by Jay Parini
Everything was dissolving. I was moving but unmoved, flying but still.
Without the ability to control my experience, I began suddenly to float, swept into a vertical movement as I rose into and through the skies above me, my soul unleashed. I sailed through the first heaven of blue rock and black water into the second, where bright and tingling star-hairs dangled in an ebony sky. I brushed beside them and quivered with the shock of their cold heat. Then I passed the orange moon and moons beyond this moon, pausing only to look back at this good earth, its mountains and valleys, lakes, rivers, and deserts. I didn’t need those green fields of corn, the glint of rock faces, lush oases, palms, nuts, dates, men and women, children. I didn’t need the grand, gleaming Temple in Jerusalem, as I had fashioned one of my own body. In my father’s house are many mansions, Musa had told me our Lord had said, and this made perfect sense. I had many rooms for prayer, mansions of meaning, a tower from which I could sing out, blow the ram’s horn, shout: I will exalt you, God, my king. The heavens belong to thee. Praise to the many-layered kingdom within the kingdom of your making, the last breaking of the shell, the radiance that goes on forever and ever, this world without beginning and without end.
I spoke in Hebrew, the tongue of King David, my holy tongue. As David had humbled himself before God, so did I. I emptied myself, becoming nobody, nothing.
And rose—kept rising—aware of the separation of limbs, bone from bone, the disintegration of my soul into pieces, a scattering of self and skin, the fine dust of meaning shaken free, loose in the universe.
Neither width nor depth, up nor down. None of that made sense. Words—what are words? I write these for myself as a way to recall, but so feeble is each utterance and every phrase.
All language dissolves into silence, its goal. As the chattering streams descend into the sea.
I had not the slightest need for words this glorious day when I found myself in a crystal globe of light, and before the great throne of the Ancient of Days, which was not a throne but more an emerald dais. Choirs sang around me, such surpassingly beautiful but unfamiliar hymns, in a bliss of scented light, with green folding melodies, and louder than the brightest radiation, and with Jesus there as well as Mary his mother and my mother, too, and my father, and all dear friends of long passing. Oh Simon, Simon! He came toward me with his green eyes, and we laughed and maybe we sang and danced—I don’t know what happened in this flickering, unfooted and free.
It was all uncounted time and beyond measure. It filled me though I wanted to fill myself again and without quantity. I was satisfied yet still yearning, hungering. Eager yet full. I don’t know what this meant in ordinary hours and days, where I commonly dwelled, in the usual cascade from dawn into dusk, the rude passage into night. This was uncharted infinite and unrestricted time.
By the grace of the Lord my God dear savior, I rose and rose, and was met, and needed never again to think about life in the same way. Or fear the prospect of death.
“Go into the city,” said the Lord, kissing my forehead suddenly, though I didn’t see his face. Not this time. “Whatever you imagine shall be yours.”
My forehead was damp and burning as I began to descend into flesh again, into the world of human frailty and confusion, the counted hours. I found my footing again in the world of creatures, night and day, death and dung, the howling of wolves and goat bells and the sharp cries of children from dark windows cut from the red stone of Petra.
I didn’t want to leave and would have stayed in the third heaven forever. But it wasn’t possible, not yet. I knew that, but I would return, that much I also knew. Maybe often.
Now I would do as the Lord had asked, would humble myself before the world. Take on this flesh again, these pale body rags. I would fall to rise and to bring others, my dear brothers and sisters in the Christ, with me.
To rise and rise again.
Chapter Seven
LUKE
Walking with Paul, asleep beside him in caves, in leafy groves, in mountain huts abandoned by shepherds, in rank unspeakable prisons, I came to know him as a brother. He might be odd, yes. He was distinctly odd. Humorless and temperamental, unpredictable, even irrational. His temper could lick the night sky like desert lightning running along the far hills. He might speak at length in the most abstruse language, quoting passages from alien scriptures or the Greek poets—Ion of Chios. But I always felt alive in his presence, closer to the truth, called to that Messianic flame, to the breath of our Lord Jesus the Christ.
He was mad, yes. An irritant. But he saw things nobody else saw, and did things nobody else could do.
He told me about what happened in Petra, where he actually saw the face of Jesus, not just a haze or numinous glow but the features distinct and shimmering with, as he said, “a clarity of expression.” Soon after this experience, he rose through the ether itself into the third heaven, as Isaiah, Elijah, and Daniel had done before him, coming back to earth with quickened energy and without fear, a different man.
He walked with fresh courage into the pink city, visiting the nearest synagogue, which lay at the end of a cul-de-sac. And he was lucky: It was the Sabbath, and a dozen elderly Jews sat reciting prayers, bending in a helter-skelter fashion. “It was a gallery of disconnected supplication,” Paul said.
He sat among them, attracting little notice. Then a leader of the group, a rabbi in a purple caftan, with a curly white-and-yellow beard and wild red eyes, walked to the front of the gathering and read from the scroll. He had a melodious dark voice that filled the small room, although Paul doubted that his fellow listeners would know much Hebrew. (Their nodding and grunting could easily be misconstrued as understanding.)
A knowledge of the Hebrew scriptures was uncommon, except in Jerusalem. And even there most Jews preferred the Greek or Aramaic translations.
Paul stood as the reader continued his recitation, then—seeing that this impertinent visitor refused to sit—the rabbi paused to look down as if to say, “May I help you?”
A tall man stood and shouted at Paul, “Sit down!”
The rabbi continued, and Paul waited patiently until he finished. Then he walked to the front of the chamber and stepped onto the wooden stool, where he said, “I am Paul of Tarsus, a Hebrew, born of the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee by affiliation. I was educated in Jerusalem under Gamaliel.”
This statement brought everyone to attention.
“I come as a messenger of Rabbi Jesus.”
This was an unfamiliar name, but they had no trouble imagining that some new and popular rabbi would have emissaries. Any number of them had come and gone over the years, and most seemed harmless, afflicted with enthusiasm for some obscure text or charismatic teacher.
“Have you heard of Rabbi Jesus? If so, stand. I shall count.”
Nobody stood, of course.
“Ah, this is unfortunate. Yet I bring good news. A great rabbi was born from a maiden, Mary, in the city of Bethlehem, a son of the House of David, from the tree of Jesse. His learning was great, and scholars of the Temple revered him. He was a messenger from heaven and spoke about a New Covenant between God and man. The Law of Moses remains in place, but it has to be understood in the light of this fresh covenant. Jesus announced a new heaven, a new earth. He was the promised Christ. As we just heard from Isaiah: Our God shall give a confirming sign. Look out, for a young maiden will give birth to a son, and you will name him Immanuel, God-within-you. Immanuel has come in the name of Jesus. He was arrested in Jerusalem, fastened to a cross by nails, crucified under Roman authority. Within three days he rose to new life in a heavenly body. He walked among his family and friends. And he brings us all to life, as we—like him—learn to trust in God.”
There were gasps and some derisive laughter as well. It must have seemed a fabulous tale, moderately well told.
“I don’t think I impressed them,” Paul said to me much late
r. “I stuttered quite a lot and my throat felt dry. My knees grew soft and quivered. I was not heroic.”
He went into the western part of the city, where poor Jews sheltered in tents, and managed to make a little money by mending leather goods. His dexterity in this craft would increasingly prove useful, a skill in high demand wherever he traveled, and he managed to acquire funds as necessary and gain respect among ordinary people by stitching seams. It would be a few years before he had the inheritance from his father that allowed him to finance his travels and missionary work with considerable ease. And Paul always liked the idea of contributing to his own sustenance. “A man who supports himself lightens the roof above him,” he said, quoting Ion of Chios.
A week later he returned to the synagogue, determined to speak more clearly and forcefully, even to win their hearts.
“Their faces turned in my direction,” he recalled. “One of them, a man of astounding height, approached me. His eyes drilled down into mine. He said I should leave or he would pitch me through the door, then step on me. At once, I appealed to the elderly rabbi in his purple caftan, who stood to one side. He nodded, then told everyone to be still and patient, quoting wisely from Deuteronomy: Love ye the stranger, he said, for you were once strangers in Egypt. With courage, he invited me to the front of the room for what he termed ‘a final statement.’ ”
Paul stared at the assembly, tongue-tied, frightened.
“Do say whatever you wish,” the rabbi said. “This is your time.”
Paul spoke, but it was, he said, “as if I must propel the words through a thick gauze.” After a pause, during which he surveyed the room, he said, “I come, as I have said, in the name of Rabbi Jesus, who was of the tribe of Jesse. He is lord of heaven, seated next to the Ancient of Days, his dear father. He is the Christ.”
“But he was crucified!” a man shouted.
They would know that according to Deuteronomy only an outcast beyond the pale of redemption would be executed in such an ignominious and shameful way: A man hung on a tree is cursed by God.
“But he rose from the dead,” Paul replied.
This drew laughter from the back of the room. Several heads shook in disgust.
“There is more to say,” Paul said, lifting each word like a heavy stone. “The end of history approaches, and Jesus has shown us the way to enlightenment, a peaceable kingdom. We shall live there together, all of us, Jews as well as gentiles.”
The rabbi said, in sonorous Hebrew, “Yemot Ha’Mashiach.”
Paul understood: The “days of the Christ” approached. Yet nobody but Paul understood what the rabbi had said, and I suspect nobody cared. This talk about the end of times maddened and amused them in equal measures. Had they not heard all this somewhere before?
Taking Paul by the arm, the rabbi led him to a door at the side of the room, saying, “You have the gift of the spirit, but the proper time for your message hasn’t arrived. You must go quickly. Petra is dangerous. Someone will kill you if you remain, believe me. But I will pray for your safekeeping.” His bloodshot eyes narrowed and he said, “Go!”
Paul had no wish to fight with the Jewish community in Petra, and even less of an inclination to die before his work had properly begun.
“I shall write from Jerusalem,” he said. “But what is your name, sir?”
“I am Elah,” the rabbi said.
Three men moved toward Paul and the rabbi, and Paul understood the precariousness of his circumstances. Seizing the moment, he slipped into an alleyway behind the synagogue and ran to a thoroughfare, where he fell into a broad stream of people. The crowd absorbed him nicely, folding him into their flow. Paul had a gift for hiding in plain sight and made use of it now. When it was safe, he gathered his few things and left the city along the rose-dark valley, disappearing into the dusk.
He set his mind on Jerusalem.
* * *
The visit to Petra, with its ruckus at the end, agitated Paul. Yet the Lord had urged him to carry forward his mission at whatever personal cost, and Paul would never shrink from that commission. He knew that the soil of God’s kingdom would moisten, grow fertile and sweet in the spiritual waters that heaven poured out. Before he took this message into the wider world, however, it seemed wise to gain approval from Peter and James, the Pillars, in Jerusalem. Their consent would lend an air of authority to his undertaking.
He found a caravan moving north and, as before, hid himself in their company. These nomads who carried a variety of precious goods along the Silk Road would accept him as part of their cargo, and for only a few coins. That was good, but there was a danger in this as well. Paul knew he could easily be knifed, robbed, his body dropped along the roadside. The vultures would remove all evidence that a human being had lived and moved in this body. The bones themselves would turn to dust and sand before long, and there would be nothing left of Paul but his soul.
He survived the journey, crossing the Jordan at dawn one day in a raft, feeling himself at home in Palestine, although he knew that nobody would welcome him. The important question was, would they murder him? He must get to the Pillars as quickly as possible and make a case for himself. And then depart.
Peter was the first disciple of our Lord, a man who had walked with him in Galilee and Judea. Jesus had loved him, and Peter knew the teachings well, in their many iterations, and had seen the risen Christ more than once. The Way depended on him for counsel and direction, and many considered him the final authority. Yet James, the brother of Jesus, refused to grant Peter so much power, having closer ties to the Lord than his other brothers—Jude, Simon, and Joses—who considered Jesus a madman whose activities and death had brought only shame to the family.
The ironies here did not escape Paul, who knew that James had come late to the realization that Jesus was God’s son. Apparently after his return to life, Jesus had kissed James on the forehead and urged him to carry the mission forward. You are my brother, Jesus had said, and you will speak for me now. James repeated this in public, and it was widely accepted, although not by the disciples who had actually walked beside the Lord in Galilee. By now, most of them had scattered to distant parts of the empire, and their stories remained unobtainable. This was a pity.
But James was very much present and had considerable sway in Jerusalem circles. Even by his outward habits and appearance, he conveyed his authority and uniqueness. He refused to cut his hair or eat meat or drink wine. He never married and forswore carnal relations of any kind. He wore white linen tunics that had darkened with sweat and grime over the years, and he never washed them. They trailed him like clouds of soot. He went into the Temple every day to pray for the sins of his fellow Jews (gentiles were not his concern), and his knees resembled those of camels, enlarged and knotted with gristle. He smelled horrid, like onions that have softened into moldy pulp, as was evident from Paul’s first meeting.
James believed that his brother taught that trust in God was impossible without the active pursuit of justice in the world, and he repeated his favorite saying: “Faith without works is dead.”
In the course of years, he wrote many letters to members of the Way, and these had been collected in a book that continued to circulate, although James and Paul would repeatedly clash on points of principle.
“Why do I so dislike James?” Paul would ask, with a sigh.
I pointed out that even those in the Way who revered James as the brother of Jesus considered him peculiar and prickly, possibly an impediment to the Kingdom of God. He spoke in a thin, reedy voice without the usual manly registers. His broken-toothed smile failed to inspire confidence or put anyone at ease. It was said, in disdain, that even the poor refused his alms.
Peter, on the other hand, had poise and grace. He connected to those around him in ways James could never do in a thousand centuries. Peter had been the favorite of the twelve, although James disputed this, saying his brother l
oved John above the others. (John was conveniently silent on this matter and had not been seen by anyone in several years, having retired to a remote island far from Palestine.) Jesus had certainly encouraged Peter at every turn, even if his dear disciple frequently misunderstood the point of his teachings and had actually denied his affiliation to Jesus during the last days.
Now Peter devoted himself to efforts on behalf of the kingdom. He led gatherings in prayer, and would commonly speak after the holy meal, often at length, with an eloquence that astonished those who heard him. All who wished to lead a gathering in the city sought his blessing as confirmation of their stature, and this eventually became ritualized, with a laying on of hands.
Paul approached James first, having caught sight of him in the street.
“I am Paul of Tarsus.”
“I know you,” said James, coolly.
“I’ve spent three years in the desert, and met Jesus twice.”
“You’re a sinner, and I shall pray for you,” said James. “Do you keep the Sabbath? Moreover, do you really understand the importance of Sabbath-keeping?”
“Is it so important?”
There had been stories about Jesus and the Sabbath that did not convince Paul that it weighed significantly in the mind of our Lord.
“Did you really ask me such a thing?”
“Your brother would gather food on the Sabbath to feed his disciples.”
“You have been misinformed.”
“I want only to serve.”
“Speak to Gamaliel. I remember seeing you in that school. He is one of us now. But he may not be glad to see you. You murdered Stephen.”
“I have changed direction,” he said.
James studied Paul as if a strange new planet had appeared in the sky.
“What do you want?”
“I want to follow in the Way of our Lord.”
“Give everything you have to the poor,” said James, without conviction. “Pray for forgiveness. Go home to Tarsus. Observe the Law that has been given by God through Moses.”
