Walter laughed, but Jillian pursued my comment.
“How are they different?”
I stopped to consider her question while Jillian climbed onto Walter’s bed, which had been lowered to a height that made it easy for him to get in and out.
“They’ve all grown up in a culture that insists everything must be instant,” I said. “I mean, we had our microwaves and our drive-thru restaurants, but information, or even truth, is something they arrive at with the click of a few buttons. And their truth has a hundred heads, all of them equal and none of them satisfying to an old-timer like me.”
I scooted the guest chair into position next to the bed and facing Walter. Jillian playfully nudged me with her knee where I pulled up close to her. “‘Old-timer.’ Pffft.”
Walter had settled in and found his notes on the latest dream. They lay next to the digital recorder. I wondered whether the recorder had nearly filled, when Walter spoke, sounding a bit winded.
“Oh, I’m sure you’re right, which is why my generation is fortunate to be out of the way. Your generation is the one that gave these kids all the gadgets and ideas they’ve run away with. Now you have to deal with it.”
Though his words were somewhat whimsical, his mouth and eyes seemed tight, his voice a bit strained.
Jillian and I glanced at each other; I assumed she too was noting the way his energy seemed to have dissipated.
Walter appeared to notice our exchange and looked at each of us briefly in turn. “Well, you want to hear about the dream?”
We both nodded.
“I’ll tell you what I remember.
“I’m recalling a moment when the teacher smiled and took one small step to his left, careful to clear a small rock in his way. On the ground sat an African man, whose ebony skin was marked by nasty sores from his ankles to his forehead. Whatever the cause of the sores, it apparently also sapped his strength.
“A man who appeared to be a Roman or Greek spoke to the teacher. ‘Sir, this man is my most beloved servant, like a brother to me, really. Please help him if you can.’
“The teacher motioned for the master to help his servant stand, bypassing any comment on what he could do. The master, who was surely a wealthy man, complied readily. He crouched low and, holding both arms from behind, assisted his servant to stand before the teacher. It seemed to me that the only reason for making this weary man stand was simply that it would have been too difficult for the exhausted teacher to kneel or squat on the ground for each person so late in that day.
“When the servant had regained his feet, he bowed respectfully to the teacher, though it was the weak and resigned bow of a man preserving his every grain of strength just to survive. The teacher stepped very close, toe-to-toe, in fact. I think he intentionally allowed his own sandaled toes to touch those of the sick man. Their noses but a few inches apart, the teacher spoke two words softly, but with the conviction of a man who knows his orders will be obeyed: ‘Be well.’
“It looked just like a sudden wind had blasted out from the teacher, without any physical effort on his part. The servant flew backward, as from a bomb blast, and his master staggered back into people standing behind him. This healing blast made it appear to me that the man had been blown right out of his sores, as if they had stayed where they were as he was launched clear.
“The tall, handsome servant, supported by his master behind him, shook with a whole body shiver that seemed to come from deep within, eventually filling him like wind in a sail. And he was well, his skin clean of all visible sores, his posture sure and strong.
“A white-toothed smile broke from his face. It was a beautiful sight. But the teacher had moved on to the next person. The servant and his master embraced, each raising a fist to the sky in triumphant celebration as they walked away, arm in arm.
“The teacher merely touched the shoulder of a stooped old woman who was propping herself with a long knotty cane. With loud popping sounds, her back straightened and she threw her head back and uttered one loud ‘Ha!’ straight up at the sky. Then her whole frame adjusted to the change so that she stood perfectly upright and facing forward. She smiled at John, who was now in front of her, as the teacher stepped to his left again. John blessed her and then followed the teacher.
“Three stretchers lay side-by-side on the ground before the teacher. He looked at the man on his right. ‘Get up; you are well.’
“Only after he said this did I look hard at the man and see that he was no more than a skeleton with skin. This condition changed completely in the space of time required for the sickly man to sit up, gather his legs beneath him, and rise to his feet. The process of standing seemed to take unusually long—prolonged by the fact that there was more happening than just a man getting up off of his bed. Finally, there stood a tall man, taller than the teacher, of a fairly healthy weight, now apparently quite far from the grave that had seemed only moments away when the teacher spoke to him.
“The teacher turned his attention to the next stretcher, where a man wrapped in bandages looked up at the teacher like a child awaiting his mother’s care. The teacher reached out his hand and bent his knees slightly. James took hold of the teacher’s other arm to support him as the touch of the teacher met the outstretched hand of the bandaged man. When their fingers connected, both the teacher and the prone man began to vibrate, as if taking part in their own private earthquake. The hand of the man on the ground shot up unnaturally. The teacher snapped back to a standing position under the pull from James. John steadied him.
“When the teacher and the bandaged man broke contact, the man on the ground jumped to his feet, bandages fluttering all around him. Those bandages had obviously been wound around a limp and sickly man and didn’t survive the movement of the now healthy and vital man. The teacher motioned to James to help get the bandages off, even as two men and a woman, family it seemed, were stepping all over the abandoned stretcher to help with the task.
“During this flurry of activity, I noticed a sudden upward movement to the teacher’s left. The third person on a stretcher, a teenage girl, had already stood up and had begun praising God with her hands raised over her head. In one hand she held a roughly fashioned splint that looked like it had supported both of her legs. She was dancing up and down on her stretcher, essentially running in place, as if she couldn’t stop herself. The teacher clapped his hands in celebration at the sight of the healing that had gotten ahead of him. The prospect of such spontaneous healings must have looked very good to the weary teacher, who surely wanted to see as many people as possible healed in that day. And what was possible? I wondered.
“James returned to supporting the teacher in another round of touching the sick. Again I thought in terms of momentum. The spontaneous healing of the teenage girl caught the attention of at least one other person. A younger girl, about ten or eleven years old, was flexing her left arm, which had previously been in a sling hung around her neck. She smiled and showed the arm to the teacher. He grinned broadly. ‘God is good,’ he said.
“She nodded and waved her arm before a woman that I assume was her mother.
“The teacher touched the forehead of a small man standing next to that girl, and the man began coughing as if frantically trying to dislodge some small creature that had flown down his throat. In response, the teacher bent down and said in a low voice, ‘Come out.’ At that, the coughing ceased and the man stood up straight, taking a deep breath, even spreading his arms out as wide as the crowd would allow, sucking in a lungful of air.
“With unbroken determination, the teacher continued moving, John and James still close beside him. The next woman he approached appeared to be trapped in a deep internal storm, her face contorted, her eyes shifting from left to right. When the teacher touched her forehead, both of her arms shot out in front of her, missing the teacher but forcing both James and John backward. Fortunately, a second level of support, Thaddeus and Andrew, caught the brothers as they stumbled back. The teacher remained
unmoved.
“‘Shalom,’ he said to her. And that word must have carried power and meaning that covered what the woman needed. That storm within her broke, and tears rained. Her dark, unwashed hair fell over her face as she bowed into her catharsis. Two of the women among the teacher’s helpers stepped forward and took hold of the crying woman’s arms to support her as the teacher moved on.
“In quick succession, the teacher touched and healed a man with an infection in his gums, a woman with some unspoken ailment and a girl who was deaf in one ear, touching each of them briefly before stepping to the next person. He flowed to his left as the crowd shifted, people moving away when they were healed and others stepping forward. At this point, it seemed that the crowd consisted of an even mixture of people still desperate to get their healing, alongside others simply watching the miracles.
“A middle-aged man gingerly stepped before the teacher. ‘I always have this pain in my back, here.’ He placed his hand on his lower back.
“‘Back pain, be gone!’ the teacher said.
“The man suddenly stood up straight. He moved nimbly as he patted his lower back, apparently searching for the point of pain. Behind him, two more people grabbed at their backs, an older woman and a young man barely twenty years old. A trio of exclamations followed as all three discovered new flexibility.
“John gave the teacher some water to drink from a cup and James asked him how he was doing.
“The teacher reassured them. ‘I’m fine, my friends. You are doing very well. I appreciate your help.’ He patted James on the cheek. I think he was trying to assuage any fears they had regarding how hard he was pushing himself. Surely, he knew how much he could take.
“A woman who appeared to be pregnant was ushered before the teacher by a man holding her arm and supporting her back. ‘My wife has a growth inside her. She looks like she’s pregnant, but she’s not. It’s a tumor or growth in her stomach.’
“The teacher nodded then pushed a finger into the growth, which disappeared. The woman belched loudly. She and her husband laughed heartily as her dress fell loosely about her waist.
“A boy with a bandage over his right eye laughed at the woman’s impropriety. The teacher touched him. ‘Infection, be gone!’ The boy clapped his hand to his eye and yanked away the bandage. His eye was perfectly healthy. He laughed, and blinked both eyes several times as if to test them.
“The teacher took advantage of a momentary pause and put his arm around John to rest himself. He accepted a drink of wine from Joanna, and then stood for a moment, relaxing his whole body as much as possible in a standing position. The crowd pressed closer. Their worried looks led me to believe that his pause in healing may have made them think that he was nearly done, that all the power was about to be spent. In response to this new crush, the teacher’s bodyguards joined arms to form a tighter protection around him.
“He rested inside this ring of his followers, ten strong men, sweaty in the late afternoon sun, locked together like a great defensive machine. The teacher moved them with a nod of his head or a gentle push on the back of Peter, who stood directly in front of him. He reached over their protective arms and touched the next sick or injured person.
“My attention turned to a disturbance in the crowd. A young man bounced up and down about two rows away from the teacher. He was shouting inarticulately, and I assumed that he was excitedly praising God. But the teacher ended this assumption when he pointed at the young man and spoke sharply. ‘Stop that! Come out of him.’
“As suddenly as his bouncing ecstasy started, the young man disappeared into the tight press of people. Though he might not have actually fallen to the ground, he completely ceased his frenetic noise and movement.
“The teacher didn’t pursue him; rather, he touched and healed a small boy held by the lean, tan arms of a man who must have been his father. The little boy had a twisted foot, turned about forty-five degrees inward. When the teacher touched him, the foot thrashed on its own accord, quite unnaturally. After a few seconds, the thrashing stopped and the foot looked perfectly straight.
“The teacher touched a man on the forehead who had a severely smashed nose. When the teacher’s hand came off of the man’s forehead, the man grabbed his nose with both hands and shouted in surprise. When he removed his hands, his nose stood straight and unmarred. He smiled as he inhaled vigorously through his restored nose.
“People who had been healed pushed their way through the crowd, away from where the teacher stood surrounded by his friends. Thousands of people remained on that hill, but many of them had moved out of the press of people. Some were setting up camp for the night, away from the center of activity.
“A small group of young men had gathered at the front of the mob-like crowd and were reaching out to the teacher. He took hold of one young man’s hand and shouted to the others to take their friend’s hand. They each turned to the next and all of them stood linked together. An older man standing near the end of this line attached himself to the last young man, clearly guessing what the teacher intended.
“The teacher made no sign of greater effort; he simply stood still a moment and hung on to the first young man, who started to vibrate. His friend next to him started to bob up and down and the next one to jerk back and forth, and so on down the line. The young man who had created a distraction a few minutes before was part of this healing chain. The older man who had tagged on to the end of the group of youngsters shouted joyously, holding up his hand. He waved it and flexed it freely.
“The teacher released the first young man, who stood still, staring and speechless, tears running down his face. All of the young men slowly gathered together and turned to push away from the teacher now. Some of them, at least, would certainly need to find a place to sit down and absorb whatever it was that they had just experienced.
“Others filled in at the front, reaching for the teacher like he was a celebrity they wanted to touch. The teacher responded by touching each of those hands extended to him, some very briefly, and some holding on a bit longer. The recipients would react in a wide variety of ways as they recovered from sicknesses or injuries that I couldn’t know about.
“The teacher’s attention turned to his friends, a concerned look creasing his brow as I had seldom seen all that day. I could see from their slumped shoulders and growing sweat stains that the press of people constantly leaning in toward him had begun to sap their strength. The efforts that protected him from the weight of those desperate people wore on Peter, John and the others. The teacher directed Peter toward a large flat rock, where he could sit and his friends could more easily control the crowd.
“They moved like a phalanx of Roman soldiers, together as one person, gaining strength from one another. As they moved, the teacher briefly touched each of his friends, perhaps to bless them with strength for their work.
“When they reached the rock, the crowd’s push had slackened enough so that the bodyguards could arrange themselves in front of and behind the teacher, without having to lock arms to protect him. The edges of the rock provided space, and sitting on the rock allowed the teacher some much-needed rest. By this time, he had been healing people for at least ten hours, with little respite. He showed no sign, however, that he would stop before the sun went down.”
When Walter stopped, I felt more than ever that I didn’t want to leave the story, to return from that faraway place and time.
“James, you look as if your body is present but your soul is somewhere else.”
I snickered, remembering him telling of a Native American belief that when a person traveled he had to stop occasionally to allow his soul to catch up with him. I certainly felt like that traveler when I followed Walter through those vivid and compelling dreams.
When I tried to speak I couldn’t keep my voice from cracking as my throat tightened with the longing. “I want it to be true.” That was all I could manage.
Jillian chimed in. “I know what you mean.” Her voice sounde
d as choked as mine. She took a deep breath and sniffled a bit.
Walter smiled and nodded ever so slightly. “I think that’s the starting place for faith. You have to want it.”
I thought about that. Somehow the word faith didn’t fit the yearning I felt.
I spoke, my voice a bit more under my control. “I don’t know if that’s it, but I’m finding this whole experience completely destabilizing.” I paused, gathering my thoughts. “I guess the cognitive dissonance comes from the power of something that I can’t see or verify. How could your retelling of your dream have so much impact on me?”
Walter looked at me with what I always thought of as his sly fox look, his eyes squinted as if assessing me even as he grinned. “Maybe it’s because they’re not my dreams but really your dreams. I’m just the messenger.”
I had no answer for that, and didn’t even try.
He strained to stifle a yawn and covered his mouth with one hand.
Jillian broke into my mental wandering. “It looks like the professor could use a nap before dinner.”
Not only had I noticed how tired Walter looked before the dream narration, but it had been a long story. I had also forgotten my dinner and concert plans with Jillian. When I looked at her, it seemed as if her body was poised to jump out of the bed, a brief look telling me she was ready to go eat.
“Yes, that does sound good,” Walter said. “Would you mind asking the nurses to hold my dinner? I’m much more tired than hungry tonight.”
Jillian and I agreed. We each hugged Walter as he got up to move to his bed. We said good night, though it wasn’t even five o’clock yet. It seemed most likely that he would sleep for the night, judging by the angle of his eyelids and his languid rise from the chair.
As we walked to the car, I wondered aloud if the excitement of the dreams was taking a toll on Walter.
Jillian offered a low and measured response. “At eighty-seven, he could fully recover from the stroke and still pass away quietly.”
And He Healed Them All: Second Edition Page 15
