Chapter 9 Out of this World, So to Speak

The morning was misty and miserable and heavy. Here it was mid-December, yet somehow it seemed all wrong. It felt more like the dark side of October, perhaps; after the leaves had fallen.

Just beyond and encircling me were trees and bare bushes and together they resembled death or some skeletal assembly. A few degrees colder, I thought, and a blanket of snow would christen this scene holy and pure. But the sun, even as it hid, regrettably left just enough warmth in its wake to render everything gray and clammy.

And oppressive.

I sat with my legs crossed in the middle of this haphazard circle and soon droplets of moisture were forming on my eyelashes. If I blinked, fake tears rolled down as random, miniature streams on my cheeks, breaching this stoic countenance of mine. It was still—so eerily still—like some code of silence had befallen this plot of land.

It was there that I was once again held captive by something dark and heinous, a serpent bent on removing this mustard seed as it rummaged to find fertile soil in me, way down in the depths of me. Sneering and hissing his lies, I trusted him, of course, as he constricted slowly to purvey a subtle, presumed and foregone conclusion that I am just a body; merely a man.

And because of that, my shell and my smile were always meant to be up against yours—and his and hers. Their skin, their ways; their charm and their warm disposition competing with this frigid display of a man. Or, on random days, vice versa.

You’re cute or maybe not; you’re shy or you’re brash. Pause for a moment while I size you up.

This one here is rich, that one not so much. He’s plain but she’s beautiful. Good thing he’s smart. He’s so damn smart and he always knows what’s next, ahead of everyone else and people like him make me feel stupid. Maybe you too.

Over there, look, she’s so stylish. And athletic. Put her over there in that section. With the other stylish and athletic ones.

Still another screams out: “Not me, I’m an artist, and I’ll paint and dance circles and weave my poetry in and around you.”

Defining me, defining you.

You can’t put on a pound, as hard as you try.

Try as I might, I’ll never lose this weight.

Let me carry a tune to you in this bucket for it will never reach my lips. You sing like an angel, and, well, I can’t.

When you look at a baby, it's just that: a body you can look at and touch. But the person who takes shape within is formed by something you can't see and touch - the Spirit - and becomes a living spirit. So don't be so surprised when I tell you that you have to be 'born from above' - out of this world, so to speak.

I strained my eyes to see and my ears to hear because the stillness was broken ever so slightly by this Word, and the low resonance of a distant cello was gliding over the hair on my arms.

Could it be that these talents and grand exteriors of ours must pale and die first? What skeletal assembly are we? Must we re-think what it means to be re-born, to be christened holy and pure?

I wondered, for there, just beneath entangled brown branches (the very ones holding me prisoner), I could see a lion and he somehow knew peace; in fact, a helpless lamb had just nestled its head into his mane. And next to this I saw a refugee clothed in stunning beauty and he was seated before a table of bounty. And near him, an orphan found love and security and hope. And a home. The sick and the lame and the last and the least were smiling at me from the fringe. All humanity previously cursed began to emerge and they were my equal there, by the light, and a bouquet of green and vivid color began to warm the edges of this cold, gray center.

If this is another world, albeit from my imagination, must I find it as a source of new life?

Knowing my refusal still, he cleared through the trees and he wanted to thrash me out of this cross legged, closed-off posture of humanity into some type of heavenly reality, because I just wasn't getting it.

You're not listening. Let me say it again. Unless a person submits to this original creation - the 'wind hovering over the water' creation, the invisible moving the visible, a baptism into a new life - it's not possible to enter God's kingdom.

It doesn’t even make sense to me, this spirit or wind, nor should I be expected to understand his terms, right? But there his Kingdom was, just beyond, invisible but yet oh so visible to me, and it was breathtaking in its simplicity.

And yes, I wanted to enter it.

Yet, I hesitated, for this body of mine is solid and I can touch it. But wait—it's not as good as his. My mind is nothing like hers. They’ve got it all together and so do you, while we're at it.

If I tell you things that are plain as the hand before your face and you don't believe me, what use is there in telling you of things you can't see, the things of God?

And every time it would begin to make sense, I could hear them disagreeing again, as if I was a child, and they were arguing and they thought I wasn’t listening. But I was. This personified evil, unrelenting, gave little ground as he whispered and taunted; how attractive, to rely on my wit, my charm, my privilege. My body.

Such that it is.

This is the crisis we're in: God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness. They went for the darkness because they were not really interested in pleasing God.

The day grew even darker then, midday no less, as if it had given up completely. The limbs and the thicket started to close in.

You know well enough how the wind blows this way and that. You hear it rustling through the trees, but you have no idea where it comes from or where it's headed next. That's the way it is with everyone 'born from above' by the wind of God, the Spirit of God.

I did hear it picking up then, and the cello began to deepen—not some discord, no, but of stroke and cadence.

This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life.

I do believe, I do! Out loud I shouted it.

His retreat was clumsy but swift, that of a snake wounded. And my body relaxed all at once. Branches and bushes previously entwined released their knots and more radiance overcame the gray. The lion stood and the lamb stretched lazily beneath him; and together they knew nothing of this world. And there I could imagine that peace prevailed and light persevered and there was no death, no hunger; nothing of the kind.

And it started to snow.

Passages in italics taken from The Gospel of John, Chapter 3 (The Message)