Theresa put her hand up to the pulsating eye, as if attempting to steady it. Jesus nodded toward that hand and Philly knew he should put his hand over Theresa’s.
Sitting there, feeling the warmth of Theresa’s shaking hand, his near arm wrapped around her, Philly grew more conscious of their physical contact. Then he rebuked himself, just as he did that first time he caught himself admiring Theresa in the hospital lobby. That self-chastisement further distracted Philly from the healing process, doubling his sense of guilt. “Boy, I’m blowing this,” he thought.
Jesus replied to that thought. “Really? And her healing was up to you?”
Philly answered that rebuke by shaking his head and deleting the stream of thought that had drawn him away from the healing process.
Theresa, still focused on what was happening to her eye, withdrew her hand, prompting Philly to do the same. She looked around, closed her good eye, and looked around some more. Philly waited for the celebration, but it didn’t begin.
“Hmm, it seems the same,” Theresa said, clearly disappointed.
Philly checked with Jesus internally. “Am I supposed to do something different?”
Jesus said, “Put your hand up there again and tell the eye to be healed.”
Philly followed these instructions, Theresa dutifully closing her eye to let him gently touch her, mostly on the eyebrow.
Philly said, “Eye, be healed,” with a little more force than his first words to Matt, at the restaurant.
When he pulled his hand away, Theresa looked around again and then just shook her head. Again, Philly checked with Jesus.
“What else?” Philly said.
Jesus shook his head slightly, looked perfectly satisfied and said, “Nothing else. That’s enough. She will be healed.”
“When?” Philly said aloud, feeling impatient and a bit embarrassed.
“Later,” Jesus said. And that was it.
Philly reported to Theresa. “He says it’s going to be healed later, but nothing more specific than that.”
As the disappointment of the experience began to fade through the following silence, Jesus spoke to Philly. “It’s time to give her a hug and a kiss goodbye. We need some time alone, you and I—and Theresa and I.”
Chapter Seventeen
Philly sat in the driver’s seat of his car, warm in the little greenhouse-like enclosure. Thinking about what had happened, in contrast to what he wanted to happen, Philly shuffled through a confused pile of thoughts and feelings.
“Don’t worry about it, Philly. Just trust me,” Jesus said.
Philly replied only with a brave smile.
Jesus supplied directions for what he planned the next. “Home first and then to Grandma’s.”
Philly nodded and pulled away from the curb, glancing toward Theresa’s house once, wondering what she was doing now. Jesus punched the radio on and quickly found a classic rock station. He turned it up three notches.
Glancing at his passenger rocking to old U2 music, Philly adjusted his expectations one more time. A Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers song followed and Jesus stayed with it, only switching when it ended, this time to Aretha Franklin belting a tune on another station. Philly noticed that Jesus didn’t surf stations, rather punching quickly to exactly the FM frequency that he wanted. Philly shook his head at the advantages of omniscience and let the wind ruffle his new haircut, as he enjoyed the music.
On the way up the back stairs of Philly’s apartment building, Jesus stopped at Mrs. Kelly’s door. “Let’s just check in.”
Philly shrugged a bit and then knocked on the glass of the kitchen door. After several seconds passed, Mrs. Kelly appeared in the kitchen. She still wore her Sunday dress, but shuffled along on bedroom slippers. She smiled when she saw Philly at the door. To Philly’s surprise, Jesus offered no miraculous insight and the visit seemed to have no heroic purpose. Apparently, Jesus simply wanted Philly to start thinking of checking in on Mrs. Kelly, with no agenda and no particular divine intervention. After inquiries about her health and about church, and comments on the fine spring weather, Philly said, “Well, just checking to see how you’re doing, and to say ‘Hi,’ I guess.”
Mrs. Kelly thanked him and smiled in a way that reminded Philly of his grandmother. It occurred to him then to introduce the two ladies somehow and he heard Jesus seconding that notion. They said cheerful goodbyes and Philly renewed his climb to the top floor and his own kitchen door.
Philly poured himself a glass of apple juice and sat down in the living room. Jesus seated himself on the easy chair opposite Philly, with Irving in his arms.
Looking lovingly at Philly, Jesus said, “I’ve really enjoyed our time together, Philly, much more than you would believe.” He stroked Irving behind the ears and then drilled into Philly with his sparkling eyes. “I don’t want it to end, of course, and I want to help you to be conscious of me, even when you can’t physically see or hear me.”
Philly nodded. “That’s what I’m counting on. I can’t just go back to living on my own now. You’ve ruined that for me,” he said, a bit of sorrow and laughter mixed into his voice.
Jesus smiled. “It’s good to hear you say that.” He put Irving down and pointed to Philly when Irving looked back at him dejectedly. “I want to play a game,” Jesus said, glancing from Irving to Philly.
Philly just stared at Jesus, waiting for the next surprise to finish being unwrapped.
“The game is called, ‘Can you hear me now?’”
Philly’s stared a second longer, but, within a few seconds, he felt like he knew what was coming and grinned in anticipation. “Okay, go ahead.”
Jesus smiled, knowing that Philly had understood where he was going. “Okay,” he said. “You can see me and hear me now, of course. But can you hear me now?” he said audibly, right after he disappeared from sight.
“Yes,” Philly said. “I can still hear you.”
“And, can you see what I’m doing?” Jesus continued. At that moment, Irving wriggled pleasantly, as if someone had expertly stroked his back.
Philly tilted his head. “You’re petting Irving.”
Jesus reappeared just a few feet in front of Philly, crouching down and rubbing Irving’s insistently offered head. “Okay. You can hear me now,” Jesus said again. “But, can you hear me now?” This time he didn’t disappear but projected his thoughts into Philly’s mind without moving his lips, as they had done many times.
“I hear your thoughts in my head,” Philly said aloud.
“Good. That’s how it will be for us after today,” Jesus said.
“Really? It’s that easy?”
“Of course. I never leave my friends.”
Philly looked puzzled. “How come I never heard anyone talk about this. I mean, if Christians are always hearing your voice in their heads, you’d think I’d have heard about it.”
Jesus stood up and walked to the other end of the couch. “Well, there are a few things you need to learn about Christians,” he said, an air of patient tolerance in his voice. “The reasons you’ve never heard about it are numerous and tangled. Some of the people in churches around this country don’t expect to hear me, so whenever I speak they mistake it for their own thoughts, or some kind of tempting devil. Some of those folks have simply learned to filter me out, in order to simplify their lives.”
“For other people, who follow my teachings and love my Father, my voice is something that breaks through only in emergencies, or in peak experiences of religious fervor. They tend to assume that they can handle most of their lives on their own and that I’m too busy, or too puny, to stay daily involved with all of them at once. Of the folks who fall somewhere along these two broad categories, most of them believe I can’t help them in substantive ways, such as healing their ailments. They certainly also doubt that I would use them to heal anybody else, the way I’ve used you.”
Philly nodded with recognition, “That explains the people at Theresa’s church being so suspicious of me.�
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“Yes,” Jesus said. “They’re like children who leave home and completely forget what their parents are like, assuming no one wants to take care of them or provide for them, just because their parents are out of sight for a moment.” He lowered his voice slightly and peered at Philly. “This is the point of my little game just now. You can hear me even when you can’t see me, because you expect to hear me,” he said. “They don’t expect to hear, so they don’t hear.”
“But what about Dave Michaels and his church?” Philly asked, trying to resist a sinking burden of hopelessness.
Jesus smiled. “Well, there you have another kind of child. In fact, Theresa is also another kind of follower, who is ready to believe, given half a chance to experience what I can do.
Philly still looked perplexed. “I guess I’m still wondering why I haven’t heard anything about this stuff.”
Jesus sighed. “There are at least two more reasons for that, the first being that, among my followers, wherever they may fall on this spectrum of expectations, many are afraid of believing. They’ve had their hearts trampled by parents, and others they trusted, so hard or so often that they fear sticking it out there again. That risk is what it would take for them to learn to trust me enough for you to feel the impact of them in the world.”
“Another reason is bad press,” Jesus said. He named some prominent Christian leaders that he knew Philly had heard of in the recent past. “You’re familiar with their names, aren’t you?” Jesus said.
“Sure, I’ve heard of those people, mostly ‘cause they got in some kind of trouble,” Philly said.
“Exactly,” Jesus said. “The people who publish and produce the news seem to get a lot more mileage out of a sex scandal involving a Christian leader, than they do out of a simple physical healing by that same leader, or someone else in their church. You need to understand, Philly, that the people who aren’t on my side are working against me. The world is still under the control of my enemy and that includes most of the institutions of your society, even some of my Church.”
“Wow,” Philly said. “That sounds really depressing.”
“Only if you focus on it,” Jesus said. “If you focus instead on my voice, and on what I show you in the world around you, you will be full of joy, instead of fear and depression.”
Philly nodded thoughtfully. “I believe that. I remember my dad once showed me, when I was a kid, that if you stare at someone’s nose for a while it starts to seem really big.” Smiling, he continued, “The point being that the thing you focus on tends to seem bigger than it really is.”
“Wise words,” Jesus said.
Philly took a deep breath. “This all sounds really complicated. Will I find people who can help me keep it all straight?”
“You already have,” Jesus said. “And I’ll show you more. Just stay tuned in to me and you’ll be fine.”
Philly relaxed a bit, smiling self-consciously at Jesus. “Ready to go to Grandma’s?”
Jesus nodded.
“Can we practice me hearing you inside my head, on the way over?” Philly said.
“Yes, that’s a good idea,” Jesus said.
Philly and Jesus carried on an invisible conversation as they walked out to the car and as they drove west toward Grandma’s house. The phone interrupted their conversation, however, when Eileen called to check in with Philly and to update him on her recovery from the breakup with her boyfriend. But, most of all, Eileen called to tell Philly that she had gone to church that morning, with a woman from work, who had invited her to numerous church events in the past.
“So how was it?” Philly said, withholding the ironic news that he had also attended church that morning.
“I liked it,” Eileen said, in a way that Philly knew she meant it. “It’s mostly African-American, but it reminded me of Grandma, the way the people talked and seemed to feel about God. I think you’d like it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, they talked some about healing,” Eileen said.
“That sounds good,” Philly said. Then he told her the news of his own visit to church, which led to a lot of probing regarding Theresa, about whom Eileen had heard nothing. His fear of this probing explained Philly’s hesitation to reveal his church attendance earlier in the conversation, but Eileen kept her questions light and her comments sympathetic.
Jesus reappeared in the passenger seat, as the conversation wore on, reminding Philly of their agenda. However, Jesus merely mouthed, “Say ‘Hi’ for me,” waving his hand in the direction of the phone. Philly snickered.
“What’s so funny?” Eileen said.
“Oh, Jesus just said to say ‘Hi’ from him.”
A moment of silence on the other end concerned Philly until it ended in a low laugh from Eileen. “Well, ‘Hi’ back at him.” She giggled. “So you still see and hear him, then?” She grew a bit more serious, her voice lowered and the laugh gone.
“Today’s the last day,” Philly said.
“Oh. You sound sad.”
“Yeah, of course. It won’t be the same, but I’m practicing hearing him when I can’t see him.”
“You can do that?”
“Yep.”
“Well, I guess anything’s possible.” Eileen sounded more hopeful in the way she said that than Philly ever could have imagined in years past.
“I’m beginning to believe that,” Philly said.
“Have there been more miracles, since Grandma?” Eileen said.
Philly tried to concisely, and humbly, update Eileen on the healings he had seen since she left for New York. He finished his account sitting in the car next to Grandma’s house.
“Wow, Philly. That’s amazing,” Eileen said when he reached the story of healing Matt from diabetes that morning.
“I could almost start getting used to this stuff,” Philly said spontaneously.
“Hmmm,” Eileen said.
“Good,” Jesus said. Philly looked at Jesus, cataloging that little comment into his growing comprehension of what lay ahead of him.
“Well, I’m at Grandma’s house,” Philly said. “I should go in. This is the night that she and I say goodbye to the 3D version of Jesus.”
“Oh, okay. It was good to talk,” said Eileen.
“Yes,” said Philly. “I’ll call you later this week when we can talk longer.”
Eileen’s goodbye included a slight hesitation, as she noted the unusual promise of a call from her introverted brother. Philly hung up and Jesus opened the passenger’s door, as Philly got out of the driver’s side. As Jesus shut his car door, Philly noticed an older woman walking a scruffy little dog, the woman staring at him and at his car. He nodded at her, but decided against an explanation, real or otherwise. He even looked at Jesus for some kind of direction regarding the curious neighbor, but Jesus just headed up the driveway to Grandma’s kitchen door.
Grandma greeted them at the door. Philly hugged her and then saw Jesus behind her, instead of behind him.
“How are you Philly? Did you have lunch?” Grandma said.
“Yeah, I had brunch with Theresa.”
“Oh, okay. Well, come on in and have a seat. I’ll get you some iced tea. I guess Jesus has something for us, one last time in full view.”
Philly nodded and walked through the kitchen to the living room. He smiled at the same familiar dark green carpet, dark green plaid couch and chairs, and Grandma’s favorite rocker by the window. She hadn’t redecorated for as long as Philly could remember, perhaps to protect her family from the shock of any changes to her familiar, old house, which served as a pocket of comfort for all of her children and grandchildren. He wondered for a moment whether his family had held Grandma back from being and doing what she wanted, free from the expectations of insecure generations of offspring.
Grandma appeared with the iced tea in a tall, clear glass with pictures of lemon slices on it. She knew better than to include actual lemon slices in Philly’s tea, but those glasses added to the sweet fam
iliarity of Grandma’s house. Philly noticed Jesus standing, looking at him, as if observing all of these mundane, and yet fundamental, thoughts stepping through his head.
Though it hadn’t conformed to most people’s expectations for a conversion experience, Jesus’s time with Philly had transformed him as much as any altar rail repentance ever could. Philly could sense Jesus’s pleasure at this, even without words passing between them.
When he thanked Grandma for the glass of iced tea, Philly thought he detected a touch of sadness on her face. “How have you been, Grandma?” he said.
She smiled loosely, her eyes glistening with the memories accumulated over the last few days. “I’ve had such a marvelous time seeing and hearing Jesus,” she said. “It’s so much easier to listen to him and talk to him.” Here she hesitated and her face changed, like a girl who realizes that summer vacation is almost over. “I’m gonna miss seeing him, though I know he’ll always stay with me. It just makes me want to go home to be with him so much more than I ever wanted before.”
Though Philly had never heard Grandma speak of death as going home to be with Jesus before, he knew exactly what she meant and he even recognized that feeling of wanting to make their communion with Jesus permanent. In Philly, of course, Grandma had a sympathetic listener about the wonder of being with Jesus, but he also remained heavily dependent on her and didn’t want to see her leave anytime soon.
Jesus spoke up. “My hope for you two is that you won’t have to struggle between your desire to be with me and your assignment to live and work here on earth. I always intended for you to stay constantly connected with me here. If you see with your spirit instead of your physical eyeballs, you’ll still see me. If you listen with your spirit, instead of only your physical eardrums, you’ll continue to hear me. As I told my first disciples, it is really better for me to give you my Spirit to live inside you. With this internal contact you’ll never have to ask me to speak up, you’ll never have to strain to see me in a crowd. I will be inside you and you inside of me.”
Mysticism of any sort had baffled Philly, at best. Without religion or faith, he had constructed his life, and even his self-image, out of material he could hold and touch and throw away when necessary. Jesus took this into account with what he said and did next.
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