Through the years, I had attempted to offer some options for building a system on which to base a virtuous life, as Aristotle called it. I showed my students that the various, and often sharply opposed, viewpoints we studied in class all boiled down to two questions: What do you value? And how do you sort between your own competing values? In answering those questions I had relied much more on the intellectual heritage of the college than I did on religious or biblical foundations. This left me with more of a philosophical framework than a compelling passion, and changed no one’s life, including my own.
On a Tuesday in March, not long after Walter’s death, a young man met me after class and asked me a simple question. We had been discussing various approaches to violence and war in class that day, and, as usual, I had danced in and out of several answers, with the intention of encouraging those young minds to examine the options and form their own beliefs.
Randy Hamer, a pale nineteen-year-old with hair cut close on one side and hanging to his collar on the other, looked at me with his one visible eye and asked, “What do you believe?”
I gathered up my folder of class materials and my tablet computer and prepared for my usual evasive maneuvers to avoid directly answering that common inquiry. My justification for this practice was that I didn’t want these young, impressionable students to adopt my beliefs just because I could make a good argument. It was better for them to form their own beliefs, so they had something to take with them when they had forgotten what we discussed in class and even the professor’s name.
As Randy followed me from the classroom to my office, where I had office hours to keep, I found myself faltering in my usual “what really matters is what you believe” speech. Something was interfering with that ready response, something perhaps about the way that thin and intense young man attended to my words, even as we wound our way through streams of students and faculty flowing to and from classes.
“But what about your personal beliefs?” Randy persisted, as we reached the third floor of the creaky old building that housed the philosophy department. One of my colleagues passed us in the thin corridor outside my office trying to pretend he wasn’t listening to my response. I caught his eye and he picked up his pace, surrendering his attempt to capture some sort of personal commitment to truth from one who had long avoided getting pinned down.
I stepped through my office door and stopped myself from reasserting that Randy had to form his own beliefs. A look into that one big brown eye in his expectant, face and the intensity of his persistent questioning hinted that this young man was looking for real answers, not just an opening in my system that he could use to argue against me. Walter and his dreams climbed out of my memory and into my cluttered office.
I motioned for Randy to have a seat in one of the little circle of chairs in the corner, not content to speak to him across my broad, paper-laden desk. He slouched into an armchair and dropped his backpack to the side, pushing his hair out of the way and revealing that he really did have two eyes. I dropped my folder and tablet on the corner of my desk and resisted checking email before sitting down in a chair facing Randy.
I asked him a question to see where he was starting from. “What’s your church background, Randy?”
That seemed to wake him up, like a poke in the ribs. He raised his thin, dark eyebrows. “Well, my parents made me go to the Methodist church all my life, but they never said I had to believe any of what I was taught there. It was pretty hard to figure out what they believed there anyway, one Sunday school teacher saying one thing about God and the preacher saying something else. The people who made the most sense to me, even if I disagreed with most of what they said, was the Young Life group at school. I liked the kids there so I hung out with them and listened without arguing.”
I couldn’t tell if Randy was customizing this answer to appeal to me, or to project a more intellectual image of himself. But I decided to tell him about some changes in my faith, inspired by Walter’s dreams.
After I finished describing who Walter was, and then doing my best to concisely portray the extraordinary dreams, I could see Randy fading backward under the weight of incredulity. Having already decided to take this risky direction, I pushed further and asked what he was thinking.
He shook his head so that his long bangs fell down over his eye again. “I can’t believe it.”
“Which part don’t you believe?” I hoped for some divine inspiration to help me communicate the reality and power of Walter’s experience.
“No, it’s not that I don’t believe what you’re saying.” He appeared to waver for a moment. “What I’m having a hard time believing is that I had this dream a couple of days ago, that an old professor I didn’t know was going to show me these pictures of something he’d discovered. And when I showed up at his office, in some building I’ve never been in, he told me he couldn’t show me because the things he had discovered were hidden in his dreams.”
Stunned, I checked that my mouth wasn’t hanging open.
“Wow,” was all I could say. My lips and tongue had suddenly gone dusty dry.
I looked hard at Randy, checking to see a twitch or twinge revealing a joke, uncovering a deception. But he looked concerned, like he was afraid I was going to keel over or something.
I laughed, all of this stunned disbelief feeling strangely familiar to me.
“Why does everyone around me get these dreams, but not me?” I said, without filtering the accuracy of what just leaked out me.
He shrugged. “What do you think it means?”
“Of course, it means that there’s something in Walter’s dreams that you need to see. But you’re asking something more than that, right?”
“Yeah, like, why me? Why now? What did I do? Or what am I supposed to do?”
I offered half a grin and cocked an eyebrow. “What are you supposed to do?” Though I had a cascade of questions, I had one answer for Randy. “I think you should listen to Walter tell about his dreams. I have most of his narration in MP3 files.” I waited for Randy to reject my prescription, but he sat as if waiting for more.
“I’d love to listen to them again,” I said. “Maybe we could listen together and talk about what’s in there.”
If you ever saw the look on a kid’s face when he asks for less than what he really wants and you offer all of what he was secretly hoping for, you can imagine the birthday morning kind of smile that flashed across Randy’s face . . . before he ducked back behind his cool college intellectual facade.
He nodded. “Yeah, I think that would be good.”
I called Jillian at work to see if she had time for me to tell her about Randy. She was leaving her office, headed to her mom’s place, and then home. She suggested I meet her at her place to eat leftovers and tell her what happened. That sounded even better than my plan.
***
“I hate throwing away food,” Jillian said as she pulled a plastic container out of the microwave, shifting it quickly between hands and dropping it onto the counter. I carefully pried the lid to let the steam out without getting scalded.
“I know what you mean.” I let the condensation drip into the sink as I pulled the lid off all the way. “It comes from being raised by people who were kids during World War II.”
Jillian laughed. “My mom would be very quick to point out how that was impossible. She’s much too young for that to be the case.” She mimicked the protesting tone I imagined her mother would have used.
Filling our plates and moving to her kitchen table, we settled down to eat. But first Jillian pointed out something.
“You see how comfortable I am with you now? Eating leftovers at the kitchen table? Clearly I’m past trying to impress you.”
I patted her hand. “You never had to try.”
She grinned, rolled her eyes slightly, and actually blushed, resorting to eating instead of responding to my flirtation.
After a hot bite and a quick drink of water, she changed the subject. “So what d
id you want to tell me?”
Her question renewed my excitement over what happened with Randy and I replayed my meeting with him, forgetting about my food until it was plenty cool enough to eat.
“The plan is to get together once a week or so and listen to Walter’s recordings. I figure I can make some notes and even get some help from Randy for writing up the story in the dreams. He’s a good writer, one of those students whose work is a joy to read.”
Jillian sat with her hand over her mouth, shaking her head persistently. I felt like I had wowed her, but then knew I didn’t deserve any of the credit. All I did was take one small risk at mentioning Walter’s dreams to a student. I didn’t do anything to orchestrate the dreams of two people who would never meet each other.
“Remember how Walter said he thought the dreams were for you and me, but also for other people?” Jillian said, a honey-smooth hush tempering her voice.
I got another one of those chills up my back and wondered if maybe I should start getting used to that. I huffed a small laugh then leveled off. My attention turned to wishing Walter was there to hear about how his dreams would live on after him.
“So what do you think is in the dreams that Randy’s supposed to see?” Jillian had set her fork down and apparently forgotten her food.
“The same things that Walter saw, and you and I saw. That God loved people so much that, through his son, he had compassion on a whole motley crowd, received all who came to him and healed them all.”
Then I realized something. “You know, I think, if Walter and God have their way, I’m gonna start believing it’s true.”
Acknowledgments:
With so many rewrites over a long period, there are a lot of people to thank. First of all there’s my Dad who encouraged me with his enthusiasm for the early drafts. The original inspiration for the earliest drafts came from Mark Cornthwaite—someone I’ve lost track of by now. My biggest fans for the first edition of the published book were my sisters, whose encouragement helped keep me motivated to improve this story.
My lovely wife has paid the highest price for all the time and energy I’ve put into this, not to mention reading and proof reading early drafts, for which I’m extremely grateful.
Finally, I must thank Erin Brown, an able and accomplished editor, who showed me how to transform this book into what it is today. She deserves lots of credit for pointing me in the right direction on several issues. I recommend her services highly.
And He Healed Them All: Second Edition Page 20
