Time seems to pass slowly in as I recover from my latest soul journey, but time on Didumos keeps its own cadence. The sun rises and sets, the twin moons pursue one another across the starry dark, and one season gives way to the next. “As regular as clockwork,” my old daddy used to say of those whose routines could be counted upon from day to day. I tend to mark these days in the cave sanctuary infirmary by the appearance of meals, for I never cease to be hungry, and by my scheduled rehabilitation exercises. I wasn’t aware how wasted I became while soul traveling, for my body remained on my home planet, while my consciousness visited my companion’s home in that far distant galaxy.
Suffering in Paintings: Frida Kahlo, What the Water Gave Me, 1938, Collection of Daniel Filipacchi, Paris, France.
Epiona has finally allowed me a few visitors aside from Aaron and Michael. Today I’m meeting one of the families of the temple.
“What kept you gone so long from us?” the child asked innocently. Her mother interjected as she pulled her daughter away from the bedside, “Dear, it’s not polite to ask our Priestess about her health. If she wants to talk, she’ll tell us about her absence.”
Miriam smiled weakly at their nervous agitations and replied, “Don’t worry. I should talk about this. I’ve been asleep for a long time, due to a seizure. It’s a strange form of epilepsy, and it sends me traveling across the stars to another world.”
Odilon Redon: The Celestial Art, French, Bordeaux (1840–1916 Paris), 1894, Lithograph, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.
“Does your whole body leave Didumos?” “Oh, no sweetie. Only my mind. My body has been here the whole time.”
“Why didn’t you quit breathing?” “I suppose a basic part of my brain kept operating to keep me alive.”
“Oh, my goodness!” “I agree with you. This is an odd experience for me to understand also.”
“How do you remember what happened to you on your journeys?” “They seem like dreams on occasions, and other times they’re as clear as a bell ringing in the pure mountain air. You know how in the early fall, when the air is crisp and cool, the morning prayer bell rings sharp and clear?”
She nodded and Miriam noticed her curls, as the light of the air shaft above illuminated each one of her loops and swirls. Miriam followed those shapes with her eyes until she felt sick to her stomach, as with motion sickness. When her face revealed her discomfort from the sour taste on her tongue, the visiting mother said to her daughter, “Come, dear, say your goodbyes to Priestess Miriam; we need to take our leave and let her rest now.”
Miriam gave them a weak smile, “So nice of you to pay me a visit. Thank you.” “Goodbye and get well soon,” the child said.
“Yes, dear. God bless you.”
“Goodbye and god be with you, Priestess Miriam,” her mother said as they left Miriam’s bedside.
Hellenistic Funeral Stelae, Woman with Servant, marble sculpture, Greece, possibly Delos, 2nd BCE, J. Paul Getty Museum
Epiona came into the room. “Is anything wrong?” Miriam grimaced, “I have a nasty taste in my mouth.”
“Are you regurgitating part of your last meal, or does it taste like bile?” “More like bile, actually.”
“Spit it out, Miriam. What’s bothering you?” “Spit what out?” “Something is inside of you and needs to be expressed, so tell me about it.”
“It’s not about me, but about my companion and her life on earth.” Epiona sat on the edge of the niche, which was carved into the cave wall of our winter sanctuary. The mattress in this sleeping recess offered some comfort against the cold stone ledge, but neither she nor Miriam were paying attention to the amenities or the lack thereof at the moment.
Epiona used her relationship skills as much as her healing arts in her profession as a healer.
“You know I can tell when you worry over something or some person. Your eyes get this far away look, they cloud over, your brow furrows, and your nose even gets narrower. When you start twisting up your lips, both Aaron and I really get worried. Those are my signs to push the calm cup on you more, and Aaron begins his own particular ministrations, I would imagine?”
Epiona raised one eyebrow as if asking a question, without actually inflecting her voice into the question form.
Miriam stared at Epiona blankly, taking a moment to realize she hadn’t fooled anyone around her at any point in time.
“So, all of you knew something wasn’t right with me all the time?” “Of course, what it was, we didn’t know exactly, but we knew you weren’t your old self. The old you was always open and voluble, but lately you’ve been secretive and silent.”
“Out of character, in other words,” Miriam affirmed. Epiona replied, “We hardly knew you anymore.”
“Oh, my. And here I thought I was managing.” Epiona shook her head slowly, “No, not hardly, but we love you and we’ll get through this together. You need to trust us with everything, and not just what you think we can bear. Also, no matter how crazy it makes you sound, you also have to tell me all about your experiences, for they might have a physical reason behind them.”
“Epiona, I know you’ll think I’m crazy, but I’m certain my mind—my consciousness—leaves my body and travels to a distant world called earth. There I share the body of the one I call my companion. She is also a priest of her world’s god and like me, she also has a seizure disorder. Only she never travels beyond the stars. I journey with her for a while, then I make my way back home across the path of stars between our two worlds. After a while, some stressor here on Didumos sends me back to her world once again.”
Epiona mulled this over for a moment and asked, “Are you sure she’s not aware of your presence?” “I’m never sure if she knows I’m with her or not, but sometimes I seem to be in charge of her body, while other times I’m just along for the ride.”
“That’s interesting.” “You don’t believe me.”
Asclepius, the Greek Healer
“I didn’t say that. When I say “I find it interesting”—it’s a phrase we healers use when we contemplate the possible options for a diagnosis. Think of it like the sentences, “We’ll know more once we run some tests,” or “We’ve called in a specialist from the Central Healing Temple to consult on your case.”
Miriam laughed at Epiona’s serious recitations of the healer’s delaying tactics. “You mean today you have no idea what’s causing this strange malady of mine?”
Epiona gave Miriam that look healers from time immemorial have given their patients. She dropped her chin, and with bowed head, she fixed Miriam in the eye: “Miriam, you must hear the truth and deal with it. No, I don’t have any idea now, but I will not give up trying to find the solution. I will put my best efforts into this problem. For now, trusting in the healing power of the god who loves us and protects us is our best medicine. We’re safe inside the winter sanctuary cave for the duration of the season. Remember, our holy writings proclaim
“In you I take refuge, In the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, Until the destroying storms pass by.”
Miriam nodded tiredly. Epiona set her pillows at an angle. “Sleep now. I’ve elevated the pillows. That should keep the bile down where it belongs. Rest and we’ll talk after the midday meal.”
“Lower Niger Bronze Industry,” with eight chameleons with spirals, which refer to concepts of time and the ancestors. Smithsonian Institution
As Epiona left the room, Miriam’s exhausted body slipped into sleep. As her body recovered in a deep sleep, Epiona pondered their conversation. “What if I’m trying to make this diagnosis more difficult than it needs to be? I could be searching for a needle in a haystack, but a huge tree trunk could be obstructing my view. My teachers in the healing temple believed the simplest answer was often the best answer. As one often said, ‘You look for the obscure, but fail to find the obvious. If it were a snake, it would bite you. Why make something harder than it needs to be?’”
Pouring herself a calm cup, Epiona sat in a comfortable position on pillows piled in a corner of the infirmary. Closing her eyes, she inhaled the fragrance of the cup, thanked the god of healing for wisdom and compassion, and offered the first sip in thanks for god’s gifts to healers everywhere. With the second sip, she asked for insight into Miriam’s special needs. She held the cup a bit longer, thanking god for the blessing. Then she drank the rest of the cup, sip by sip, with an expectant attitude.
When her cup was drained to the very bottom, she carefully set it down, closed her eyes, and allowed her mind to clear. Thoughts, of course, wandered in, but she acknowledged them and let them go. Each time, she returned to a clear mind, until the errant thoughts were fewer and fewer. Finally, when her mind was clear, she saw her friend as a shimmering light traveling among the stars and making a circuit between Didumos and the strange world called earth.
Anonymous Treatise on Comets, Flanders, 16th CE
Awaking from her reverie, Epiona thought “If comets have designated courses amongst the stars above, why do I think my dear friend’s soul journeys are so impossible? I should trust the ancient wisdom handed down from the faithful of former days:
Our god heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds. God determines the number of the stars, And gives to all of them their names. Great is our god, and abundant in power; With understanding beyond measure.
Rising from her pillows, she plumped and straightened them. She would leave them ready for the next visitor’s time of silence. She passed along the gift of hospitality by sharing the presence and mystery of the god who knows us better than we know our own selves. After all, she has a healer’s heart, as well as the healer’s gifts.
On my world of Didumos, the twin moons above our planet always chase each other through the night skies. Our ancient stories, once told around the campfires of our nomadic ancestors, tell of lovers who snubbed the old gods. This angered these deities, so they gave these lovers an eternal place in the stars above all of us to remind future couples of their need for supernatural power in their daily lives. Today these old tales are mostly forgotten, relegated to ancient myths and legends. Many regard these accounts as quaint relics of our distant history. Our young people ask, “What do those old stories have to do with our modern world today? Why would I waste my time on them when I could study something important, such as science, business, or even a trade?”
Mohammad Bin Rashid Space Centre, Dubai replicates what can be seen from the surface of Mars, across the UAE desert skies.
The stories or myths of old help us to relate to one another and to understand our world today. Stories help us shape our understanding of the world in which we live. Stories also create a new world, a universe in which we can make sense of the nonsense of our own dysfunctional environment. Some of our stories can be true in the sense they represent actual events, with the names and locations changed to protect the innocent or the guilty. Moreover, some of our taller tales can even be “true” in the way fiction seems genuine, for it reliably represents the world as we believe it is. Otherwise, the story wouldn’t seem real, and the characters wouldn’t come to life. We most likely wouldn’t finish a book that didn’t have a well thought out setting or fully fleshed characters. We’d set it aside and seek another, better book.
Apollo and Daphne, Piero del Pollaiolo, c. 1441, The National Gallery, London. The Greek word for laurel is daphne (δάφνη).
People have been telling stories for as long as they’ve had the capability of speech and the curiosity to ask why. Many of our old stories and myths seem to answer the ancient and eternal question of “Why?” I’ve always imagined a family or a bond group relaxing around a bright fire pit after a long day’s journey, with the dark blue sky and a bright star field above them. In the flickering yellows and reds, which light up their faces, a curious child asks, “Why do the two moons always follow one another across the night sky? Do they ever touch?”
The story we tell is from our ancient times, when our people believed in many gods. If we were good, the gods rewarded us, but if we failed to honor the gods, we were punished in some way. The two moons, who always chase the other across the star filled sky, were once two lovers. The high gods wanted each of them for their own enjoyment, but the lovers ran away. Because they chose one another, rather than the honor of the god’s love, in anger the gods set the two into the sky where they could pursue each other forever. Their punishment was to never meet again.
A young child doesn’t have the wisdom or the years of experience to know why the moons can never meet on Didumos. The oldest ones of our people carry the memories of our elders, who handed down the memories of their old ones. This ancient wisdom now needs to be handed down to a younger generation, who will confirm it by their experience over the years. These are the traditions of our oral history and the stories of our lives, by which we make sense of our world and how we live today.
Courting Scene, Greek Red figure drinking cup, Attributed to the Briséis Painter, Signed by the potter Brygos, Circa 480-470 B.C.
What is true about this story in fact is the orbits of these two moons are so different, they never can catch each other. One rises and sets faster than the other, which is not such an early riser and is on a higher trajectory. They aren’t on the same path, but we can’t tell this with our unaided eye. Another truth is we all need the supernatural power of god in our lives. If we were telling this story for the first time in this age, we wouldn’t speak of a punishing deity. The god of all grace and mercy draws always draws people into god’s loving presence, whereas the old gods used retribution and reward.
When we think of love today, both on Didumos and on Earth, we more often think of two people or two lovers. We rarely think of those who love themselves enough to be open to others. Some people do this because it’s their job, such as beauticians or therapists, but others do this because they are kind and good at heart.
Some days I just put the phone on silence…
“Miriam, wake up woman! It’s time for breakfast.” Epiona swept into my room and lifted high a steaming pot of the wake-up cup.
I inhaled its fragrance, as the fog cleared from my mind. “What? Already? I was having the strangest dream.”
“Wake-up cup first, eat something, then talk.” “You’re bossy this morning, Epiona,” I grumbled.
She laughed at my misery. “You need sustenance. You haven’t had solid food in months. It’s time we got your stomach started on something light. Eat. Now.”
“Grr. Are you always this mean in the morning? What’s this all about?” “Look, Miriam, everyone, and I mean, EVERYONE, wants to visit you. I’ve had it up to here!” She signaled with her hand at chin level.
I nodded in sympathy. I would have laughed, but Epiona wasn’t in the mood. “I see. Well, how about this afternoon I see Michael, one other, and Aaron?”
“As long as you don’t overdo it.” “No, short visits only, no business, just a meet and greet. Assurance of my presence.”
“Too much too soon and you won’t get well. I need you to get well.” “I need to get well. The visits will help. Their prayers and reassurances will be part of my therapy.”
“Miriam, you know what’s going to happen. You’ll end up reassuring them, encouraging them, and even though they came to help you, you’ll help them instead.”
“Epi, I know. This is the natural order of our life together. If I were on my death bed, our people would still seek out my help and comfort. This says more about them than it does about me. After all, who takes care of the healer? And who takes care of the priest but another priest? If a few of our people can care for me, I’ll be glad. If the rest need my care, I won’t be surprised.”
“How can you go on like this day after day?”
“Epi, some people you treat aren’t going to get well because they won’t change their diet or lifestyle. They won’t exercise, sleep more, or take the herbs you prescribe for them. Yet you treat them anyway. You keep reminding them of the better life they could have if they make changes. I do the same thing, even though I know some aren’t going to do anything differently than yesterday. They keep hoping for a different outcome, however, as crazy as that seems to you and to me. My companion on earth says, ‘I haven’t got any magic twinkie dust to make things change for you. You get to do this with god’s help, or you can try to do it all on your own.’”
Magic Twinkie Dust
Epiona cleared her throat, saying disgustingly, “Sounds like this magic twinkie dust is really god’s help to me.”
Miriam laughed at her response. “That’s my companion, all right. She’s not always the sharpest pencil in the box, but she gets the message across to her people. If they expect her to change them, they’ve confused her with god. That means they have a misguided impression of who she is. After all, the day she thinks she can change them, she has a problem, for then she has a god complex.”
“So, tell me again, what was this dream you had? I have other patients to see.”
“Oh, yes. I dreamed about my companion who had gone grocery shopping. She was feeling good about herself, having just had her hair cut. Winter had returned to her land, after a false spring. She was wearing a heavy black knit sweater, black pants and a bright pink turtleneck sweater. No makeup, but she had on antique green glass earrings with a silver leaf motif. She was walking tall with a renewed spirit in her heart.”
“Miriam, why was what she was wearing important?”
Sipping from the wakeup cup once again, Miriam replied, “If you let me tell my story the way I remember it, you’ll understand.”
“Your stories tend to be long and overly detailed,” her friend admonished.
“They tend to take the necessary time. People today are in a hurry to get nowhere to do nothing that is of no importance. What’s more important than knowing another more deeply? We say our world lacks intimacy, but we won’t put in the time to gain the currency of intimacy, nor will we reveal ourselves to another in any depth.”
“Get on with it, Miriam. I have people to see!”
Dreaming and Shopping
“Alright already! My companion was studying her grocery list on her phone when she pushed her cart down the end of an aisle. She stopped short, for she almost ran into a huge black cart full of bins.”
She said, “Oops! I didn’t mean to wreck you. I was paying attention to the phone, not to my driving. I don’t want to cause a big pile up like what’s happening in the snow storm on the northern interstate.”
The store employee laughed. “No harm, no foul. I couldn’t help but notice your earrings as you turned the corner. The light glowed on them and they’re really beautiful.”
“Thanks. They were handmade in Greece from antique glass. I got them from a European dealer who visits our annual church conference. I got two pair, so he gave me a discount for the purchases.”
“I used to work for a corporate retail group up North. I’d have people come in and ask for discounts all the time, like their neighborhood markets gave them. The best I could give them was 10% off if they signed up for a credit card. This was the company policy. You get tired of telling people NO all the time, especially the same people all the time.”
“I can understand that.”
“I like this job. I get to pull the grocery lists for people, then they come to the store, and we take it out to their parked car. I once worked at a big discount club pulling orders for businesses. This is more fun. Besides, I get to chat with people like you. Those are really amazing earrings. I even have blurry eyes, but I can tell they are quality.”
“Thank you.”
“My name’s Terry. If you ever want someone to shop for you, I’m your man.”
“Thank you, Terry. I’ll remember that.”
Epiona asked, “Miriam, were you sure you were dreaming this?”
“I’m pretty sure I was dreaming. Why do you ask?”
Dream Sequence: Noodle Brain
Epiona pursed her lips and took a deep breath before speaking. “It doesn’t have the odd disjunctive quality of a dream sequence. It’s more of a straight narrative, as if you were relating an event, in which you were a participant or an observer.”
Miriam paused, taking in this information. “This is a concern. I don’t think we need to share this with everyone. I do need to share it with Aaron.”
“I understand. I’ll be limiting your visitors while we run more tests. For now,only Aaron may visit you.”
“Thank you for this, Epiona.”
“Rest now. You need more than you think.”
As I lay back upon the cool pillow, my thoughts turned to my companion’s world and the noted observer of her planet’s life from a prior century:
“The events of life are mainly small events — they only seem large when we are close to them. By and by they settle down and we see that one doesn’t show above another. They are all about one general low altitude, and inconsequential.”
I thought of all the many small details of all the individuals who have touched me across the many years of my life: my bond relationships in my childhood, my mentors in my early priesthood, as well as my peers and my parishioners. All of these lives have woven the tapestry of my life. More importantly, some have been there to mend the rends and flaws every work of art acquires across the years.
Along the way, I’ve returned the favor, I hope, and have stitched up the ripped, and mended the worn and torn. No tapestry is too common for god’s care and compassion, so we who’re called to be the hands of god in our worlds do this healing work on god’s behalf.
I find a deep sleep coming over me. I wonder what Epiona put into my morning wake-up cup. If I remember this when I wake up, I’ll have a chat with her. This must be her way of ensuring, “Rest now. You need more rest than you think.”
At least I can have sunshine in my cup, even if I have to wait for it to appear outside.
The dark days of late autumn are leading up to the winter solstice on this planet I habitually visit. Back home on Didumos, I have no idea what’s going on. Are we counting down the days to our spring festival, or have I been gone only a short period of time, so my own world would still be encompassed in darkness and deep snowbanks? My soul journeys never keep a congruent pace with Didumos time during the time I experience on earth when I visit my companion.
I’ve never understood this strange elongation of time when I’m with her, for when I snap back to my own world and reenter my time and space, I discover only moments or minutes of time have passed. This shrinking of time is like the child’s game of yo-yo played on earth. The object spins out to the length of its string, and with a quick tug, snaps back in an instant. Oddly, however, it can spin at the end of the string for awhile before it’s brought back by the controlling hand.
When my companion has distorted time experiences, her healers say she’s having petit mal seizures, perhaps with concurrent complex partial seizures. In other words, her brain imagines this experience, but they claim the time distortion isn’t really happening. My healers also believe I only imagine I’m moving between two distant worlds, but this is just a misfiring of my brain. I think it’s real and not a delusion or just a burst of overexcited energy concocting an elaborate fantasy in my mind. After all, how would I know such things exist in this amount of detail? People don’t invent characters and events out of thin air, even if they sit down and try to do it. Everything begins in some form of reality. Authors do this, but I’m a mere priestess of the god of all grace and mercy. Writing space fiction isn’t my calling.
Words I write…
The dark days of December never treat my companion well. When everyone else in her world has ratcheted up the merriment for the holiday season, her moods typically grow darker. I can’t tell if this is due to the lack of daylight or if she doesn’t enjoy the commercialized experience of the sacred holiday. On waking in the morning, she pours herself a cup of coffee, raises the window shades, and waits on the sunrise. She measures the quality of the light daily, noting how pale and weak the rays appear, as they struggle to pierce the darkness of the former night.
“More coffee,” she mutters to herself, as she turns her back to the weak and hapless dawn. Getting started before midmorning might not happen, but her body will get going. In the winter, she’s like the seasonal poinsettia plant, which needs thirteen to sixteen hours of complete darkness to bloom. My companion is more a full light plant, who blooms best in the bright light of summer. Her low mood won’t lighten until a few weeks after the solstice, for then the days are noticeably longer, brighter, and warmer. Even if the temperature outside is below freezing, the light still has a touch of the hope of springtime within it.
Arkansas State Capitol Building and Christmas Tree
When I search her mind, I find no childhood trauma or disappointment from the dead of winter. Instead, the season was always a time of magic, mystery, creativity, and generosity. The traditions of season might change or evolve, but life went on. One of my companion’s earliest memories dates from her kindergarten years. Her mother went flying out the front porch door, as the screen door banged behind her. Running down the sidewalk, her bathrobe flew open behind her, and she carried high over her head a tinfoil wrapped, rum soaked fruit cake she’d baked the night before. Her mom was trying to catch her daddy before he headed off to work, so she was waving and screaming to catch his attention. That’s big excitement for a child.
In later years, this same recipe morphed into cookies with bourbon, so their larger circle of friends and connections could all have a sweet taste at Christmas. In the South, folks give food for Christmas even now, when everyone has plenty to eat and then some, for people still remember their ancestors’ shortages in the Christmas of 1864, the year Sherman broke the back of the Confederacy with his march to the sea. From Atlanta to Savannah, Sherman led the Union troops on a devastating total war against the hostile insurrectionist population. This campaign destroyed the railroads, farms, industry and the moral support of the Southern Whites who led the secession from the Union.
My companion’s daddy would mete out whipping punishments to his children with the phrase, “You want to cry? I’ll give you something to cry about.” My companion learned quickly not to transgress, for whippings not only hurt her body, but also her soul. Her brothers weren’t quite so quick, or they weren’t so lucky. Maybe they had to learn the hard way.
As one confederate soldier wrote home in a letter, “It isn’t so sweet to secede as (they) thought it would be.” Violence teaches us to remember the harm done to us and to use violence to solve problems in the future. The trauma of past generations gets passed down into future generations, unless at some point, we can name it, claim it, and let go of it. If we can’t identify our pain, we can’t claim it or release it.
Van Gogh: The Good Samaritan, oil on canvas, 1890.
My companion has worked for over two decades with faithful church people on identifying the “good neighbor.” If a person looks and acts like you, most people agree, this person is a good neighbor. The only problem is her holy text contradicts this definition and most church people aren’t reading their holy text. We have the same problem on Didumos, where our temple adherents ignore the parts of our ancient wisdom that contradicts their own wisdom.
We both know faithful attendees who have closed hearts and minds, and we both struggle to call them “faithful” in their practice, but then we have a meeting of our minds and realize, this is why god called us to god’s ministry. Someone must speak the truth in love, or they will never see the neighbor in the poor, the hungry, the lonely, the stranger, or the orphans. If we can only see the neighbor in the one who looks like us, we’ll never see the common image of god in everyone. Once we lack compassion for all people, we’ll lose compassion even for those who are imperfect among those who look like us. We may not be alike on the outside, but we’re all the same on the inside, for our basic building blocks of life are no different from one person to another.
This shared trauma has been passed down from generation to generation. My companion is only six generations from the Civil War, but she has friends who are only four generations distant from that great war. Families gather and tell their histories over and over again, so the next generation remembers who they are and so they can carry the collective memory on to the next generation. This is how memories become part of our familial DNA, with the traumatic ones marking us for ill and the good memories tempering those harsh ones. The sad truth is trauma sticks to us harder than gum from a hot sidewalk sticks to our good shoes, while positive experiences seem to slide off our memories like water off the back of a duck.
We grow accustomed to the normal of whatever environment in which we grow, so this may be why women in my companion’s family all marry men who drink, and all the men of her family have had drinking problems. Or at least, this is the common family wisdom. My companion has noticed however, when the men quit drinking, their women usually start imbibing more heavily or they pick a new woman who has some other dependency problem.
Novelty sparklers can burn up to 1,800 F—hot enough for 3rd degree burns or to set lightweight cotton clothes on fire.
Some of her family never were reconstructed completely, for they resisted reunion with the Northern States. Her father was the usual spoiler for the festivities around Independence Day. The rest of the family would get excited about cooking out and fireworks. Her brothers always looked forward to any event that had fire and noise, while food and people got my companion’s attention. All of them loved the blazing sparklers, for they could write their names against the stars in the deep, black skies of summer.
This and hand cranked ice cream always meant summer to her. All the neighborhood children took a turn at the churn, but when the old wood and aluminum contraption nestled in an aluminum ice tub got too hard for even the oldest to crank, the adults took over until even they were tested beyond their strength. The children, hovering around, salivating and dancing as they anticipated the sweet icy dessert, would cheer when the bowls and spoons appeared. When the top came off, they delighted to see the magic which had happened. They would have rushed the container, if not for the grownups admonishing, “One at a time! Don’t crowd your mother—wait your turn.”
Vintage Uncle Sam poster for Independence Day
Never did she handle fireworks, however, for “You’ll blow your fingers off or lose an eye,” her daddy always warned.
When she was older, she groused, “Don’t be such a spoilsport. It’s the Fourth—Our nation’s birthday.”
“NO true Southerner ever celebrates the fourth of July—that’s the day Vicksburg fell to the Yankees.”
“Daddy, that war was over a long time ago. Let sleeping dogs lie.” “Damn Yankees should have left us alone.” He spit the words out as if they were poison in his mouth.
“Daddy, if you can’t celebrate the fourth, can you still cook us steaks for dinner? Mother and I want steak, baked potatoes, and salad. You cook the best steaks of all. Besides, you can use the new gas grill you bought for my birthday. Please?”
The writing side of my studio
He smiled. He never could resist his only daughter, or his sweet wife, or the call of the grill. He was always in his element over the grill, armed with the water bottle to squirt out flare ups and the tongs to turn the meat at the precise moment. Give a man a mission and get him out of his funk. He would do things for love he would never do from his firmly held political beliefs.
My companion’s daddy suffered from right wing hysteria over fifty years ago. People today, who think far right conspiracies are recent appearances or have manifested out of thin air, have no historical memory or haven’t studied history. Some of my companion’s father’s harmful ideas were passed down from his ancestors, but the John Birch Society only fed and nurtured those unfortunate beliefs.
Questions we ask ourselves, but don’t want to hear the answer.
So, the question I’m left with is why my companion was able to reject these ignoble ideas and choose another way. Perhaps she lived in the time of rebellion, for her generation was going to rewrite the rules and do it their way. After all, they were the largest generation numerically until death began to winnow their numbers. Millennials are now the largest generation, with Generation X right behind them. I wonder if her father, who was born before the Great Depression, felt as if his life was already slipping away from him, for his first born was already in college, his middle child would leave in another year, and the baby boy three years after that. When faced with a crisis, many choose to double down on firmly held beliefs. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Rather than spending their days locked in fierce debate, in the kinder, gentler past Congressional representatives came together at the holidays to collect toys for poor children. Here, U.S. Senators Joseph F. Guffey of Pennsylvania (left) and D. Worth Clark of Idaho assembled their haul in 1939.
My companion, on the other hand, is one who holds certain moral beliefs, but also can change directions at the drop of a hat if circumstances require. As a teacher, she had to read the room, monitor for her students’ comprehension, adjust her teaching technique, and continue the class, while reading, monitoring, adjusting, and teaching some more on the fly. As one old teacher once said, “When in a hole, don’t dig deeper.” She had to change her presentation if she wasn’t getting her information across. If students didn’t learn from one way of teaching, she had to find the path to open their minds.
My companion has always had a sense of justice, not like the courts who sentence wrongdoers to prison, but the moral righteousness of one who walks with god. At an early age, when she questioned the necessity for separate drinking fountains for the different races, she was told, “This is the way it is.” Asking why got her nowhere. If the adults can’t or won’t answer questions, then she would find out on her own.
I suppose that made her a dangerous person, for god speaks to people who want to hear. All they have to do is open and read the sacred text, handed down from the generations of the faithful:
He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? –Micah 6:8
I can drink endless wake up cups, steaming hot and wicked sweet with sticky globs of bee nectar and cream. The mere act of holding the cup close to my face, so I can smell the fragrance of this healing brew, helps to bring me back to life, even if I’ve had a sleepless night. I wish I could slide into the deep sleep of the river of forgetful nothingness as soon as my head hits the pillow, but I don’t have this gift, unlike my companion. For some reason, she and her dear daddy would find this healing dreamland as soon as they pulled the covers over their bodies. They were known to fall asleep in a heartbeat, while the rest of their family tossed and turned until they wore themselves down and sleep overcame them.
When grief hit me, I began to sleep all the hours of my days and be awake all night long. Like the old people of my world, my days and nights were all mixed up. I didn’t want to face people in the ordinary course of time, and I found few people who wanted to see me in the dead of night. I liked it that way. I was a hindrance to those who cared for me, however, for my schedule was a log lying across the river of the course of life. I was an impediment to the free-flowing river of their busy lives. Mostly I hated to be cared for, since I had spent my life caring for others. The ones caring for me were also uncomfortable in this turning of tables, for they were used to my caretaking of them. Somehow, we both sensed life was out of order from the way “things ought to be.” Soon we each gave up trying and settled into our separate griefs: I to mourn my changed circumstances and they to transfer their relationships to a new priest.
We both were grieving the death of a relationship, and I had the added grief of my loss of health and livelihood. While my calling didn’t change, my ability to serve as a priestess in the temple wasn’t possible any longer, for the daily stressors of my work would send me on a soul journey. Grief is a distinct form of trauma, which my companion experienced as swinging from numbness to hysteria, as if she were on a roller coaster. Indeed , she’d always avoided this form of self-inflicted terror at the state fair and all other high flying, gut wrenching carnival rides. This should tell you her experience hasn’t been easy.
Some people like drama all the time, but she had her fill early on. Not that life should be boring, but seeking chaos isn’t in her bones. Yet this is the way of grief. Our ancient, wise ones claim grief has stages, but they also understand no one walks the path to recovery at the same rate or in the same direction. Some of us go in circles in the middle part of the journey, while others race toward the end, and then run backward to the starting line just as the finish line is in sight. The race isn’t to the swift, but to the one who does the whole work of grieving, for a life unobserved is a pain still carried into the next generation.
Just as the great city of Plusion wasn’t built in a day, but took generations of citizens to add to its size and honor, we need to honor the time and effort to rebuild from a significant loss. My companion always was in a hurry to finish a project and move to the next one, for she always had a sense time was short. Indeed, in the great scheme of life, we have but moments to live, breathe, and make our mark upon the world. Her two tests of the time are “What can I do now to make a difference for the better? And will what I do take away my God given salvation?” If she can be a force for change and act for the good of God, she worries not, no matter what others may think. She does get frustrated with people who worry with what “other people will think about these actions.” Do it now and do it for the sake of god, for that’s what a person of faith is called to do.
“Don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today, for tomorrow may not come.” This is a common wisdom saying to both our worlds. Of course, the wits in both places say, “Why don’t we wait and see if the sun comes up tomorrow before we make any decisions?” My companion in her younger years was more frustrated when she met these change resistant people, for she was ready to make a difference now. “Now” should have been her middle name, but even after two decades in ministry, her eagerness to move was still faster than the average congregation’s willingness to change. Sometimes she thought she was a pancake flying straight off the frying pan and the people were maple syrup straight from the refrigerator. Of course, she was always ready to make pancakes and eat them too, while others were still making up their minds about the morning menu. I suppose some folks just aren’t that hungry.
Having spent some time soul journeying with my companion, I now understand the meaning of the question: “How many people does it take to change a light bulb in the church sanctuary?” The answer is, “Don’t you dare change that light bulb! My grandmother gave it as a memorial to her dead husband three years ago.” Grief makes people do strange things, like hang on to things that don’t work anymore.
Picasso: Crying Woman
We hold on to things that don’t work or have lost their usefulness because we haven’t grieved their loss completely. We don’t give ourselves permission to grieve or to show our emotions. For some reason, my companion’s people are ashamed of tears, especially the ones shed in public, but also the ones shed privately.
“Don’t wear your heart on your sleeve,” her mother admonished her repeatedly. “Grow a thicker skin. You tune up like a baby.”
My companion would burst into a fresh shower of tears and run to her room to cry some more. My companion has always had a soft heart, which enables her to cry in movies, and when Rod Stewart sings love songs. She cries for the poor, the cold, and the hungry, even when she’s in a warm sanctuary and can go to a warm, comfortable home after the worship service. Her mother’s admonitions never seemed to change her true nature or her true heart.
When will we stop loving the ones we lost? Never, for they live on in the world beyond us and we hope to join them one day. We will stop grieving for them deeply as the days go by, but the loving never stops, for as our ancient scribes have written:
Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end;
as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.
For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part;
but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.
Little Red River, Arkansas
Time is a river. We can either stand on the banks to watch it flow past us, in which case we never change, while time and events move on. Or we could join the river itself, even if we fear the flood overcoming us. The river will wash us down the stream of life, along with all the other flotsam and folks who’ve dared to dive in. About the moment we think we’ll go under, a log or a branch floats by for us to grab. Grief is part of this river also. If we don’t join it, we never get over our grief. At least we’ll be so wet, no one will see our tears.
If we join the river, we keep moving even when we don’t feel like we can put one foot in front of the other. Sometimes it’s best to lie back and float, so the river can carry us downstream. This is contrary advice to people who are used to being active agents in their lives. They don’t want to “give up” being productive and useful. Yet just as sometimes a land needs to lie fallow for a time in order to regain its health and productivity, so also after a tough blow, a person needs time to recoup their spirits and their energy. My companion always recommended people take a year away from church leadership positions after a significant death in their families. More than one leader has thanked her for this time to take care of the family and their grief. On Didumos we have extended bond groups who organize healing opportunities for grieving persons. No one is ever alone for a year after a death, for we have those who come to visit, sit, bring food, and talk.
I haven’t allowed my people to come near me, except for Aaron. Somehow, I don’t want to be with people and talk any more than I must, since the healers have me assigned to a talk therapist, an exercise therapist, and a regular healer. I almost wish I had my companion’s communication device, so I could set the alarms on the calendar. This is more complicated than I can keep in my brain. If my companion were here, she’d say, “I only have one brain cell awake, and I need more caffeine to get another one to spark!” Some days there’s not enough caffeine to pull me out of the lethargy which marks my persistent grief. Then again, I think the healers have switched out the beans here to the decaffeinated cup, since they claim even too much of the wake-up cup can bring on a soul journey.
Starfish Story
How long does grief last? It depends on the situation and the person. My companion took a whole year to inter her daughter’s cremains in the columbarium at the garden of her church. Those cremains will always face the food pantry where the poor, who are her people, come for help. Whenever my companion thinks of the poor, great tears well up in her eyes and flow down her cheeks, for she grieves not only for them, but also for her daughter. If she couldn’t save her daughter, she spent her two decades in ministry trying to save the world: one starfish, one person, one church, and one community at a time. She knew she wasn’t saving anyone, but she did make a difference in many lives, one at a time, for only god can save a life.
When we ask how long a grief lasts, my companion can point to her country’s Civil War. The southern states, who depended on slave labor, are now right to work states, and have low wages compared to the northern tier states. They also are in the forefront of “voter suppression,” as well as lack of health care availability. These problems have their source in the Lost Cause narrative, which claims the noble southerners were overwhelmed with the North’s superior resources of manpower and supplies. Since the war was fought in the southern states of the Confederacy, the land was destroyed, and farming tools were rare as hen’s teeth. Poverty stalked the land, and the defeated soldiers came home with maimed limbs and scared minds.
This grief was passed down from generation to generation, for each carried the memories of the preceding one’s pains of loss and suffering. “One day the South will rise again!” If my companion heard this whispered prayer once, she heard it more often as an alcohol fueled shout. Anger for perceived past harms and denial of their own complicity in making war on their own nation hasn’t yet been transformed into the later stages of acceptance in the process of grief. For many, the Lost Cause is a whirlpool in a river, sucking them down to drown in its depths.
DeLee: Autumn Afternoon, Arkansas
Yet one who has reflected on a well lived life, including its attendant sufferings, understands the river well, as one of my companion’s favorite poets, Ralph Waldo Emerson, writes in “The River:”
And I behold once more
My old familiar haunts; here the blue river,
The same blue wonder that my infant eye
Admired, sage doubting whence the traveller came,—
Whence brought his sunny bubbles ere he washed
The fragrant flag-roots in my father’s fields,
And where thereafter in the world he went.
Look, here he is, unaltered, save that now
He hath broke his banks and flooded all the vales
With his redundant waves.
Here is the rock where, yet a simple child,
I caught with bended pin my earliest fish,
Much triumphing, —and these the fields
Over whose flowers I chased the butterfly,
A blooming hunter of a fairy fine.
And hark! where overhead the ancient crows
Hold their sour conversation in the sky:—
These are the same, but I am not the same,
But wiser than I was, and wise enough
Not to regret the changes, tho’ they cost
Me many a sigh. Oh, call not Nature dumb;
These trees and stones are audible to me,
These idle flowers, that tremble in the wind,
I understand their faery syllables,
And all their sad significance. The wind,
That rustles down the well-known forest road—
It hath a sound more eloquent than speech.
The stream, the trees, the grass, the sighing wind,
Change is a shock to our system, whether that system is our physical body, our spiritual body, or our community body. I once had a friend who lost her little finger, the one the earth people call the “pinkie finger,” and the grief she felt was equal to the loss one of our warriors felt after losing both legs in the heat of battle. No matter how many people tried to tell her it wasn’t even noticeable, or it was a minor loss, or she should be glad she lost only this tiny part of herself, she continued to fixate and fulminate over its absence.
“Can’t you just hide it in the folds of your tunic?” well-meaning people asked her. “Can’t you just ignore it, since it’s not useful for anything anyway?” others asked her.
“You don’t understand a thing!” she cried and raced out of the room. “This is my body! These are my feelings, and you aren’t listening!”
Some of us don’t want to deal with feelings at all, especially the bad ones, and sometimes not even the good ones. We want to keep all emotions at bay, rather than rock the boat. Unfortunately, this isn’t how the currents in oceans work, much less the currents in the systems of relationships: the spiritual body, the physical body, and the communal body all have streams pushing and pulling against one another. When we deal with grief, all three of these bodies are in play, so the currents are crashing into each other. We often need an experienced captain to guide the ship of our life through this maelstrom, or we risk crashing on the rocky shore instead. In the faith tradition, we call these persons spiritual guides.
My companion and I have both journeyed with the distressed, the dying, and the bereaved for most of our lives. Not everyone can do this with joy, for grief is a heavy weight around the heart and the home. On earth, business must go on, so employees often get only three days leave to handle a death in the family, but most people aren’t quite right until the first anniversary of the loved one’s death. In truth, the living can’t take a whole year off to process their loss, but it’s a significant blow to their physical, mental, spiritual, and communal relationships.
I hear from many who say, “It just ripped my heart out. I couldn’t feel anything. I was numb to the world. Food didn’t taste good anymore, and I love my food. I’ve never missed a meal!” My full, mature womanly figure is a testimony to this, but I blame my figure on eating the compassion foods brought to ease the grief of the newly bereaved, whom I’m visiting to bring spiritual comfort. I lived out the lesson I learned at the temple during my training days: “Always follow the food, for there you’ll find people who are in need of comfort and cheer.”
My companion can identify with these sentiments. Some days she thought, “I’ve been sleepwalking from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day, and all the while, I’ve been dead to this world from mid-October when my daughter died.” I can say at least sleepwalking is an improvement from being dead to this world. At least it shows movement. I’ve known people to take to their couches and eat snack foods by the bucket in a vain attempt to stuff or snuff their pain. They feel it as “hunger,” but their pain is really heartbreak.
Burne-Jones: Portrait Of Lady Lewis
Life gives us some mini moments of resurrection when we are in the midst of death. Just because we prepare for our loved one’s eventual demise doesn’t mean we won’t feel the loss. Even if we’re estranged from them, we’ll feel the loss, for now we have no physical means to set our relationship right again. When a person becomes a Lost Cause, and can’t or won’t make changes in his or her life, then we need to grieve for them, let them go, and believe god will make the final healing possible for them. If god shows compassion for the sick and the diseased in this world, then god’s healing concern would extend to the next world also. “Peace, peace, to the far and near,” says the LORD; “and I will heal them.”
My peace I give to you.
Most of us are stuck in what “I can do,” for we are self-actualizing people, used to imagining and becoming our best selves. “If I conceive it, I can achieve it,” is one of the great positive affirmation texts not found in any holy scripture, but often preached from many pulpits, great and small. We tend to think our salvation is a choice we make without god’s assistance. If we don’t consciously make this decision, we’ll be forever doomed. This is an all or nothing scenario, which appeals to dualistic thinkers. They will say, “Turn or burn!”
My companion has quit hitting her head against the wall when she meets these people. They don’t have the skill set to engage in a literate conversation. She says only, “If god has compassion for the sparrows of the fields and feeds them day by day, I’m sure god won’t let a human soul caught by despair or illness be burned for all time.” These dualists stare at her blankly, for this thought never occurred to them. Planting little seeds, which one day might take root, or might be choked out by weeds, is what she does. She also pushes against the currents of hate fomenting the storms of division on her world. She may be just one wave pushing against a tsunami, but standing up against greater odds is part of her prophetic calling. Others will follow.
Hokusai: The Great Wave
What happens to us when our world begins to change and the safe and sure we’ve always known begins to fall apart? On Didumos, we experienced a sea change when our society no longer revered the old gods, but began to worship instead the god of grace and mercy. The old gods rewarded and punished people haphazardly, according to their whims, but the god of grace and mercy offered love generously to all peoples. We still celebrate the old festivals, of course, since the people enjoy the celebrations, but they’ve been renamed and revisioned to fit the new deity.
In politics, the same happened when we moved from the old kingdom order to the new republic with elected officials. Many of the aristocratic houses retained leading roles in the government, but others from the merchant classes rose to prominence to balance their power. We have yet to build a society where everyone is treated equally, and the laboring classes still don’t have a strong voice in making the choices which guide our nation.
Likewise on earth, my companion’s country has pursued its goal stated in its 1776 Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” If they aren’t there yet, it’s because they’ve set such a high bar to attain and some segments of the society want to hold on to power, rather than to share it.
Her country and her church broke apart in the mid 1800’s over the question of slavery. The Southern states seceded because they wanted to keep owning people as property. The Methodist Church split into the Methodist Episcopal Church South and North because the pastors in the South wanted to keep owning human beings as property. The Lost Cause mythology arose out of the South’s defeat in the Civil War, the freeing of the slaves, the Reconstruction, the Jim Crow laws meant to oppress black people, and the State’s Rights movement, which continued to suppress civil rights through white supremacist activity.
The Destrehan Plantation in Louisiana is the oldest documented plantation in the lower Mississippi River Valley.
This isn’t a pretty picture of the Lost Cause, but my companion had an upfront view of it, since her ancestry included plantation owners, Confederate soldiers, Ku Klux Klan members, and John Birch Society members. It’s not a long hop from the 1960’s calls to “Impeach Earl Warren,” to the current day calls of the Capitol Hill Insurrectionists’ “Hang the Traitors!” as they built a gallows on the grounds of the nation’s Capitol for the leadership of our country, except for the former president. Every one of these are cut from the same cloth.
When a nation undergoes a sea change, almost everyone agrees it’s “going to hell in a handbasket.” My companion lives in a time in which her people are divided, just as they were in the old Civil War days, over 160 years ago. This ancient saying may have originated as “riding to hell in a handcart or in a wheelbarrow,” but alliteration and imagery have always trumped the ordinary. Southern folks know how to tell a good story, rather than merely delivering the dry goods. After all, if we pay attention only to the great things, but ignore the details, we can lose our battles. This is why we proofread, for as my companion says, “Spellcheck doesn’t fix idiocy.” Her mother was a teacher and the difference between “its and it’s” was drilled into her brain from a young age. Just because the computer suggests a word doesn’t mean its artificial intelligence knows it’s the right time to use it correctly. Then again, she was born before predictive spelling.
One of her friends who was frustrated with the word suggestions was distressed at the sea change it represented. “I hate this! Why does it keep popping up with words before I finish typing?”
“It’s the predictive spelling feature. You can turn it off in settings,” she replied.
“Settings?” he said, as his coffee was cooling off. “Who’s got time for that?”
My companion silently sipped her coffee. She’s learned not to rip the phones out of people’s hands and fix it for them. They need to learn how to make the changes for themselves, or ask for help. Some people want life to remain the same and never change. Others are griping about this small change, when they’re really going through some bigger transition in life, one thrust upon them. Sometimes they’re dealing with the consequences of their own acts, but haven’t come to grips with the accountability that comes with it. They have to deal with those greater changes first before they can cope with the minor changes life keeps presenting daily.
As my companion ages, she notes how quickly the world is changing. Back when her daughter was young, she depended on her to help set up the VCR and the cable on the television set. Now she can set up her own modem, firestick, email, and printer with internet access. Maybe “necessity is the mother of invention,” for she doesn’t have others to do it for her. She takes it as another learning opportunity to keep her mind fresh for the next new thing.
One reason she keeps learning new things is the memory of her dear departed father, who kept every bit of his healing knowledge till the end of his life, but couldn’t figure out how to use a new remote when he and her mother got cable television for their home. Alzheimer’s was robbing him of his past memories and Parkinson’s was taking his ability to learn new tasks. Soon he’d forget everyone he ever knew, and his wife would become the lady who came to kiss him every afternoon at 4 pm.
When the installer came to put in my companion’s tv at one of her parsonages, he told her she’d need to use two remotes for her tv: one for the channels and one for the on/off switch.
“Why can’t I have all those functions on one remote,” she asked him.
He paused before replying, “You could, but most people your age find that difficult to manage.”
My companion gave him a moment of silence, then replied, “I had that on my old remote where I used to live, so I think I could manage that task today. Set that up for me.”
“Whatever you want.”
My companion thought, “I’ll keep up with the new things, even if it kills me. My guess is it won’t, but instead, I’ll get new brain cells. I’ll be in better shape, since I’m losing cells daily!”
It wouldn’t do for my companion to tell this installer to go to hell in a handbasket right now or give me one remote, for that isn’t considered good form on her planet, or mine for that matter. Even if someone insults your intelligence or assumes you’re just like everyone else, we who choose to follow god are expected to give mercy and grace to all. We might want to scream, or slap them into god’s loving presence, but we have a higher calling. People expect more of us, we expect more of us, and god expects more of us. Most of the time we priests and clergy wonder why others don’t hold themselves to this same high calling.
Breaking Waves by Katsushika Hokusai, 1847 (Freer Gallery of Art)
Perhaps it’s because we’ve undergone a sea change in our own lives, for we’ve given ourselves unreservedly over to living for god and not for self alone. When our life has a higher purpose that fits into the calling, we know what ever changes happen are not outside the providence of god. Some people find this current world to be a living hell, a place of torment, the destination for all handbaskets in my companion’s existence. We don’t have a comparable place on Didumos, but there is a place of nothingness, where only shadows exist. Anything that once was will never recognize anything else that once was, so it’s an ultimate obliteration. Only the shadows of the former things exist there, and nothing knows nothing in that no place.
Perhaps on both our worlds, the worst place to be is in that living place where we find ourselves separated from god, when we live separated from god. Some find the world painful and numb themselves, so the world can’t harm them. Then they can’t feel themselves, the presence of others, or even the holy god. They’re isolated, removed, and living like strangers in a foreign land. They don’t recognize their loved ones anymore, and their loved ones have difficulty seeing them too. They get farther and farther from home, either their physical, spiritual, or emotional home.
This begins to feel like the hell my companion’s people speak about, and the chasm of the shadows we talk about on Didumus. None of these people know the joys of a life with god, but instead wander about separated and alone. Perhaps they find others of their kind, only to mass in crowds of angry, self-hating, negative mobs of energy. The most interesting aspect of this hell of shadows, when viewed from the world of the living, is how empty and godless it is.
If we see our world only through our own eyes, this hell looks terminal. Perhaps, this is to convince the faithful not to go there and to seek a life of reward instead. Yet, people quite often go against their own best interests, since we aren’t fully god or fully good. If we’re to have hope, and if god is fully god and fully good, then god must be steadfast in god’s love for us even when we turn from god. We may abandon god, but god never abandons us, for god’s steadfast love endures forever. Even when we enter our private anguish, god never abandons us.
My companion’s world is at the great Easter season of her faith. When her savior ate a last meal with his disciples, he said, “One of you will betray me.” These were his closest friends.
Every one of them was surprised and disbelieving, “Surely not I?”
Yet every single one of them ran away. One of them even accepted money to identify him. They looked on from afar as he died on a cross between two thieves. In his agony, he cried, “My God, why have you forsaken me?”
While god’s steadfast love seemed to have failed in the short term, in the greater arc of history, that love prevailed, for “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.”
This is the message of the resurrection, that death has no more hold on life anymore, and the chains of sin cannot bind us forever. The cross breaks the chains of sin and death. The resurrection brings us into life and love. The steadfast love of god endures forever. This is the sea change that overcomes the world and brings it peace.
Icon of the Appearance in the Upper Room
Of course, as her savior said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
When we face a changing world, we can try to drag it back to the order and stability we once knew, or we can step out into the unknown and undulating waves of the future, confident our god is with us always. One way is to ignore the call of the future and the other option is to explore the excitement of the world to come. If we have faith in the resurrection, we can set out for worlds unknown. If we’re still bound by the chains of sin and death, we’ll try to keep our world the way we’ve always known it.
“Let go of it. It’s over and done. The cookie has crumbled. There’s no putting it back together again. What is, is. Take it or leave it, but there’s no changing it, no matter how much you want things to be different.”
I can’t tell you how many times my mother impressed this bit of wisdom upon me as I was growing up. Not that I wanted to hear it, of course. I wanted my life to be different. I wanted a pure white tunic that never got spills of food on it, but I wasn’t ever as neat as my close kin. My companion would call her my cousin, for she was my father’s brother’s child. Her hair was cold black, her skin ivory, and clear of blemishes. She always wore even the simplest of tunics as if they were royal robes. I often wanted to be part of her family, for they seemed to live larger and bolder than my own. Sometimes I dreamed I was their child, rather than my own parents’ child, but I knew better to hold on to this fantasy. We all have dreams of what we wish our lives could be, but as my Nannie so often said, “If wishes were horses, beggars would be kings.”
Picasso: The Dream
Letting go of desires is a difficult task for most of us, for we fight to control everything in our lives. Even as a small child, I fought until the last moment when I lost consciousness and slipped into the arms of sleep. I could feel my hold on the waking world loosen, and experience the moment I began my slow dive into the dark depths of dreams, which were my fantasy worlds. As much as I tried to resist, I could never stop this journey into the world of strange shapes and weirder associations. My daddy claimed it was “only my mind cleaning house of the accumulated debris from my daily life, so I wasn’t to worry my pretty little head about what happened in these dreams at night.” He was a healer, so he knew about these things, and I trusted him.
Still I would lie awake each night between clean, white sheets, which felt cool because my body hadn’t yet heated them up to the ambient temperature of our sweltering summer evenings. The windows in my room would be open both at the top and the bottom, in the hope a stray breeze might circulate. Hot moving air is better than stagnant air, which lays on a body like a wet and deep ocean. Even the ceiling fan wasn’t much help on those hot summer nights, but a small comfort was better than no comfort at all.
We never wore our full outer tunics for sleeping, but our lightweight undertunics instead, which we wore inside the home. Our outer summer tunics were short and woven with thin cotton fibers, much like the favored batiste of my companion’s childhood. Children’s tunics are plain cut and simple, but adult tunics can vary from the simplest to the most elaborate, depending on the individual’s station in life or their taste. Of course, in the doldrums of summer, many on Didumos abandon the outer tunics altogether, and some even air bathe in the “altogether” in the inconsistent or nonexistent breezes of the evening. This activity also separates the classes of Didumos, for the young and rebellious, as well as the poor, tend to do this in the public parks, while the moneyed classes have private homes with secluded grounds for this refreshing practice. On earth, nude beaches and colonies serve the same purposes.
When bedtime came in these hot months, I would lay upon my mattress, covering my small, round bottom with only a corner of the upper sheet. I’d pull my light summer gown up as high as I could, so every square inch of my thigh flesh would be exposed. My plan, every single sultry evening, was to remain as still as possible, for any movement would increase the friction on these sheets, and this would add additional heat to the cauldron in which I cooked.
As I lay stock still, I could hear through the open windows the sounds of our summer nights under the twin moons of Didumos. I spent my childhood at the healing temple near the Red River, in the great agricultural valley of our province. Because we have twin moons, which rise and set at different times due to their distances which are nearer and farther from our planet, the sounds and life of night vary according to their presence in our night sky. When both moons are visible, we have more light, sometimes as much as an evening twilight, so birds and small animals will awaken to resume their normal daily habits. Other times, both moons will leave our night sky altogether, so this dearth of light means a lack of life, and everyone and everything sleeps.
Normally, we see at least one moon chasing the other through the sky, day or night. Of course, in the fulness of the sunshine, we’re not able to see the moon, even though we know it’s there. Only toward sunset can we see the old moon leaving the sky and his lover running after him. There are occasions when the two moons seem to be together in the sky, even though we know they’re miles apart in actual space. Their appearance together usually portends high tides, severe weather, and storms everywhere.
Just as we can’t control the circuits of the two moons of Didumos, the weather, or other people, I could never control my sleep. Try as hard as I could, I could never hold at bay the one moment in which I slipped loose from the moorings of consciousness and fell into the well of sleep. I knew I was falling, for I always felt a faint twitch of my muscles just before I relaxed into the sweet bliss of the unknown dream world. Floating in this watercolor world of fleeting images and strangely lighted scenes always reminded me of visits to the harvest fires and carnivals of my youth.
I loved going to these traveling carnivals, for here were exotic colors and people who came from afar. They were the “greatest show in town” when they arrived. To be sure, they were usually the only show in town, but not much went on back when I was young, or else I wasn’t allowed to know about it. To journey into a dream at night was to venture out to the “greatest show in town,” so I don’t know why I resisted sleep so strongly when I was young. Perhaps I didn’t enjoy not being able to choose my evening’s journey, or what I’d dream, but more likely I didn’t want to miss out on all the grownup action in the still awake world.
When we dream, we aren’t in control of our unconscious thoughts. We may think we can guide our dreaming, but our dreams have a will of their own. As I’ve grown older, I find I remember fewer dreams, but those I do recall are significant messages for my waking mind to process. I often dream of a house, which needs renovation. Of course, the dream isn’t about an actual house, but it’s a symbol of my own self: my need for renewal or refurbishing of my mind, body, or spirit. I find my companion also has similar dreams, for she too seeks to renew or restore herself.
A home to restore and renew
In the times of great loss, we each need to restore and renew ourselves. Death, divorce, war, culture shock, or any great upheaval has to be dealt with, reconsidered, reframed, and renamed. There is no going back to normal after these things, for life is uprooted, rearranged, and made into a tossed salad that comes with anchovies. This is how my companion sees her world, whatever anchovies are. I guess they are unappealing, but at least we can gingerly pick them out of the salad and set them aside. If we can’t grieve the loss of the “way things used to be,” we’ll try to resurrect the dead body of the old normality from its moldering grave for years past any worthwhile hope that has gone from it. We’ll become as lost and dead as our yearning for the Lost Cause of Yesterday.
If we think we can reframe it, rename it, or pretty it up so it can be socially acceptable, we’re just trying to put lipstick on a pig. The pig may be wearing makeup, but it’s still just one step short of bacon. It’s never going to be a pretty girl. Once my ancestors fought a great war between powerful forces for control of our country. Tensions had been fraught for generations, for the leaders each had competing visions for Didumos. While each group believed their ideas were better, the underlying divisions would cause the separation of our nation state. As my old daddy said, “How could one nation exist, if part of its people were not free?”
How anyone could want to control the life of another is beyond my understanding, for if all of us are made in the image of god, how can some of us be slaves and some of us be free? They said the slaves were lesser peoples, on the order of animals, so they needed to be controlled. In fact, they claimed the slaves weren’t even made in the image of god, even though our holy texts were plain to state this truth. The truth never seems to get in the way of a firmly held prejudice, however, so this group overlooked our ancient holy texts and wrote their own. They looked to these texts and then to their weapons, and soon we were at war. Fortunately, they lost the war, but the battles persist, as others periodically take up their Lost Cause.
As for my dreams, I learned to embrace sleep as I grew older. I grew comfortable with my nightly slide into the nether world of dreams and fantasy. No longer did I hold on to this waking world, but I welcomed the abyss of sleep, as if I were folding into a lover’s arms. Perhaps sleep is a true paramour, who gives everything, and asks nothing in return, while washing the cares and woes of this daily world away. My days have always been like the two moons of Didumos, always chasing after the truth of one and pursuing the justice of the other in the twin circuits of our beloved world.
How is it truth to deny our holy texts and to write a version that suits our preconceived notions better? How is it justice to treat our fellow citizens as cattle or horses, which we buy or sell at will, and over which we have the power of life and death? How can we say we value life in one arena or one age, but fail to value the lives of others of the elderly or the lives of those in poverty? As our learned elders have reminded us, “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten in god’s sight. But even the hairs of your head are all counted. Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.”
DeLee: Rule of Life
Perhaps I understand my companion and her world to which I travel on my soul journeys, since they shared this common experience of civil war and reunification. Unity can’t be imposed upon human hearts any more than prejudice can be cleaned out by a good night’s sleep or a confession of the soul. Only god can remake hearts of stone into hearts of love alone.
My companion can sleep gently and quietly at night. She’s learned over the years to entrust her evening to her god, who never sleeps. At night I repeat her thoughts, “This was my day Lord, and I did the best I could. Tomorrow is another day. If you take care of tonight, I’ll help you with tomorrow wherever you need me.” With that done, she turns off her grandmother’s bedside lamp, settles down into the pillows, and within five minutes, she’s asleep. Not that I keep watch on her, but once a week her Fitbit activity tracker gives her an average of the time it takes to fall asleep. Epiona would call this quick descent into sleep, “Remarkable.”
What’s remarkable is how short and sweet is her daily summary. God knows her comings and goings, so she doesn’t list them for him. She did the best she could, and doesn’t apologize for her failures or ask god to bless her good deeds. Tomorrow is another day to love god and serve her neighbor, so god will open the way for that ministry. Sometimes it’s in the interruptions of her day she serves god best, and sometimes it’s when she’s on task. Staying on task isn’t always the best service. Rededicating your life to god every night is a promissory note for a good night’s sleep. When we wake up refreshed and raring to go, we pay it forward for god.
I always know when my companion has had a good sleep, for she wakes up singing. Then she raises the shades as she announces, “Let’s put some light on this subject!” As she laughs, she praises the new day and calls out for the coffee robot. There is no coffee robot in her house, however, so she goes to the kitchen to get the coffee pot going. “In my next life, I’m going to have a coffee robot, for sure.”
Perhaps my companion means she would accept having a relationship in her next renewal or phase of life, for the new normal won’t be like the old normal used to be. My new normal after the spring renewal rites certainly won’t be anything like life used to be, that’s for sure. I’ll journey into an unknown land, much like falling asleep, only I’ll be wide awake. I’m sure I’ll have a difficult time interpreting the sense of time, the images, the meanings, and the landscape of the places I’ll go, but I needn’t worry my pretty little head about it. It’s a natural process of life, this change and transformation, which I’ll undergo. I’m just glad Aaron will go with me and not just some coffee robot.
Epiona never fails me. I can always count on her to sing me awake, whether I’m in the mood for it or not. If I haven’t mentioned it before, I’m not my best as I rise in the morning. My daddy was always cheerful, unlike my mother, who needed at least two strong cups of the wakeup brew to bring her body back from the sleep of the dead. I was livelier back when I was young, but now I seem to inhabit my mother’s body, even though she lives eternally across the rainbow bridge.
“Let’s put some light on the subject,” Epiona calls out as she flips on the switch in my dark room. “Let’s not,” I groan and mumble, “More sleep. Less talk.” I bury my head under the pillow. “None of this hiding and moping, my friend. Today you join the world again.” “Noooooo.”
Epiona pulled the covers from over my head, revealing my bed tossed hair. Picking up a corner of the white encased pillow, she leaned over and spoke gently into my ear. I could feel her warm breath on my cheek.
“Miriam, you can’t sleep your life away. It’s time to face the world.” I turned over and sighed. I opened my eyes, looked briefly at her face, then I closed them again and sighed. “I don’t want to go anywhere, do anything, or see anyone, not even you.” “I know, but now is the time for doing, going, and seeing. Let’s start by sitting up. I have a wakeup cup for you.”
I suppose I’d do just about anything for a wakeup cup, and Epiona knows it. A little plumping of the pillow and adjusting of the covers, plus securing my upright position has awakened my sense of smell. The dark roasted beans with notes of chocolate and nuts waft from the heavy cup sitting on the bedside table. The fragrance of the caramelized sweet milk has a light scent noticeable just behind the heavier aroma of the drink itself. Whether I want to or not, I’m waking up.
If this is what the resurrection from the dead is like, if this is how our loved ones arise to the new life beyond the rainbow bridge, then death may not be so bad. I’ve been in the seasons of grief for too long, as has my companion. This last soul journey really took all my energy and emotional reserves out of me, for I experienced firsthand my companion’s shell shock and depression due to her daughter’s death.
Body Casts of Pompeii Citizens, 79 CE, Volcano Eruption
I was with her at her favorite NASCAR track in Texas, but she was decidedly subdued, rather than celebratory. Her daughter had died in October, so her visit in November was as if she were a dead person walking. She doesn’t remember much about this vacation, but staying home with her memories wasn’t an option. One’s child isn’t supposed to die before the parent does, because that’s not the natural way of things, but it sometimes happens that way anyhow.
Death ages a mother’s face.
Maybe some would have been angry at god, but my companion has always believed god is working for good in all things for those who love god and are called according to his purposes. The test of our faith comes when we have to live it, and not just talk about it. Anyone can talk a good talk, but not all can walk a good walk. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as the old folks say. My companion colorfully expresses this by saying, “Stick a fork in it and you know if it’s done.”
If god is going to heal us, this act could happen as a miracle, which her people define as an event beyond the physical or medical intervention of ordinary human means. God can also heal us through ordinary means, by using the talents and products of the healing arts and trained people. God can also effect perfect healing through the death and resurrection of those who are too ill to be healed in this life. We sometimes forget god brings about god’s work through god’s people, since we want to be the recipients of god’s special mercies and blessings. God can work both in hidden and open ways.
The people of faith always pray for healing, and trust god for the timing and the outcome. “Your faith has made you well,” our healers say. On my companion’s world, the physicians often trust science more, but many are learning to incorporate mind and body techniques as part of their art. They may one day even acknowledge the healing aspects of spirituality, since the body at peace with the world has more energy with which to heal itself.
If my companion’s daughter was too ill of mind and body to live in this world, the god of all grace and compassion would have mercy on her pain and brokenness. Some of our people and my companion’s people believe the body is a temple, or a sanctuary for our god. Some build very fine temples for worship, with great outward appearances, and these radiate in the sunlight. They’re photogenic, but they are closed to others, for they’re all for external show. They have no sacred altar inside, and nothing pure and holy lives inside. These temple builders like to keep the rules and regulations, for they claim this is a holy way of life and evidence of their faith in god. To please god, they reject anyone else who doesn’t live the same way. I asked the head priest of such a temple once, “Why don’t you spend more time in ministry to the people outside, rather than in enlarging your own temple?” He looked down his nose at me, and turned away without answering.
Our ancient elders say, “The potter shapes the clay into a bowl, but the inside is what makes it useful.” Most of us spend our attention on the outward life and neglect our inward life. We keep up our outward appearances, but neglect our inward development. We forget our “emptiness” must be filled before we can be useful. Most of us live our own outward lives well, but our inward lives starve to death. We fill up our days with activities and experiences because we don’t know who we are if we stop. In fact, because we’re empty, we’re afraid, so we return to whatever addiction drives us and makes us feel alive. We don’t recognize how it’s killing us, just as my companion’s daughter couldn’t see how her addiction was killing her.
In grief, the act of moving is the body’s gift to the spirit. “No, we won’t give up. You won’t lie down and die. You’ll get through this. Keep on moving, keep on keeping on.”
Laocoön and His Sons, Vatican Museum
“It’s not right, I tell you. I’m supposed to go before she does,” the old woman moaned in her rocking chair. “This isn’t how the world works. A parent dies first. The child buries her mother. This is the way it’s supposed to be!”
Her rocking and keening kept a regular rhythm. Her grief was inconsolable. Her life had been turned upside down.
My companion sat on the leatherette foot stool at the grieving woman’s side. She nodded in sympathy. “I know, it’s not right, Miss Mable. It doesn’t make sense at all. Accidents never make sense, and freak accidents like this one are beyond imagination.”
“How could the vacuum cleaner cord electrocute her? She plugged it into that outlet how many times. But this time it killed her? I can’t figure it out,” she cried, sobbing into yet another tissue, which joined the wet wads piling into her lap.
My companion took her hand to give her comfort. “Some things will never make sense to us. Bad things happen all the time. None of us on this side of heaven are immune to these terrible woes. I wish we we lived in a perfect world, with no tears or sorrow, but we aren’t there yet. I do know god is with us in the worst of times as well as in the best of times. He was there to receive your daughter with open arms and god’s here now to strengthen us in our time of grief. Let’s pray now for god’s power to be with us to comfort us and hold us close.”
For we who trust in god, our walk with others along the well-worn paths of grief helps to remember all of us will experience this affliction one day. We can’t ignore it. We can only make the journey. We can get angry or depressed about it, but we still have to take the trip. If we don’t follow the path of grief and work the steps, we’ll stay rooted in place. Like an addict, we’ll be stuck or habituated to our feelings of sorrow, anger, guilt, or despair. We need to make our crooked way towards acceptance. This journey has no set time, for everyone’s grief is different, and each one of us has different coping skills, which we bring to the journey. Those who have more experience with grief may pass along the route more quickly, especially if they’re intentional about the process.
I know a young woman who still has grief issues since losing her husband in a violent accident over a dozen years ago. I’ve met parents who kept a deceased child’s room “frozen in time” as a shrine for over twenty years. They’ve never repurposed this room. Widows will grieve for their dead spouses for five or more years, but men will bond again more quickly, on both our planets, for they’re used to having a woman around the home. How many workers have no life outside of their occupation? They grieve if they’re laid off or made nonessential, so they’re both “dead” and “alive” at the same time. They grieve for their way of life, for the change and disruption, and for the fear of a life set aside, perhaps never to recover.
My companion is a decision maker, so she wants an ordered world. She can alphabetize her spice rack and order her shirts by color in the dresser drawer, but she’s not in charge of the whole cosmos. She’s had to learn the hard way she isn’t god. Sometimes all you can do is “let go and let god.” For hardheaded and strong-willed people, this is difficult, but eventually everyone will get a big enough square peg and a small enough round hole, only to discover their tiny little hammer is to no avail. Then when push comes to shove, they too will surrender and “let go and let god.” At this point, she came to understand she couldn’t control other people’s acts or thoughts, but she could control her own thoughts and actions about them. As her daddy would remind her often, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink.”
God reveals god’s self to each of us in god’s own time and in god’s own way. We aren’t in charge of god any more than we are in charge of others. If some don’t find god in this life, we need to trust the mercy and compassion of god to reveal god’s pure love and saving energy to them as they finally see god, while they take the last step across the rainbow bridge. From there the allures of our world are so far behind them and the beauty of the full life with god is so visible ahead of them, they have another opportunity to choose god. While I don’t know how people would think in this environment, since I’ve never been there, I hope our minds would be transformed in these new conditions to come to different decisions. The wonder is why our minds fail to see the presence of god in this world right now, since we seem to be blinded to god’s invisible glories.
There are times in my life when I’m so exhausted from giving and going, that my pillow is more of comfort than any prayer. All I want to do is close my eyes in the blessed sleep of the dead. My old daddy would look over the rims of his thick lens, which were always sliding down his nose, sigh lightly and remind me, “Miriam, god knows what our bodies need. If it’s sleep, you’ll sleep. If it’s food, you’ll eat. And you’ll drink when you thirst. What we need to do is listen to our bodies and listen to god.”
We are in this together. We are not alone.
Sometimes I forget about this, especially when I get to taking care of everyone else and listening to their needs. Now, however, I’m taking care of myself, so I don’t have an excuse. Learning how to care for me is difficult, but what’s really tough is allowing others to help me get well. As my companion says, “Don’t rob someone of the blessing of helping.”
I’ve always been a giver, but now I’m on the receiving end. I hope I’m up to being gracious and generous to those who are part of god’s healing mysteries on my behalf, especially if they bring excellence cups of the wake up brew.
When I was a child, we played a game called Hide and Seek. My companion played this game on her world also. I wonder if it’s common to all places inhabited by living beings. When her child was a baby, she introduced the first form of this game as Peek-a-Boo. I’ve watched new parents on Didumos play it with their infants also, usually to the squeals of delights or rage, depending on the age of the child. At first, babies aren’t sure if the adult hidden behind the blanket hasn’t disappeared for good, but when the familiar face reappears, their tears change to smiles. I’ve never had my own child, so I can’t say if this is traumatic for children, or if we’re teaching them to trust in our return. I don’t have memories this far back in my own life and no children I’ve ever met can recall the days before they were verbal to tell me about this time in their own lives.
When we say, “out of sight, out of mind,” for a child this young, who doesn’t yet have object permanence, we’re naming the agony of abandonment when they see their loved one’s face disappear. Later on, after many repetitions of this game, they connect the disappearing and reappearing face with the constancy and presence of the person behind the cloth. Once the children begin walking, they progress to Hide and Seek. Everyone’s familiar with the game, of course, for one person is the seeker and everyone else goes to hide. The goal is for those who hide to make their way back to home base before the one who seeks can find them.
We played outside, but on rainy days, we would move this game inside our home, much to our parents’ consternation, as my brothers and I could tear about the house in the chase to base. Once when my daddy was playing with us, we kept running about the house looking for him, as he sat silently smiling in the corner chair of the living room. We passed him on several swift circuits around the base until he burst out laughing and this sound stopped us in our tracks. We were so busy running, we weren’t looking for him.
Sometimes in our lives, we think god is playing hide and seek with us, or god is hiding god’s face, in an unholy game of peek-a-boo. When god’s face seems hidden from us, we are sometimes focusing on too many other things instead. We can fill up our to do list with worthy acts for the benefit of god’s people, but spend very little time with god. This will wear us out and we’ll end up wondering why we no longer see the face of god anymore. We can chase the perks and privileges of intimacy with god—ecstatic experiences, mountaintop moments, and illuminating insights—all to find these are denied us because we want them too badly. We ask then, “Why does god hide god’s self from me?” I tell folks, “Were you seeking god, or the blessings of god? Did you use god or did you love god for who god is? What type of friendship do you want with god?”
I look up to the hills, from where my help comes
We can run from god, but we can’t hide. God knows our inner truth, our inner secrets, and the stories we tell the world. We’re foolish to believe we can hide from an all-knowing god, yet we still separate ourselves from god. When my companion was a young woman, she was estranged from her parents because of their generation’s support of the Viet Nam war, for it sacrificed the best of her generation. Her generation called it a quagmire, or a slog through quicksand. No one ever exits the sucking sands of war unless they quit struggling and relax. Quicksand is mostly water drenched sand, so if a body will float in water, a body will float in these sands also.
Most of us who engage in our various Lost Causes tend to fight harder for our side, rather than seek to make peace with our enemies. We want to avenge ourselves, but we should let god have the final say in these matters. For our part, we should consider the words of the ancient spiritual masters: “If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” Those who walked before us remind us always to overcome evil with good.
This choice of good over evil is a moment by moment decision. For my friends in the great cities below the Sanctuary on the Shadowy Mountain, and for my companion in her world, this choice may be reduced to a millisecond by millisecond choice. When our worlds seem bent on racing to the bottom of the cesspool, how do we people of faith keep from diving in to join them? My old daddy used to say, “If everyone is jumping off a cliff, do you think you ought to join them?” His operative word was Think. I’ve always been one to process my understandings through my feelings, so thinking hasn’t always been my best trait. However, my feelings tell me going along with the crowd would be the death of me and that ends my desire to follow the crowd.
If we have difficulty with discerning the hidden from the revealed in today’s world, we need a test to sort out the truth from the lies. Just because someone in authority says something today, doesn’t mean it’s true. What is truth? That is a good question, one on which I spent most of my Temple training years, as did my companion in her seminary training. Is the truth important? Yes, but how will we know it? That’s a whole body of study in and of itself, much too long for me to discuss, but my teaching elders loved to discuss it for hours at the temple. I can give you an example of truth in real life, however.
My companion and her soon to be husband were leaving Dallas, Texas, but were lost on the large highway loop around the city. Every quarter, it changed name, so they had difficulty locating their place on the paper map. In the early morning rush hour, fighting the traffic and low on her wake up cup, she was getting frantic, for this was turning out to be yet another lost adventure in the wilds of Texas. As the sun rose above the overhead concrete flyways, she noticed a green highway sign with the words, “Shreveport, La” written on it.
“I’m taking that exit,” she said.
“You can’t go there, Cornie, it’s not on the map!”
“I don’t care, that’s where we’re going; the sign says it’ll take us there, and I’m tired of going around in circles.”
“It’s not on the map.”
“I’m driving, don’t look at the map.”
The sign was true, the map was not. Which would you have trusted to be true?
Later in life, my companion was a member of a service club in one of the communities in which she served. Their Four Way Test was a guide for professional relationships, but I think it’d be useful for life in general also:
Is it the Truth?
Is it Fair to all concerned?
Will it build good will and better Friendships?
Will it be Beneficial to all concerned?
Of course, the sticking point on Earth and Didumos is that first point, Truth. As happens everywhere, justice turns back and righteousness stands at a distance; for truth stumbles in the public square, and uprightness can’t enter. Yet if we knew the truth, the truth would set us free. We’d rather believe the myths of our lies or the “historic truth,” which we also know as legends or delusions. While a kernel of a fact may still exist within, the rest of our memories are embroidered and embellished to the point of fabrication. The truth no longer exists, but a new story appears in its place instead.
This is how the Lost Causes of our worlds became the heroic events and quagmires from which we never escape. We struggle eventually, until a savior appears to throw us a lifeline. Speaking our language and defending our causes, this great white hope seeks us out. Finally, we have found our champion, one who’ll refight our war for us. We no longer have to sacrifice ourselves—we’ve already lost our best and brightest to the quick sands of this long fight.
“Let the rich Yankee spend his money, for this is righteous payback for what the hated North did to our Southern Way of Life,” my companion’s father would say. “It serves him right.”
Even on Didumos we have the Lost Causes of inequity and generational hate, old wounds which never healed and can easily be scratched to bleed profusely once again. No healing will ever take place as long as we continually pick at our scars. We find ways to hate another because they’re different from us by race, gender, geography, economic status, sexual orientation, or some other reason. We decide it’s not yet time for someone other than a straight, white male to hold high public office, but accept criminal behavior because all politicians do this. Maybe we need to get a better class of politicians on both our worlds. The worst hate we have is sectarian hate, just because a person isn’t of the same party or religion.
As I spend my last days here in the mountain retreat, I know I’m going out into the world below. I won’t have the beauty of the wildflowers to walk among, or the smell of their fresh fragrance as the hem of my robe brushes their tiny blooms. I will miss the wind blowing through the leaves of the last trees as I climb up beyond the tree line to the ancient temple of the old gods, whose ruins are a holy site protected by our order. Down below, I’ll be in the cacophony of sounds of the great city: people, businesses, transportation, and all the chorus of sounds of living and dying happening at once.
Autumn Leaves
I wonder how I or anyone can keep from living into the hate of the ancient wars and into the wounds which haven’t healed over the generations? When I think of people who had their food taken by soldiers, who had no provisions of their own, I realize fear of hunger is just under the surface of their daily lives, even generations later. Worried parents raise fearful children.
My daddy always said, “Some folks will try to pull a fast one over you or take you for a ride.” I used to nod my head, for he liked to have us children agree with him, but I always thought if you treated someone fairly, they would treat you well in return. If they didn’t, that was their problem, and you didn’t need to do business with them anymore. Of course, my parents grew up in the hungry years on Didumos, so they had a sense of scarcity in their lives. I never missed a meal in my life, even if we set a spare table at times.
Our largest cities are mean, sometimes, often because people don’t know one another. In our smaller communities, we know who you are and who your people are. We might know you too well, as some folks say, but that’s another story. In the big cities, a person can sometimes live next door to someone and never know their name. That won’t be me, of course, since I tend to talk to everyone. My companion and I share this trait. She talks to everyone, to the bane of her old boyfriends, one of whom remarked, “You can’t even go to the grocery store without talking to twenty different people.”
She laughed, “Be glad we went early, before everyone got off work.”
We might talk to “everyone,” but we can’t heal everyone. We aren’t responsible for healing those who don’t want to be healed. We can call them out for bad behavior, refuse to put up with their actions, and we can set appropriate boundaries. We don’t need to be walked on by their muddy feet. If they refuse to act civilly, we can cut them off. Friends don’t treat friends poorly. What’s hard is when the ones who hurt you most are in your own bond group or family. Kinfolks should not be the ones who spill your blood, but give their blood for your welfare. Not all of us can heal our own houses, but we can seek healing for our own selves. Sometimes this means we spend less time with those who aren’t also seeking healing. Not everyone wants to enjoy the better life god offers, for they’ve never known love or happiness. What god offers seems like an empty promise, or a false hope.
As to thinking alike, let others think differently. You wouldn’t want to eat the same meal every day, so why would you enjoy talking with the same people who had only the same ideas as you? I personally would be bored stiff. When people start expressing extreme ideas, such as overthrowing the government, I get uncomfortable. This is my body signaling my mind: this is a dangerous person; be careful.
As a priestess, I have the face and demeanor which allows strangers to share their innermost thoughts with me. Even when I’m dressed in normal tunics, rather than my priestly robes, people will still unburden their hearts to me. Perhaps because my own heart is open to god, it’s also open to others. I can hear their truth and not be judgmental, for the compassion of god’s love is in me. I don’t hold this mercy within me, but let it flow through me, as water flows through a crack in a vessel. God keeps pouring god’s love and mercy into my life, and the excess keeps flooding out into the lives of others. I never attempt to quench this flow, to hold on to what I have, or feel anxious about the magnitude of this source.
If my heart is open to both god and others, it’s because it’s continually being broken open. A hardened heart can no longer break, just as blood has difficulty flowing through hardened arteries. If we’re unmoved by the plight of others, if our hearts don’t tremble and break at the suffering and pain of our neighbors, we’re hardhearted people. We aren’t open to the love and mercy of god, for either ourselves or for others. Instead, we’re living under the fear of god’s judgement and want to put others there also.
What is the hidden truth we all seek in these days when truth seems stumble at best, and at worst may have abandoned the public square? Do we want someone to tell us the words which will comfort us and lull us into complacency, or do we need a person who will speak to us the words which will pierce our hearts? Do we want a priestly voice, who speaks to the comfortable, or do we need a prophet, who comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable?
Or is the truth some of both, all mixed together? The ancient holy ones believed in the golden mean, or the virtue of the middle point between the twin vices of excess and deficiency. My companion learned this lesson as a child in the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The Papa Bear’s porridge was too hot, Mama Bear’s was too cold, but Baby Bear’s was “Just Right.”
Unfortunately, on her world, as on mine, most of us go to extremes in our search for the truth. For some reason, the extremes get all the attention. They do this by excluding the others and including only a certain, favored few. Of course, if you are part of the in group, this seems good to you, but if you’re excluded, this isn’t so good. When each group holds the claim to “Truth,” those on the outside often decide both competing claims are “not true.” This is a death blow to the groups who lay claim to the absolute truth. We forget god alone holds truth, for as our ancient writings record, “God is righteous, and all god’s deeds are just; all god’s ways are mercy and truth.”
If our hearts are open to god, we can be open to the evolving wisdom of god. As we are changed by experiences, god can change our hearts and minds too. This is why some people are victors who overcome trauma, while others are remain victims. We can resist the healing power of god and the ministering love of others. This is why some dysfunctional behaviors persist across the generations of a family, as “gifts that keep on giving.” Are they to suffer as “Lost Causes,” or can the hope and power of god’s love intervene and change the course of their lives?
Our ancient holy ones believed no desert was so empty and forsaken, but the spirit of god’s fire still burned there, waiting to be discovered by one who had lost all hope in heir own powers, and was ready to give into god’s greater powers. Many of us are deserts, Lost Causes, and we wander in a world which offers false truths, which have no eternal meaning. When I descend the mountain, I’ll need to carry the eternal mountain truths within me, and breath only the sweet fragrance of god’s holy words as I walk in a world of falsehoods.
What was easy on the mountain will be a struggle in the city, but god has called me for this purpose. At least I’ll have a warrior by my side.
My Aaron’s warrior code speaks of his calling to serve and protect. As a member of the warrior clan, he grew up learning this code with his mother’s milk. Even before he could walk, he experienced her protecting arms and nurturing care. His father guided him in the early lessons of physical training and following directions. Later, others of good character would guide the youth of his clan, both male and female, in specialized preparation for their future destiny.
They are a special group, unlike others on Didumos, for “warriors are born to the sword.” We don’t actually use old-fashioned swords and spears, as our forefathers once did back in the days of the ancient gods, but the saying persists. Likewise, our warrior group doesn’t acquire new blood by those who volunteer to serve or are pressed into service for a short duration. Only those who are born into the clans on Didumos fight for the honor and protection of the nations and states of our world. Perhaps this keeps the armies small and the wars short, since the rulers need survivors to propagate a new generation and a new warrior band.
My companion’s world, on the other hand, fights wars with abandon and at length. The strangest war was the Dutch-Scilly War from 1651 to 1986, for it had no battles and no bloodshed, but lasted 335 years. Their own Civil War, from 1861-1865, killed over one million people, including civilians, slaves, and soldiers of both sides. The trauma of this war still affects generations of southerners today, for they still fight for their Lost Cause.
On Didumos, we have our post war wounds also. No one can enter a war zone and escape unscathed, just as no one can endure growing up in poverty and not endure some trauma associated with hunger, want, violence, or fear. Yet the warrior clan strives to forge bonds among its young by team building and leadership exercises. They also learn to be truth tellers, accepters of consequences, and through testing, gain courage as well as skill. They work in groups to learn service above self, but they also take turns being the leader to learn how to make good decisions. Respect for one another and their warrior mentors is encouraged.
I’ve noticed our warrior clan members have a distinctive walk and bearing. I can spot them in a crowd, even years after they’ve finished their active service. They’re often more organized than our city people, perhaps because they’ve lived a more ordered life. In this respect, our priesthood is also more recognizable, and not just because of our traditional robed garments, which are our ancient attire, having been worn by priests of the first gods of Didumos. Most of us seem to have a clarity of purpose, a sense of calm, and an openness of spirit which allows others to share with us the deep secrets of their wounded hearts. In a sense, we too are warriors in a battle to help others know their truth and heal from their wounds.
Aaron’s sense of order and my order don’t always agree, however. Rather than jump headlong into a battle over righteousness, or who holds the high moral ground, we use a form of the just war theory. Both of us had this training in our various academies: he learned his lessons with examples from actual wars from our world’s history, while in the temple academy we apprentice priests learned the theology underpinning these same wars. Most of us were surprised to discover each nation and each side believed god was on their side and god had blessed their purposes or justifications for pursuing the wars.
When two people live together, conflict is bound to ensue, even over the most mundane arenas of existence. One day Aaron announced in no uncertain terms to me, “I want to have all my tunics facing away from the closet door.”
As he stood with his arms crossed tightly over his taught chest and his jaw pushed toward me, I set my cup down carefully on the table beside the chair. I breathed deeply before I answered, “Aaron, you have all of three tunics. Why is this a need all of a sudden?”
“Your tunics, which I just counted, are twelve, by the way, and they’re facing every which direction! And they’re in the same closet with mine!” His arms suddenly flew up in the air as he began to stalk around the room.
I tried to remain calm. I’d seen him like this before. One day he’d be calm and strong, and the next he’d crack open like a fragile egg. I knew the stress of our upcoming changes was bothering me, and it was affecting him too. Even if I was struggling, I had to be his rock in this moment. After all, this is what we warriors do, we’re bonded to each other, we care for each other, we serve and protect, no matter where we are.
Fallen Warrior, Temple of Aphaia, 5th CBCE
“Is the order or disorder a problem, or is the number of my tunics the problem?”
He stopped pacing and looked at me. “Actually, it’s the order. Why can’t you put your tunics on the hanger so they all face the same direction?”
I got up out of the chair, walked over to him, and put my arms around his slim waist. Then I pulled him close. I felt the tenseness in his back muscles relax as I rubbed my hands across them. Looking up into his brown eyes, I murmured, “Do you want to hang your tunics in another closet?”
“Miriam, you know we don’t have another closet.”
“I was just checking on what this fuss is really about.”
“It’s really about the disorder of our closet.”
“Do you want to take over the job of hanging up all the tunics so they are right?”
“Not really. I want you to hang your tunics so they all face away from the closet door.”
“You realize, I’m not really bothered by the direction in which my tunics hang.”
“Miriam, why can’t you do this for me?”
“Will god love you or me any more or any less if we hang our tunics in different directions?”
“No, Miriam,” he sighed, “but I wish you wouldn’t bring god into our disagreements and discussions.”
“What did you expect? That I’d be a priest at the temple and an unbeliever at home? It’s not the robes which make the priest, but the attitude of the inward heart.”
“I know. This seems silly now that we discuss it. It’s just when I get stressed, I sometimes need to make things more orderly and predictable.”
“Do you want to talk about this stress?”
“No, I’ll talk to Michael tomorrow about this particular stress. You however, could take care of another stress in a more satisfying way.”
As Aaron put his strong arms around my body and his lips on my expectant mouth, I felt a quiver inside my body answering the swell I could feel pressing against me. I was quite sure this battle of the tunics was going to be resolved by peaceful means, even if the surrender might be prolonged due to our mutual desire for pleasure on the “battle field.”
My old daddy would drive my mother crazy. As he was taking the last bite of his meal, he would smile, thank her for another wonderful meal, wipe his mouth on his napkin, and as he folded it neatly beside his plate, he’d look at her straight faced and ask, “What are we having for the next meal?”
If she were in a good mood, she’d laugh at him and shoo him out of the kitchen. If she were stressed and had too many plates in the air at once, his question was sure to wreck her wobbling crockery’s choreography.
“You just finished eating! How can you possibly be hungry? Do you have worms inside of you?”
My daddy would just laugh. I sometimes think he did this just to get a rise out of my mother. She never seemed to experience hunger or have a real appetite for food, unlike my brothers and I who remained constantly hungry every day of our lives. I went through a phase of “watching my figure,” as we call restrictive eating on Didumos, but I think many adolescent girls have body issues when they’re dealing with changing from childhood to womanhood. If restrictive eating helps them control these changes, it’s probably the least harmful way of dealing with this transformation. Until poor nourishment causes trouble for the body or the mind, no one notices the problem.
My brothers both had a hollow leg and daily filled up this cavity with extra food and beverage. Mother made extra trips to the dairy in between the milk delivery dates during the week. I was busy at school from early morning to late afternoon with classes, clubs and athletic events, either my own or my school’s teams. Then I was up till late at night studying, or reading wonderful books from the local temple of learning. Burning the midnight oil every night and burning the candle at both ends during the day will eventually catch up with a person, especially if they skip breakfast, eat sugared rolls for lunch and only eat one decent meal daily.
Erectheion, Acropolis, Athens
My healer daddy laid down the new rules for the rest of my days at home: “No more skipping breakfast, young lady. You need to eat a full breakfast everyday before school. No more skipping lunch for sugar-covered rolls and a sweet drink. You eat lunch at school.”
I began to protest, but he’d have none of it.
“If you don’t like the lunch there, take your own. Plus, you’ll be in bed at a reasonable hour and get some sleep. None of this up all night and awake all day. You need your beauty sleep.”
My daddy wasn’t an unreasonable man, but I knew when I could argue and when I should keep silent. I’d tested the limits of freedom and gone too far, so now I was getting my wings clipped. I was too tired from not eating well to care. Once I was in better shape, we could renegotiate this restriction.
As I remembered my youth, I thought the taste of food would be an exceptional pleasure right now. As the thought left my mind, my stomach chased it with an indelicate growl.
“That’s loud enough to wake the dead,” Aaron opined as he entered the alcove with my food tray in hand.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “You caught me calling for my meal.”
“Perfect timing! I hope you’re hungry.”
“I could eat enough for a small army.”
“All I brought was enough for a small platoon.”
“It’ll do.”
Between bites, I was talking with Aaron. “Did I ever tell you about my companion, what kind of person she is?”
“No, not really. I know she’s an artist, and a priest on her planet, but only bits and pieces I’ve gleaned here and there. I don’t really know the wholeness of her, like I know you.”
“She isn’t a great philosopher, or a deep thinker, but she can get simple ideas across to people. When she taught art classes to children and adults, she strove to instill the work ethic in people as well as the artistic skills and creative thinking process. She had a simple motto: ABC—Attitude, Behavior, and Consequences. If students had a positive ABC, they would have positive ABC as a result. This meant Attitude, Behavior and Consequences would all be positive or negative if they began with the Attitude and end with the same kind as they started. A Negative attitude never produced a positive outcome.”
“That makes sense to me. We warriors teach Simplicity, Patience, and Compassion.”
“That seems odd for people who fight for a living.”
“Not really. Simplicity is a way of life, as is Patience and Compassion. War isn’t our first choice, but we will protect our own and defend the weak. When the battle is over, Compassion for the defeated helps to rebuild the peace.”
“The people on her planet seem to find her simple equation enlightening. She sold it in the classroom to children who never had a chance in art before. Her spiel was simple:
“If you work 100% of the class time, turn in all your work on time, and fulfill all the parameters of the projects, you can make an A in art. I’m certain of this because you’ll do enough work to improve. And half your grade is on your work ethic, plus ¼ is on improvement, so only ¼ is on the actual art. This takes raw talent out of the equation. If Michaelangelo can do greater work in one day than Johnny Can’t Draw a Line without a Ruler, I’m going to fail this great artist anyway because he didn’t improve. Test me on this! Let your parents call me!”
“And I suppose the great artist in the class would test her will?”
“Don’t you know it! I’ve often wondered why people with greater talents often think the rules don’t apply to them, but the expectations should be increased for all others. This young person would do nothing in class until the last day, then get quickly busy and make something more elegant than anyone else could produce. Then he or she would howl and moan when the overall grade came down due to lack of work and improvement. If a person never has to work for anything, they never have to improve.”
“We call this being born with a silver spoon in the mouth. We have some in our warrior clan who’ve been used to command because their ancestors were always leaders. These get the same training as the regular fighters. If they survive this, they can go on to the leadership level.”
“So if they can pass the field test, they can earn the right to ascend in the ranks of leadership?”
“Of course, since none of us ordinary warriors would follow anyone less able than our own selves.”
“I’ve never thought of you as ordinary.”
“You’re my best friend for life, if you keep saying such nice things about me.”
His eyes brightened and his inner light glowed beyond the confines of his skin, as I watched him fill with joy and love. If I had never seen the great proof of how positive praise elicited positive behavior, I was seeing it come alive in this very moment.
“I don’t think I ever told you, but I’m thankful to the god of all grace and mercy you never gave up on me,” I said, more seriously.
“How could I give up on you? You were there for me on my worst days, even when I had given up hope in my self, you reminded me to remember god will hope for us even when we have lost hope in all else.”
“That is what we believe, that is what we are taught, but until we experience it for ourselves, we don’t really know it for sure, do we?”
“No, we don’t. We can’t trust our comrades in arms until we’ve survived the battle, but we won’t go into battle with them unless we’ve trained together, eaten meals together, and learned to overcome obstacles together. Perhaps those of us who survive have a greater bond than when we first began. I don’t think too deeply about these things, you understand, since I’m not a warrior priest.”
“I think my companion may be one of the rare people on her planet who spends time thinking as well as doing.”
“Doesn’t everyone think?”
“Oh, you know—reflection, rather than just repetitive action all the time.”
“Of course. Our people are given to this trait also, at least those I’ve had the misfortune to serve and interact with.”
I laughed with my sweet bond mate. He has that wry gallows humor of those who know the taste of both the bitterness of death and the sweetness of life.
“That’s true. While I’ve never thought my life was on the line, I have too many times been with my people who are hanging on the thin threads of life and death. I can’t help but be affected by the swirl of emotions in these dramas at the edges of existence. When all the relatives gather round, everyone’s feelings are raw and bare. Usually we gloss over our truths and whitewash our words so we can get along without any distress in the group. When faced with the mystery of death, a transition we refuse to contemplate and a fact we continually deny, we lose our polite cultural grooming and fall apart into disturbing disputes and disagreements. Still, once the person crosses the rainbow bridge, the living have to go on with life in this world so they can hope to be with their loved one in the next world in the days to come.”
“Hope is one of the three beads of Truth, the other two being Faith and Assurance. Faith brings us to Hope, and Hope to Assurance, but all three are needed to come to the Truth of god’s love for us and our love of god. You helped me to remember this.”
“Exactly. I wonder if hope has been lost on my companion’s planet? It seems they are a hopeless lot, for too many have been excluded from success, too many have been kept out from the inner sanctums, too many aren’t allowed into the corridors of power, and too few are admitted to the better schools. If year after year, failure builds upon failure, the child believes he or she is a failure.”
“What makes your companion so different from the ordinary person?”
“Maybe she is afflicted with chronic optimism!”
“There’s no cure for that disease!”
“That’s what my old daddy used to say, but anyone who had that much optimism most likely would find the depths of despair after a while, for the world would conspire to convince him or her otherwise.”
“Your old daddy had some common sense, not just learning.”
“Yes, he was good and wise, even if he had some old fashioned ideas. My companion hoped when her students had no hope. She believed in them, even when they didn’t believe in themselves. She encouraged them until they began to see the change in their own work. Then they were excited enough to work more on their own.
Art is more than copying someone else’s ideas or just recreating the teacher’s model. Art is solving a creative problem to the best of the student’s own ability. If a teacher has thirty students, she should have thirty different solutions. Every student sees a landscape from a different viewpoint, and some will focus on one point over another. Some see the sky larger, while others focus on the trees or the buildings. The heart and personality of the individual artist determines the composition of the final scene. My companion always taught art, even to kindergarten children, for she thought they could learn not only the basic skills needed for later years, but also creativity and imagination. Since every student enjoyed the opportunity to find his or her personal expression, she even had well behaved classes. If you can succeed in a class, I suppose behavior isn’t a problem.”
Aaron was quiet for a moment, and then he asked, “Do you want another wakeup cup? I’m going to refill mine and I’ll refill yours.”
“Thanks,” I said as I handed him my cup. “Just a half cup, I think.”
I was eating a few more bites of my meal as Aaron went into the break room of the infirmary to refill our cups. My food had grown cold and wasn’t half as appetizing as it was when it first appeared. Still, I was hungry. I’m always hungry. I suppose this is how I keep my full figure. I can’t remember any of my female relatives on either side of my ancestral lines being slim. They were all good cooks, they tasted their food to be sure of its quality, and then they ate with everyone who graced their tables. We always had at least one neighbor child and sometimes a stray relative or three who happened to drop by around mealtimes. Somehow we always had enough food to go around, even if we had smaller portions of everything and more bread and spread to fill our stomachs.
I could smell the wake up cup arriving before Aaron entered my alcove. Things were looking up. My food might be cold, but my cup would be hot and sweet!
“Thank you! I think I’ve eaten all I want for this meal. This will be a perfect ending. And you made it just like I like it.”
“You might have been gone a long time, but not so long I’d forget how much you love your sweet, hot wakeup cup. Besides, I know it’s the way to your heart.” He gave me a knowing smile, and winked.
I laughed, “You are too much. You only have one thing on your mind!”
“After this long winter of celibacy, do you blame me?”
“Hardly, but that’s the purpose, to give us the appreciation of the spring feast.”
“Trust me, I plan to feast with you, and I hope you’re prepared for this.”
“Hope is what gets us through the hard and empty times.”
“I’m holding on to hope right now.”
“This is good for us, you know. Not everyone practices this spiritual discipline, not even on our planet. On my companion’s planet, hope seems to be a scarce commodity these days, but it’s been lacking for years.”
“What do you mean by this?”
“When I journeyed on her planet this time, people talked about the crisis of hope. They said the rise of hate groups and the opioid crisis were both part of the same problem: ordinary people had given up on the American dream. Some went toward the pole of violence to achieve the old goals, while others sought the pole of numbness by succumbing to the sleep of drugs and avoiding the pains of their hopeless lives.”
“I’ve been there myself, unfortunately. I can’t blame anyone for that choice. I’m just glad I found this mountain sanctuary. Actually, I didn’t find it so much as I was forced to come here, as I recall. People tried to wash their hands of me and dump me far enough away I wouldn’t get back to bother them, but god meant it for good. God brought me to a place where people understood me, would work with me, and had the spiritual and healing means to help me find hope again. When I found my true self again, I was new again. I can’t tell you how much this means to me to have a new life and a new hope, a new reason to live and a new purpose in life!”
“When a person loses hope, they lose the reason for living and for growing. My companion knew the best artist in her classes had no real challenge to grow or to live because he had no hope to improve. With every other teacher, he would get the best grade in the class because he was already the best artist, but with my companion, he couldn’t get the best grade unless he worked as hard as everyone else. If he worked that hard, he’d show improvement and his achievements would excite him to excel even more. A real artist learns from each piece to make the next one even better.”
“Miriam, your companion sounds like a taskmaster, or one of my old warrior trainers. Was she as hard on her students as these were on my fellow fighters?”
“Hardly, for she often had pop quizzes of hand mouth coordination.”
“What’s that all about?”
“Designated chewing gum day. As long as they work with their hands and keep the gum in their mouths, they can chew gum in class. Since this was a forbidden act in all other classes, it went over big.”
“I see…”
“And the sculptural houses made of cookies and candy between Thanksgiving and Christmas, two of their holidays. As long as the houses got built and decorated, the loss of building material was ignored.”
Aaron began to laugh. “I’m not sure this was exactly legal in any school system I attended!”
“Yes, well, it skirts the boundaries of legal, perhaps, but it gives the children joy, it stretches the imagination, and it’s tasty too. Besides, they have to deal with the structural problems of supporting walls, roofs, and keep it from collapsing from too much decoration or looking too bare from too little decoration.”
“I suppose it is hard to teach art to everyone, including those who aren’t native talents. And finding a way to give hope of success to all with an even playing field is important, especially when art is a requirement, not an elective. Once people choose to take art, then perhaps skill can triumph over improvement and work ethic. I think I’d still downgrade a skilled person who didn’t work hard, however, since they weren’t serious about their work.”
I replied, “I wonder if we give up on ourselves or others because we lack hope? Sometimes I go down our twisting mountain road to the town below us to conduct the sanctuary’s business at the local treasury, which is like a bank on my companion’s world. On Didumos, the treasuries are run by an order of priests, but they aren’t dedicated to the god of all grace and compassion. Perhaps my companion would call them lay servants, or dedicated fiduciary overseers of the people’s moneys and assets, but here we call them priests. We believe all things we have, even the money we earn, comes from god, so a priest dedicated to god needs to watch over our savings and stored assets.
As I entered the small temple, of our small mountain town’s treasury, I walked up the simple carved steps of marble. I compared it to the grander temples of Plusion, the great seaport trade city. That magnificent temple would dwarf this one multiple times, but the trade city does far more commerce in one month than our small town does in a year. I laid my hand against the slender stone columns to trace the fine fluting the craftsmen of old had carved. The stone felt both warm at first because of the sun, but turned cool the longer my hand remained upon it. After a bit, I lifted my touch, for I was no longer pleased by the feel, but content to let my eye linger upon it.
I watched the incremental rise of the sun trace its journey across the ridges of the flutes. The shadows told the story of its travel across the sky. Why I lingered on this top step, I don’t know. Perhaps I was gathering myself into the place of eternal calm and peace. I stepped inside and the caretakers said, “You need to go back into the holy place.”
I found the lead priest and his assistant.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“He won’t talk to me. He just stands there and shakes. I’ve never seen anything like this!”
“Yes. Well, why don’t you go take care of business and leave us alone for awhile?”
I looked at his assistant’s ashen face and tensed body. He stood in the corner with his arms raised up and rigid. His knees were half bent, as if he were about to break and run, but he was frozen in place.
I spoke from my heart, words I hoped he could hear. “Look, whatever’s going on, the god of all compassion and grace is willing to suffer with you and give you strength to endure this. I’m here now with you to be with you and to let you know god loves you, my friend. Do you want to tell me what’s going on?”
“She left me, for another man.”
“Your bondmate?”
“I left my child’s mother for her and now she’s left me for someone else.”
“Ya’ll been together now for nearly ten years, as I remember.”
“I know. I don’t understand it.”
“Then this priest, who never shows or shares his emotions with anyone, fell into my arms with great sobs racking his thin frame. I put my arms around him and held him as if he were a child. When he’d cried himself out, I drew back, looked him firmly in the eye and said, “I believe in you. God believes in you. You’ll get through this. Lean on god’s greater strength for these hard times. It isn’t going to be easy, but you have many people who care about you. Don’t lose hope!”
“He nodded, for he was too emotionally spent to speak any more. At least he was no longer frozen in one position. We can’t put our hope into a job, a person, a treasury account, a lottery ticket, a big score, or any other thing on either of our worlds, for all these things are transitory. “Easy come, easy go,” my daddy would say and mother would remind me, “Here today, gone tomorrow.” They both grew up in the great depression era on Didumos, when people had fortunes in the morning and were paupers by evening. Their grandparents also lost fortunes in the wars between the kingdoms generations ago when the defeated surrendered land to the victors. Some of my relations are still fighting that lost cause.
“When we are at the end of our journeys on this side of the rainbow bridge, we discover death can take a loved one from us quickly or slowly. Most of us hope death takes us quickly, so our loved ones and we don’t have to suffer a lingering illness. I’m not sure any death is better than another. The quick death spares a long suffering before hand, but it opens up a long grief and shock afterwards. The long death prolongs the care taking, but allows the survivors to prepare for the eventuality of the loss. We can “pre-grieve” as it were.
“Both my parents have crossed over the rainbow bridge already. My daddy took his time, and lost his memories of who we were and how we were related to him. He never forgot his healing knowledge, for it was tucked away in a different part of his mind. My mother became the lady who came to kiss him every afternoon before dinner. He lived this life for two years, but I honored him as my daddy even if he didn’t remember me, for I remembered him.
My mother had cancer of the pancreas and died within two months. She got her wish to cross over the rainbow bridge quickly. “I hope in never have to go through what your father went through. I want to go quickly,” she told me. It was a shock to me, for I told her, “You’ll live forever.” In truth, she does live forever, with god, and daddy, across the bridge of light, in the land where the light of god always shines and the night never intrudes to darken the sky.
“I’ve celebrated the rite of the rainbow bridge for people who kissed their loved ones goodbye on their way to work, but they never made it home. Instead, a cart or carriage brought the lifeless body back to the temple for the final rite of passage. If we can’t control our futures, some will choose to live in despair or anxiety. We who trust the god of all grace and mercy choose to live in hope, for god is always in the future, even as god is always with us in the present. We mortals can only be in the present time and place, for we are tied to the laws of nature.
“God, who existed before creation began, exists outside of space and time. Therefore, god can be in the future, past and present as well as in multiple presents at the same time. We don’t understand this because our minds aren’t designed to comprehend a being totally unlike us. My old priests in the training temple would laugh when the young priests’ brains would begin to smoke as we first encountered this idea. “Don’t get your panties all tied up into knots,” they would laugh, “just relax and step outside of your bodies to understand this!”
“Miriam, I think it’s time you rested. This conversation is getting too deep for me. I need to find some rocks to move or do some exercises. My brain is starting to smoke!”
“I’m sorry, Aaron. I get carried away. It’s just that after a long journey, I haven’t been able to talk during my travels and I’ve got a lot of pent up talking to get off my chest.”
“So how about you take a nap for a while, and then I’ll send someone in that understands all this priestly talk?”
“That’ll be good.”
As I watched him go, I realized how much I was going to miss talking about the faith with people. If I’m not going to be assigned as a priest to a temple, how will I exercise my calling? Will I just button hole people on the sidewalk, or will people think I’m crazy? Maybe I need to cross that bridge when I come to it, as mother so often advised. We can’t cross the rainbow bridge until god calls us home, and we always have hope: while we live, god is with us and when we die, we live with god. So then whatever happens when I leave the sanctuary here, I’ll be with god. And that will be good.
The Journey of a Vagabond Soul 