“But despite what had been done for them – the finest wines and richest foods laid there as a feast – they could not recognize it. Their palettes found nothing but gruel and foul water for they had turned away from faith.”
If you are familiar with classic volumes of children's fantasy (which always speak on a different level to adults) then you know the pivotal moment I have paraphrased above. Likewise, if you are a devout Christian (read: one who thinks for himself) or a student of religion, you will be aware of the significance of the verse and myriad of interpretations that it has spawned. Personally, I do not believe that this lesson to be learned is that Christians experience more joy than non-Christians but rather if a person consciously *turns away* from Christ, his eyes are blinded to grace. His life devoid of elysian. When you do not place Christ into every living moment of your existence, accepting Him as a living presence, entering into that continuing conversation, you are shutting your senses to joy. The feast becomes gruel.
The glass is half empty. The glass is half full. The glass, my friends, is simply full. All the time, every time. It just isn't always full of *water.* Step One: We accept there is a glass. No... not a glass, a *grail* and that grail has been handed to us by the Lion, the Lamb, the Changer. If we accept the grail than we accept it as complete and full as it is. The level of water, wine, rain, tears, poison, potion, atomic particles, becomes just part of the miracle of our lives known best as our personal adventure with faith.
I found myself, this last week, on twelve hours notice, leaving for Croatia for work. I have been twice before with family, roughly ten years ago, and I started counting the hours until my body could move anonymously over the glass dance floor of the Hopdevil, losing and finding myself to Saturday's live DJ while the cascade of the interior waterfall mesmerized and rolled turbulence under my feet. And though I spent a good many hours celebrating this body Christ gave me not once but three times (at birth, at baptism, after near-death) in three of Zagreb's excellent rock and alternative clubs, I found more of my hours were spent with its doves.
It seems whether on Los Angeles rooftops or in Croatian cobbled courtyards, God's common birds remind me of pure divinity, inherent in all moments when we not just accept but enact and embrace faith as a force in our lives. What is this? This pure divinity? Can it be found in timeless scripture or prophesy? Can it be discovered by lighting the right candles, displayed by intoning the proper patron saints? Can it be depicted in stained glass windows?
There is Christ. There is man. There are no other designations or gradations of man. God, all-powerful, provided our genesis flashpoint and allowed the fractal spiral to begin, to unfold and multiply, populating the universe with mirrors all reflecting outward and inward at the same time in four or ten dimensions. At the very heart, the center of this collection of mass welded together and apart by science and ethics, consciousness and the laws of gravity, love, laughter and lasagna, there is something *completely different.* When all of space and nature and science and biology mimics (“...as in nature, so in man, so sayth the Lord...”) each other, this singular core differs from every rule. This center will turn every table in the temple and then turn the other cheek. Christ. The pure divinity. Available in one-size fits all but insisting upon being *different* from everything else, ever.
Doves are classically portrayed white as driven snow, composed and regal, their faces knowing and wise, resembling eagles or other noble (albeit predatory) birds. They are graceful as first light. Eternal. Ethereal. But in reality, these birds are often far more like their pigeon cousins – auburn or gray, cock-eyed, single-minded – than like anything in the standard definition of pure. Which is, of course, exactly why they are divine. Christ, too, was outside the guidelines, rules and definition of religion or savior. He didn't amend, baby, He rewrote. Everything else before Him had been (and was after Him) only a continuing mimicry of the same ole fractal. Only Christ was, is and will be unique.
I have heard it preached on tv, on street corners, in my inbox, that I can join any of a great number of denominations and be then allowed access to an ordained, blessed, appointed, anointed, trained, touched, and otherwise elevated mouthpiece for my Christ. A mortal man or woman who anonymously or voyeuristicly (both are equally useless) will “listen with Christ's ears and speak with Christ's mouth.” I call this Babylon Syndrome. It was a virus present among some of the apostles after the Ascension but it most certainly began far before that. Rooted in the innate human fear of being no one/nothing, the terror of not being enough (to just be one of His the same among billions), it survives and flourishes because the antidote to hubris is hard to find.
Only Christ is Christ. All others are part of the repeating pattern. One and the same. Only Christ is an original blueprint. Outside the cosmic binary. No mortal can speak for Christ. We mortals don't speak the same language. Ever. The end.
When I need (because I am corporeal and mortal and so limited) to physically see the eyes of Christ looking back at me, to be heard and responded to by a voice not so intense as Alpha/Omega, I look for what is different and unexpected. For that which is striving to be, by practice or design, outside the pattern. The Sunday school teacher with the Psalm tattoo. The friend who boxes instead of painting her nails. The two year old eating twelve tacos while he recites “The Raven.” The eighty year old with the electric guitar impromptu jamming at LAX. The bronze and cream dove with the copper eyes eating Crackerjack from my palm while he sits on my knee.
Fact is stronger/better/smarter/wilder than fiction. And doves as the eyes and ears of Christ? Yeah. That pretty much rocks this gamer grrl's world. I accept their presence in my life as a tangible jewel of faith, like slow kisses, breathless poetry, wicked LOLs, midnight motorcycle rides, Glo Goats and hard dancing with strangers. I embrace my faith (as I embrace you, my love) as light, as strength, as armor and sword, as starry night, as the air I breathe... as tears, as heartbreak, as struggle, as hardship, as pain, as doubt... as everything, the grail always full.
Because the feast is everlasting and I have no taste for gruel.
EJ
