Illuminated

On Holy Saturday, the monk had a tradition he had cultivated for himself over the years.

He was one of the monks who labored illuminating the Bible, a painstaking task very few would ever see, and yet he had always considered it a special privilege. 

On Holy Saturday each year he always set the day aside to contemplate Christ in the tomb. The point of all these illuminations was to glorify the faith in all its visual splendor, and yet he gave himself the challenge, each year, to imagine the darkest moment of the faith, when all seemed to have been lost.

He was aware of how the world saw the faith, in his time.

Most of Europe had been won to the faith at this point. The fall of the Roman Empire had brought about a seismic shift in the balance of power, away from its centralized nature, previously, and into the regional hands that had labored to cultivate themselves over the centuries, which in recent years had encountered a menace worse than anything they had confronted before, a horde that sought to sweep over their lands, assimilate them into a different faith, a different culture entirely. Many strongholds had resulted, many vanguards, and perhaps a few of them had perverted their roles. The Church, too. Perhaps.

He didn’t care. His faith was strong. There were always challenges. His faith told him the truths of civilization would endure. There were among his number those whose sole task was to copy the treasures passed down from previous generations, well beyond the scope of the core interests of the Church, what in other hands would be hailed as rediscovered, as if they had been lost. He knew the Church was considered oppressive. He knew there were those who agitated for autonomy, who wanted to break its power up into regional interests. Given all the forces at work it was inevitable.

He knew much of the Church was being condemned. He also knew he had one job, and that was to paint the Bible, not in works of art that would be collected and displayed in the homes of rich men, but would be sealed forever in pages that hid them away. 

That was his faith as he understood it.

On this Holy Saturday, he tried to relax. His faith was strong. He spent most of the day in quiet contemplation, his brushes set aside, his inks in their pots. 

When evening drew, he selected black. Red was the color most often used, in this work. He sketched, at first, his Christ in the tomb, hidden beneath a shroud, in the darkness. Then he focused on the outline, the highlights in the dark, a suggestion of an angel, seated patiently, and in the far corner…a finger, the hand of the Father, reaching out. 

His faith told him, Christ truly rested, was truly dead, had not yet descended to the pit, was nowhere but in this body, the portrait of defeat. 

He had always treasured this day for precisely that reason. The believers had often, from the very beginning, been defined by defeat. They had persisted in their belief anyway. They had seen that there was always a way forward, a belief not so much in another world where they needn’t fear their fellow man so much, but in this world, itself, the ability to push past difficulties, if not to solve them but to move past them, to keep going, to endure. No matter where it led. Even unto death. To believe all men might rise above themselves. As Christ had demonstrated even on the cross.

The scripture he embellished had very little to say about what Christ experienced after his death. It was a record of man’s experiences, and no one had witnessed Christ in the tomb. They had placed a body there, and then they had sealed it away. The next day it would be opened and the scriptures had plenty to say about that, who had witnessed the risen Christ. In the tomb, in the darkness, however, all was silent.

That was why the monk gave him company. His faith told him no one was alone.

Must There Be a Santa?

There comes a time when…you don’t believe.

It happens to everyone. For some it’s at the very beginning. They never even get the chance; someone made the decision for them. For most it’s later. They think they grow too old, too smart, or simply outgrow the idea.

And I’m not talking about Santa.

So what’s the need for Santa?

Marty was at that point. Santa was presents, of course, he was the very symbol of the holiday, he was the jolly fat man with the reindeer and the impossible task of visiting…everyone, on a single night. But never caught in the act. That was one of the central tenets. If you saw him it was your dad, your mom. Or some guy at the mall, ringing a bell. The real Santa?

That was an act of belief. That was how Marty understood it. Until he didn’t. He started making his own lists, the way these things go, and gradually realized the gifts he found under the tree…didn’t match. So it was your basic disappointment.

This year was going to be different. He’d been obsessing about it all year. It was the running dialogue in his head, the thing he told no one about. Santa wasn’t something you talked about with friends anyway. He wasn’t even something you talked about with mom and dad, not after those first few years, anyway.

No, he was a private matter, something you thought about late at night. Well, if you were Marty, anyway.

For Marty it was a kind of torture. He didn’t need Santa to know there would be presents under the tree. He needed Santa for…What? That was the crucial question.

He was old enough to know what Christmas was all about. He’d seen a few versions of the Dickens story at this point. Good will toward men. Whatever that meant. Being…happy.

But Marty wasn’t happy. He needed to figure out Santa.

If you take away the proposition that Santa exists to deliver presents, what does that leave? Must there be a Santa?

His dad must’ve heard him stirring, because he stuck his head in Marty’s room. Marty pretended to be asleep, but his dad knew.

“Hey, kid,” his dad said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m not worried,” Marty said.

“Oh, I’m not talking about gifts,” his dad said.

“I know,” Marty said.

“So what it?” his dad said.

“I don’t understand Santa Claus,” Marty said. “What’s the point?”

“Well, you know the story,” his dad said. “Saint Nick.”

“Yeah,” Marty said.

“Then you know what Santa is about,” his dad said.

“Well, no,” Marty said.

“Okay,” his dad said. “Not so easy. Okay. Let’s see. You want to know why bother with him. Why you ever needed to believe. Well. That’s…that’s a big one. Sure you don’t want to sleep on it?”

“Sure,” Marty said.

“Sure you don’t want Mom to handle this one?” his dad said.

“If she needs to,” Marty said.

“No!” his dad said. “I mean, it’s okay! I can handle this…He’s kind of the spirit…You know what that is, right?”

“Yeah,” Marty said.

“He’s the spirit of the thing,” his dad said. “Not like…a mascot. Angel. He’s like an angel. Hark! And all that…Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Maybe?” Marty said.

“Saint Nick,” his dad said, “And then…Well, Christmas as we know it is kind of…a pretty recent invention, really. We imagine Santa to be very old, but in…ah…relative terms? He’s actually quite young. But that would be…weird. A young Santa would be weird, but kind of cool, if you thought about it…No, he looks the way we imagine him to look. He’s not an idea…Don’t get me wrong.”

“He could be an idea,” Marty said.

“Sure,” his dad said, “but he’s not. Some ideas are too real to be imaginary. You know what? Never mind, that’s…a little much. What I mean is, he’s the version of the story that makes the most sense to us, so that’s…that’s why he exists. Maybe in another hundred, two hundred years there’ll be a different need, and…Santa will get to relax…Now? He makes his visits…to bless us. You know, like the Ghost of Christmas Present. That’s…ah, the real gift. Not what’s under the tree. Do you understand?”

“I guess,” Marty said.

“Listen,” his dad says, “give me a hug.”

“Sure,” Marty said.

It took him forever to fall asleep. But he wasn’t anxious. He thought maybe he really had understood. 

Voice of God...

In the beginning...

She didn't speak of it.  She never spoke of it.  She couldn't...

The day that changed everything, that changed humanity forever, right from the beginning, when Eve spoke with the serpent, who convinced her to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, she was shown...everything.

She felt instant shame.  That was what God had wanted her, and Adam, and humanity, to avoid.  To remain eternally...innocent.  Innocent wasn't the same as pure.  Innocent meant to be free of the burden.  The serpent had attempted to be cunning, to convince her that God had meant to coddle them, to keep them docile.  But Eve had lived in Eden.  She had seen everything there was to see.  She simply hadn't understood...

He had shown her everything.  In fact, in his pride he really had...and it had nearly overwhelmed her.  He had shown her everything possible.  He had shown her...everything.  What had so blinded the serpent was that it had seen everything, too, and it hadn't understood.  It had blinded itself, perhaps, or perhaps it had been incapable of such comprehension, such things.  She had, though.  Oh.  

She had been second.  For a very brief moment, Adam had been alone, and then God had decided there should be more, that Adam needed a companion, and so he had drawn Eve from out of him, and...Without the serpent, perhaps, even then, humanity would have run its course.  The serpent showed Eve such a potential, and perhaps, in all the possibilities, it had shown her lies, because, of course, all possibilities are lies, and the serpent didn't know that, had believed its imagination spoke truth, and that was a kind of truth, if it had imagined with wisdom, so of course it had not.  Only what happened was true, and only one course was true, and in its folly, the serpent had shown Eve not only possibilities, but the future, the one true course, and it had shown her...

A manger, and a man and a woman, somewhere down the course of history, what, in the beginning, would have seemed magic, impossible, what to God was simply another quirk of existence, what to the serpent was folly, and to Eve, capable of being grasped, at least for a moment, a fleeting glimpse, and a baby...

What child was this?  

Later, Eve very much wanted to explain all of this to Adam.  Surely not in the moment, not when Adam felt shame, not when God spoke to them, banished them from the garden, when they had lost all their innocence...

And what was that?  What was this thing they now had to fill their days attempting to contend with, to understand?  

The knowledge that they had to worry about consequences...That they could choose to ignore them, to be crippled by them, or to use them as guideposts...And who was that child?  God, as Adam never failed to remind them, was no longer a step away.  He was an eternity.  They were cut off forever.  Or, perhaps, not.  Eve, in the very back of her mind, saw the thread.  She saw her children, she saw the murder, she saw the communities of mankind, she saw the struggles forward, the denials, the betrayals, the...hope.  Not for what they would someday have again, if they were good.  What they might have, if they chose to do good, what it might mean in their everyday life.  

It wouldn't be easy.  They would certainly need guideposts.  In her moment of weakness, Eve had already proven that.  Too easy to be led astray.  But her moment of weakness had shown her, as would always be true, what strength could look like.  

The child she saw was God, and the clarity that what they'd lost...They could reclaim.  Not like before.  They would have to rely on...faith.  Not faith to make their lives better, as if through magic.  Faith, so that they could navigate the guideposts, make the right choices.  Had she made the wrong one?  God had already seen it.  He had seen everything.  The child had already been born, since He was God, and even before His birth had been in existence...And Eve had seen that, too.  She had seen Evil, and she had, surely, seen Good...Evil, the chance to use her thoughts for selfish reasons, Good the chance to...

In the days after the expulsion, she kept all these things to herself.  Adam forgave her, and they made a family, and in the years that followed, when they had understood death, she wondered about...pride.  If she would be...remembered.  If she would be condemned, if she would be understood...

She supposed it didn't matter.  She had glimpsed a new beginning, somewhere very close to the beginning, and also very much in the middle of a drop in the vast expanse of eternity...A light in the darkness.

Holy Days - Easter

She kept asking herself throughout the night, on Thursday, on Friday, did they believe? Did they believe he was the messiah? 

And as much as it hurt, Mary had to admit, of course not. That was the whole point. Even the disciples hadn’t believed. Not really. Not even Peter. John? Had John believed? At least he’d been there. In the end.

And she asked herself, all over again. Had she? 

Since she had first been told. Yes. Yes, she had believed. It had been a terrible burden. She’d known, all his life. She’d known how it would end.

For the world, his death was just another crucifixion, just another dead messiah. It was easier to end the story that way. Everyone was happy, then. Everyone would forget. That was how it always went. The day they died, that was always difficult, but then, there was always so much company.

She wondered what motivated them. Why so many boasted in the streets. It was a deep yearning, of course, an ancient one, and a horrible burden of a tradition. Their people had escaped from bondage many times. But the world always set another trap.

She’d known. She’d known from the start. And even if she hadn’t, he spoke openly of it, eventually, and eventually even in terms others would understand. It did not blunt watching it play out. Watching him torn. Watching him pierced. Watching him. Die.

Listening to him. She had spent his lifetime listening to him. To the end. To the very end. He’d always had something to say. She always had the time to listen. He spoke to her, from up there. He spoke to John. He spoke to others. He allowed himself to grieve. For him it was a moment he was experiencing for the first time, too, despite a lifetime of anticipation.

She wondered how she still managed tears. Watching it. Holding his body, later, when it had been taken down. While she waited, his body in the tomb. One night. Two nights.

Then this morning. She wasn’t among those he appeared to. That burden, among others, he had passed on to John. Perhaps that’s what he’d meant. Perhaps he knew that if she saw him, again, she would never be able to let go again. She had spent his lifetime giving him to the world. It seemed too much. Because no one had seen him the way she did. 

She waited, still. She waited to see him. She knew she could wait the rest of her life, and she wouldn’t. But she had lived with anticipation before.

She had her faith. It sustained her.

Holy Days - Saturday: An Easter Tale

By then he was dead. 

Some things, perhaps most things, are on a relative scale. Joseph’s doubts about Mary, his difficulty accepting the circumstances of her pregnancy, of needing to be persuaded by the visit of an angel in a dream, none of this should project an image of a man who was in any way unworthy to raise Jesus. In another age, in another context, a fictional one, Joseph is Jonathan Kent, adoptive father to Superman. 

Superman, Clark Kent, is often depicted as gaining his moral character from Pa Kent. Jesus didn’t find his character through Joseph. What he learned was how to be a man.

His mother, Mary, spent her life encouraging him, believing in him, knowing all the while the destiny that awaited him, in this world, in this life. She was, and Joseph was, firmly rooted in this world, this life. This is what they knew. Mary had extraordinary faith. Joseph, meanwhile, was the first model of what a good life could look like.

In those days it was usual for the husband to be older than the wife. Joseph was in his thirties, and Mary not yet in her twenties. This is to say, Joseph was established in his practice, as a carpenter, when Jesus was born, when they made the journey to Bethlehem.

When Jesus was a boy, Joseph was approaching middle age. When Jesus approached his thirties, Joseph was, for that time, an old man.

He had already done everything he could for his son. He led a life of quiet dignity. Joseph didn’t understand the larger concepts of faith any better than anyone; he knew them as well as Mary, certainly, whose faith was less informed by temple worship than in her son, in his destiny. 

Joseph saw how wise his son was. He didn’t try to understand it himself. In fact it was something they never really talked about. They spent their time together in idle chatter, Joseph about the many people he knew, Jesus often quietly, or sharing mutual jokes. They had an easy camaraderie that maybe wasn’t easy to see. It wasn’t for others, anyway. Maybe Joseph took it for granted. He wasn’t alive when his son went out. Perhaps his death was necessary for it to happen. They shared the work together, until it was time for different work.

Time didn’t have as much meaning, in the place where Joseph found himself, after dying. At some point he found himself face to face with his son again.

They didn’t say anything. Jesus hugged him. Joseph tried to understand what he saw in his son’s face. It wasn’t the face he remembered. It wasn’t so much older. But it was sadder. It was also filled with a kind of joy Joseph couldn’t begin to describe. It reminded him of the face his son had had when he was a boy, when he had been found after lingering in the temple. That had been the day everything had changed, when the whole family knew, for the first time, what lay ahead. That is to say, when Joseph knew his son understood his destiny for the first time.

Joseph hugged his son in return. He didn’t want to let go. Not again. Jesus gave him a gentle smile.

Then he was gone.

Holy Days - Good Friday: An Easter Tale

He was an old man, then. He’d been the oldest of them, all those years earlier. He’d known about the Hebrew culture, had studied it somewhat extensively, out of idle academic curiosity. That was why he’d chosen myrrh, then. He’d been led to believe they were going to find a king. He’d chosen it so they could anoint him.

Today, he was a much older man. His bones ached. It hurt to move much at all, and so he was content, most days to not move much at all. Today, though, Balthasar thought about other things. It was early, yet, still very early in the morning. But he’d received news. 

They’d found themselves talking about the old days, this week, revisiting that journey, all those years ago, the baby they’d found in a stable, whom they’d paid homage, even in such a state, to whom they’d given their gifts, the gold, the frankincense, and yes, the myrrh. They’d all had a sense of foreboding. Nothing they’d seen, no signs. They’d heard the rumors of the authorities in Jerusalem.

It’s not true, what they said even in those days, that no one talked about the man, that he existed in a vacuum, that his life was unremarkable in his lifetime. There are remarkable people you treasure whom no one would think to record for posterity. That will always be true. The scale shifts. The everyday kindnesses that are so easy to take for granted, the wisdom that comes from sources outside traditional roles. These are things that can leave a profound impact on the world. They called Balthasar a wiseman, but he thought, he hoped, you didn’t need to be one to understand such things. He knew he was wrong about that. He knew that was the true distinction.

This man had made an impact, and he had inspired fear, not because he led an insurrection, either against Rome or his own people. No, never anything like that. Those are the things that wind up being recorded. They don’t talk about love, about compassion, the things so many people yearn for, so easy to ignore, why they’re so precious.

But that was what had happened to the man. All through the night he’d been undergoing a trial. He’d been arrested. Outside, in the worlds untouched by the circles within Jerusalem, it had quickly become a scandal. Word reached Balthasar quickly, much more quickly than the distance should have allowed. He was worlds away, in so many ways. None of this should have concerned him, and yet it had, many years ago, and even a wiseman couldn’t really have appreciated, then, the implications, so seemingly regional, irrelevant.

The man was going to die. He was going to be executed. He would be long dead before Balthasar could muster himself to undertake another journey. The Romans were a bit too predictable. The authorities there knew how these things worked, all too well. They’d conspired to rid themselves of a pest, who had threatened their peace of mind, their complacency, a man who had dared gather the lost flocks of their society and given them hope. He would end up on a cross. The landscape had begun to look naked, Balthasar was told, if there weren’t at least a few of those about on any given day.

No, he hadn’t considered the myrrh for its other applications. He’d gone in search of a king. Depending on how long it took the man to die, if somehow his family still had the myrrh, it would be used for something very different, before this day was done.

Balthasar found himself ashamed. Ashamed for humanity. Ashamed for his own weakness. Weakness in body, now. Weakness in spirit. Then. Weakness in spirit even this week. They had all undergone a journey when this man was born. They hadn’t bothered, when they knew he would die. No one had. He would die alone. He deserved so much better.

He felt very old. He still didn’t understand faith.

Holy Days - Thursday: An Easter Tale

In those days he had been young, and when he looked back, now, he felt he must have been a child, and he could still remember his elders in the fields, with him, except they were old men, now, and he was in charge, and had been for years, and struggled to remember when it had been any different. When you’re a shepherd you know how your day’s going to go. There’s not much mystery.

There had been, that night, all those years ago, that star shining so brightly, and the angel…Later, he’d told himself he’d imagined it, dreamed it. Anything but admit that it had really happened. Alone, or alone now among those who had experienced it, it was easy to pretend. It had been a lifetime ago.

Anyway, he still occupied the same fields, still there in Bethlehem. Today he was asked to sell one of his sheep. The request came from people he’d been hearing about the last few years, people who had been traveling about, a network, agitated people. It wasn’t hard to find the like. Everyone was agitated these days. No one was happy about the Romans. If he kept to himself, paid his taxes, he’d found he didn’t have to worry about it too much. 

Why someone would want one of his sheep over in Jerusalem, he couldn’t say. Seemed like a lot of bother. He assumed it was for the Passover, but it was a little early, and they’d seemed to be in a rush. “The master needs it now,” they’d said, “He’s in a rush. Never seen him like it.”

There were a lot of masters about, but the one spoken about had tended to inspire a different response. Normally he inspired calm. The shepherd knew these people. These were common people, for the most part, some of them important fishermen from Galilee, sure, who operated in circles similar to his, but who had spent their lives in the same daily fashion as him, busy about their work, hardly the like to change the world. In normal times, anyway. These weren’t normal times.

And this was not a normal day. He wondered. What was so different? What so urgent? 

There was something in the air. A desperation. Something was going to happen. The authorities were frequently given to sudden gestures, to assure the population of who was in control, to solidify their position. These things followed patterns. Troublemakers were rounded up. The shepherd wondered if the master’s luck had run out. 

All that was someone else’s problem. He tended his flock. He sold sheep. The urgency, though. These people. They seemed frightened. This was a movement of common stock. No one usually bothered to include men such as him in important affairs. His fields had been occupied by these people, though. He’d watched from a distance, too far away to hear, but surprised at the level of calm as the crowds listened. 

He decided he’d ask around, in a few days. He led a simple life. But he could involve himself in something like this.

Holy Days - Wednesday: An Easter Tale

Thirty years or so later…

The innkeeper hadn’t much paid attention, at the time, concerning the effect his decision to give a young couple some space to sleep for the night. He’d certainly noticed the effect of Herod’s decision, very soon after. So many innocents lost. He’d heard about the birth that happened in the stable, that to his shame almost hadn’t even noticed was imminent. The couple had been so humble, he’d felt shamed into helping them. The census had made everyone a little crazy. He’d thought, at the time, he’d done nothing to be proud of, giving them that, of all spaces. No dignity. They hadn’t seemed to mind. He had. It bothered him the rest of that night. Then he forgot all about it. Life went on as it always had, in Bethlehem. A quiet place. Certainly no Jerusalem. That was what he’d always treasured about it. Yet somehow he ended up in Jerusalem anyway.

Somehow. Right. He remembered their names. The husband had been a carpenter. The innkeeper remembered that. His line of business? He could always find value in such a trade. He obtained a variety of products from the man, over the years. In this way he learned about the son, the baby who had been born that night. Again, none of this was intentional. A coincidence. The son developed a reputation, over the years. Most of the time, he kept to himself, went about his father’s business. He spent much of his time ruminating, though. Not like a rabbi, although it was often said he ought to follow such a path, take up space in the temple in an official capacity. But he was always humble, exactly as his parents had been that night. 

The years progressed. The innkeeper heard how the son went out on his own, how he walked away from his father’s trade, found a group of friends who liked to listen to all that talk. On this day the innkeeper found himself talking with one of those friends. They said this man wanted to rent one of his rooms.

Passover was approaching. Space was once again at a premium. The innkeeper, all these years later, found he had a role to play in this family’s affairs, one more time. This time there was no hesitation. 

They needed it the next day. He’d heard about what’d happened a few days earlier. He imagined what it must’ve looked like. For a lot of men, for too many, it would’ve been too easy. Basking in the glory. Well, not the carpenter’s son. No, the innkeeper thought it probably felt embarrassing. This man would need someplace private. Strangely, the innkeeper, perhaps too aware of history, felt a certain foreboding. Something bad would happen in the days ahead. He made arrangements for the room to be fitted out in such a manner for a man who had merited such a welcome into town. Fit for a king, the innkeeper thought. In case it was his last chance for such treatment. 

There was another Herod, after all, and, the innkeeper found, names being collected all over again. Support, this time, for what he did not care to know, to be a part of. He was a humble man himself. Went about his work. Tried to believe he’d always done the right thing. He knew he hadn’t. 

The friend of the carpenter’s son gave him a shy kind of smile, upon completion of the deal. He wished he could be among them the next day.

Holy Days - Tuesday: An Easter Tale

Caspar, too, was old. They all were. That was how he saw the world, now. It’s easy to see everything the way you are. This is not a failing. Even wise men can suffer from such vanity.

When he was younger, he had traveled far, with his friends, to a humble place. He had presented frankincense to a baby.

Frankincense had particular significance to the Jews, as he’d gathered, a kind of offering to holy places, to sanctify them. So his gift was more of an acknowledgment. He’d done his research. He was paying his respects. Candidly, he thoughts his friends had been a little eccentric with theirs. But he didn’t have to understand. He let them carry on. They had different ideas, but united in their belief that the world held sacred mysteries. He didn’t pretend to understand the mysteries surrounding this baby. He didn’t need to, he’d decided.

Like all of them he tried to keep tabs on what followed. Not because he became a believer, once he’d learned just what kind of a life that baby grew into. Remember, in the early days it was a mission to the Jews, a matter for Jews. It didn’t expand until later, and by then Caspar was dead. But that’s later.

Now, on a Tuesday in the early days of a week that would change history, Caspar had a chat with his old friend Melchior, and that was when he found out what had happened that Sunday, and what his friend thought of that, the foreboding he felt, the certainty that far from portending good things, it singled the beginning of the end.

Or maybe not. These two certainly had a unique perspective on all of it, a scholarly one, and they were peering in from the outside. They were free to speculate.

So that was what they did.

His friend seemed hopeful. Caspar wasn’t so sure. Anything could happen, right? And the world often seemed determined for the worst outcome, even when he claimed profusely otherwise. He didn’t want to call himself a cynic, but sometimes it seemed the only rational approach. And, well, he was an old man, now. He’d seen many things. They all knew what Herod had done, after all. 

He had to laugh. They had both been so hopeful, then. His friend gave the baby gold. Caspar had brought the incense. A part of him says he knew better than he knew. That part of him was faith. And it was right for him to struggle with it. That was what faith was all about. 

It was only when he had grown so old, that he allowed himself to admit such things.

Holy Days - Monday: An Easter Tale

Melchior was an old man, by then.

Someone told him about it. They told him about what had become of that baby they’d visited, all those years ago, those long decades. 

Each of them, all three, had agreed to bring gifts. He’d chosen gold. At the time he couldn’t really have explained, except the stories had said the baby would grow up to be a king, and so it had seemed appropriate.

But what he’d heard, since, not just what they all heard, later, about what Herod had done, not even to say how he’d tried to trick them, seemed to contradict that. He didn’t really understand it, hadn’t back then, either, not that it had mattered. A different culture, a different world. But in the final analysis, none of that had mattered. What he understood, then, was that he was simply paying homage. He saw no reason, now, to think otherwise.

No, that baby had not grown up to be a king. In that world, in that Roman world, after he’d thought about it, that had never really seemed likely anyway, or in any sense that would’ve been interpreted in that way, then, trivial. He’d heard all about the culture the baby grew into, its vision of the future. He listened as it was explained to him, what that baby grew up professing. He knew a thing or two about some of that, surely.

But he had never seen any of that in quite the manner he saw it from this new perspective.

And then he heard about what happened yesterday. Yesterday that baby truly had, for a moment, grown up to be a king. Melchior had to laugh. In a selfish moment he even wondered whatever had happened to that gold. Many men would have at least laced their attire in it. He didn’t see that as a possibility, here.

He would never see this man for himself. He saw him once, as a baby. He worried about him. He knew that culture, that world, everything that man had already struggled against. Such crusades were not meant long for the world. Or maybe.

He still could not escape this man’s story. Just perhaps, it was a story that would endure. Melchior had first read it before any of it had even happened. He followed a star to see its first fruits for himself.

He decided it wasn’t so hard to believe.

Holy Days - Palm Sunday: An Easter Tale

The angel Gabriel had almost literally seen it all.

Angels came forth sometime before the earthly realms. They were never God; they were never omniscient, omnipresent, certainly not omnipotent. But they were certainly privileged.

But they could observe. Gabriel had done a great deal of observing. He saw what humans got up to. He saw the many ways they envisioned faith. He saw the many varieties of religion, how they started, how they played out, the effect they had on humans. He knew God’s relationship with humanity was complicated. God didn’t just pop in for a visit with anyone. Most of the time it was completely a matter of faith, and believing what was said, and knowing what to believe.

Every now and then, Gabriel was sent to intervene. That was something he’d done, when Christ was born, into the world. None of any of that was a mystery to Gabriel. He knew from the moment of his announcement how it was all going to play out.

So on the Sunday before the end of that brief life on earth, he watched with some curiosity how Christ’s day progressed. He watched Christ’s friends procure the donkey. He saw the happy frenzy in the streets, as word spread. He may have watched humanity since its infancy but he honestly couldn’t say he understood it any better than he ever had. 

He simply allowed himself to get caught up in the moment, even knowing where it was leading. 

Humanity can be fickle. If the right people align, then it can be an organic miracle. That, he thought, was what Christ had always tried to say. If the wrong people align, it can be a disaster. That’s what he thought God had been trying to say since Eden., since the serpent, since Cain. Listen to the wrong people, get caught up in yourself…

But this moment, this perfect, impossible moment. For Gabriel it seemed to symbolize what Christ’s life was all about. Not what would happen in a handhold days, which again, even someone who doesn’t see all time all at once knew was coming, since for God, for Christ, was known from the beginning, and was an open understanding in Heaven. No. It was watching people be joyful. 

Which was really why he’d taken the assignment to announce Christ’s birth. It was indeed a privilege, getting to see these humans, who struggled so much, happy. They didn’t know what to expect. Gabriel knew and he was still happy. He didn’t know about this day, that this would happen, too. But he hadn’t needed to.

So that was also why he so enjoyed watching Christ make his way through the streets, through the palms. This was Gabriel’s faith.

And It Pleased the Lord: An Easter Tale

In the pit, time had no meaning. David, who used to think of himself as a young boy, when the world still made sense, before he had felt its burden, had momentarily, when he died, experienced elation without the immediate sense of the weight. He saw his son and they had their first conversation about it, but afterward it settled in again. Actually, when he thought about it, it was really that he couldn’t settle. He hadn’t for a long time.

It was the weight of expectations. In the pit there was no parchment, nothing to write with, which for David was a kind of torment. For some people writing is a compulsion only relieved by its act. Otherwise the words store up. It might have helped to sing, but he lacked a harp as well, and he had never been able to unaccompanied. He felt locked up.

It was a long moment, a pregnant pause. He waited.

When Jesus appeared in the pit, David remembered many of the things he’d written, and they all bubbled to the surface. In his days, and under his burden, he had never had recourse to repeat his hymns. These were tasks left to others. Once recorded they had been consigned to history, to others, to later generations, but none of them, when he saw them in the pit, had felt them as he had. 

Jesus was different. David saw that immediately. Without knowing who this man was, he knew. He began to sing.

He found himself exploring notes he’d never used before, words he’d never uttered. They just poured out of him. Those around him, and this was the miracle, rising up like a bubble within his chest, so he felt as if he might burst if he stopped, joined in perfect harmony. He was lost, for the first time in a very long time, among the flock.

And he saw a smile on the face of this man. He knew it had been there before he started singing, but he thought it was a reaction all the same. 

He couldn’t stop singing. He had never been happier. The weight was being lifted at last. And he felt young again.

In the Pit: An Easter Tale

It’s only after you die that you begin to grasp the true nature of God. For God, time has no meaning. That is what the dead learn. Before Jesus died, all the dead collected in the pit, all those who had ever died, both those who knew of and believed in God, and all those who didn’t. There was no distinction. One day, on the day Jesus died, a man appeared, in the pit, Judas Iscariot. In the pit, it was difficult to understand what Judas had done, before he died, since all those who resided in the pit were cut off from the land of the living, as with everything else. But many were curious. There was little to do, in the pit, except indulge curiosity.

Among the believers, there were those who understood the shape of history, in the shape humanity took in history, its relationship with God. Only in the pit could they relax, if they could, if they weren’t consumed by the inexorable course of events. In the pit, too, they awaited the messiah. Those who waited, in the pit, had a much different interpretation than those still existing on Earth. There are no warriors in death. There are no more wars to fight, except doubt. In the pit there was only doubt. Doubt was how they thought of the messiah, since they could only wait.

And yet there was no concept of time. One generation was much like the other. They all intermingled, and they all understood each other, and yet no one knew what anyone else thought. That is the sort of thing you learn in such circumstances.

When they talked, those who believed, who understood, they saw the shape of history, its inexorable march toward destiny. Some of these hoped this would reconcile them with God, even if they had no idea what that meant. In the pit, God was entirely absent, even for those who believed. For many, it was a simple yearning for peace. There was no peace in the pit.

When those who understood sensed that the time of the messiah was ascendant, they began to wonder about how all this would play out. They saw a lot of necessary suffering. They knew someone would have to take the fall. Since the fall of Lucifer, this was a thing that was understood. Lucifer, the fallen angel, the guardian of the pit, the opposite number, at least in his mind, of God. In the pit, no one really believed that, and there were many who wondered if even Lucifer did. There is no opposite of God. There is only the abstract belief that there could be, or should. Or perhaps, the idea of a catalyst against which God acts.

The believers, in the pit, understood that the messiah needed a figure like that, and so that was how they became familiar with Judas Iscariot before they ever met him.

When he appeared, in the pit, Judas was truly the wretched of existence. He was appalled with how things had turned out. He tried to explain himself.

“He told us. He told us what was going to happen. What was going to happen to him. Last night he even told us that one of us would betray him. That one of us already had. 

“I knew what he was talking about, because it was me. I had already been paid to betray him. It wasn’t out of disbelief or disenchantment. I believed. Oh, I believed. Sometimes I even thought I believed better than any of them. It became a curse. I believed, and I understood. I knew what had to happen. I knew that the only way humanity would have the courage to kill him was if he was delivered by one of us. 

“He spent so many years in anonymity and then for a short while he ministered to any who would listen, and there turned out to be a few. Some who listened were jealous. They knew he was better than them. I suppose it’s only natural. The problem is always how to get rid of such people. Usually it’s creating a scandal. He volunteered to do that himself. He made it easy. And still, his enemies were afraid. They needed to be justified. They needed someone to betray him. 

“I saw all this. I knew what had to be done. It didn’t make anything easier. I betrayed him with a kiss. And then I killed myself. And now I’m here.”

In the pit, they all listened to this in utter incomprehension. They couldn’t fathom the insanity of it. Judas was, there, the pariah he had become in life, what he had held in his heart, and what hounded him in his final hours. 

And then Jesus appeared. Even those far away, for the pit was a very large, deep place, knew it instantly. They could feel his presence. He looked whole. There was no trace of what had become of him in his final hours. If anything, he had a faint smile on his face. After all, he had finally endured what he had long dreaded. When you’re God but you have to face time like anyone else, it changes things. That’s when time has meaning. In the pit, it was the first time in decades Jesus was unburdened from time. The faint smile was accompanied, if you were lucky enough to catch it, a sigh of relief. His whole body relaxed.

Then he turned to Judas. The believers thought they knew what would happen next. Holy vengeance. But Jesus opened his arms and embraced Judas. And he gave him a kiss on the cheek.

He forgave him.

No words were exchanged. Everyone who saw this was astonished. There was no time in the pit, and yet this moment had been anticipated for an eternity. That’s what eternity is, a timeless, weightless moment. For those in the pit, they had waited to find their bearings.

None of them could have expected the culmination to look like this.

Those who accepted it, they were finally able to relax. Those who couldn’t, they began a new eternity of torment. That was how the pit experienced the turning point of history. Everyone else, the living, they were thereafter free to believe. Or choose not to. 

An Easter Tale - Rex Futurus, Part 3

A lot of things changed over the years. The idea of Jesus changed in a lot of people’s eyes, after what happened that third day. I watched it from a unique vantage point: how Pilate’s son reacted.

Perhaps not enough is said about him. Often we tend to overlook someone’s family when dwelling on them; they get lost in the shuffle when you’re busy worrying about how you think about just the one person. You overlook the context. That’s how a lot of people reacted to Jesus, as I found out later, the more questions I asked about him, how for most of his life he was merely the carpenter’s son, who took up the family trade, who was best known for the work he did, never took pains to draw attention to himself, just focused on doing a good job, being someone who was easy to have around, who put you at ease, was easy to take for granted, and then for a few years was something else entirely, and then was executed. His father was long dead at that point, and his mother was said to be one of his biggest supporters, who constantly talked about him, who even inspired him to show more of himself to the world. 

I can’t really imagine what she must have thought, what she must have gone through, as all that played out. It’s said that later, he would openly talk about what needed to happen, that he would have to die and actually come back again. The business about the sealed tomb and then the empty tomb, the mad scrambling that took place that third day, the confusion, and then all the talk that it had actually happened, for her it had to have been the best and worst experience of her life, worse than seeing him die, since of course for her she had still had to experience that and then there he was again, just as if it had never happened, and then he was saying that he was only back for a little while. 

I can’t explain it. I know many people talked about seeing him. Some said he had somehow faked his death, but let me assure you: crucifixion is many things, but it is not something you can fake. The whole point is that you can see the whole process play out. Usually it’s a slow process, which is the point. For Jesus they sped up the process, because of the Sabbath, or at least that was the intention, but he died of his own accord; the other two they broke their legs so they could no longer support themselves to draw breaths. They made sure he was dead. They pierced his side and saw what could only come from a dead body flow from it. They gave his body to his mother to hold, after. I saw this myself.

Anyway, years later people still talked about Jesus. They still talked about him. This was many years, decades. The way the Romans continued to talk about Julius, the way he died, it was very much the same, except for Julius it was a tragedy that gave way to life very much as it had always been, except it codified exactly what everyone had feared about Julius, and so was an irony. With Jesus it was very much the opposite: his death was supposed to end the problem, and yet it only magnified what he had tried to accomplish in life, show people that there was another way, to reject the brutalities we can so often inflict on each other, to suggest love conquers all.

Pilate’s son was in a unique position to appreciate this. For him it was inescapable. Everywhere he turned he encountered people who only knew him as the son of the man who had unsuccessfully tried to end the Jesus problem. The Jesus problem never went away. His followers never went away. In fact, they only multiplied. They became perfect pariahs of the Romans, scapegoats, easy to blame for any little mishap, fodder for the circuses, their deaths mere entertainment, but somehow this never dissuaded their faith. In a lot of ways they were only emboldened. When they started telling the story of Jesus, some accused them of shaping the events of the trial to flatter the Romans, but it could only be an embarrassment. Just ask Pilate’s son. Just try to look at it from his perspective: his father failed to end the problem, and he was going to be the one who would have to live with the results, the constant proof of that failure, and everywhere he turned he couldn’t hope to avoid it.

A funny thing happened, though. As far as I can tell, he began to believe. Pilate himself was removed from Jerusalem, having been judged ineffective to the task. His son followed him back to Rome, but the whispers of the whole affair followed. The itinerant preacher Paul, who was himself Roman, who showed up a few years later, had never met Jesus himself, not even after the mysterious resurrection, the event that had galvanized the faith for so many of the followers, the impossible thing, spread the message far and wide, so that it became truly inescapable. Pilate’s son learned this better than anyone. Often he found himself jeered. His response was remarkable. He would tell anyone willing to listen that he was actually proud, that if anything his father had been vindicated, that if his judgment had been challenged, then perhaps that had been the whole point all along. A point rebuffed must be reconsidered. This is the task of any rational mind, and any such mind that refuses to accept such a challenge isn’t worth taking seriously. This is how he chose to view it. This is what he told those who stopped to listen. This is how he came to believe.

He gave up everything. Some say he didn’t have much to begin with, the son of a man considered a failure, who couldn’t subdue a troubled province, who seemed to actually have made things worse. No prospects, no hope for a future. Willing to grasp at any straws. 

Well, maybe I view it differently since I myself came to believe, so I was willing to extend him the benefit of the doubt. Some say it was easy to believe because it offered an alternative to the Romans, suggested that if you simply endured then you could envision life after them, to life on terms without them again. But I don’t think that was ever the point. I heard that Jesus once said, render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. Accept life as you find it. But know there is something greater. Know you don’t have to define life by the terms in which you find it. This is to say, there is the standard around you, and then there is the standard you hold for yourself. If your standard is greater, hold that closest to your heart. If you find the standard set by Jesus, then you won’t need to worry about the lower standards around you. All you can really do is hope one day more people will see things the way you do.

And that’s how Pilate’s son saw it. He could have considered his future bleak, his loss of station, of potential within the empire, that he would never reach the same heights his father had, certainly never surpass him. But he chose instead to embrace the idea upon which this failure had been achieved. He humbled himself quite happily. He became just another Christian. In his quiet way, if like me you noticed him at all, later, marveled that he never shied from being treated like any of the rest of us, subject to the same perils, you saw how the story had come full circle. Like his father he had washed his hands of the business, but in his case he washed his with ours, to break bread with us, to share the same  bounty. And so, perhaps, like father like son. That’s what I like to believe, anyway.

The whole thing was an affirmation. That’s how I saw those three days play out, and how they spoke through the years that followed. I commemorate the experiences to this day. How could I not? I believe. I believe in Jesus. I believe in his way. I believe in humanity, even when it seems I shouldn’t. Not for some selfish reason. Not because I believe I will receive some reward for it. Because my faith in humanity is the best way to inspire that same belief in others, that they will see there is a better way, a way that sees value in others. Pilate, his wife, his son, they had impossible journeys to be a part of all this. Believe what you want to about them. For me, they are essential. 

An Easter Tale - Rex Futurus, Part 2

The next day people began to talk about Pilate’s wife.

Now, let me get something out of the way. I’m really curious as to how all this will be talked about in, say, two thousand years. I think I know. I think so because I know how it’s being talked about now, how the story is already taking shape.

It would be one thing if Jesus were turning into legend. Legends take one of two paths. The first is that they become an epithet, the epitome of evil in the eye of memory. The second is that they become impossibly heroic. The legend would be that Jesus tried to overthrow the Roman Empire itself. He would be cautionary tale in one, a glorious victor in the other. Imagine if this idea of his becomes state religion at some point, what his detractors would say. What the believers would!

But he was just a man (in one sense). He died as a man. He was condemned both by his own people, and under Pilate, by the empire, too. History officially has little space for him now. He was executed in a group. I saw him hang there myself. Surrounded by common criminals. Forget what Pilate had nailed to the cross above his head. From a distance all you could see was three dying men gasping for breath. 

What they’re saying about Pilate’s wife, though. They say all through the ordeal yesterday she pleaded for this man’s life. It doesn’t matter if it’s true. It doesn’t matter if it’s his followers putting out a false narrative. The man was just executed by the state. You can’t argue, logically, realistically, that they make themselves look good by suggesting only that it was his own Jewish authorities responsible. I know the Romans. It will be a long, long time before they even consider sympathy for this business. They’re going to kill a lot more of them, these followers of the way of Jesus.

Why would this story circulate, then? He died. Yesterday. End of story. Consigned to history. Forgotten. Except the story continues, and it takes interesting turns. They say she thought he was not only innocent, but an innocent, one of the truly good people. As to whether he was innocent of the basic charge of intended or implied mutiny, that’s debatable. I don’t particularly see it that way myself. It’s said that he preached those who live by the sword die by the sword. Apart from the temple incident he abhorred violence. It’s said he once preached those eager to cast stones in judgment of another must surely be themselves entirely blameless. 

It’s said she thought he was such a person. Perhaps the only such person who ever lived. He was a preacher, first and foremost, who never went out of his way to promote himself. Drawing attention for the sake of attention was never his ambition. His message gained followers, his wisdom. It’s said he performed miracles, and there were those who believed in him because of this, only because of this. It’s said his message finds parallels in other cultures. In the far east there’s said to be a tradition of holy orders very similar to his ideals, except theirs believes ultimate removal from daily life is the key to satisfaction in this world, where he always argued radical acceptance of even the worst trials, such as the one he himself endured. 

I don’t think the acceptance of pain was his message, or even the seeking of it for penance. That’s what he had to experience. It’s said even as he died he asked forgiveness for those who put him up there.

Last night and into this morning I have been struggling to understand all of this, which is why any scrap of additional insight is so valuable. It’s said his followers almost to a man abandoned him in his final hours, that only his mother, some family friends, some secret friends, and the youngest of his disciples were present. Such a motley crew wouldn’t be sending such stories out so quickly. It was a strange business, what happened. Strange stories are going to be told. But maybe not as strange as this.

Pilate’s wife. It’s said she was plagued with nightmares. In their culture such things have meaning. That’s how they interpret the world. She worried about what her husband’s decision meant. It’s said he washed his hands of the business. He put up that sign. Somehow I doubt she thought that was good enough.

So what do I believe? I believe such a story. I’m starting to believe. I believe this is not the end of the story. 

An Easter Tale - Rex Futurus, Part 1

Someone tried telling me the sign was because Pilate and this Jesus fellow were friends. In the moment it almost made sense. I imagined a whole scenario where they hung out together for years, out of the public eye, complaining about Jewish politics. Jesus was a carpenter, that’s probably how they met. One day he delivers a table or whatever to Pilate, they get to talking, discover how much they have in common, and it just blossoms from there.

Now, I’ll admit I didn’t know either one of them personally, but people talk. They were both gossip magnets. Pilate for obvious reasons, and Jesus, because he went around the whole region with his little group of friends in recent years, and it was kind of impossible to avoid what people said about him, the miracles, the idea that he was the messiah, but basically how he was unlike anyone any of us had ever met.

Then of course he ends up arrested, they push through a trial overnight, and this was just last night, mind you! And this morning he’s shown before Pilate, asked to explain himself, and Pilate is essentially backed into a corner, something about sedition, I guess, which is the one thing a Roman governor can never be soft on, and he has no choice but to order yet another execution. 

To be a fly on the wall when they spoke in private! That’s what they say, that Pilate kept pulling Jesus aside, which is strange enough. To listen to most of what Pilate’s reputation suggests, you’d think he’d hardly think twice about the matter, that he would hardly give such a criminal that had been presented to him so early in the morning the time of day! And listen, I don’t really care what they say about the Jews. I’m just a merchant, here, I’m not Roman, I’m certainly not Jewish. If anything I should be mad at Jesus for that outburst at the temple. It was all but a personal attack, right?

But the trouble is, I got to thinking. Not just about why Pilate would humor such a man, why he would stick such a note on the crucifix, “King of the Jews,” what he could possibly have meant (Romans aren’t known for their humor; they’re best understood for their tragedies, since in all things they are always chasing Greeks), but why I should take this Jesus seriously, if I thought for even one moment a Roman governor did.

It’s not because he clashed with his own people. I get that he probably gained some of his followers that way. There will always be contrarians, and hopefully I am never one of those! I think, rather, that he had something worth believing in. A sign says “King of the Jews” above his savaged body, you have to think about that for a moment.

They say he championed the humble. Sometimes it’s easy to believe that anyone willing to do that is just trying to gain their favor, do the state the favor of making such people somehow feel good about their lot, and someone far more cynical than me would then draw the conclusion that Pilate and Jesus bonded in this way. Well, not me.

I think he did it for the very reasons he himself suggested, that, and if you believe what people have said, that he was the son of the Jewish god, and certainly all the Jewish stories in that book of theirs proves what good storytellers they are, and that this story of his was the best they ever produced, because he further suggested he was born to once and for all reconcile his father and these people, and in fact everyone else, too. And he had to do it by dying today.

Ritual sacrifice is an old religious tradition. I think every culture has it at some point. It’s not so common for the sacrifice to be the son of the god. It’s not so common for such a grand gesture. Well, if it is, I haven’t heard about it. 

King of the Jews. Clearly it got me thinking. I’m not saying Pilate believed one thing or another. But perhaps he believes Jesus himself believed it. I don’t think he posted it to antagonize the Jews. I think it was about respect. I think he recognized, for one reason or another, that Jesus was more than just another agitator.

I’m starting to believe a lot of things.

Cradle: A Christmas Tale

I have to be honest. When Mary first told me, I was a little upset. 

We had known each other since we were kids. I thought I knew her as well as I knew myself. When she agreed to marry me, it was the most natural thing in the world, and I never expected any kind of surprise. Certainly not to hear her tell me, one day, that she was pregnant, before we ever had a chance to consummate, before the wedding could take place, while she was away, while she was off helping take care of her kinswoman.

So of course I felt betrayed.

We never argued about it. I’m sure she knew how I felt. She knew me as well I knew her, of course. What I did was bury myself in my work. This wasn’t so unusual, in one sense. These were hard times, after all. It wasn’t so easy to be a Jew, which was why so many of us yearned for the Messiah. 

Later, when I understood who our child was, I did feel a little foolish.

I set out to make a cradle. I chose the wood, as sturdy as I could find (and that took some doing, which meant some traveling, which I was very ready to do, which in hindsight was probably the worst of what I did), and I set about my business. I told her nothing about it. I just kept myself busy.

Later, as her term progressed, the Romans insisted we travel for the census. I was devastated. I certainly wasn’t going to lug a cradle around. This did nothing to help my mood. I tried my best. By this time I better understood what was happening, but that didn’t fix everything. Things aren’t easy to forget, sometimes. Not when you don’t react well the first time. She was an angel, and I wasn’t, but she wasn’t perfect. Full of grace, certainly. Well, as I said, we never argued about it. But she knew. Of course she did. She became quiet for her own reasons, and she had every right.

So it was a quiet journey. There were so many travelers because of the census we couldn’t find a place to stay. Now I felt humiliated. I had let my pride get in the way. There was no use denying it anymore. Maybe I had never been good enough for her. Maybe I could never be a good enough father.

We were shown a stable. It was cold that night, and then she went into labor. I was frantic. I looked around, and found a box stuffed with hay for feed. It was about as crude as any carpentry I had ever seen, and then I realized, this had been my work, one of the first things I had ever made. I recognized all the details. I was ashamed all over again.

But then I reconsidered. I mean, what were the odds?

I had been prepared. I had been ready. Even when I failed, when I spent all that time being unworthy, somehow I had set in motion preparations for this exact moment. I had made a cradle we could use after all. I had done something right.

From that moment, even before she gave birth, things were different. I think she knew. I think she saw new strength in me, just at the right moment, just when she needed me most. There was a new grace about her, and our son came into the world, and we were a family, and the moment I saw him, my world transformed. I had been so busy resenting things I had never even considered being a father, what that meant, how it would change everything. I had never thought about being a father. I had never been very good around children. I didn’t think I had it in me.

It wasn’t just who he was, but rather something in me, when I saw him for the first time, when I held him in my arms. I was in love all over again.

I treasured every moment from then on. I mean it. There was no longer any doubt, not in my mind, Mary’s, and certainly never my child’s, certainly nothing I ever saw, even before I knew, I understood, and that was a process for both Mary and myself. It’s one thing to be told something, another to experience it, to see it take shape, to see your child’s future emerge before you, to see that he is as special in the world as he is to you.

We worked alongside each other when he was old enough. He would say the most astonishing things, earlier than most children learn to speak, just as if it was the most natural thing in the world. He was smarter than me, smarter than Mary, and it was just idle chatter, busy talk, while we worked.  I loved him more than anything.

Mary always understood him better. Of course she did. Eventually she even knew what to do with him, which was just to encourage him out in the world. I watched, continually astonished. I had no further part to play. I was the carpenter, the cradle, he outgrew. 

But I was always proud. I never boasted. I didn’t feel worthy. One day, he said to me, “Forgive yourself.” I had never told him about my doubts. He just knew. He seemed to know everything. Even when we worked alongside each other, I never had to teach him anything. He just set about alongside me. Maybe I made it easy for him, maybe I encouraged him by always involving him, including him, talking about what was important to me. That’s something he always seemed to know about anyone he met, what was important to them, which became important to him, too.

So in a small way I had a part in who he became. I like to think so, anyway.

I never did forget about that night, about the miracles that took place. One of them was just for me, the culmination of a different journey. When Mary would kid me about that old box I would insist on lugging with us, I would join in, make a joke or two myself, but I kept that thing the rest of my life. It was the cradle of everything.

So Loved the World

He believed.

He was an old man, when he died. He was a young man when he first began to live. He met a man named Jesus, with whom he traveled for a few years, until the execution, and then he carried on the mission.

At the time of the execution he was in his early twenties. Together with his friends, he spent a decade spreading word about Jesus. In time he went about this on his own, with those he had gathered around him, when communities based on the Way began to form, outside the immediate reach of these original friends. When the persecutions began in earnest and executions became a common occurrence based on followers of the Way, and he was sent into exile, he found a new calling, a new voice.

Which is to say, he began to write.

It was a few decades into the movement that letters began to circulate, after these communities solidified. The letters kept these communities in contact. Some were written by a man named Paul, who joined the Way years after the execution, who had never known Jesus in life. And some were written by those who had known Jesus.

The friends had not been of an overly literate manner. Many of them had been fishermen. As the Way progressed, they found those who filled in the gaps of their experience. The one I followed, by the time I met him, as I said, he had found his voice. Sometimes it takes time. Often we are told to believe that talent is inherent, that it needs to exist in some recognizable fashion in order to be nurtured. Sometimes it simply appears. Sometimes it is inspired by forces that cannot be rationally explained. We came to believe such things. We believed in God, and Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Some of us because of a man we found beloved.

He wasn’t always easy to love. He could be irascible. He had a peculiar sense of humor. If you didn’t understand it, if you didn’t understand him, you might get the wrong impression. He never hid from his reputation. Instead he would joke about it, or deflect. He’d say it was Phillip, not himself, who was the cause of all the mischief. This was funny, to me, in part because Phillip had been dead for years at this point. 

But he understood things better than anyone I ever knew. His words became like angels. He was a poet. He would say he learned from the master. If you want someone to remember something, tell it in a way that’s impossible to forget.

He was always telling us about Jesus. By this time there were stories about Jesus, about his life, circulating, to explain him to those who had never known him, who saw these friends spreading the message and perhaps might think it was them and not Him they should thank for it. It could be difficult, to reconcile the things said about Him. To many of us, he was God, and to the friends, he was Jesus. In the stories, he was both. But only in the words of my friend was this truly evident.

Over the years, over the decades, the more the Empire sought to stamp us out, the harder it became. Many of us expected Jesus to return in our lifetime. There were those who believed this was the whole point of our faith. There were many, and are, who confuse what our faith is about. They are the ones who struggle over whether Jesus was God or man. They miss the point, but at least they believe, although I confess I sometimes wish their faith was stronger.

My friend saw many things, and he amassed a great many followers, although he never for a moment let it reflect off himself. He kept the emphasis on Jesus. As the years progressed, and as he approached his death, the last of the first generation, he was in his nineties, but you wouldn’t have known it to see him. People often assume everyone ages the same. But some who are old are still young, and he was one of those. He never tired. 

He died seventy years after the execution. A lifetime. He never forgot a moment of his earliest years, in the footsteps of Jesus. Those of us gathered around him, we were writing our own letters, keeping the faith, the Way, and some of us were on our way to much more violent deaths, shorter lives, but no less consequential in our devotion to Jesus, in the face of an empire, Babylon, awaiting a glorious future, not in this lifetime, in this life, but in a different kingdom altogether. We believe in a life that can endure, that seeks the best of humanity, even in the midst of the worst, because God so loved the world he gave us Jesus, himself, his only son, the Son of Man, to an execution, a reconciliation, a new baptism, an affirmation, to wipe away forever the sins of the world, for all time, from the face of the earth, even as we continue to stumble and fall, to fail.

And I believe this because of my friend, who never gave up, who was old when he was young, and young when he was old. We should all be so lucky.

Still, I Believe - An Easter Tale

Still, I believe.

He just died. I stood at the foot of the cross with his mother. We stood there and watched the end of his life. I can’t really begin to process this. I listened to him talk about this moment, this day, long before any of the events that led up to it ever began. This isn’t the first one I ever witnessed, but…

I grew up with parents who made me believe the world was mine. Even when I started listening to the Baptist, this was the focal point of my life. A lot of us followed the Baptist not because of what he had to say about the messiah, but because he was himself magnetic. And that was why I followed him, too.

I can’t say his name right now. I don’t think I deserve to.

I found him magnetic, that’s why any of us followed him, if we were being honest. We certainly didn’t to have him explain, in his various ways, how badly we’d been failing, and continued to fail, even as we followed him. 

But even that wasn’t nearly humbling enough for me. Me and my ego. I thought, and never mind about my brother, because, and this isn’t because of ego, but, as I try to process what I just witnessed…that in order to follow such a man, to recognize his greatness, it could only be a credit to my character, that it spoke about me, my ability to recognize him for who and what he was…People would say about me, surely, what a good judge of character I am, how wise it was for me to attach myself to a great man, surely destined for truly great things…

What I could get out of it…

Sometimes you listen but you do not hear, look but do not see. You don’t realize how strong a pull the past has on you. My parents…they did what they thought was best for me. What I am beginning to realize, perhaps, is that what is best for me isn’t necessarily what’s best for others.

That’s what he was always trying to help us understand. And he just…He just died. He died because he loved the world. I can’t understand this.  He died because he loved the world. I’m trying to make sense of this. 

He died. Even after he told us this would happen, I don’t think any of us truly believed…What does this mean for tomorrow? I know what he told us…Not tomorrow but the day after.  But what about today? What happens today? How do you believe in tomorrow when the worst day of your life has just happened? How do you continue to believe you found the meaning of life when the world has just determined that it must have been wrong, very wrong, so wrong that it had to be expunged…

I spent years with this man. And he was a man, he was my friend, and most of the time I spent with him was like spending time with anyone. When he spoke, when he really spoke, his words were impossible. Listening to him then, it was as if there was no point listening to anyone, anything, ever again. This was a man who understood life better than anyone who ever lived, and somehow he was always better than anyone, and yet still understood…Completely impossible. I still can’t understand…

And to most of the world, despite the words, despite the miracles, he was almost completely anonymous. He was not a temple rabbi, he was not a king, he was not a governor. He was not friend to any of these. Not because he couldn’t have been. But because they had every reason to ignore him. And someone like me, when I finally got out of my own way, every reason to listen.

And I’m only now just beginning. Now that the words have stopped. Now that his body lies cold. What happens from here? I don’t know. They ended his threat. None of us are remotely his equal. How do we keep his work going without him? I listened, all those years, and I listened to his last words…They sounded definitive. Final. 

And yet, listening, as I am now, in the memories, I hear his message, and remember how he changed me. Took away my ego. It would be very tempting to say the world revolves around him, even in death. I don’t think this is what he would want, though. Remember him. But honor him in keeping his words alive. Believe.

He lies dead, and still, I believe. He saw a world that was possible. He saw the possible in the impossible suffering. He died for this. He died because he loved us. I know it doesn’t seem to make sense. For who he was, what he was, to die because he had faith in us…

It was terrible. The suffering, even knowing so many had been crucified before and many more will after him, knowing that he accepted this, even while it was happening, I didn’t know if I was strong enough. To witness. 

He spoke to me, from the cross. He called me a son. I have always been a son. But not until today did I understand what that meant. And he called me a brother. I have always been a brother. But not until today, when I lost my brother, did I know what it meant.

He didn’t ask anything more from me than to embrace my family. But I am only beginning to understand what a family is. And how hard it is to embrace it. You lose the member of the family who was most important to you, but you don’t lose the family. You can never lose the family. 

I…Even now, at the end of the world, I have a family. And this is what is going to make tomorrow possible. And the next day. And the next.

Still, I believe.

As They Lay: A Christmas Tale

Before the angel came, long before, they lay in the field, on a cold winter’s night, and wondered.

The world is a cold place regardless of the season, of the weather, the climate. People are apt mostly to worry about their own lives, even those charged with watching over others. These huddled few, though, these shepherds, they had spent long hours discussing things, and they had always been a little different.

Just imagine the life. Watching over sheep, all day, every day.

We will give these shepherds names, not the names they would have had, not names they would have known, but names you will recognize, for your benefit: Frank, Mel, Joe.

Frank could be taciturn. He could be cold, but there was no one who knew his work better than he did. He always thought, regardless of what others did, that it couldn’t hurt to sing for the sheep. Mel was the wild one. If you knew him it was as likely you would love him as think him strange, and it mattered how you encountered him if it mattered at all. Joe, he was the one who thought most deeply, who was most passionate, of the three, who was most easily dismissed by outsiders, but who was the best of them.

They were of varying ages, Mel the oldest, all of them driven from the mass of humanity into the field, and yet they had somehow retained their faith in the world. They held to it for a simple enough reason, and that was the idea of God. For them, God did not make things happen. It didn’t even matter if God had made the world or would ever appear in it, if God took an interest in a single life from throughout the vast length of human history.

Nothing so crass. Not even the idea of God as some perfect being, some example to strive toward. Not a hope for a change one way or another. They led simple lives that were by and large the same from day to day, year to year, and they saw little point in changing their fate.

They saw God as something good.

That night, when the angel came and called to them, it was certainly strange. They knew all about the Hebrew faith. They knew about angels, no matter how rare. They had never expected to see one. When it appeared, the angel blared like a trumpet. The sheep scattered, startled. They were in truth a little annoyed.

But they knew. 

The three of them, they never uttered a word to each other. They left the field immediately, and sought out the manger. The child, when they saw him, was crying. 

Frank began to sing, Mel asked to hold him, and Joe spoke with the parents, about nothing in particular, just how things were going.  They didn’t say a word about God, about destiny, the future, what the child would become. And none of them had ever been happier.

Later, when they were back in the field, gathering the flock, silent, they thought how good it had been. They were glad. Their lives continued as they had always been. Nothing changed. They never left the field, or the sheep, again.

And yet they were happier, knowing this child had entered the world.