally speak. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember how to pronounce your name.”
She grinned, a beaming that lit up her face, softening her features even more and seeming to radiate into the falling dusk. “Yeah, I’m sorta known for that. Grand-Mother… you pronounce it Grand-Mother.”
He laughed. “Okay, then, Grandma,” he stated, and patted her hand.
Her eyes opened for the first time and he found himself looking again into those same incredible brown origins of light. He was looking at Jesus, but different. “Not Grandma,” she observed, “Grandmother. Understand?” She stated it with a nod, and he found himself nodding back.
“Uh, yes, Grandmother,” he stammered apologetically. “I’m not sure I understand the difference.”
“Obviously! But I forgive you for that.”
“Excuse me?” He was surprised. “You’re going to forgive me something that I don’t even understand?”
“Listen to me, dearest…” She paused, and Tony felt a wave of something painful and sweet in her use of that particular term of endearment. He let it wash over him, and as if she knew when it subsided, she waited before continuing, “Much of what you must forgive others for, and especially yourself, is the ignorance that damages. People don’t only hurt willfully. More often because they simply don’t know anything else; they don’t know how to be anything else, anything better.”
Tony wanted to change the subject. She pushed at emotions better left dormant. It had already been a long day.
“So, where do you live?” He couldn’t imagine anyone actually living in the adjacent outbuilding. It looked more like a poorly built gardening shed for tools.
“I live everywhere I am,” came the curt reply.
“No, that’s not what I meant—” he began, and she cut him off.
“I know what you meant, Anthony, but you don’t know what you ask.”
Tony didn’t know how to respond to that. Finding himself at a loss for words was not usual.
Fortunately,
she rescued him. “So,” Grandmother said as she stood up and stretched, “do you have anything to eat?”
Even though he knew they were empty, he quickly checked his pockets to make sure. “No, sorry. I don’t.”
“That’s okay.” She smiled. “I have plenty.” And with that she chuckled to herself and ambled in the direction of the mud shack, light warmly emanating through its cracks and crevices. He stood up and took one more look down the length of this place as the evening’s descent muted and then began erasing its colors. From here he could see a few lights scattered unevenly, little dots of white mostly in or near the ramshackle homestead. He was also surprised to see in the farthest distance, near the bottom end of the property, a congregation of brighter lights. He hadn’t remembered seeing any other buildings, but he hadn’t been looking for any either.
He stretched one last time, getting the sitting kinks out, walked the few feet to the entrance, and stooped to peek. It was larger inside than it had appeared from the outside, but that could be just an illusion of how she used the space. A fire burned against one wall, the smoke rising and disappearing through a rather complex sequence of coverings, probably to keep rain from dousing the flames while allowing the smoke to escape.
“May I come in?” he asked.
“Of course, you are always welcome here!” She warmly waved him inside. He found blankets on the floor and, though taking the risk that he might be violating some protocol, sat down anyway, surprised by how soft and plush they were. She seemed to take no offense and he settled, watching as she swayed back and forth over what looked and smelled like a stew and some flatbread baking on a stone by the fire. Simple and inviting, and, he smiled to himself, without expectation.
He paused, watching her rhythmic movements between stew and bread, almost a dance. “May I ask you a question?”
“You want to know why I live here, in this ‘hovel’; I think that is the word you used, based on your civilized and educated perception?”