Eshtine

enjoying the miracle

Another excerpt from the novel that may hit bookstores near you in, oh, let's say 2010.

He went out to the desert, they had told me. He had gone out to the desert before he had met any of them, and no one dared to ask him what he had seen there. But ever since then he kept running backónot to the same desert, but to high country, lonely places. What was there for him?
I wanted to know what made him the way he was. He had so much energy, he lavished so much attention on everyone he met, he gave and gave and gave. Where was the store of riches he was drawing from? Finally I thought, maybe itís in the desert.
I am a city creature. There have always been people around meómy large family, my wifeís large family, our children, my students. And all around me there is cultivation. The ground I am accustomed to walking bears the imprint of generations of men. As a child I roamed some wild places close to home. I have never spent any time in the true desert.
But I wanted to know.
Forty days, they told me. He hadnít brought any food along, just water. Unless there was a secret stash of provisions out there, he must have fasted. I wasnít up to doing all that, but I thought Iíd better do as much as I could. How long could I stay in the desert? A week? A day? An hour?
People do die in the wild. They can get weak from lack of food, they can be set upon by wild animals. I decided to tell Gamaliel my plan so he could check up on me if I hadnít returned in a weekís time.
I got ready. I filled seven skins with water and folded up a sleeping cloak. I bundled sticks and chose good tinder for a fire. Then I set out.
The wilderness is never far, no matter where you start. They say it took Jonah three days to cross Nineveh from one end of the city to the other, but I set out in the morning from a much smaller city, Capernaum, and was out by the afternoon. By early evening I could no longer hear merchants in the market or shepherds in the hills. By late evening I had crossed over a hill and down into a valley, so when I looked back I could see no sign of human habitation. I was alone.
I had with me no scrolls, no food, nothing to busy myself with. I gathered scrub brush to serve as a supplement to the wood I had brought. I prepared a place for the fire, but I decided it was too early to light it. I spread my cloak on the ground and sat on it.
I looked around. I was not in the kind of desert that is all sand, but in an undomesticated place where the soil was rocky and the plants were thorny and anything of softness or sweetness was foreign. I tried to fix the look of it in my mind: brown, gold, yellow, black; low bushes with needle-thin branches; faint trails marking where water would rush if there was rain. It was very quiet. I didnít hear birds or buzzing flies or the calls of any creature.
I didnít want to move much. Iíd been walking all day. I took a generous sip of the water and dabbed some more of it onto my skin. With nothing else to do, I let my eyes roam again over the landscape.
Slow prickles of doubt crept up my back. ìI donít know what Iím doing here,î I said aloud.
Empty air all around. No response.
At least I could have asked Jesus what he had done out here. How was I to fill my time? Had he sat chanting, did he hunt for food, did he talk to himself? Did anyone talk to him?
What if heíd done nothing at all? Could he have possibly just sat out here in absolute silence and stillness? There were times, especially when around screaming children, I had wished for nothing other than peace. Here for the first time I knew what it was like to have no disruptions. There was nothing to do, nothing to hear, not even anything very interesting to look at. My eyes were tired of rocks and angular weeds. I shut them.
Did I say there was nothing to listen to? There was nothing but noise; it was just all internal. A constant of babble of voices sang in my head: ìWhy are you doing this to yourself when you have a warm bed and a good wife and a loving family? What are you doing out by yourself with a cloak to keep you company waiting for something you know nothing about and which may not even exist? Why are you doing this with your time?î
I argued with the voices, carrying on elaborate conversations with myself, debates that could not be won. By the time it finally seemed late enough and cold enough to justify lighting the fire, I was exhausted without understanding why.
My sleep was not restful. I wandered endless dream roads.
The morning sky was clear. Birds woke me at dawn, but shortly afterward the quiet descended again. I washed my face with water and drank without rationing; I had nearly convinced myself to walk back to Capernaum that day. First, though, Iíd spend a little more time in the quiet.
My chattering thoughts rushed in when I stationed myself upright on the cloak and shut my eyes. How little control I had over them! They made me feel desperately tired. They were swarming flies and I was wearing out my arms swatting at them. I was beginning to understand the virtue of jobs undertaken for no other reason than to have something to do. Anything was better than to spend all day listening to this.
Strange, though. I knew the voices would come, I knew they would remind me that I was being a fool. I remembered how fruitless it had been to argue with myself, so this time instead I just listened. I made every effort not to get upset at what they said, no matter how insulting or provoking. I did anywayóI got upset that I carried around with me all these untamable provocations. But when I felt my hackles rise, I forced myself to smile and just listen some more.
That is how I spent a large part of the morning. I listened, went out of my mind with the distractions, realized I was going out of my mind, calmed down, got carried away again. I would often be wrapped up in my self-insults long minutes before I realized what I was doing and escaped them. Or I would get pulled into worries about home, wife and family; or I would start wondering what Jesus and Peter and the rest were doing; thinking about Jesus would lead me into memories of my students, and Iíd replay favorite images of classes, favorite pupils; then Iíd berate myself about scrolls I couldnít save, fights I picked with lazy workers. All this would go on inside before I was even aware. Then Iíd say out loud, ìNo!î and pull back to just listening, not allowing myself to get pulled along.
So it went, one cycle after another. When the sun was highest I walked around a little, slinging the waterskinís contents into my dry throat every few steps. I sang a psalm. It felt good to hear real noise, something from outside my mindís ears. But my voice also sounded shrill and alien bouncing off the rocks of that place. When I stopped singing, the wasteland seemed deader than before.
I was very hungry. When I sat back down I was annoyed to discover unstoppable images and tastes haunted me nowóripe figs, fish fresh out of the pan, near-endless supplies of wine at a wedding feast. ìYou can return to these whenever you want. You can just get up and leave,î my voices coaxed. I discovered I was gritting my teeth so hard my jaw was getting sore.
The sun crawled down. Eventually I gathered more brush, lit the fire, kept watch over the flames with waterskin in hand. I was so tired of this, but I was stubborn too. I had survived one full day out here; Jesus had done forty. It seemed pointless now, but what would happen with a little patience?
I didnít rest well that night either. I kept dreaming of rare delicacies out of reach.
The next day it rained. That offered my existence a little variety. It also made my cloak uncomfortable and smelly before the next nightís sleep.
God knows how the rainy day went for me. I shall not mention it again.
I awoke the next day in a foul temper. I tore apart one empty waterskin out of boredom and for the sheer thrill of destruction, then stomped on it howling like one possessed. Is every man a dayís walk and three meatless days from madness? I wasnít madóI wore myself out with the stomping and felt much calmer as I lay on the ground waiting for my breath to come back.
The sound of the air getting pulled in and rushing back out of my body slowly became my sole focus of interest. Even after I was breathing normally I continued to lay there enjoying the simple rhythm. What a marvel it is, I thought, that breath is both unseen and essential. Water is like that, too, sustaining without color or taste. Air and water were more important than anything I could ever own, yet there was nothing that called attention to them. They even slipped away from being grasped if I tried to snatch them in hand. Only when I was free from all distractions could I even notice their existence, yet my existence depended on them!
I wondered if anything else was like thatóso hugely necessary that my attention would have to be concentrated fully for me to even perceive it. I shut my eyes.
It felt like an explosion. It felt like an earthquake, except I, not the ground beneath me, was being split in two. Something had been waiting for me to guess at its presence, and now that it was showing itself to me, it was too immenseómy mind could not contain the thought of it. There was nothing else in the world of any importanceóno boredom, no hunger, no whining doubts. There was only this, unutterably, incomprehensibly, supremely itself. And it had been with me all this time.
Maybe Jesus could stay out in the desert with it for forty days, but I could not. The next morning my sandals were pointed toward Capernaum.