Fifth Gospel (27 page)

She gathered in the folds of her soul
, and attentive, watchful, with her spine as cold as marble, she looked to the moment.

EXCALIBUR

J
ohn
the Baptist was dragged, whipped, pushed and prodded across the cold compound and into the citadel of the castle by Herod’s guards.  Upon entering the banquet hall he was blinded by light and stood a moment dazzled at the spectacle of debauchery before him. Demons fluttered before his gaze, having escaped from some foul source. Drunkenness, licentiousness and depravity were everywhere made plain to him.

Then he saw it
– the blade of blue-burnished steel. It enticed him.

He was pushed to his knees and looked about until he found her, the witch and sorceress, that Jezebel reborn
; Herodias. He saw it then, in her eyes, the kernel of many lives to come when she would bear the weight of the same message he had once proclaimed – that she would wander the earth with no peace. He told her so and waited.

The world pulsed.

He heard a whish past his ear and felt a sudden tug, a jolt.

The blade repulsed him and the world and its sufferings were taken away
on the wings of the fine airs.

And this, after all, is bliss!

Lifted from the world, a crystalline clarity entered into him that near blinded his spirit eyes. This clarity was an angel, that great and mighty angel that had come to him in the cave came again to take him from the captivity of his body, and away towards the open spaces, towards the hills of Hebron and to the deep clefts of the Jordan Valley, to the oasis of Jericho and to the wilderness of Judea, to Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Along the way, the angel showed him all the scenes of his life, all of his labours, the sum of all his accomplishments, spread out like breeze-blown clouds over a wide expanse of sky. And he saw something else…the angel showed him what had not yet been.

‡

‘What does he see Lea?’ I asked.

‘
He sees a room,
pairé
, and in it a painter.’

‘
Oh!’

‘He is
engaged in painting a picture of himself, so he is standing before a mirror. But there is a moment when he does not only see himself in the darkling reflection – he does not see the man with the heart-shaped face, with wide-spaced black eyes staring back at him. His self changes to another man.’

‘To another man?
Who is it?’

‘I
n a far off future, men will ask the same question,
pairé.
They will wonder who it is that in so intimate a way, occupies a place in this painting, which he will call
Self-Portrait with a Friend
. They will not know that the painter sees not only his own image, as he is in that life, but also a likeness of himself when in the past he was John the Baptist. This is why he paints the two men together, for they are his two selves.’

I thought on this.
‘What is the name of the painter?’

‘
He will be called Raphael,
pairé
.’

‘Like the Archangel?’

‘Like the Archangel, and he will paint many paintings of Mary with two children, he will even paint me, floating in the skies, holding a child in my arms…and yet it is unclear if he will come to paint the Transfiguration.’

‘Wh
at do you mean unclear?’

‘
You see, a part of the future must always remain inscrutable, pairé, even for the gods who order destiny, because a man’s heart is free.’

I was about to ask her many questions, particularly concerning the creation of destiny itself but she had already begun to tell of other things.

BREAD OF LIFE

I
t
was near Passover,
pairé
, when Jesus sat with his disciples on that mountainous fertile outcrop near the Sea of Galilee. He had brought them here, again, to teach them of those things that were hidden from others…’

‡

…Simon-Peter was sat near his master, looking out at the moon that seemed like a splinter in the flesh of the black sky and the stars that were locked in conversation. Simon-Peter knew nothing of the moon, save that it enticed the waters, and he nothing of the stars, save that they pointed the way home, so he looked at the sky is if it were a silvered sea and this calmed him.

It had been over a year since he and his fellow fishermen had left their
boats to follow Jesus, and since then, Simon-Peter had seen the master turn water into wine and cause the lame to walk and the deaf to hear. He had watched, awed and fearful, as he admonished the Pharisees, as he cast out demons, and cure plagues. His wonderworking had not only brought a girl back from the brink of death, but also a dead youth back to life and at those moments he seemed like a god known only to a man in his dreams – an awesome powerful, terrible God, full of glory. At other times, when he slept and taught and walked with them, he seemed no more than a man.

In truth, when his master was not teaching or healing, he was often times quiet and withdrawn, walking ahe
ad of them with his feet bloody from blisters and his head bent, like a ghostly shape that either melted into the heat-haze, or dissolved into the desert wind. Many times Simon-Peter found himself speaking like his master. His fellow disciples too, seemed inspired by his way of being, so that they also talked in his manner, with his voice.

These were strange goings on for a lowly fisherman
, and whenever he thought on it he felt a dullness overtake him. He missed his sea and his boat and asked god for a dream, a dream of his boat, limed and new and ready, with its lateen sails full of breeze.

And so he slept. And God granted him a dream.

He dreamt of crowds on the shores of the lake. They were hungry and were fed bread and fish by his master, who seemed happy. But then his dream took him out on his new boat but it was not a calm day, the water was raging and the lateen sails were torn and the great waves broke over the bow. His master was in the water, calling out to him to come. Simon-Peter was afraid and yet he attempted it and found he could not stand on the water, he was sinking, and he knew it was because doubt had made his faith run out.

On waking
he remembered the dreams and did not know what to make of them.  Even at that hour, many were arriving at the shores of the lake to be healed, and after a hasty breakfast of bread, soaked in honey, his master began to address the crowds.

He took some bread in his hand
, and said to them. ‘You eat bread to feed your hunger, but your souls need something else, your souls need what I teach, which is the bread of life. Unless you eat of my teachings, you have no life in you! Nothing everlasting, for the bread and water of ordinary life are not meat and drink for heaven!’

M
urmurs came from the crowds and someone said to him, ‘Are you not Jesus, the son of Joseph? Why should your teachings be like bread, and why should we eat of it?’

‘
Those who know me, also know that if they eat of my teachings they shall have life even after death!’

Simon-Peter saw
red beard, Judas Iscariot, making a mocking face to a number of people who were shaking their heads. Thomas was frowning and so were others.

The crowds became restless.

A man, no doubt a scribe sent from the Pharisees, stepped forward.

‘When you tell ordinary people these hidden things without preparing them, it is like
letting them eat bread without washing their hands!’

Jesus did not speak
, but waited. The crowds grew noisome and angered, and it was a long time before his calm voice caused a well of silence to form, ‘Well did Isaiah prophecy of you hypocrites…’ he said, ‘for you concern yourselves more with who is listening and care nothing for the teaching that I give you. It is not what goes into your mouth that defiles you, but what comes out of it…for your teaching, Pharisee, is like putrid meat!’ he said.

Offended and angry
, he and those who had come with him made to leave with much hatred in their hearts.

Later
, when the master and his disciples walked on the shores of the lake again, trailing behind those few who had remained with him, Simon-Peter deigned to ask him a question.

‘Those folks were offended at what you said
. They did not know what to make of what goes into the mouth and what comes out of it. Come to think of it, I don’t know what to make of it myself, but that is because I am ignorant and stupid!’ He looked askance, ‘But there are others…clever men, who do not love you as I do. They follow you with disdain upon their faces. What you say offends them.’

He looked a
t Simon-Peter without anger and raised one quizzical brow, ‘Do you say this because it offends them, or because it offends you, my brother?’

Peter felt shame rise to his cheeks and he averted his eyes. ‘My rabbi, all your followers will go if you keep with such talk
, and you will be left with nothing but scraps…’

‘I have you
. Is this not true?’ he said, looking at Simon-Peter and others who were gathered about.

Simon-Peter’s face opened up.
‘Yes, of course, rabbi, always shall you have me, a thousand times shall you have me, but how must the few of us who are true to you, gather in the harvest?’

‘Yes,
rabbi,’ Andrew added catching up, ‘how are we to do it? After all, we are a sorry lot!’

His master
regarded Andrew. ‘The blind cannot gather a harvest, this must be left to those who see…if a blind person leads a blind person into a field, they will both fall into a hole. Let all those who are led by the Pharisees, who are blind, go after them…they shall not reap much together that is certain. They are not my concern.’ Then, ‘Andrew, tell me, what do you see?’

Andrew c
ould not hold the master’s eyes. ‘I am only a fisherman, Lord. I understand about fish and nets and the sky and the sea. I know very little of these things you tell, but I believe in you.’

The mas
ter clapped him on the shoulder and gave it a shake. ‘You have always asked me to speak plainly to you, and yet, is there one of you who hears my words? What shall you do when I am no longer with you, hmm? What shall you do, when you have no one who can tell you how to live?’

The day had turned
hot as they had walked along the lake’s edge. His master brought up the cowl of the robe
without a seam and put it over his head and sat down on the sand with his feet touching the cool water. The others all did likewise, except for the red beard, Judas.

‘
I have spoken plainly to you, but you don’t listen. Listen…the Pharisees give the people something they can take hold of, laws, traditions, but these are not eternal, they are only for the body, you see? What I give you is something that you can never take hold of, but once you have it, you can never lose it because it will have a life in your soul, it is eternal. Do you understand?’

He looked to Judas and to Thomas.  ‘I see that there are some of you who do not believe in my words. And I say to you
that you are in this circle because it pleases God…even those whose hearts are hardened against me.’

Judas shook his head, ‘
My heart hardens when you speak of the soul without telling us how we are to liberate our bodies! First, you must liberate us from our oppressors. Then, only then, we will eat of your teachings!’

‘If you liberate your souls,’ the master said, ‘if you change your souls, then
the world will also change, not the other way around. The world is as hard as it is, because in your hearts you are hard.’

‘You are not in me, and you do not kno
w how I feel,’ Judas said.

‘You
say I do not know you, but you have no faith, Judas, and because of it you do not know yourself. Faith melts away hard hearts and wakes the mind so that it can know itself.’

Si
mon-Peter remembered his dream, the multitudes and the bread and the fish, and his faithlessness in the stormy seas, and now he understood! Yes! Of a sudden he saw his ordinary self, fall away from him, the self that was made up of country, of folk and family. In his heart a vision arose of another self, a higher, more clearly his – self. And this self was none other than his teacher, who sat among them.

Fish and Fisherman were one!

He realised then, that what his master had given them had many names, and yet had only one name. This bread, this food, these teachings, this kingdom brought down to earth, was an intimate thing – a light that pierced his soul. Suddenly all that his master had said had come true! The river of the world roared in Simon-Peter’s ears then, and he told himself,

This is
that something you can never take hold and yet once you have it, you can never lose it – your own eternal selfhood, which is given to you by Christ!

‡

‘What a riddle!’ I said to Lea.

‘Yes…but h
e understood it,
pairé
,’

‘
Well, are you going to elucidate it for me?’

‘
It just means, quite simply, that a man’s word, his I AM, is the God in the man.’

‘
The God in the man is his Word! Oh! Yes…the fish and fisherman were one, pupil and teacher, lower self and higher self! I see my, child!’

‘
And that moment of grace, of exquisite, concentrated knowing, would never leave Simon-Peter. Even many years later, when Roman soldiers nailed his racked and tortured body to an upside down cross, he would recall it with joy: that once, amid life’s dream he had caught a glimpse of his true self.’

‘W
hat every man would seek to see outside himself!’ I said, ‘Even though it is always looking at him, from within his own heart – Christ, the Son of the living God!’

Lea
smiled like a proud parent.