The Hitchhiker's Love Song

We see each other all the time. He'd strap a polaroid camera around his neck, collect a picnic basket and me in the beat up old truck and we'd ride - hours of sunshine and starlight, laughing at the giddy polaroids gathering in the backseat. The AC pumped out an intoxicating blend of summertime and memory and we laughed more, drunk it in, heady as an October evening. The stereo was the sound of our heartbeats, ribboning forth like a kickdrum, eternal as the wind.

We stopped often at first, doing nothing much - checking the headlights before it got dark, keeping time by the blinkers, taking laughing polaroids of the rest stops and state lines, of the two of us chewing sandwiches served from paper sacks. Lately, we've just driven and driven even though the farming towns and railroad tracks are forgotten before they're even seen. We ignore the exit signs now, ignore the restaurants and their gaudy paper napkins, just keep on driving.

We could drive like this forever, you know.

I like it when you drive better. It frees up my hands to ruffle your hair when the wind musses it and to grip the consul between us when the road turns or you start going very fast.

I tease you about your grandfatherly driving, the left-right-left-again adage and driving slow being more than just a big laugh. But we laugh anyway, you and I.

Our favorite time of day is just before the sun begins to set. In this golden light, everyone is beautiful and even our polaroids look simply lovely. Maybe it's the colorblindness you have that perceives the world in whites and greens,  or my rose-colored sunglasses, but even we are beautiful at twilight.

Sometimes, late at night, by moon or clouded skies, we pull the car to the side of the road and look at each other in the silvery grey light that follows the golden evening. Our eyes glow like nocturnal creatures and sometimes we grow afraid. Usually, we sit there in silence, our lungs heaving up the taste of memory and, still in silence, our fingers lace together like shoestrings.

Neither one of us ever stops the radio, except in those silent times without laughter. We need the sound to show us that the car is alive and will keep on running. We learn to listen for our heartbeats on the radio, proving that we are alive too. Because if all the polaroids are any measure, we're going to be here a long while yet. The wind and road signs remind us that we have a very long way to go until we get to the Pacific Ocean or Mount McKinley or the Continental Divide or wherever this old truck is taking us.  The silences will grow and the pictures will discolor. But as long as we're still here and not hitchhiking back alone, we know it's all going to be okay.

"Okay," I say, and we miss another turn.

"Okay," you reply, and crank up the radio, where our hearts beat in stereo sound.

And we know that no matter what happens, if the radio is running, the car will keep on going, and everything will be golden.

The Urchin

The travelling man came across an urchin in the street. She was dirty and her fingernails were clenched and bloodied against her breast. One hand was pressed to the pavement and the other was pressed against her breast. Hollow-eyed, she glanced up at the man and waved with one hand still against her. Her shawl falls away from her dirty eyes and she stares. He waves back and travels on. He is a travelling man, it's what he does. She's just a little urchin girl, and as he whisps on, an empty chewing-gum wrapper falls from his pocket. She picks it up and calls in a softly lisping voice, "Thank you, sir. I'll hold this piece of kindness in my pocket and one day when I have something to give, I'll be kind to you too." He doesn't turn around, but hopes that she'll grow up to be not such a dirty girl as she is now.

Decades later, when the moon is king and the sun is dark, the travelling man returns and as he walks, he sees the urchin girl - thinner, colder, and brittle as a snowflake. She is not an urchin anymore, but a seller of secrets, a lie-seller. 

"Are you a buyer of things I know?" she said softly in the street, her hand clenched against herself. 

The white-lipped man with the pocketwatch stops. "Are you a seller of good things?"

"I sell the things I know, sir. But we will barter in things we know: I will hold whatever secret you put into me and then I will tell you something happy. You may buy the things I know."

So he whispered a bitter secret into her ear, and she took her hand off of her breast, and pulled, to the travelling man's surprise, her hand away holding her heart, beating and hollow as a drinking gourd. She put the pale secret into the hollow vase of her heart, solemnly. Then she pressed it back into her chest. She shuddered and grew a little paler. "Thank you. I'll hold it unless you want it back." She said it sort of like a question.

"No. I do not miss it." 

"Then let me tell you a secret, in exchange for what you sold me." She looked up into the heavens, and whispered something in his ear. His face lifted and he smiled. His lips took some color and he put his pocketwatch away. Then he walked away.

She smiled thinly and sat back down. Whatever he said had made her sad, and whatever she had said had made him happy.  

The travelling man was curious. And so he walked to her. "Are you a buyer of things I know?" she said. 

His eyes shot from her dark hollow eyes to her hand clenched against her. "What do you sell? Lies or the truth?"

Her eyes flickered. "I don't know the difference. I sell the things in my heart. I have many things that my heart knows. And I sell the ones that make you happy. I'd make you happy, sir, if you'd exchange me something in your heart."

"Why?"

"My heart falls out a lot, and it has a hollow in it. It's shaped like a secret. So I thought I should do it that way. That part I know is true."

He stretched out his hand and dropped a beam of light, purer than any secret into her hands.

"I can't keep this, sir." she said, her lips quivering. "I've never had anything this beautiful. I'm not that kind of girl, sir."

"Keep it." he said softly. Curious, he said," Now, tell me one of the things you sell people."

After a moment's hesitation, she rose to her tiptoes and whispered in his ear. His eyes intuitively brightened. "But that is true." he said happily. "The things you say are true."

She looked relieved, and tired. "I'm learning now what true is, sir. But that's not what I say, sir. I'm saying things that are happy."

He looked her in the eye. "Now tell me one of the things still in your heart. One of the sad ones."

She shook her head. "No, they are mine to hold. I'm the one with the hole in my heart, and I'm the only one who has to do this. I wouldn't wish this on you."

"But they're lies." he said. 

She turned her head in a somewhat shamed way and walked.

The travelling man saw her again the next day, sitting on the ground. The first thing he noticed was that her hand was out in front of her face, outstretched, and not clenched against her.

In her hand, her heart was bleeding all over, and the smile he was accustomed to seeing on the lie-seller's face was gone. "It wouldn't go back in today." She said blankly. "I couldn't get it back once I put a secret in it." She winced.

"Does it hurt?"

She winced. "I can't tell if this is truth or a lie. And I know I'll die if I get it wrong." She glanced back to her heart in her hands.

"I will show you the truth." Said the travelling man. And he put his hand on her heart and held it for her as she coughed. Secrets and lies and sadness and blood poured out of it and she coughed and cried. "No, no!" she said. "I promised I would hold those."

But they continued to pour until one last thing was stuck in there as she gasped.

It was a chewing gum wrapper.

"I made a promise once," she said to the travelling man, all out of breath. "to be kind to you."

Then she crushed her heart into her hands and said, "I can not hurt you any more. Neither can I lie to anyone again." 

And the urchin exhaled.

The Wedding Dancer

I remember him well
The shepherd with the lute
Such a sweet boy
Such a sweet, sweet sad boy
I loved him with every part of my voice
I never did know her name,
The fanged little wolf that stole
his heart, which I'd always thought
would be forever free.
Maybe I love him still.
I'll dance at his wedding, forgetting.

I remember her too
She was a small sparrow
One wing was clipped military short
She perched on my shoulder
She was my song and my sighing
I loved her more than anyone
She was my child
He loved her too, with his overalls
His overlarge hat
His heart wide open so
I could see he loved her
He loved her best, the sparrow
And I was glad to give her away
But how I miss her
I loved her too, thought
Maybe more purely than the other
It's okay.
I'll dance the Lindy Hop at her wedding
In my red shoes.

He's not a memory yet
The White Knight, I loved him too
My poor heart could never quite
But that's not important
The White Knight came green
and wounded and I loved him from the beginning
He was as beautiful as a Mid-Atlantic
Snowstorm. His sword
Was rusty but his pipes were fresh.
I love him still.
I've always known about her, too.
As long as I've known him,
I've known the White Knight
was meant for a princess
not a Lady of the Lake
or dancer
I've always loved you for someone else
And that's okay.
I always will.
That's why I'm the Lady of the Lake.
I love you, I
Promise I do.
And, I am not so broken, you know
I will dance at your wedding.

when hearts are many-faced

My heart has many faces, and all of them are turned toward many yous.

I miss our impromptu singing.

 I miss looking at you and the telepathic connection unfolding.

I miss knowing your heart and reading your face.

 I miss dancing.

 I miss long travel days.

I miss setting food aside for you when you’re too busy to eat.

I miss getting texts from you when we’re sitting across from each other in boring meetings.

 I miss pinning on your nametag and fixing your hair.

I miss apples and peanut butter and bran muffins and chocolate chip cookie dough.

I miss  sitting under blankets and hammocks and the way you smell early in the morning.

I miss stairwells and bad food days and the weird smell of Wendell’s office

.I miss the broken oven and the uncomfortable futons and people being everywhere.

I miss laughing till we make the sun rise at night.

I miss your laugh and your voice and your smile and the way your eyes become soft as cotton candy right before your heart leaps from your lips.

 I miss times when you told me your secrets and we cried.

 I miss you.If you were a person, you’d be a many-faced person.

If you were a heart, you’d be a many-faced heart. And I think we are more or less a person, because I think we are more or less a lonely bride. And I think we are more or less a heart, because I feel us beating each other sometimes.

 I miss lots of things today. And it’s good to miss and it’s good to remember and it’s good to care that the pieces of my heart - the pieces of his heart - will someday be gathered, and we’ll have one face. Then there will be no more missing at all, because we will be one.

Walk My Love

Siuil, siuil, siuil a run

Siuil go sochair agus siuil go ciuin

Siuil go doras agus ealaigh lion

Is go dte tu mo mhuirnin slan

Walk, my love

Run, my love

I have found your heart, my love

Hold now -

Among the reeds the tusks of pigs

I'm picking up pearls thrown

[At me I'm the dirty girl

Cleaning laundry hang me up to dry]

Selling my bejeweld soul

Selling my windswept mind

Selling myself to dirty tricks

dirty work dirty men and egrets

Walk, my love

Run, my love

I have found your heart, my love

Hold now -

In the muck where algae

Is crawling up my arms

My skirt eaten by frogs swallowed

I Am Bare

My skin crawls and would you stop looking at me

[They're all dirty boys and girls

That's why they laugh at my nakedness

I'm burning put out the fire boys]

They cry laugh turn their backs

My hands grasp a sword of bronze

Walk, my love

Run, my love

I have found your heart, my love

Hold now -

Cutting away my skin

I bleed

My skin falls off

I cut further

My muscle falls away

I cut further

My bones clatter down

I cut further

Just my heart now, my love

It still beats. I am still alive.

The battle is against me

And against the frogs

[I'm a dirty heart

But I am a little fighter

I promised my children I'd never]

Walk, my love

Run, my love

I have found your heart, my love

Hold now -

Can't you see I've done this killing

For love?

Dead frogs and boneless hearts

For love

Oh failure

Sweet transparency

What was I supposed to do?

Love all over our bodies

I think I've always loved you.

Wherever I'm with you.

Walk, my love

Run, my love

I have found your heart, my love

Hold now.

Expectation.

(Warning: the thoughts contained in this post are typically irrationally and abstract. And it's been worked on for weeks. And all that.)

Okay... so I'm pathetic about posting. I hope to become better about this. And since my last "creative" poem about... well, whatever that poem is about, a lot has happened.

I am a high school graduate. This is a weird thought for me. I'm graduated early (at 16, as opposed to 17 or 18, I suppose). I think this is not so much because I'm graduated, but because of expectation, which is something I've been thinking about a lot.

When a girl graduates high school, there are a few different groups of people who all have different expectations. One camp expects me to go to a university on a nice scholarship (for? I'm still not entirely sure I understand all of the scholarships that are out there.) get my degree and have a nice, illustrious career until I'm twenty-five or thirty, and then think about settling down. Another group says I should get married. The end. Now. (At sixteen? Perhaps they mean court now, and get married on my eighteenth birthday.) Others combine those ideas, throwing in a few twists like traveling, working on political campaigns (me?), picking up sewing or cake decorating, nannying, and other sundry hobbies.

They all ask me, "What are you going to do now?" as if the graduation of high school means some sort of drastic switch where I abandon everything I used to do and start doing something else. I really just want to hold steady on the course, to finish well what I began and then see what seasons God transitions me to.

But people don't expect this.

What is the value of expectation? As a naturally compliant person, I tend to follow peoples' expectations on me, which makes it rather frustrating when some expectations are in direct opposition to each other. I suppose this is why God is teaching me and guiding me, and not all of these people. It's made me careful to evaluate the expectations I have on myself and on others.

I think the most dangerous expectations I have are on myself - I must stay up till 1 tonight to finish my American Literature curriculum, I must pass four tests per month, I must finish YSG by next January, I must learn, I must be, I must be better. Discouraging, yes? I think all of us struggle with expectation, whether ours or others'. It can easily take our eyes off of the God who is to be trusted and obeyed, and onto what we think we ought to do or be.

I am learning a lot of what it means to love, and to have faith. Faith is not an easy thing for me - I am a creature of compassion and joy, not of faith! But I think I am learning.

So what am I going to do? I am learning still. I think that I will finish college this year, continue teaching, maybe travel a little more. Then, next year, I think I will see about traveling and teaching together. But this is God's business.

I expect God's glory, and that is all.

Stone

I'm sitting in the back of time
An insignificant half-life, hidden
Clothed by my illusions of thought
Protected by hiding under feeling
I can't even remember what I've lost, I
Don't know the name - overwhelm -

Is the purpose of darkness to overwhelm?
I feel empty inside most of the time
I want love! How desperately I
Want someone to love me. Is good hidden?
No one wants - I cut off feeling -
Me, has heaven given a thought?

I cover myself with him, I thought
Perhaps this stench of death will overwhelm
My own. If I hide my own feeling
Of fear will it work most of the time?
Behind the dead one I remain hidden
That's what I wanted right? I -

I believe - but not like that - I
Like to be alive, but not as much as I thought
Ah, so long as death is hidden
Why does sadness seem to overwhelm?
It seems to control me, consume my time
Why so [un]vulnerable? Where is feeling?

I think I used to indulge my feeling
I'm not sure that that wasn't good. I
Pretended at pain to pass the time
And my mind was my reality, my thought
Truth, true to form, would overwhelm
The recesses of my soul are hidden

But now light will reveal the hidden
I'm not stone any more, but feeling
Can darkness truly overwhelm
My heart behind this dead body? I
Am going to leave behind this filmy thought
This disguise I'd almost kept for all time

You are not hidden - You are my time -
Removed my stone thought - now living feeling
This is me: I am. You overwhelm.

(That's the poem, or something close to it, that's been bouncing around my head since The Great Divorce. It still doesn't make sense to me, but I do love that story. -C)

In Haiti

Dust
It stung my eyes cough cough
The sky is opened above me
Where is the house
I'm confused
Gasping clutching Mother- mother -
Scream
The pigs move past the women scream
We cry out
There is blood on my dress
There is bile on the stones

Fear
How could this be?
Where are you, God?
So far away, what can I do
What can I do
What can I do?
Hundred miles pass in blue
Between you and I
My arms are aching
Aching to hold you.

Cursing the sun cursing
The light handling what I can
No more house no more sky
No sky just dust
I can't breathe can't cry can't speak
I hate you where are you when I need you
Why aren't you here for me why didn't you stop this
Why weren't your hands there to cradle me
God o God o God I can't feel you
Then where are you

Praising the Son praising
The Light and truth
The Shepherd was there, he cradled the lambs
I can't feel him, and his staff pains me
I just want to cry, I have no praise in my heart
But in my soul, maybe, in my spirit
I can find a wailing voice
Even if I have no words, I praise you
You were there, when I couldn't be
Hold her
Rock her to sleep
Tousle her hair
Sing over her:
Blessed be your name when I'm found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed be your name.
I will sing, I will shout

Burning sun blistering water
Tears in my eyes
Blood in my hair
Over me
Blessed be your name when I'm found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed be your name.
Your name is a strong and might tower
It did not collapse when the earth shook
I run to the tower I ascend
The stairs cavernously
Nothing can shake you nothing
I am safe here
I feel your arms around me
I know your name
You are here
Blessed be your name.

Please be in prayer for the victims of the 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti. Already the poorest country in the western hemisphere, they've consistently had natural, social and political adoptions. More people in Haiti are chronically malnourished than anywhere else in this half of the world, and with the earthquake, less food and water is available. The streets are littered with dead, and many are still trapped under rubble. Haitian adoptions are slow, unsteady and strewn with deceit and corruption. This earthquake could make things more difficult. Dozens of countries have rushed to Haiti's aid, but their support will not be enough. We need to be in prayer that the spiritual elements of the Haiti disaster will be covered, not just the physical. The country is dedicated to Voodoo, and God feels far off to these precious children of his today. When we are inadequate, Christ shows strongest. Please lift these little ones up in prayer in the coming days, weeks and months.

Hollow Men - for Rebecca

"We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men...

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in the dry grass..."

-TS Eliot, We Are the Hollow Men



"Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me!" Psalm 51:10



"So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel. And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in th epotter's hand and he reworked it into another vessle, as it seemed good to the potter to do..." -Jeremiah 18:3-4



"then let men kill, which cannot share

Let blood and flesh be mud mire

Scheming imagined, passion willed

Freedom a drug that's bought and sold



Giving to steal and cruel kind

A heart to fear, to doubt a mind

To differ a disease of same

Conform the pinnacle of am."

-E.E. Cummings, my father moved through dooms of love



"But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, 'Why have you made me like this?'" - Romans 9:20

The Hollow Men
I was the darkness swallowed up the sun
I was the plague on Egypt's plain
I was the ice in God's hand
I was the stone that rolled from
I am the Hollow in the stone

You look at my face
My nose - aristocratic, called
My mouth - laughter, heard
My beauty - revealed
My eyes - what heart?

I felt above the pounding of
Rain or hammers or hailstone
Like bones, and I felt simplicity
Drain my ears
Hmmm.
Crack.

I heard above the sound
Of rushing waters
Of crickets in the early morning
Of bells from one thousand churches
Of the Angel of Death
Passing over

Thump. Ump. Thump. Umpthump.

I felt within and above and beyond
A sound that could only mean
One thing:
That thing that makes men's minds
Turn to oatmeal
And makes men's hearts
Turn from stone to sand

What sound? What song?
Only this:
I love you.

I am full.

Noah

Drip. Drip.
I do not understand the water
That falls like a birdsong on my face
You say it cleanses
Then why is the dirt pouring on
Me?

You chose me. You chose this
Dark creaking beast to be my Shelter
In a long storm. I didn’t
Choose it for myself.
Why me? I am not
Good or Beautiful and I did not
Know you then. I hardly know you now.

Unworthy is a good word.
It’s who I am right now in the face of
This Great Flood that threatens me
But somehow, you protect.
How is it you could love a fool like me?

Is this who I am? More than just the
Earth on my face or the water in my hands,
I am made in your image
These eyes are to see destruction and live
These hands to cradle in love like you do
This heart to beat like yours
Is this who I am?

Unworthy is a good word.
But that is not who I am.

(This poem was up on Real Teen Faith earlier this week, but I decided I'd post it here too. I have too much to do to come up with something new with my poor decrepit old brain right now.
Note to self: Do not make the mistake of telling a Type A person that you are Type A and are the only person in the state the week before you're hosting a conference. It doesn't work out well. Sparks of illumination, C.
P.S. The conference mentioned there is the Institute for Cultural Communicators Flood the Five conference. I get to help teach, which is both scary and exciting. It's fantastic - and, if you live in my state (CO) then this is an excellent opportunity (Don't let the fact that I'm teaching scare you away - to counterbalance my inexperience, we'll have some wonderful speakers, including the debate National Champion from a few years ago). Check it out at: http://www.instituteforculturalcommunicators.org/.
Sparks of illumination, C.)

Sestina

She sits with her back to the bitter wind
The quiet cries of the pale in her hand
The little bird’s trusting muffled song
From within the shifting of his wings
Makes silent rufflings in the shadows
In the bird’s hushed-gentle throat.

The girl looks down and clears her throat.
As her mother follows the wayward wind
Into the paths of darkness, painful shadows
With her destiny in the palm of her hand
And, soaring on a devil’s wings
Distorts the girl’s pure playful song.

The little girl wishes she could sing a song
Like the bird’s, but the dust pains her throat
Instead, she holds the bird’s steady wings
Keeping him from flying into the wind
Stubborn, she holds bird and mother in hand,
She will not let them cross the shadows.

For a moment, she heard the silent shadows
Speak, and their words were the words of a song
That treasure held in conniving hand
Is a knife pushed down magician’s throat
But treasure thrown to the wiles of the wind
Is treasure that will grow bold white wings.

And if the treasure has strong white wings
Then it will call out creatures of the shadows
Who praise the glory of the wind
Whose ears will hail no sudden song
That rises from a sainted throat
But hopeful whisperings of moon at hand

The girl raises her freckled hand
And, arbitrarily, bird tests his wings
A joyful song in the girl’s one throat
As her mother glides in hidden shadows
And both join in the bird’s free song
They see now beauty in the free wind.

The girl holds the shadows like clay in her hand
And the gifted wings fly like the song
In her brave throat and float above the forgetful wind.

I wrote this poem for a contest, but I didn't like it in context enough to submit it as my entry. I wrote a better one that will be my entry. This one is just a pretty thought. I hope you enjoy it. Echoes in ink, C.

Curtain

"How strange that the Lord should wait until the day before Sabbath for his curtain to tear!" Zechariah made a buzzing sound in his throat. Since the cough had taken hold, his humming had grown steadily weaker.

Judah reached up to take the curtain from the old priest. The temple had stood, solid, since the days of Zerubbabel, and the curtain, as a general rule, had been no exception. It had certainly been strange for the curtain to tear from top to bottom on the stormiest day Galilee had seen since Judah could remember, indeed, the day before the Sabbath.

"Why do you think the Lord chose last Friday for the curtain to tear?" Judah asked, a grin quirking the corners of his mouth. He handed the torn curtain to a Levite who stood nearby to attend to it.

Zechariah smiled more broadly, a laugh gurgling in his throat, his full brown beard twitching. "Who knows? The Lord works in mysterious ways, my boy."

Judah laughed too. Though he was supposed to be too old for playing, this was still his favorite game. Growing up in the temple had not been easy, but Judah had found hope and happiness in his favorite priest, a man who was like his father. They had played the game they played now every day for years, asking questions of each other about the God they both served. Why do you think God chose to use a boy to slay the giant, Zechariah?

He still remembered the answer to that one. Zechariah had replied that boys are weak, boys are clumsy and small, and God wanted his people to know that He had won the victory, not little David.

Judah looked up to Zechariah, still standing on the ladder, staring up at the blanket which was to temporarily replace the curtain. Judah thought if Zechariah tried, he could pierce the woolen blanket with his fierce glance and see the Lord's place.

But Zechariah would never blaspheme like that.

Reminded of their old game, Judah said, "Zechariah? Why do we have a curtain before the Holy of Holies?"

The priest heaved his bulk off the ladder and sat down on the floor next to Judah. "You know the answer, don't you?"

True, Judah knew the answer. God was too holy for the ordinary people. Only the High Priest was allowed behind the curtain.

"But why the High Priest only? Why couldn't the ordinary people go through some sort of ritual to pass behind the curtain and make their own offerings to the Lord?" Judah said. A thread brushed past him. He caught it in his hand and stared into its forgiving fibers.

"God ordained for it to be the High Priest. He has been necessarily purified."

Here came the second phase of the game - trying to see how much they could get the other to prove before he said, 'It's the Lord's mystery," which was always the end to their game.

"The Weeping Prophet says the heart is desperately wicked. All hearts. Not just the ordinary people and the sinners."

"The Lord also says he will create in us a pure heart."

Judah frowned at the thread. "Why would God make it so that the ordinary people can't know him?"

"He is holy, my son."

Judah looked up. "Does he not love us, Zechariah?"

Zechariah looked away for a long time, and for a moment, Judah thought their game had ended sadly. It was quiet, the only sound the wailing of a crowd of mourners outside the temple.

"Oh yes." Zechariah said, startling Judah out of the silence. "He loves us very much. Where does it say that, my son?"

"In the Torah."

"Yes."

"How could he love us if he is never with us?" Judah said, quietly.

Zechariah looked away again. "It's the Lord's mystery."

---

Judah sat outside, on the street. It was stiflingly warm, sticky, and his shirt was sticking to him, not at all pleasantly.

In the distance, the call of a peacock, mimicking the mourners who still stood outside.

Women. So many women in this crowd. They were moving past him now. Good. He couldn't stand the sound of their hopeless, ululating cries. They made his skin crawl.

It was so warm, so lulling and warm. He felt himself begin to relax into waxy half-slumber.

But someone was shouting, breaking him from his very comfortable dream.

"He is alive!"

A female voice, happy. He opened one eye, recognized her as a woman he had seen in the temple on occasion. An older lady, respectable, quiet.

It seemed to him that something was unfortunate about her, but he couldn't quite place it.

"He's alive!"

Who's alive, woman? and would you be quiet? I'm trying to rest.

He felt like saying it, but he didn't.

"Jesus is alive!" Something about that name stuck with him.

Oh. That was the unfortunate thing, wasn't it? Her name was Mary. She was the one with the maniac blasphemer prophet as her son.

Alive? He couldn't be alive. Wasn't he the one who had died, the day of the storm?

The day the curtain tore?

He had listened the man speak once. He had called himself the good shepherd. He was a carpenter, this Jesus, but he called himself a shepherd. What did that make Judah? A sheep?

The thought had struck him as funny when he first heard it. Now, it seemed vaguely familiar, and faintly disturbing. What was it the prophet Isaiah said?

We all...

we all like sheep...

We all like sheep have gone astray; each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

Who is the He in this verse, Zechariah?

It's the Lord's mystery.

"The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep."

Judah could hear that voice, that perfect voice, in his mind still.

But I don't understand. You are a carpenter, not a shepherd. And you're dead.

"Jesus is alive!" The woman's shouts mingled with the mourners.

We all like sheep.

Judah heard something, but couldn't seem to place it. We all like sheep have gone astray.

Maybe he was the good shepherd. He had laid his life down. And his mother seemed to think he had returned.

The Lord has laid on him the iniquities of us all.

More unidentifiable sound.

The iniquities of us all.

Judah remembered the lightning, the thunder around him, cowering, as the curtain tore. Unreasonably loud, that thunder. And the words, over and over, soundless and screaming, in his mind and above him like the thunder itself, It is finished.

And it was. The good shepherd had laid down his life for his sheep, he inexplicably understood. Because the Lord had laid on Him, that shepherd, the iniquities of us all.

The sound he could not hear shrieked in his ears.

He had killed the Lord of hosts. He had been the one the weeping prophet, Isaiah the prophet, and all the others had spoken of. It was his iniquities, it was his pain.

That was his criminal death that the Lord had paid.

Oh, Lord. Oh, Lord. I am afraid.

Why so afraid?

I love you. You know that, don't you? I love you. Where do you find that, little Judah?

The Torah.

That's right. And I have a question for your game now, little Judah. Why did I choose Friday for the curtain to tear?

It is the Lord's mystery.

No mystery is hidden with me, little Judah. How can I love you if I am never with you? I do not dwell in the Holy of Holies, behind a forbidding curtain. I am among you. You are my people. I am your God. I love you. I will always be with you. How can it be otherwise, dear little one? I dwelt with you as Christ the Savior. Now I dwell with you as your friend, your lover, your king, your Messiah. I am with you, to the very end of the age.

Who are you, Lord?

I am Jesus.

Judah could still hear the sound in his mind, and now Jesus' words showed him what it was. The curtain was torn in two. The path to God was open.

The Night

And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness, he called Night.

It was now about the sixth hour and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun's light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two.

For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.

I, Jesus... am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star. The Spirit and the Bride say, "Come." And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.

It is so dark out here, Father. It's so cold, and chill, and I am frightened. The stars even hide their light. I cannot break this blackness, this perfect, pure blackness.

Father, I am afraid.

Why is the night here? Is it not daytime? Why, Father?

These torrents of rain cover me. They are in my hair and my eyes, and the scream - the pained, pained scream - fills my ears and my heart. Who is crying out, Father? And why is he anguished?

Then the wailing begins. I cannot tell where it begins from. Perhaps the man in the center of the three? The wail is unbroken, unadulterated pain. The man arches his back, trying, trying so hard to...

To breathe, I think. Below him, the woman is wailing too. Their screams harmonize together in cacophony with the screaming. I think it is the wind.

I am afraid, Father.

Above the shout of rain and wind and tears, I can hear just one thing.

Small gasp. Small gasp.

The man in the center is making the noise. He tears his hands on the spires and raises himself up.

"Father! Into your hands I commit my spirit. It is finished."

It is.

The wind is louder. The rain pounds harder on my face, my outstretched hands.

I'm crying. And I don't know why.

It is finished.

That is why. It's done here. The suffering, finally over. The pain, finally done.

But his life is ended. Cut short.

The darkness plunges even blacker. And then I realize.

Light has perished from the world.

Come back.

Come back.

End the night, forever.