Tell me what didst thou dream, my lady fair, that hast troubled you so? What darkness wraps a ghastly shroud ‘round your mind? A vexing premonition you now declare, through eyes of heavy sorrow. Come, take a drink; stillness shall return in time.
‘Tis but the ravings of an indignant throng that jostles the soul within. Beholdest thou their gnashing teeth and wild eye, their tongues conducted in a spiteful song! My dear, I cannot comprehend the vindictive fervor by which they cry.
Thou claimest the vagabond innocent, and with thy verdict I agree, yet here doth passion and politics collide. This city is a duel, and I a participant. Change is wrested in slow degrees and greater injury forestalled by compromise.
Alas! Thy soft hands shake from misplaced fear and thy lovely eyes downcast. Peace, my love! Look thou forward, not behind. Was he a secret son of gods drawn near, or a sly iconoclast? Trust me, ‘tis best to leave these matters undefined.
Hark! Here is Lethe’s basin, filled to its brim, a place to bathe our ailing souls, In such waters one may wash his conscience white. Of this dreadful day, speak ye not again nor pay the Titaness’s toll, but stitch thy memory by dawn’s absolving light.
I wonder how many burning bushes I have missed, the many marvelous signs from which I shift my gaze unhalted, unfazed by the curious conflagrations in my midst.
And what of the baskets in bulrushes floating through the midst, or the low man leaned on, lambasted, lashed by a stronger, crueler hand– the poor, the slandered, the scammed, a multitude with no witness?
Oh! What conflicts avoided, their happy futures unwittingly dismissed while dust clouds billow like silent sandstorms beneath my fleeing feet beating hasty retreat, choosing instead this lonely wilderness.
When those faraway flames charm as much as my own independence, and every craven fear is fully immersed in a smokeless fire, and my selfish desires are reverently removed at your insistence,
and a still, small, and sudden voice hushes this reluctant apprentice from his ceaseless, thoughtless skepticisms that beg endless exceptions and pose ignorant questions until my heart is, at last, defenseless–
only then will I behold all God touches, and feel, beneath my feet, His presence, which hallows every wild, ragged corner in my dim periphery, gently beckoning me to turn aside and truly see these holy fires in the distance.
Nothing good ever follows so potent a turn of phrase. No gold medals were ever won on “C’mon, do it.” No job promotions were ever bestowed following a “C’mon, do it.” No Michelin stars awarded because somebody egged on Alain Ducasse with a “C’mon, do it.”
There I sat in the vice principal’s office, a quivering baby bird fallen from the nest. Face contorted in anguish, rivulets of tears running south, knuckles pale and clutching the arms of the office chair dragged in front of the big man’s desk. All because of those three magic words: “C’mon, do it.” Compelling in the moment, sure, but absolutely absurd to offer as an explanation for my behavior. And that’s what he wanted, this brooding authority figure who towered over me like a thunderhead.
What could I say?
The lever of the fire alarm hung limp and ineffectual, as ripe for plucking as the fruit of Eden’s trees. It was broken – it had to be. All the boys in seventh grade suspected it was. They would flick it as they passed from the showers to the lockers, watch it bounce uselessly in its place.
God, that changing room was a Darwinian jungle! Within its chaotic confines, the meek dressed hurriedly, awkwardly, while the gleefully pubescent stalked the corridors bare-chested, whipping towels and blasting farts to establish dominance. That fire alarm was merely a trinket, just a thing on the tiled wall for us to consider and inspect and dare one another to pull even though we all knew it was disconnected. All the other levers of all the other fire alarms throughout the school building looked a lot newer than the one in the locker room. Covered in protective glass, they were the kind with the little metal mallet that you had to lift and then swing downward forcefully to break the glass “in case of emergency,” at which point you would take hold of the exposed lever and pull. These levers, I will add, did not hang limp from the mechanism like the one in the locker room. No, they were ideally fixed in place. Clearly, these were the functioning alarms, placed in obvious and obviously strategic places and regularly inspected by professionals, ready to alert every soul in the building to any given crisis.
“It doesn’t work.”
“I bet it does.”
“Nuh uh. It’s disconnected.”
“Why don’t you pull it then? All the way down. See what happens.”
“Nothing’ll happen. It’s broken.”
“It’s probably been here since the fifties.”
“The school ain’t that old, dumbass!”
“I’ll pull it.”
“No, you won’t.”
“I pulled it the other day.”
“Did not.”
“Did too!”
“Nuh uh, you liar.”
“Yeah huh! You didn’t see, but I did.”
It could go on like this for ten minutes straight, every day the same stupid insistences and know-it-all claims interspersed between the mocking and the jeering and the snickering and the flatulating. Over the course of that school year, just about every kid – big and small, mean or mild – was dared to give the allegedly broken lever a tell-tale tug, and yet no one was ever willing to do more than flick it or jiggle it or lift it slightly and let it fall back to its inoperative state.
No one, that is, until yours truly.
“Hey, Vern!”
Because I went by my real name back then, that’s usually how most of the boys addressed me, each one doing his most obnoxious Ernest P. Worrell accent, thick as used motor oil. And no matter how many times the sneering salutation came, I found it impossible to ignore.
“Hey, Vern.”
I’d look up.
“You suck at basketball.”
Muffled, derisive chortling.
“Hey, Vern.”
I’d turn around in my school bus seat.
“Where’d you buy those faggoty-ass shoes?”
Snorts, sniggers, and conspicuously averted eyes.
“Hey, Vern.”
In the cafeteria cue, peering down the tray line.
“Who taught you how to tight-roll your jeans?”
Cackles and high fives all around.
Small mercies, this wasn’t an everyday occurrence for me. A plethora of ugly ducklings waddled the halls of Dahlstrom Middle School, which meant most of the time it was possible to blend in to the crowd like Schwarzenegger slathering himself in mud. When changing, my usual modus operandi was to dress quickly, quietly, and efficiently – if that meant forgoing deodorant or even a shower, so be it. Most of the time, I could get in and out without attracting attention. But not this day.
“Hey Vern.”
I turned. One of the towel-snappers was chuckling and glancing sidelong at the other alphas.
“Dare you to pull the alarm.”
“It doesn’t work.”
“Then pull it.”
“Yeah, Vern, pull it.”
“C’mon, do it.”
Of course, I could have refused. I could have brushed off the dare. But all of us lowly locker room lambs knew from experience that choosing to ignore the howls of the wolves in our midst was tantamount to rolling over and exposing our soft bellies to their glistening fangs. In this particular version of Truth or Dare, the only hope of avoiding further ridicule was to choose Dare, though even then the chances were slim. But, at the very least, you had to show these bullies you were willing to play in their reindeer games. Go through the motions, show them you could be cool, even if such a designation was solely theirs to bestow. The whole thing was a pathetic and hopeless undertaking, like investing in cryptocurrency or making a New Year’s resolution to join Gold’s Gym. Your coolness was never really within reach.
“Whatsa matter?”
“You scared?”
“It doesn’t work.”
“Then just pull it!”
I reached up and gave the flaccid lever a meager jab. It bounced impotently in its place. That was, of course, not enough.
“C’mon, do it.”
It was broken, I told myself. It had to be. No working fire alarm would look like this, would be left so temptingly exposed in a middle school boys’ locker room. I wrapped two fingers around the T-shaped lever, felt the feeble lightness of the plastic. It was absurd to believe so flimsy a thing could hold any legitimate influence over a 25,000-square foot academic complex. Absurd to expect anything would happen.
And nothing did. At least, not at first.
No clanging bell. No bleating siren. The locker room fell into a brief, anticipatory silence. Finally, someone had the(recently descended) balls to give that useless lever a demonstrative pull.
“See,” I said, relief flooding across my reddened face. “It’s broken.”
A number of grumbles arose from wolves and lambs alike. So, the mystery had finally been solved, the unknowable equation proven. It was slowly dawning on everybody that I’d just unwittingly put an end to every seventh-grade boy’s favorite 6th Period conspiracy theory. It’s a wonder they didn’t all flog me with their towels in punishment. In that disillusioning silence, the dare dissolved. There was nothing left to do but shake our heads, shoulder our backpacks, and slam our locker doors shut. We shoved our bodies against the crash bar of the exterior door that opened onto the school courtyard and headed out into the afternoon sun…
…only to behold dozens of lines of students exiting the classroom wings of the complex in a safe and orderly fashion. Teachers stood like shepherds overseeing their fleeing flocks, shushing the gigglers and keeping careful count to ensure none had been separated from the herd. Most assumed it was a drill, though the confusion on certain administrators faces spoke volumes.
So, the legends were true.
The lever wasn’t broken. The alarm worked after all.
*
“I want to know why you did what you did,” the vice principal insisted as I sat weeping in shame. “I want you to explain to me why you thought that was an intelligent thing to do.”
Intelligent? What a ridiculous notion! Intelligence had nothing to do with it. I was twelve years old. Pulling that lever was all hormones and impulse, a misfiring of my fight or flight response. No, even that wasn’t true. It had been a compulsory act. A kind of offer that, if you knew what was good for you, you couldn’t refuse.
At the same time, I was thankful his voice, while deep and stern, didn’t rise much in volume, nor did it grow overly heated. This was a welcome contrast from the P.E. coach who, only a few seconds after the crime was committed, had blustered into the locker room, crimson-faced and seething. Apparently, a gaggle of informants had squealed on me. I suspect, had there not been other boys present, that the coach might have strung me up in the gym by the climbing ropes and beat me with an aluminum bat.
I kept my head down in the vice principal’s presence, quietly sputtering the words, “I don’t know.” My shoulders quaked and my lips trembled. This was the only utterance I could offer in such a penitent state – my own three words, though there wasn’t a hint of magic in them. Only bewilderment and miserable resignation. Tears dripped from my chin and soaked the fabric of the office chair. “I don’t know,” I whispered again.
But I knew.
They’d dared me to, had set before me a choice that hadn’t seemed like a choice at all. Perhaps I could have demurred, could have turned my back, but there would have come with it a cascade of social consequences. No longer would I have been able to blend in most days. The goading would have multiplied. I would have been pilloried – presented daily before my peers to receive all manner of taunts, jeers, and pile-ons. How could I explain such a dilemma to this peeved and wearied administrator standing over me? What would it take to make him understand that my crime wasn’t carefully considered at all? Show me the seventh grader who has time for such nonsense?!
No, what I’d done was similar to the thing knees do when the pediatrician taps them with his mallet.
“C’mon, do it.”
Tap. Reflex. Tap. Reflex.
Thirty-two years have come and gone since that humiliating day, and I’m honestly uncertain whether my circumstances would have been any better if I’d somehow, and for the first time, been able to locate my backbone and stand my ground against those magic words. Sure, I’d have avoided a week of shameful in-school detention. I’d have escaped the scornful, how-could-you glances of my teachers, genuinely surprised by my recklessness. And, yes, I would have been spared a lengthy and particularly fidgety “conversation” with my parents.
But what would’ve become of me? Could I even have survived the remainder of middle school? In what world does the lamb stand up to the wolves and live to tell the tale?
Pulling that cursed alarm is the closest I’ve ever come to experiencing the peculiar, mystical relationship between fate and free will. In a certain light, it was a lesson in comprehending the doctrine of predestination. As Frederick Buechner puts it, “The fact that I know you so well that I know what you’re going to do before you do it doesn’t mean you aren’t free to do whatever you damn well please.” Exactly, Fred.
Choice. Does such a thing even exist? Perhaps I was always meant to capitulate to the pressure. Maybe that alarm was my destiny. I was chosen, by the omniscient mind of the Creator, for such a time as 6th Period P.E. For one brief moment in my twelfth year of life, I was appointed the Great Disruptor. The Despicable Delinquent. Look on my Cowardice, ye Mighty, and despair!
All things considered, it is a thorny endeavor to speak of choices to the young and hormonal. A middle schooler’s gauges are frequently going haywire, bouncing his impressionable mind like a pinball between impulse and intimidation, pressurization and provocation. I remember in my church’s youth group an oft-repeated Bible verse was the second half of 2nd Corinthians 10:5: “…and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” The directive, as we understood it, was to not merely think WWJD? before we acted, but rather to filter everything – every question, every instruction, every challenge – through a well-oiled mental machine that would root out and expel all impurities. Any lustful urge. Any vindictive thought. Any rude retort. All of these would be sieved, and only perfectly distilled words and actions would remain.
No doubt, this is a wonderful ideal to espouse. However, it’s incredibly difficult to practice out in the real world, particularly in the presence of ravenous wolves. It’s like using a Revolutionary War musket to fend off Seal Team 6. You might have an initial blast of confidence, but by the time you reload they’re all over you.
Which brings me back to the concept of choice. Wisdom comes less from discipline than from experience, even the regrettable ones. Twelve years olds are not known for their wisdom, but neither should they be condemned for failing to use it. We grow, we learn, we put away most of our childish hang-ups. That, at least, is something to appreciate.
Even if I’m still unsure whether my middle school days would have been better had I resisted those three little words, I’m at least confident that I’ve matured enough over thirty-two years to say that middle-aged me would be up to the task. Today, I’m sure I could easily ignore the taunts and dares of those alphas, pick up my backpack, and walk out the door.
Somewhere in the back corner of the building in a small room made smaller by shelves thronged with books and dictionaries and journals and hardback tomes full of history and linguistics and a cacophony of scholarship
and a pair of chairs shoved together beside a lamp or perhaps a couch squeezed between those shelves and facing a heavy desk bedecked with folders and pamphlets and notecards and Sunday School softbacks and a nameplate and a ceramic mug and a near-empty box of tissues
and the blue light of a laptop screen bearing a half-written manuscript stunted by three false starts and stumped by too much exposition and cheapened by chuckle-worthy puns and choked by overly long quotations and blunted by the necessity of reducing six penetratingly perceptive points to an alliterative three
as the silence is singed by the relentless bleet of an open inbox joining the ceaseless shudder of a smartphone with its storage forever over capacity in front of a landline whose garish red light winks with aggression adjacent to a scattering of While-You-Were-Out slips hastily scribbled and triaged for later
parallel to a framed photograph of a bride with sunlight in her cheeks and another of a cerulean sky and four pairs of feet in Florida sand close to a kiln-dried clay cup finger-painted and furnished with pencils and pens next to a stockpile of store-bought thank-you and birthday and get-well and sympathy and just-because cards
and a creaking swivel chair and a creaking filing cabinet and a creaking cabinet door behind a well-worn black suit hanging on a brass hook in front of an inadequate mirror above some water bottles and a spare toothbrush and a stick of deodorant and several more stacks of books,
again you will find him on his knees, pleading for fullness.
It is putrid, rancid – a sour stench that turns the stomach. It is the fetor of wet dog, a refrigerator thawed and spoiling in the summer heat. It rolls in from the shore, across the sand, through the weeds, born upon the usually pleasant inland breeze. And it hangs in the air. It soaks the palm branches and the leafy, green vines that color the shore. Step outside your door, and you catch the scent in seconds.
But the smell is not the worst of it. The smell is only fallout. It is the indicator of death, but it is not death itself. For that, you must go to the source. You must brave the stench and journey down the wood-planked pathway to the water’s edge. Here you find the culprit – one long, seemingly endless stretch of decay frames the shore. Where once had been only an adorning necklace of seaweed, and accumulated belts of colorful shells ringing the beach – the ever-present deposit of a teeming, vibrant world beneath the waves, a world that invited you to wade in and draw your fingers and toes along the ocean’s floor, feeling for suspicious lumps, spying the scuttling legs and mandibles that flail from within apertures of exquisite, swirled conchs, reaching down and lifting up sandpaper-like discs alive with tiny, wriggling tentacles, grasping hold of living stars the size of dinner platters with arms that curl around yours and kiss your skin for dear life until you finally release them again into the murky depths where they belong…
Now, before your bare feet can even sink into the wet sand at the water’s foaming edge, what you find is a sickening, grey-black mantle of corpses spread across the entire beach. A cataclysm encircles the entire island, like the leavings of some terrifying, occult ritual. Grouper, bonito, croaker, and redfish lay strewn like Antietam’s dead, lidless eyes staring up at white cumulus masses above. Anchovy, threadfins, and bluebacks bake in the shadeless tropical heat.
You stand there, staring at the carnage, awestruck that so much life has been lost outside of your sight. Death stealthily spreads out across the gulf, infiltrating every bay, every cove, every canal. Each morning you awake to find a not-so-fresh stratum of the ocean’s dead expectorated upon dry land, as if the sea has engaged in some kind of macabre renovation project, its inhabitants continually tossing the dross and detritus off the edge of their world.
You peer into the tumbling breakers, intent on perceiving what you cannot really see. A scarlet bloom of sickness just beneath the surface – a billowing red cloud, like chum slopped overboard and spreading out into the glaucous blue. From where you stand, though, there is nothing to see but the aftermath. You behold the effects, but the cause remains veiled. This irrepressible algal contamination that has laid low so much life is invisible to you. It is difficult to fathom. How can so prolific a killer keep its executioner’s mask in place? How has the entire sea not turned both the color and viscosity of blood?
For millennia, he who stood at the ocean’s edge, letting his feet slowly sink pleasantly into the gritty mud while gazing upon the endless ebb and flow of the waves, felt compelled to contemplate the vastness of human existence. Like the relentless creep and withdrawal of the tide, so our own lives reach out for safety, security, meaning, but then recoil in order to preserve a healthy amount of distance from everyone else. We are as numerous as the waves, and just as unique – each one of us determinedly roll in with our own unique size and strength until we finally break and collapse upon ourselves. Nothing lasts forever.
And, all that time, beneath those waves lies a whole other world. If you did not perceive it before, now that the dead of this world have been vomited up onto the border of our own, you realize it. So much life – so much existence – schooling and swarming and spreading out beneath the surface, and yet most people never give it any more than a passing, facile thought. We putter about in our little worlds, focused on our highly individualized concerns, and we glance up and beyond the stirred dust cloud of our ceaseless activities only long enough to briefly acknowledge an existence extending beyond our own. We give it no real thought, because we have no time to do so.
Standing at the edge of the sea, one is compelled to contemplate one’s place in the world. Standing at the periphery of a red tide, one is forced to consider one’s mortality – to be reminded that, short or long, life as we know it does indeed come to an end. That we who are finite are subject to the consequences of finitude.
But you hope in Something else. Another place, another time. Another sea, another shore. Somewhere in which the finite are reborn infinite, and the waves roll forever, uncontaminated and teeming with glorious new life.
The prayer book prompts me to be silent, and so I take a breath and close my eyes and go to where the silence is. Outside is the click of the ice maker, the low hum of the refrigerator, the faint gush of air through the ducts of this aging house. The baby monitor elicits the sound of an artificial womb, the volume raised just enough to perceive a pre-dawn cry. Beyond the window in the darkness, a morning bird too eager for the break of morning decides to test its call.
Outside, there is a beating heart, a yawn, a subtle pop within the stiffened neck of this aging body. The shift of the couch cushion. The gurgle of an empty stomach accepting hot coffee.
I go inside. Inside is the soul, and thus, the silence. Inside is where the Spirit of God has made His dwelling place. Some mornings, He seems a next-door neighbor; other mornings, it is a long journey to His abode, down the narrow path of sluggish contemplation that winds through the wild interior woods where if I turn to look I will see the watchful eyes of dark shapes surveilling me from the shadows. The path empties into a clearing, in the center of which is a quaint cottage. A thin line of smoke whispers from the little chimney – He always has the fire kindled in His hearth – and the morning light spills across the garden plots that surround the cottage.
Some mornings I find the Spirit tending these gardens: aerating the soil, assessing the strength of the stalks, inspecting the budding fruit. He greets me with a smile and a kind word, and there is always a look of pleasure on His face. He is proud of His gardens, of the fruit that has been born and is slowly growing. On other visits, I have found Him relaxing on the little front porch. He rocks back and forth slowly, and as I approach He gestures to the other chair next to Him. “Sit for a moment,” He says. “Enjoy the view with me.”
Once, I found Him inside by the fire, and I asked Him why He was not tending the gardens, and He told me that He was, that resting is also part of gardening, and the fruit He has planted responds as much to this as any other act of cultivation.
I feel safe in the clearing. I am aware that eyes remain on me, that there are dangerous things in the woods, but the Spirit says He is unafraid of these wild things and I should be as well. Standing there next to Him, it is hard not to feel safe. Still, I tell Him that the things in the shadows want to ravage His gardens, and He nods His head as if this isn’t news to Him. He tilts His gardener’s hat back, letting the first rays of the morning splash His face. “Of course they do. This used to be their territory, like the rest of your soul. A completely lawless place. But then you invited Me to live here, and together We have tilled gardens for My fruit – good soil beneath warm sunlight – where before had been only overgrown wilderness, brambles and thorns.”
“But what if they get in?”
He looks at me. “That’s up to you. But I can assure you that they won’t run me off. I will go on tending these gardens, and if you will keep visiting Me, day after day, they will stay in the shadows. And, eventually, you will not only see the fruit; you’ll get to taste it, too.”
The clearing fades away. I surface from the silent depths. I come out from within my soul.
A period of silence may follow, the prayer book says, and I wonder if what I have seen… or imagined (what’s the difference, really?)… will suffice for practicing the discipline of silence. I move on in the prayer book: I read from the Psalter, then the Gospels, and then I offer prayers for myself and others, and it is within these free-form supplications that I often find myself saying, “Holy Spirit, cultivate the gardens of my heart. Let the harvest of Your fruit be bountiful.” In my mind’s eye I see the Gardener standing by the garden plots. He tilts the brim of His hat. I pray to know love, to experience joy, to feel peace, to have patience, to show kindness, to exemplify goodness, to learn faithfulness, to exude gentleness, to practice self-control. I pray the same fruits would be tended by the same Gardener in the souls of others.
Then I pray the way the Savior taught His disciples, and, at the end, as the black of night gives way to the gray of dawn, and the lone birdsong becomes a chorus, and the baby mutters and shifts against the weakening grip of sleep, I conclude with the Collect: Lord God, almighty and everlasting Father, you have brought me in safety to this new day…
This was the result of a collision between two of the most ubiquitous realities of the present season: dreary precipitation and bitter cold. In some places, like New England and New York over the last few weeks, the ratio is such that what you get is heaping after heaping of white snow. In other places, like the region of central Texas where I grew up, you get sleeting rain and slick ground. Today, in Georgia, I woke up to crystalline trees.
Underneath the early morning cloud cover, there was something dismal and austere about them. They stood there, frozen and gunmetal gray, hardly moving in the still morning air. Creation itself seemed appalled by the cold. And yet, as the day unfolded, the overcast sky began to dissolve, and patches of pale blue were made visible. And through those patches, here and there, spilled sunlight. It had been there all along. Only hidden. Not absent.
And those trees, their limbs encrusted in ice, began to sparkle. Beneath those paroled rays of sun, all that had been frozen became lively, ebullient. They caught the eye not with gloom but with hope.
And I thought to myself, how beautiful it is when something is frozen.
But then I realized that what made the limbs of all these trees beautiful was not the fact that they had been frozen, but the fact that they were in the process of being unfrozen. It was not the ice itself that dazzled my eye and filled my heart with promise, but rather the thaw.
The sunlight played within those crystals of ice in extraordinary ways, while the slight rise in temperature began to soften them. The trees were slowly, methodically warmed, and their limbs were, little by little, liberated.
So it is with my own life, and, specifically, my own selfishness. On the eve of Ash Wednesday and the beginning of the season of Lent, I cannot help but see myself as one of those frozen limbs, and the Church as that great tree appalled by the turn of coldness in the world – a world from which we do not stand separate. There is so much selfishness, it seems. It lays as close to us as a winter chill on the skin. We feel hardly able to move, sitting numb under a leaden sky and a bleak horizon.
Ah, but the Son is peeking through. He is not absent. He sees us, shines on us. He is the One who begins in us a great and liberating thaw.
Word: Substitute Parameters: Write for 15 minutes without stopping
the blood of bulls and goats cry out
from the ground, a ferment flowing
was death for naught, o chosen ones?
the left hand cuts; the right hand grasps
for pleasures to fill the clean slate
perpetual slaughter provides
the fire burns, never dies away
in your place we stand, knife to throat
will you remember us at all?
Substitute for sin, once for all
if this is what they need then why
were we called to give for so long
and why, when they finally see,
do they debate the hows and whys?
Ransom, Penal Satisfaction,
Christus Victor, Exemplary,
Universal or Limited
what power is there in a name?
is not power found in the blood?
does it not ferment even now?
does it not flow for you each day
you chosen ones, you wanderers?
the left hand pierces flesh with nails
the right hand gambles on garments
and the eyes behold death and say
surely this was a God unknown
will I remember him at all?
for those who faced death every day
so you might have a way to peace
the blood you spilt speaks better words
than those you use to describe this
in sight of death, theories shudder
and hang their heads, speechless, silent
and hope in this redemption too
let these words reign, for what we were
He is, forevermore, Amen.
“You wander from room to room Hunting for the diamond necklace That is already around your neck.”
-Rumi
Prompt: Write something in response to the quote. Parameters: 15 minutes
They choose a billboard.
Though there is still thirteen years to go, they follow the instructions of their pastor. They put down a deposit and find someone to design the look of it. After this, one of the crews that changes out the facades takes that design, renders it according to the necessary materials, and a few days later the date is displayed for every northbound motorist to see – an intentional eyesore, gaudy in its size and color.
Beneath the date, in smaller letters, they offer a cryptic subject line and provide their website.
And now they wait.
In thirteen years they will fly to Israel. They will bring along suitcases packed solely out of practicality: what do you wear to a Second Coming?
They will do a little sight-seeing first. Who wouldn’t? It’s the Holy Land, after all, and they don’t expect to ever lay eyes on it again. At least not on the way it looks now, all corrupted by non-believers and heretics.
And then, on the determined day announced by the pastor who, in his adamancy, has satiated their hopes for an escape from this corrupt world, they will climb Mount Olivet (as they prefer to call it), pick a nice spot facing the once holy Holy City, and fix their eyes on the vista. They will wait to see it change. To see the clouds do something out of the ordinary. To see Someone split the sky.
And take them home.
And then, once the day ends and that which they have waited thirteen years to see does not unfold, they will look at one another, confused, heartbroken, disillusioned. Some will make concessions, suggesting an innocent glitch in their pastor’s figuring due to time zones or hemispheres. The one who endlessly quotes the Old Testament will suggest that the day the sun stood still, as recorded in the Book of Joshua, could be a reason, and they should stay put one more day to be sure. A few others will feel their hopes – both in deliverance and in the man they have called their pastor – dissolve. The pastor himself will say nothing. Not yet, anyway. Not until he can figure out how to explain himself without losing the bulk of his flock.
They will return to their home country. The deposit will expire. The billboard will revert to the company that owns it, and an advertisement for a truck stop or a local university, or perhaps just one of those “Does Advertising Work? Just Did.” signs will replace their announcement.
And one of them – at least one of them – will turn to her well-worn Bible out of despondency, to the Scriptures she has memorized and manipulated but never respected. On one sunny morning, not long after her return from the Mount, she will sit at her kitchen table, a mug of steaming coffee to her right and a journal and pen to her left, and she will read the words before her with no predetermined agenda. And for the first time in longer than she can remember, the sound of the Savior’s voice will not sound to her like the voice of the old pastor with his curmudgeonly sermons and dire predictions.
Tears will well up, because for the first time in so very long, Jesus will not sound angry or disappointed. He will sound kind. He will sound patient. He will sound like love.
In that moment at the kitchen table with the steaming mug of coffee and the morning light filling the room, he will gently remind her that hoping in his return has nothing to do with predictions and signs and best-laid plans. The escapists and code-breakers and treasure hunters go after such things. “Here it is,” they cry, though they have found nothing at all.
She will pick up the pen and write only seven words in her journal, the shortest entry it has ever received.
Windblown 