Seeing Jesus

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  “Who were you talking to?”

  Philly tried to answer. “Well, it’s kinda hard to explain. I guess you could say I was thinking out loud without realizing it.”

  Dennis raised his eyebrows and frowned. “You should be careful about that sort of thing, Phil. It makes you look . . . unprofessional,” he said, taking his turn at not saying exactly what he was thinking.

  Philly grinned unconvincingly and nodded. “Yeah, I’ll be more careful.”

  Dennis just nodded, unmoved by Philly’s reassurances. He turned and headed for the elevators without another word.

  Philly thumped himself on the forehead and stepped into his office, shaking his head. “I gotta be more careful, or Dennis is gonna fire me for insanity,” he thought.

  Jesus answered him silently. “You don’t have to worry, Philly. My father will take care of you.”

  Philly scowled at Jesus, viewing this response as nonsense. “Take care of me? How are you gonna do that if I don’t have a job? Help me move back in with my parents?”

  This was the surliest response Philly had jabbed at Jesus since he began shadowing him. A brief, guilty regret smothered Philly’s explosion like a lead shield.

  He looked at Jesus, who had taken his place in the guest chair again. With deflated angst, Philly plunked into his chair and said, “Sorry for snapping at you like that.”

  Jesus smiled and said, “You’re forgiven, Philly.”

  Though Dennis worried that Philly’s work was suffering, Jesus often helped him remember things about his work through-out the day, which saved him time and saved the company from trouble. Philly had begun to rely on the steadying voice, and timely prompting, of his eternal escort. But his reliance had not escalated to dependence; the promise that he could easily survive the loss of his job fell lifeless at his feet. While he now truly believed that Jesus himself was accompanying him through his day, as the result of his grandmother’s prayers, Philly’s faith pooled within proscribed limits. Having Jesus beside him had not yet produced rivers of living water flowing out of him.

  He also forgot the conversation they were having when Dennis showed up, still not grasping what Jesus was promising.

  During the day, Philly had exchanged emails with Brenda. She was slogging through the day acceptably well, not disconcerting her boss as Philly had. But even her email exuded the anguish of open wounds. She wrote, in response to Philly’s simple, “How are you?”

  Philly,

  Thanks for asking. I’m making it through the day alright. I just keep my head in the work as much as I can and don’t let my thoughts wander. I’m so tired. I think it actually makes it easier to just type and not think about anything else.

  Oh well, sorry to be so gloomy.

  Thanks again,

  Love,

  Brenda

  At the end of the day, Philly walked the stairs down to Brenda’s department and stopped by her cubicle just as she was shutting down her computer. This was not miraculous, or even much of a coincidence. He had been monitoring the files she had opened on the network and could tell when she was starting to close up for the day, based on how many files she saved and closed. Philly never told her he did stuff like that.

  “Hi, there,” he said, when Brenda looked up from her monitor.

  “Hi, Philly. All done for the day?”

  “Yep. Ready for the weekend.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  Brenda pulled her purse out from under her desk and swung it over her shoulder. They said nothing as they walked together to the stairs and down to the lobby. For Philly, the tension between Jesus and Brenda seemed inescapable, but he couldn’t tell how much of that was his imagination and how much Brenda really felt.

  On the sidewalk in front of the building, they stopped a moment, catching their breath against a swirling wind that twirled bits of garbage and leaves around their feet. Brenda arranged a wayward lock of hair and Philly turned his face into the wind to keep his bangs out of his eyes.

  Brenda looked at Philly for a second and then said directly, “Is Jesus still with you?”

  Philly looked around quickly to check that no one overheard that question, then he looked at Brenda, sensing the gravity of her inquiry. “Yes, he’s right here.”

  Brenda nodded and looked away, also facing into the wind. She looked back at Philly. “Well, call me when he’s gone, okay?”

  Philly shook his head in confusion. “Why? I mean, you don’t want to talk to me until he’s gone?”

  Brenda nodded, her lips pinned together in painful determination.

  “Why? I thought he told you some important stuff that was true and all,” Philly said, like a wronged school boy.

  Brenda looked into Philly’s eyes. “Of course, it was important and true,” she said, impatiently. “That’s just it. I can’t take any more of that. It would drive me crazy. I just can’t deal with it.” She choked off there and looked away again.

  Philly glanced at Jesus who seemed restrained, as if held back by the wind, though his face continued to declare his love for Brenda, with painful intensity. He shook his head slightly, to signal for Philly to let it go. Philly nodded, acknowledging Jesus’s prompting.

  “You can call me any time,” Philly said. “If you change your mind . . . anytime.”

  Brenda faced Philly with a look very similar to Jesus’s expression toward her and Philly warmed to her, even as he too felt the wind pushing him back. She patted him on the arm and turned to walk toward the train station. Philly watched, noting that they had said goodbye without words, wondering when he would hear from her again.

  Jesus took a deep breath and looked at Philly. In that simple gesture, Philly understood that Jesus experienced this kind of thing all the time; that he loved and longed to be with people who, nevertheless, held him at arm’s length, afraid of him for reasons true and imagined.

  “But I thought you showed her something important about her childhood,” Philly said, remembering not to use his mouth in communicating, as they walked to the bus stop.

  Jesus looked intently at people as they passed. “Yes. That’s true. And that’s why she wants you to stay away.”

  Philly shook his head, thinking, “This is one of those women things.”

  Jesus responded to that thought, even if it wasn’t aimed directly at him. “No, Philly, it’s just a human thing. There is a large gap between believing that God is real, and even that God is engaged in your life, and choosing to cooperate with that engagement.”

  As he arrived at his bus stop, Philly looked hard at Jesus. For a moment he thought that perhaps Jesus’s comment applied not only to Brenda, but to him as well. But that application seemed to have no handles that Philly could wrap his mind around and it slipped past. Before he could respond verbally, the bus arrived, bearing a huge ad that featured a barely dressed woman. The effect of all that bare skin looming up in front of him, as he considered his next question for Jesus, startled Philly. Jesus, on the other hand, seemed to say something under his breath and then he put his hand on the forehead of the woman’s image, before he followed Philly onto the bus.

  Philly forgot the previous line of conversation and asked a question instead. “Why did you do that to the picture?”

  Jesus stood next to Philly, who had taken a forward-facing seat next to a young woman. “You could see that as just a picture of a human being,” Jesus said. “Or it could be a spiritual magnet, attracting lonely souls and their deepest hurts.”

  “What do you mean?” Philly thought, furrowing his brow in spite of himself.

  “Look at the young woman next to you,” Jesus said.

  Philly looked out the window and stole a glance at the college-aged woman next to him, she was listening to music on white earbuds. She had long, straight, golden-brown hair, large brown eyes and full lips. Philly found her very attractive.

  He looked back at Jesus and then remembered not to look at him, thinking, “What about her?”

  “What di
d you notice about her?” Jesus said.

  “She’s beautiful,” Philly said honestly.

  “What about him?” Jesus said, nodding to an aged man with an old-fashioned hunter’s cap pulled low and a million wrinkles on his sullen face.

  “What about him?” Philly said.

  “Isn’t he beautiful?”

  Philly looked again, restrained himself from making a face and said, “I guess, if you think of it that way.”

  “When you see the woman in the ad, or the young woman next to you, you think they’re attractive,” Jesus said. “That is actually a good word for what you’re feeling. You’re attracted to them. The attraction is the voice of a need you have, a need that was never met; a need that you have to press down inside to keep from going crazy,” Jesus said, very seriously.

  Jesus continued, in the sort of voice your favorite teacher used in elementary school. “You think this ideal woman might be able to fill that open space in your soul and you look at her with longing to find out if she can. Fortunately, for her,” Jesus nodded toward the young woman, “you’re afraid to try to find out if it’s true. Otherwise you, and hundreds of other men, would be bothering her all day long and she would be the one who goes crazy. When, in fact, she is just a person who has needs and who is not the answer to anyone’s deepest longings. You turn to her, or images of women like her, because people all around you have devoted their creative energy to serving a pagan deity that broadcasts the lie that sex with a beautiful woman will bring you the fulfillment you crave. This lie is not told to your rational mind, which would figure out that it’s a lie, it’s told instead to a confused little boy inside you, what you think of as your emotions and I think of as a broken part of your soul.”

  This therapy session would have been hard for Philly to absorb if he were sitting anywhere. But the bus had provided perfect visual aids for the lesson, so that he did absorb the essence of what Jesus was saying. And the lesson was not over.

  “Now, quietly tell the woman next to you that God knows her desire to be honest and pure, and that he will help her tonight, when she faces the uncomfortable situation she’s worrying about,” Jesus said.

  Philly stared at him incredulously, forgetting how that stare would look to anyone paying attention to him.

  “Go ahead,” Jesus said, “and don’t worry how she responds. They’re my words, not yours.”

  Philly shook his head, completely unable to move in the straight-jacket of his own insecurities. But he glanced at the young woman just as she bit her lower lip, in a gesture that seemed to confirm her present worries.

  As if he had shaken free from the shell in which he traveled, Philly impulsively turned to the girl. He stopped suddenly, however, realizing that she wouldn’t hear a quiet voice through the music in her earbuds. But his movement caught her attention and she pulled the right earbud out of her ear, with a questioning look on her face.

  Jesus repeated the message and Philly relayed word-for-word.

  The young woman stared at Philly, her eyes enlarged and her mouth sealed shut. When he finished, Philly was just glad she hadn’t slugged him or cursed him.

  Finally she spoke. “How did you know that?”

  Philly hesitated, then made an apologetic grimace and said, “Jesus told me to tell you.”

  She nodded slowly and blinked rapidly, flailing internally, but compressing the conflict inside. “Thanks,” she said. “That helps, it really does.”

  Jesus touched Philly on the shoulder and Philly turned forward, noticing his transfer stop approaching. He looked back at the girl and said, “Good. Well I gotta get off here,” and he lurched to the front of the bus as it settled next to the curb. He glanced back at the girl once and she was still watching him. He felt someone pushing him toward the door and realized that it was Jesus. Philly followed that divine impulse and exited the bus without looking back again.

  As he waited for his next bus, Philly stood perfectly still, staring wildly into space. No one noticed, except Jesus.

  “Breathe, Philly,” Jesus said.

  Philly took several deep breaths to catch up. His stomach had curled up into a wadded wet washrag and now it began to relax. Deeper than all of that, he felt a sort of tearing as the bus pulled away and the young woman left him standing there. As if he had become attached to her and then they had broken it off, he felt the loss of their connection. Sweat beaded on his brow and upper lip, though the day was cool and windy.

  “That was wild,” Philly thought, looking at Jesus briefly. He couldn’t decide yet whether he liked the experience. No one who knew him would have considered Philly an adrenalin addict; and the thrill of the supernaturally deep interaction with the young woman had spiked his levels well beyond familiar limits.

  Jesus spoke to him, as Philly wound down, standing, waiting for the Sheridan bus toward home. “That was very valuable to her,” Jesus said. “And your nervousness actually made it easier for her to accept. You didn’t look like you were playing mind games with her, or trying to sell her something.”

  Philly briefly cringed at the realization that his discomfort had been obvious to the young woman, a fact that he knew on a conscious level, but which he preferred not to hear described out loud. Fortunately for him, no one else could hear Jesus.

  The Sheridan Road bus trip was uneventful for Philly, who needed to decompress from his psychological sprint on the previous bus ride. He thought, somewhat idly, about picking up Eileen at the airport that evening and whether he could tell her about Jesus’s appearance in his life. Jesus withheld comment regarding the prospects, but that didn’t bother Philly. He had lost all energy for deliberation or debate. Speculative scenario rehearsals, which came naturally to the master chess player, better suited his current spent state.

  Philly’s mother called him twice that evening to make sure he was going to pickup Eileen, but he managed to repress the urge to swear at her, even after he hung up the phone the second time. Jesus’s attentive look, when Philly began to vent, helped him to staunch his hemorrhaging temper.

  “She’s not saying that she doesn’t trust you to do as you promised,” Jesus said. “Actually, she’s feeling guilty that she’s not going to pickup Eileen and her phone calls make her feel that she’s at least doing something.”

  His previous notions of Jesus and God inclined Philly to expect theological insights and exhortations toward good behavior. The sort of psychological insights he had been hearing from Jesus struck him as more personal and intimate than religious people had led him to believe. “I wonder if they would be as surprised at what you’re like as I am,” Philly said.

  Jesus, speaking aloud, as far as Philly could tell, said, “Many of them would be.” He knew that Philly had no particular person in mind, but he added, “Your expectations of me were formed by the culture around you, including the religious people you know.”

  Philly thought about this and wandered onto thinking about Brenda, in spite of the fact that she had said very little to him about her understanding of God. Perhaps his lonely mind simply longed to find some reassurance that Brenda would still be part of his life, whenever this season of divine visitation ceased.

  At home, Philly busied himself with cleaning out the closet in his bedroom, to pass the time before driving to the airport. He eventually left later than he intended, having become mired in sorting through old files and photos that he found in a moldy-smelling box he pulled from behind his hats and baseball equipment, on the top shelf. As he ran out the back door, he hung onto an old Kodak color photo of him and Eileen, as small children, at the zoo. Lost in his memories, and leaving in such a hurry, Philly was startled when Jesus slipped into the passenger seat next to him.

  “Jeez, I almost forgot you were around,” he said impulsively. He recovered from the shock and started his car. After pulling carefully out of the parking lot, he climbed out of the car and locked the gate behind him.

  “Hey, it sure would have been helpful for you to get the gat
e,” Philly said, teasing Jesus.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want to scare your neighbors,” Jesus said, with a grin.

  As Philly wound his way toward O’Hare Airport, he attempted to pull Jesus into whether to tell Eileen about his revelation, though he knew to avoid pursuing the real question in his mind: “How will she react?”

  The reason this question preoccupied him, where telling his parents didn’t, was Eileen’s role in his life. Three years older than Philly, Eileen had often filled in where a motherly touch would have suited and she always relished her role as the worldly-wise big sister. Though Philly didn’t still consciously seek her approval, he felt now like that time in high school when he talked Karla Anderson into being his girlfriend. Eileen was the most natural person with whom to share his stories and she usually kept criticism and teasing to a minimum, depositing the currency of trust and confidentiality, instead.

  “I’m assuming you think I should tell Eileen about you being with me,” Philly said, speaking aloud for a change.

  Jesus nodded. “I know that’s what you want,” he said. “But you also know that neither of us can guarantee her response.”

  Philly shook his head. “Doesn’t that bug you, that you can do all kinds of miraculous things, but you still can’t get people to respond the way you want them to?”

  Jesus shrugged a bit. “Bug me? No, not really. This is the way we designed you, to have your own mind, your own choices for responding to the world around you and even to the one that created you. We never thought of you as a lot of toy soldiers for us to play with,” he said.

  That analogy made sense to Philly. He had loved spending hours laying out a battlefield with his little, plastic soldiers. The same appeal attracted him to chess, of course, the tactical and strategic art of placing his men where they would do the most good and the most damage. In another generation, he might have been a great field commander or even a general. That is, if he lived in a different family, in that other generation. He could never imagine a great general emerging from his passive dad and nagging ma, though he could easily imagine his family spawning a serial killer.