“Watching that man eat captured the full attention of many of the surrounding people. His gratitude for his simple meal was so apparent that it infected many who witnessed his recovery. The pleasure of watching him enjoy that bread inspired several others to offer him more food and wine. He didn’t refuse anyone until his arms were too full to take more.
“Joanna and Peter led him to an open place and laid out a blanket for the man to sit on and eat a decent meal away from the sympathetic gazes of so many people. The two helpers yielded only briefly to the temptation to watch him enjoying his food so thoroughly. As Peter turned to leave, the man said, ‘Maybe you could join me; it seems so strange eating all this alone.’
“Peter chuckled and looked around. ‘There’s probably someone here who can use this more than I can.’
“The teacher had finished with the second ragged man, who seemed lost in a private cloud of satisfaction. Peter grabbed the opportunity to bring him over to join his friend. Both men could obviously use a meal.
“The teacher had moved on to a group of young people, teenage boys and girls. They clustered around a boy, about fourteen, who leaned on two of them for support. He appeared to have several physical difficulties. Not only were his legs misshapen so that he couldn’t stand on his own, but his eyes were sunken into his head, likely entirely useless. His taciturn manner seemed to indicate a limited mental capacity as well.
“The teacher addressed the group. ‘Who have you brought to me?’
“‘Abner,’ several of them said.
“‘Abner appears to have many friends.’
“One girl stepped forward. ‘Everyone loves Abner. He’s never harmed anyone. And so many things are very hard for him. We’ve grown up with him in our village, not far from here, and we were all hoping that you could do something to help him.’
“The teacher nodded. ‘Yes, I could do something for him.’ He smiled slightly, as if joking with the young people. He stepped close to Abner and took hold of his hands. The teacher looked into Abner’s hollow eyes for half a minute without saying or doing anything else. Then Abner seemed to jump a bit, but I think this impression came actually from his legs suddenly straightening.
“Abner laughed. He tipped his head down and began walking in place, trying out his new legs. A cheer rose from his friends, and Abner joined the cheer, with his hands raised over his head. But clearly the teacher was not finished. He helped Abner to step back a bit, then bent down and spat in the dust where Abner had been standing. With one finger the teacher stirred the spit into the dirt to make a small patch of mud, and then he scraped the mud up off the ground with the back of his thumbnail.
“The teenagers stared with wide incredulous eyes and open mouths as the teacher carefully rubbed the mud on Abner’s sunken eyelids. As strange as it was to see the teacher rubbing mud on the boy’s eyelids, it was stranger still to see those eye lids begin to swell. Then Abner blinked a few times before fully opening his eyes. With his new eyes wide open, he made a sort of crowing noise and fell over backward. His friends caught him and kept him on his feet. They cheered at the restoration of Abner’s sight. Though still upright, he reeled in a circular motion such that I expected him to fall in any given direction. But his feet began to pump up and down, as if he were running in place on legs powered by an engine.
“The teenagers cheered again. All of them, including Abner, jumped up and down with their hands raised above their heads. Their shouting turned to singing, their song a dancing praise from an ancient psalmist. For a moment I thought that the teacher would join their dance, but he made only one stomp on the ground and then dropped his hands to his side and moved on to the next person who needed him.”
Walter finished there.
Of course, I had never seen Walter drunk, but if I had, I imagine he would have smiled at me just like he did then, unconsciously shaking his head in micro motions. I was curious how what he had seen had made him so high.
“Did you cheer along with them?” I wasn’t teasing.
Walter shook his head, his grinning gaze falling far beyond me. He chuckled, and then it bloomed into a full-throated laugh. He laughed so hard that tears came to his eyes.
I watched and wondered, beginning to feel a bit disoriented myself. I couldn’t focus a clear thought, reduced to shaking my head in those same tiny sideways motions, and to wiping a tear out of the corner of my own eye.
Finally, Walter wiped at the tears with both hands, swallowed, and took a deep breath. He looked around for his water glass, which I reached for him so he wouldn’t have to turn so far around.
After a gulp, he returned the glass to the table. “James, this is like nothing I’ve ever even imagined. You can see why this is so real to me. How could I create these scenes in my head? I’ve never experienced anything remotely like this.” He stopped to catch his breath.
My perception of all this came one very large step removed from what Walter saw in those dreams. But I knew Walter. I had sat in his house and waited while he cried uncontrollably at his wife’s death. I had also sat there cursing about the end of my marriage. I could count on Walter like the predictable and inevitable changing of the seasons and the setting and rising of the sun. And here I sat watching him either slip hysterically into insanity or rise euphorically into a spiritual experience for which neither of us was prepared. I couldn’t see the dreams, but I could see what they were doing to my old friend, and I envied him more intensely than anyone I’ve ever known.
At home that night, I couldn’t sleep. My belly seethed with conflicted emotions that I couldn’t name but which started with my realization in Walter’s room that I knew the dreams were true. They were true in the sense that he was entering the experience of Jesus healing an entire multitude of people, and true in that the Jesus in the dreams was a real person who accepted and cared for every person who brought him their pain and weakness. And he powerfully liberated and healed every one of them.
This revelation convulsed my stomach because it collapsed my world, my construct of reality. I thought I had risen above the primitive faith of my childhood and conquered the world with systems of rational thought that all pointed to humanity’s self-sufficiency, my self-sufficiency. But all of that glorious enlightenment turned sour, and even rancid, if Jesus was real and alive and speaking to Walter through those dreams. In fact, he was speaking to me, wasn’t he?
I thought of my wasted efforts to build a life with God as merely a convenient background, even a handy punching bag for my intellectual self-promotion. And my sleepless downward spiral continued. When I hit bottom, or what seemed like the bottom at that late hour, the backlash started.
What was I going to do about this anyway? It was easy for Walter; he had retired and was looking at the end of his life. So close to heaven, he had little to risk from becoming a religious fanatic. Me, I had a career to consider. The ethics classes I taught allowed for objective consideration of religious, even spiritual, claims. But that was God at a distance, or more accurately gods at a distance. What was I supposed to do, renounce all I had taught over the last twenty years?
This sent me in search of what I had said over the years about people of faith, religious true believers. I wondered whether I had gone too far and cursed myself in the process. At this point, I realized that I hadn’t even gotten close to the bottom yet. I had just found a brief pause on a narrow ledge, off of which I dropped still deeper as soon as I moved.
Such were my feverish thoughts as I finally fell asleep, in spite of the science experiments someone seemed to be conducting in my gut. My last conscious thought was that I should talk to Walter about all this . . . and maybe Jillian too.
Chapter Seven
A Friend in Need
The next two days I called and talked with Walter only briefly, planning to see him Saturday afternoon again. I phoned Jillian too and invited her over to cook supper with me. Pretty comfortable in the kitchen, I thought it would be a safe place for us to talk abou
t my crisis of faith, or lack of faith, perhaps.
Friday evening, Jillian appeared at my front door for the first time. I could tell that she had taken time to go home and change. She looked comfortable in a long gray cardigan and jeans, her hair down from her proper psychiatrist style. The cold outside had only done her a favor, turning her nose and cheeks slightly pink, to resemble a little girl by the fire at Christmas. Such were my distractions from more important matters, including supper and the state of my soul.
“Hello, how are you doing?” I kissed her briefly on her chilled cheek before taking her coat from her.
She breathed a purging sigh. “I’m doing quite fine. Glad to do something with my hands that doesn’t involve a life-or-death situation.” Though she had a playful smile in her blue eyes, it was the closest thing to a complaint I had heard from her—not much, considering it was the end of the work week.
“What about you?” she said.
I led her to the kitchen. “I’m glad for the weekend. Too bad you’re tired, though, I was hoping for a free therapy session after dinner.”
She smiled, her eyes narrowing just slightly as she checked to be sure that I was kidding. “As long as it doesn’t involve confessing any major crimes, I think we could arrange that.”
I laughed. “Yeah, I guess then you’d have to contact the authorities and that would really ruin dessert.”
“We’re making dessert too?” She scanned my big old kitchen, rubbing her hand along the butcher-block countertop on the island that stood in the center of the dark stone tile floor.
“Actually, I already made it. Just homemade chocolate pudding. It’s chilling in the fridge.”
“Homemade chocolate pudding!” The corners of her mouth stretched toward her ears.
“You like chocolate, right?”
“Yes, indeed. You sure got that right.”
As it turned out, Jillian was the perfect kitchen assistant. I think the end of a long work week helped. She was glad to let me give directions and was perfectly content to do whatever needed to be done. Together we made a variation on a meal my mother used to make. Homemade noodles with beef and mashed potatoes.
When I explained my plan, she scowled. “You trying to fatten me up or something?”
I grinned at her across the butcher block. “Oh, you don’t have to eat it. You just have to help me cook it.” We laughed together.
We drank wine and chopped vegetables for salad, rolled out the noodle dough, and boiled water, not talking about anything more serious than childhood memories of our mothers in the kitchen and foods they cooked. The fun rolled by quickly, as did the warm and savory meal. I thought I could see Jillian’s face loosen and heard her voice slacken as she relaxed in my house. It was a great thing to see. I really missed knowing a woman who felt at home with me.
While we cleared the table of dishes, Jillian surprised me.
“So what is it you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Wow,” I said, settling plates in the sink and rinsing them absentmindedly. “You took me seriously, huh?”
“You’re a pretty serious person,” she said, as she put the salad dressing back where she had found it in the fridge. “Even when you joke.”
I was thinking I should be paying for insight this sharp. “Yeah, I gave my agenda away, I guess. I really did just want to spend time with you, though.” I looked up from the dishes and met her eyes as she stopped next to the sink. Her smile had given way to an open and peaceful face, her comfort with me clear in how close she stood and how steadily she looked at me. I knew she was waiting for my answer. I was just enjoying watching her wait, but not enough to leave her in suspense.
As we put dishes in the dishwasher, made coffee and broke out the pudding, I replayed my thoughts after my last visit with Walter. She asked only brief, simple questions, though I could tell she was listening the whole time. Her eyes rarely left mine, as she let me keep my hands busy, my unbroken succession of little tasks reducing her to the role of spectator. It reminded me of watching my mother work her magic in the kitchen, though she usually didn’t seem as nervous as I was that night.
Everyone should have a skilled psychiatrist over for dinner once in a while. For the price of some noodles and chocolate pudding, I got top-notch care. I finished my rant at about the same time she first dipped into her pudding, a tiny dab of whipped cream included on that first bite. She let the silence remain between us as she enjoyed a couple of more bites of dessert.
“This is wonderful,” she said. “I don’t remember the last time I had this.” Her grin was contagious. “You know what my favorite part is?”
“Not the skin on the top.” I took a sip of creamy coffee.
“Yes!”
“I think it used to gross me out when I was a kid. Guess I grew out of that,” I said.
She nodded. Then she returned to my flush of anxiety that had preceded dessert. “It goes against our training, I know, but a bigger perspective of the way the world works has to include the power of a spiritual experience or revelation.” She took another spoonful of pudding. “We’re trained to put together systems, to believe only in things that we can reproduce in a laboratory or a syllogism. But life confined to that level isn’t really satisfying to anyone I’ve ever met. We all need something more, mystery, romance, an encounter with the divine, probably all of that.” She laid down her spoon and picked up her coffee in her two lean hands.
I sighed and stopped eating. “That’s what I want. I just need the courage to break out of my tidy life and open up to the overture from God that Walter’s dreams certainly represent.”
“Yeah,” she said after a few seconds. “It’ll be easier if you don’t have to try it on your own.”
I looked at her and didn’t say what I was thinking. “I know I need to engage more with Walter and the dreams. I know he’s there for me.” My voice felt drained, lacking the piercing punch of my earlier rant.
Jillian reached across the table and took my hand. “Not just Walter.”
That, of course, was what I wanted to hear, the question I had avoided asking. All I could do in response was smile and look from her hand on mine to her eyes watching me in the dim evening light of my old house.
Before she left that night we agreed to meet in Walter’s room the next day. Knowing I would see her the next day stifled my urge to try to keep her there as long as I could that night. We parted with a long hug and a warm kiss. I stood in the driveway with my hands jammed into my jeans pockets and my breath sending clouds after her parting car.
***
Saturday at the retirement home was as busy as usual, but Jillian was free to ignore the people crowding the hallways, or at least to try to ignore them. It wasn’t obvious to all of the residents, or their family members, that she was there on her own time, so she had to stop and talk with a short, middle-aged woman with streaked white and black hair who needed reassurance about her father’s mental condition. I waited behind Jillian, hoping the woman would get the idea that the doctor was on her day off. But I guess that wasn’t clear, and Jillian answered the woman’s questions thoroughly, and with the perfect focus of a portrait painter. I seemed to be the only one resenting the intrusion.
When we finally made it to Walter’s room, he was sitting up reading, holding a hard-bound book with both hands. He looked up at us over his glasses, perched halfway down his nose, and grinned a greeting.
We each gave him the best hug we could manage while he remained sitting, though he did make a move as if to try to stand up. We discouraged the attempt, as least for the time.
I pulled a chair around for Jillian to sit in. “What are you reading?”
“A New Testament scholar writing about the ministry of Jesus, of course.”
Jillian refused the chair, nimbly hopping onto Walter’s bed instead. I stared at that girlish stunt and missed what Walter said next.
Walter followed my attention and craned his neck to see Jillian settling onto his neatl
y made bed.
“Oh, I hope you don’t mind,” she said when she noticed our attention.
Walter laughed. “No, of course not. Make yourselves comfortable. I have a dream to tell you about.”
“Does it have a prominent religious figure in it?” I said.
“It does.” He looked at me over his glasses, straight-faced.
“Go ahead,” Jillian and I said almost simultaneously.
Walter jumped right in, only hesitating slightly for our childish laugher to die down.
“The sun hovered high in the sky by this time; and not a cloud marred the deep blue expanse. Near the teacher stood a girl about fifteen years old. I first saw her from her right side, her beautiful, dark, china-doll profile and a hint of her long shining hair. From that perspective her appearance was striking. But when she turned to face the teacher, I had a whole new perspective. Like a cruel joke, the left side of her face mocked the beauty of the right. Her muscles and skin hung loosely from her skull so that her mouth and jawline lacked shape.
“Her eyes sought the teacher under lowered brows and darted away as quickly as she met his scrutiny. Looking into her eyes, I knew that she was the saddest person I have ever seen. How many times in her life had someone seen her as I had, first from the right side, where she was so strikingly beautiful, and then they saw that other side, that other face, that other experience of who she was? How many smiles had she seen turned to shock or, worse, to derision?
“In her beaten and broken demeanor I thought I detected the depth of pain that her condition had inflicted. That too was more than skin deep.
“The teacher released the hand of a tiny old woman who had been paralyzed but now stood firmly on two feet. He smiled as she danced a little jig and raised her hands high. As she did so, he had to dodge to avoid a finger in his eye. Nudging the happy old woman gently so she would follow those who had been healed already, he moved to where the sad, young woman waited.
And He Healed Them All: Second Edition Page 9
