“Now what are you up to, Marc,” said Lady, magically not
appearing on this Wednesday morning, since last night was a double billing of
signing her little plaster houses for the gringos
at a resort in lands to the east, and the weekly poetry slam. So that made for
a long night, which makes for a long morning, devoted to and attended by
Morpheus, guarding Lady in her deep and much-merited slumber.
“Get back to bed,” I tell Lady. “You don’t always have to be
here, since in fact you’re never not here. Anyway, the Patriarch of the Tribe
of Amir is here, and does walk the café, rendering homage to guests and…”
“Enough—are you still cooking up that religion?”
“Just written the first parable,” I told her, “and let me
tell you, the stuff just writes itself. If I’m going to be doing this for a
year, I’m gonna be freakin’ bored, and so will everyone else. In fact, the
parable was so boring that the woman at the next table was yawning!”
“Why a parable?”
Can’t she see? If this is going to be any religion at all,
it’s gotta have the stuff that religions are made of. In fact, today’s task
should be to make a miracle, which would be appropriate, since we are in the 16th
week after Trinity.
“I don’t know why I’m worried about it, because really,
whoever wrote Luke—if it wasn’t Luke—didn’t go to any particular trouble about
it. In fact, it’s as thin as a Wal-Mart sheet….”
“What is, Marc?”
“The miracle of the son of the widow of Nain.”
“Don’t know it.”
“Neither did I, but I had to look it up, since the cantata
for the 16th week after Trinity is supposed to be based on it. So
here it is….”
11 Soon afterward Jesus went to a town named Nain, accompanied
by His disciples and a large crowd. 12 And when He arrived at the gate of the
town, a funeral procession was coming out. A young man had died, the only son
of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the town was with
her. 13 And when the Lord saw her, His heart was filled with pity for her, and
He said to her, “Do not weep”. 14 Then He walked over and touched the coffin,
while the pallbearers stood still. Jesus said to the dead man, “Young man, I
say to thee, arise!” And he who was dead, sat up and began to talk, and Jesus
gave him back to his mother.
16 Then they all were filled with awe and praised God. And they
said, “A great prophet has risen among us”, and “God has visited His people”.
17 This news about Jesus went out through all the
country and the surrounding territory.
“That’s it?” said Lady.
“That’s totally it. As an English teacher, I have to say
that the story is completely lacking. Does the widow of Nain have a history,
what they call the “back story” nowadays? Is she rich or poor, young or old?
Why does she not have any dialogue? Did she recognize that Jesus was the
savior? Did she entreat him to intercede? For that matter, why did
Christ stick his nose in the whole business? Weren’t there funerals left and
right at the time? Or was he getting a visit that day from the head honcho from
Home Office, and feel the need to perform a little miracle?”
“Good questions…”
“Look, any five-year old child could cook up a better
miracle than that. Anyway, isn’t raising the dead just a bit of a cliché, or
was it new and brave at the time? Evidently not, since there is the Raising
of the Son of the Widow of Zarephath—I’m not making this up—in Elijah.”
“You know, the more I look at it, the less convinced I am
about this Jesus thing,” I told her. “Christ is supposed to be running around
doing all this bat-shit stuff like raising the dead and throwing the money
changers out of the temple and causing earthquakes and eclipses after his
death. But nobody gets around to writing about it until well after his death,
even though—in theory, and what do I know—the first century was well
documented, for the time. Anyway, I don’t know why I’m going to all the trouble
of inventing parables and miracles—of a substantially higher order than the Bible’s—when
verily there did come to be in the Poet’s Passage an instrument sent via the
angels who guided the hands of Omar, esteemed and revered acolyte of the Poet’s
Passage.”
A piano had appeared yesterday in the Poet’s Passage. Those
of a less mystic mindset reported that Omar had seen a pastor who was trying to
get rid of four pianos.
“Do you suppose miracles will appear weekly in the Poet’s
Passage, now that I’m busying myself inventing them?” I asked Lady. “Is this a
sign? And if God is sending us pianos, how do we know that next week He won’t
be peeved, and send us a plague of locusts? I worry a bit that I might be
opening the door, as it were, to the other world, and who knows what might pop
in?”
“Ridiculous, we’re not having locusts in the Passage,” said
Lady. “Anyway, last week was all about poverty, and look how that worked out! A
piano! So what’s this week—the 16th after whatever—about?”
“Get ready,” I told her, “it’s all about death.”
“Well, well, from poverty to death—I can see that.”
“There is a certain connection,” I told her. “But it’s
interesting that Bach is more into death than your average Goth. Oh, and the
world stinks, according to him.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, take this…”
Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben?
Meine
Zeit läuft immer hin,
und
des alten Adams Erben,
unter
denen ich auch bin,
haben dies zum Vaterteil,
daß sie eine kleine Weil
arm und elend sein auf Erden
und
denn selber Erde warden
“Marc, you know I don’t speak German…”
“Neither do I, so I cheat and use the Bach Cantatas website. Short version:
When, Dear Lord, will I die? For we occupy this wretched earth but for a little
time, until we then become earth itself.”
“Oh, very cheery,” said Lady. “Anyone would be jumping out of bed
on a Sunday morning, ignoring the effects of Saturday night, just to hear that
message!”
“Well, you have to admit, it’s a good strategy. And really, life was
not so great in Bach’s time. They had just gotten done with the 30 years war,
which had been one of the longest and bloodiest struggles in European History.
The plague was still around, and had killed at least a third of the population
earlier in the century. And did you know that in Bach’s time, there was a dance plague?”
“Say what?”
“Yup, people were spontaneously breaking into hysterical dancing, which
sounds funny but wasn’t. They danced and danced to the point of exhaustion, and
then fell dead of cardiac arrest. Nobody has ever been able to explain it.”
Lady considers this.
“Look,” she said, “however bad life was, dancing your way to death
sounds pretty good to me.”
She may be right….
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