This story was written solely as an offering to a man whom I have loved, and whose unknowingly sacramental words have brought life and light to my soul: the beloved 7thSon of the Father. It is published here at his request. Any comments regarding the story should be sent to hunting33@hotmail. com. Please put the story title in the subject line or I will undoubtedly delete the message as spam.
Quotations are taken from the King James and New American versions of the Bible [the latter © The World Publishing Company, 1970] and Jesus Christ, Superstar by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The Celtic prayer, and other prayers that appear are within the public domain.
Quotations from, and references to, the writings of 7th Son, published and unpublished (e. g. letters to the author) are portrayed in caps, and are reprinted with his permission.
No copyright infringement for any of these works is intended.
Although this story is written from the point of view of a very loving Roman Catholic, it is not intended to it is not intended to accurately reflect Catholic teachings or dogma: it is a story of love! It carries no Imprimatur or Nihil Obstat. It is a story! Absolutely no disrespect or dishonor toward God is intended: quite the opposite! It is the author's hope that this story will show the love of Christ to everyone: as it eventually did for 7thSon.
In the beginning was the Word... (John 1:1)
***********
When she looked out the window, she could see him.
He was standing in a verdant lawn, well-gardened and cared for, an English garden with pathways of boxwoods. She could see him, his long black hair falling almost to his waist. Had he cut it recently, she wondered?
She thought, as she looked at him, that he raised his eyes, just a little, and could see her, too. But that was only her imagination, for the sun was bright on his shoulders and on the boxwoods, and her own room was darkened.
She was just the audience, now.
He was the star, on a stage that seemed at once familiar and strange. !
He was where he belonged, she thought, in a land of breeding and beauty. He looked a little lost, though, and for a moment just a breath she worried for him.
Then he stretched his head back, gazing upward at the full clouds, white and empty of any real threat of rain, just barely shading the light enough for him to stare in wonder at the azure ocean above him. His neck was slender, but his adam's apple was pronounced, especially when he swallowed, and she watched him move his head around in a small, slow circle, as if his muscles had been cramped for a long time and were only now relaxing.
Yes, she thought. Relaxing now. He had taken a long journey to get here. But now he could stretch and relax.
He stood there a moment longer, then looked down at the maze of greenery in which he found himself. He smiled. His eyes were dark, hinting at an exotic blend of several bloodlines, his flesh darker than her own but not so dark as to fit easily into any genetic description. He finally bent down and picked something up from the ground near his feet.
He was barefoot. As he rose, staring at the stone in his hand, he seemed to realize that for the first time and he wiggled his toes and smiled. Then he laughed as if he thought his situation funny.
She watched him through the darkened window. He was suddenly realizing that he was more than barefoot: he was bare! Completely bare!
He looked himself over, ran his hands along his chest and down his stomach, then glanced at his own familiar crotch, his penis and testicles. Perhaps relieved to see them still there, intact. Functional? he might be wondering. Useful? Pleasurable?
She couldn't see his expression clearly, so she couldn't be sure. But he made no move to cover himself or to check whether his genitals were, in any sense, operative.
Then he looked around himself, as if suddenly all his memory had been taken from him. He was scared, confused. Not embarrassed: his nudity didn't bother him. But he was perplexed. He looked up again: surely! , she thought, he could see her now! But his eyes simply scanned the area, the manicured garden, trees hedging the tamed landscape, stretching farther into a pasture beyond that led where?
He swallowed again. She could see his fear. His eyes were wide and his neck tightened. But only for a moment.
There was a sound. It must have been a sound, because he turned, almost stumbling, the stone in his hand falling back to the ground as he looked to see who or what was there with him.
She watched the stone fall: it had caught his eye, probably because it was uncommonly beautiful, polished and almost shining, but with a dark beauty like onyx or a deep turquoise.
He loved beauty! Of course he would have noticed that stone, she thought. She smiled while he continued to look around him.
He was beautiful, too, of course. His hair, rich and lustrous, caught the gleam from the sun above him and when he whirled on his bare feet, it flew about him like the veils women wore to church, dark and feminine and still, paradoxically, erotically and intensely masculine.
She watched him and it seemed to her as if within his body he carried all the jewels of both genders: he was not exceptionally tall or muscular, but he was not small or effeminate, either. He was clearly a man, and yet he moved with grace and agility, not with the often-stilted or studied bravura of men who needed psychological proof of their own masculinity. He was virile enough: she could see that even at the great distance from which she watched him. And yet his body was molded gently and curved, like an Ionic column enfleshed in human form.
She could almost feel the strong magnetic emanations he must have given off! He was intensely _s_e_x_ual, yet equally innocent.
But not undefiled.
"I am here."
She heard the voice: not his voice. Another voice. A strong voice that both took away her breath and gave it back to her. A voice that belonged to someone neither of them could yet see.
"I am here," the voice repeated.
She waited! patiently, watching as a cloud dimmed the light around the naked man, just a bit. He said nothing in response to the voice.
He was turned away from her now, and she beheld his beauty again, this time from behind. The smoothness of his legs, the curve at the small of his back, the roundness of his buttocks. Yes, she thought, a Grecian column, adorning a temple!
She couldn't see his shoulders or upper back: they were covered by his natural, dark veil.
"I am here!"
The voice spoke the words for the third time, and finally the exotic nude spoke back.
"Skin?"
There was silence. Then a quiet laugh.
"I am here!" The same words, but now the emphasis was on the pronoun.
She watched him. He turned back to her again (no, not to her: he still didn't see her) and looked around himself. He moved cautiously on his bare feet along the pathway that spread itself in front of him, still concealing the owner of the voice somewhere behind the boxwoods.
"Kish?" the boy-man whispered. The question brought a wrinkle to his smooth face. She wondered, watching him, how old he was. Certainly, he was no older than thirty. Probably younger. His eyes were worried, his forehead wrinkled just a bit with puzzlement and incomprehension. But he wasn't scared now.
The voice had sounded familiar to him, as if he had heard it all his life and knew it: and yet...
His memory was dimmed. He couldn't place the sound of it.
He walked forward, and twice looked down at his feet, realizing that although the ground beneath him was strewn with stones and rocks (some, like the one he had briefly held, shining with inner beauty, and others harsh and sharp and ugly), his feet were neither bleeding nor sore.
"I am here!"
The clouds above him thickened, blocking more of the sunlight that had illumined his face.
She pressed herself against the window, straining to keep him in view as he moved closer and closer to her, yet farther and farther away at the same time, as if he were walking through one of Escher's pa! radoxical drawings.
When he stopped, at a junction in the maze, a fortress of boxwoods suddenly forcing him to choose which direction to turn right or left he spoke again, still trying to remember. To understand. To comprehend...
"Mishka?" he whispered.
She could hear him. She saw him put his hands in front of himself for the first time, as if to cover his nakedness with a pathetic fig leaf. He was unsuccessful. The mere whisper of those two syllables had made him rise with desire. He was long and the blood in his veins pulsed with anticipatory delight.
They worked! She smiled as she watched his face, as the realization that blood coursed through him and stirred within him sifted slowly into his mind.
He blushed, just a little, for he was still unseen to his own knowledge. But an Oriental fire-pot blazed briefly around his cheek bones.
Then he dropped his hands to his side and whispered the word again. "Mishka?"
For a long time, and for no time at all, there was silence. Then the voice came again, still hidden, still leading, still powerful and gentle.
"I am here."
The Corinthian column that had been erected between the wanderer's legs crumbled, no greater now than Ozymandias' glory. His entrancing appendage sank back to rest. Softened, it was once more a pillow for love: hardened, it had shown ardent desire. And here, though he didn't know it yet, he would find both!
"Who..?"
His voice trailed away as he chose which trail to take. He turned right at the hedge and continued to walk and to ponder the voice. From time to time, he stopped, shut his eyes, and what? Did he recall something? Someone? Somewhere? Did he try to remember what he had forgotten? Did he see his own past imperfect? Or his present tense?
Or was he starting to understand the future perfect?
She couldn't tell.
He had beautiful muscles. Arms. Legs. Just the right length, just the right thickness for his body. He had not warped them into the bizarre oddities seen at freakish muscle contests.! He had not neglected them, either: they were firm and defined his shape as he moved lithely along the path.
He had chosen the rockier road, the road to the right, toward her. She watched, but of course, he still could not see her. She saw him reach out one hand to feel the thick, waxed branches of boxwoods as he moved toward and away from her. Then she saw him flinch and stop moving.
The garden path he had chosen had led him out of cultivated gentility and into the raw, untamed land around the garden. He stooped and picked up a stone, a rough one, that he had stepped on. There was no beauty in the stone. It was just a sharp piece of compressed gravel. He held it for an un-moment, then tossed it into the thick hedge.
She watched from her window, her face now pressed close to the glass. He had lovely hands, long fingers, visible knuckles, and a kind of movement that was usually accrued only by pianists or violinists.
"I am here."
The voice sounded again, in her ears and his. He muttered something she couldn't hear, then moved forward.
He had taken the correct path, she knew, though it was not the easier one: she wondered if he knew that. If he didn't he began to. His steps halted again. Once more he pulled a rock from the pathway, tossed it aside, then continued on.
"Not Mishka," he whispered to himself. (She heard it.) "Not Skin. Not Kish..."
He continued muttering to himself as he struggled for the knowledge of his past that would make him whole again.
"I am here."
He came to the edge of the garden. Just in front of him lay the untamed, wild forest of trees and undergrowth, of fallen logs and wild, abandoned growth. He pulled in a long breath and she saw his ribs rise with the movement.
His ribs! She could see his ribs now! He hadn't shown them before, while he was standing in the garden, but now, as he took air into his lungs, she saw them. Sharp, paled, nearly horizontal stripes across his chest where bone and skin met and blood was scarce.
Stripes? No! No, not stri! pes!
Welts?
Welts!
Restoration...penance... forgiveness...
It came back to him, and in the blink of an eye, he was changed!
His eyes opened in wide, wild wonder. She knew his thoughts now: surprise, fear, desire, horror, longing, yearning, emptiness.
And then, in the swift, unmeasurable pass of synaptic surges, it all returned.
All of it! His memory... His life... His loves. Losses. Sorrows, pains, joys. Betrayals, foolish acts, disappointments and heartbreaks. Fullness, emptiness, breath, life...
And death.
Sleep, and I shall soothe you,
Calm you and anoint you,
Myrrh for your hot forehead...
He dropped to his knees and screamed. His legs were stabbed with sharp stones and pebbles, none in itself terribly painful, but together building into agony within him.
The lovingly tended Eden had become now his own Gethsemane.
She saw him fall and pressed her nose to the glass: the moment for her own "corner time" had come.
I don't know how to love him:
What to do, how to move him.
She longed for him to look up, to look in the window, to see her, to acknowledge her, to know she was there: but he didn't. He couldn't.
That, too, was part of her own punishment, and she accepted it, looking down and watching him make his way through the maze to the amazing.
He's a man. He's just a man!
"Credo in Unum Deum," she recited, her words, her warm breath fogging the window around her lips.
...Should I scream and shout,
Should I talk of love?
Let my feelings out?
"Et in Unam, Sanctam Catholicam Ecclesiam..." The words comforted her, but they transformed the young man below her.
He bent forward, kneeling in the posture of a devout Buddhist. In the position of a devout Jew. In the position of pure and total supplication. The position of utter, physical vulnerability, his forehead pressed against the ground, against the now-painful pebbles and debris that lined his path. He rested his elbows on the earth and covered his face with his palms. His buttock! s were raised and presented, as a slave bows before his master, ready to accept punishment.
I only want to say:
If there is a way,
Take this cup away from me
For I don't want to taste its poison.
Feel it burn me...
"I believe in the Holy Spirit," she whispered, repeating the words in her mother tongue, "the Holy Catholic Church.." Her words faltered and she took a deep breath: her vision began to blur with tears. "...The communion of saints," she murmured. In her own body she felt the rocky ground beneath the young man's legs, and she felt his humiliation and fear and terror and hope.
In her mind she merely repeated the creed of hope.
"... The forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body and life everlasting."
Then, I was inspired!
Now, I'm sad and tired...
He knelt on the rocks and pebbles and stones that bit his flesh. He presented himself as if for a flogging. He cried. He covered his face, not just hiding his tears, but fearful of the light from the sun, now dimmed with clouds but still sharp and piercing.
Piercing his soul!
"I am here!"
The voice came from behind her, within her, in front of her. Above and below, external and internal. All-encompassing and infinitely ephemeral.
And he heard the voice, too, though he still couldn't identify it.
Let them hate me, hit me, hurt me
Nail me to their tree...
"I am here," the voice whispered. It was soft and melodic now. The boy-man looked up, his face ruined with tears, his knees and shins thrashed with nature's inimitable penance to his body.
...I CAN HEAR MY PAPA CRYING AND MY BELOVED MISH, AND MAYBE KISH PRAYING FOR ME...
"Oh, my Jesus," she whispered, "forgive us our sins!"
God, Thy will is hard;
But You hold every card...
I will drink Your cup of poison...
...I ONLY HOPE BRYCE HOLDS ME, FOR I AM SO VERY SCARED ABOUT WHERE I AM GOING...
Nail Me to Your cross and break Me!
Bleed Me, beat Me,
Kill Me! Take Me now
Before I change My mind!
"...And save us from t! he fires of Hell..."
His terror-riven thoughts swelled her brain with his final agonies, as she had asked and prayed for, and she struggled to remember the formulaic prayer delivered to three small children in Fatima who had once been shown unspeakable horrors in a flash of divine mercy poured forth for all the world.
"Lead all souls to Heaven! Especially those in most need of Thy mercy.
She pressed her face harder against the window. He still would not see her, might never know she was there.
Penance. Corner time. Karmic retribution.
She accepted it. She welcomed it! She had prayed for this gift, and so now she must see it through.
For him.
Despite the pain in his body, the cuts on his legs and the memories of his life that were now horrifying him, he still knelt in the light: and she stood behind the glass, able only to look, to watch, and to endure the corner she had chosen for his sake.
I TOLD HIM THAT I WOULD KEEP HIM OMPANY FOR AS LONG AS HE HAD TO BE STOOD UP WITH ALL HIS AESTHETIC NUDITY.
"THANKS," HE SMILED, "BUT IT'S NOT NECESSARY..."
"Hail, Mary, full of grace," she began, trying to share each corner he had stood in, just or unjust, as deeply as she could.
His sobs finally ebbed, like ocean waves washed from the shore back to the sea. He rubbed his palms across his face. His dark, shining veil was draped across his shoulders and back. He was almost hidden by it, but for the penitential target he had made available for discipline, as he had done in the days before physical contact became alternately a thing to be abhorred or craved with abandon.
THEY WERE INNOCENT DAYS. I HAD FELT NO SHAME BEING NUDE AMONG FAMILY...
AND THEN I GREW UP.
... MASTER KOHN HAD BROUGHT SHAME TO THE HOUSE AND IN SO DOING, TRANSPORTED ME TO A NEW PLANE OF UNDERSTANDING OF SHAME.
NUDITY HAD BECOME VULGAR IN HIS PRESENCE FOR HE WAS VULGAR.
MY CONCEPTION OF _s_e_x_UALITY, SPIRITUALITY AND ESCHATOLOGY WAS ALSO NEVER AGAIN TO BE THE SAME. THEY HAD ALL TAKEN ON A NEW ANATHEMA OF LI! FE.
His round, beautiful orbs were thrust upward, taut and firm, but marked with the balanced equation of justice. Marked, as well, by unjust punishments, bravely borne for the sake of others...
... I WAS PUTTING JIESHAN TO BED. MY LITTLE BROTHER LAY ON MY PULSE WHILE I LULLED HIM TO SLEEP. HE WAS TREMBLING AND TERRIFIED. UNDER HIS CHANGED DIAPER, HIS PENIS AND ANUS WERE RED AND TENDER TO THE TOUCH.
I COULD NOT LET MOTHER KNOW NOW OR EVER WHAT HAD BEFALLEN JIESHAN FOR SHE COULD NEVER SURVIVE ANOTHER GUILT PANG. WHEN AT LAST I WAS CONVINCED THAT JIESHAN WAS ASLEEP AND SAFE IN HIS CRIB UNDER HIS NURSE'S VIGIL, I SOUGHT MY FATHER..
They were the only marks left on the adult-child's body.
LASTLY HIS UNHOLY HIGHNESS SAID, "HE HAS NO DISCIPLINE AND NO RESTRAINT. HE IS GODLESS AND IMPIOUS AND HAS A SACRILEGIOUS TONGUE."
Sacrilegious? Impious? The words scoured her soul like sandpaper.
I FOUND FATHER AND MASTER KOHN IN THE ANTE-CHAMBER WHICH WAS KEPT AS A SHRINE TO OUR ANCESTRAL ALTAR. FATHER WAS IN DESPAIR. IN HIS HAND WAS THE BROKEN STATUETTE OF A DEITY.
... "DID YOU BREAK THIS ICON IN REBELLION TOWARDS MASTER KOHN'S LESSONS?"
I SANK TO THE FLOOR AND WOUND MY ARMS AROUND FATHER'S KNEES. HE COULD NOT POSSIBLY BELIEVE MASTER KOHN'S LIES. I WAS GOING TO TELL HIM THE TRUTH, FOR IT WAS ALREADY ON THE TIP OF MY TONGUE, WHEN ALL OF A SUDDEN A FRIGHTENING REALIZATION HIT ME.
MY GOD, I THOUGHT, MASTER KOHN DID THIS! FOR ALL OF HIS RELIGIOUS FERVOR AND PIOUS ADVOCATES, HE WAS ABLE TO BRING HIMSELF TO BREAK THE DEITY INTO TWO AND THEN FABRICATE A LIE ABOUT IT. YET, HERE HE WAS, NONE THE WORSE FOR HIS SACRILEGE AND STILL IN ONE PIECE AND WEARING THAT SMIRK.
She almost smiled: hypocrisy was universal.
But he would never have gotten this far had he raged in his last moments against Truth. Against God.
"HE IS ALSO A SCOUNDREL, FOR LOOK AT HIS PENIS. SEE HOW IT STANDS. IT'S HIS MIND - IT'S ALWAYS PREOCCUPIED WITH DEBAUCHERY WHEN HE SHOULD BE OCCUPYING IT WITH GODLY PURSUITS."
Is ther! e no leeway? she wondered. She would, of course, accept whatever answer was given: she would never have claimed a monopoly on truth.
But within her soul, the klaxons of love and forgiveness resounded with eternal hope and patience: there was always leeway. But there was also always truth.
What is truth?
Is truth unchanging law?
We both have truths!
Are mine the same as yours?
No! There was only one, objective Truth!
Love and truth were inseparable.
Truth and holiness were complimentary.
Holiness and salvation were congruent.
"All who seek Me shall find Me..."
THERE WAS NO LIGHTNING AND BRIMSTONE. THERE WAS NO GOD OF FURY WHO METED INSTANT JUDGEMENT ON ALL THAT INCURRED HIS WRATH.
No! The God of instant wrath had been satisfied with the offering of His own Son for the sins of His beloved children. God remained unchanged, but the justice He meted out now was delayed as long as possible, so that every chance and opportunity for love could seep into the souls of his beloved children. So that, if they chose, if they wished, they could crawl up onto the lap of the Father and know Eden's lost promise again.
EARLY ON, I HAD PERCEIVED A KIND OF INTIMACY THAT THRIVED BETWEEN MY FATHER AND MY SIBLINGS, AS THEY LAY ON HIS KNEES, HIS PALMS ON THEIR CHUBBY, PERFECTLY-FORMED DERRIERES RAISED UP IN HIGH RELIEF. THERE WAS BEAUTY IN THIS INTIMACY, WHOSE UNOBTRUSIVENESS I WAS THEN TOO YOUNG TO DEFINE, BUT A SHARE OF WHICH I WAS OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW I WANTED.
...I PROCEEDED TO FATHER'S THRONE.
PANTING, BUT IN LOVE, I STOOD BY FATHER. BARELY REACHING HIS KNEES, I TRIED TO HOP ONTO HIS LAP.
FATHER LOOKED LIKE GOD FROM MY VANTAGE POINT.
"MY TURN," I LOOKED UP AND SAID TO GOD.
FATHER PICKED ME UP AND PUT ME ON HIS LAP...
She pressed her face harder to the glass, feeling the cold, unremitting strength of the window against her bones, sweeping through her flesh and sinews.
For all her life, and for none of it, she was suddenly Judas and Herod and Pilate. They both ! were!
They were Peter, swearing obscenely to a curious girl that the Nazarene being stripped and humiliated and crowned with a tiara of thorns was no acquaintance of his!
They were both part of the crowd that screamed, "Crucify him!" when Pilate brought forth the disfigured and beaten man to appease the blood-lust of humanity.
She opened her eyes: they were wet with tears.
She saw him rise. He staggered, fell once, and then rose to complete the harsh journey toward the glade that waited beyond the wild, abandoned trees.
"Who are you?" he whispered as he stumbled on.
There was no answer.
He kept walking. He bled from his legs. He bled from his shoulders, where he had crushed them humbly against the craggy ground. He bled without even feeling the pain now, for his determination to find the voice and to know it to remember it? consumed him.
She finished her first set of prayers as his road grew more and more rough and untrammeled and filled with thorns and brambles.
Then she began the second set of prayers, watching him leave her, never knowing she was there.
"For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world..."
His path was long and arduous. Twice more the voice called out, "I am here," spurring him onward. He stumbled. He threw away the rocks and pebbles and stones that were in his path and that had contaminated his life.
Did he know what they were? she wondered. Did he know they were his own deeds, his sins and his selfless acts?
Some of the rocks were not so hard or devoid of beauty. Some of them, like jade or crystal, were smooth and when he picked them up they shone in his hand for a moment. They were the kindnesses he had shown, the love he had given, the sufferings he had unjustly endured.
Twice or maybe three times his penis rose and swelled and throbbed with pleasure as he retraced his life, his loves, his losses. But with each pleasurable swell came the ebb of disconsolance as he eventually realized the truth of wher! e he was.
Even the lovely stones turned grey or black as he held them. And then he tossed them away.
"Ky?" he whispered, still guessing at the identity of the voice as he stepped haltingly on and around each stone in his path.
"Bryce? Are you with me?"
She closed her eyes.
He was leaving her now. Growing dim, engulfed with a fog from the harbor of safety to which he had always been drawn and toward which he was finally drawing near.
"Bryce?"
This is My Blood you drink!
This is my Body you eat!
If you would remember Me
When you eat and drink...
"Eternal father, I offer You the body, blood, soul and divinity of your dearly beloved Son..."
"I am here, my beloved," said the voice.
It was not Bryce.
But it was Bryce. And it was Papa and Mishka and Kish and Ky and Kirin and it was...
"I AM!"
The rocks and stones, ugly and hurtful, vanished. The boy-man who had never understood himself how deep love could be, found himself once more in the unencumbered light of the sun, bright and hot, almost scorching.
He grasped his buttocks, an instinctive, protective gesture that still longed for the love of...
"Father?"
I STARTED WEEPING AGAIN AS I REALIZED THE ENORMOUS SACRIFICE FATHER HAD MADE TO SAVE THIS SON'S LIFE. AND NOW THE SON MUST CARRY ON THE SACRIFICE.
And then He appeared. Radiant and gorgeous. Powerful and humble. Full of life Life itself.
In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God!
And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us...
All the pictures the boy-man had ever seen of Him were false and frail and pallid compared with the radiant beauty before him. Why was He always portrayed as Occidental? He wasn't! He shared the Oriental beauty of the naked boy, but He was Semitic, pure-bred from a backward desert of wanderers' simple faith, that laid claim to nothing less than the history of salvation.
His eyes shone with beauty and gentleness. His arms were stretched outward, waiting to clasp the man-chil! d. Waiting to welcome him.
And in the background, behind this perfection of manhood, came the voice that had called to him, again and again and again.
"I AM!"
The unwritable, unspeakable Tetragrammaton spoke. Without action or conscious desire, the boy-man's penis rose and swelled as he beheld the awful beauty before him.
HE IS ALSO A SCOUNDREL, FOR LOOK AT HIS PENIS. SEE HOW IT STANDS. IT'S HIS MIND - IT'S ALWAYS PREOCCUPIED WITH DEBAUCHERY WHEN HE SHOULD BE OCCUPYING IT WITH GODLY PURSUITS.
He blushed with embarrassment. But the enthronement of Pure Manliness simply smiled and put him at ease.
"Ecce, homo!" the Semite whispered: Behold the man!
They were not His words: they were the words of a political coward, haunted forever by his wife's dream and his own guilt, then etched into the concrete tablets of holy writ.
The Man smiled, moved closer, and with swift power clasped the boy to Himself.
"I have called you by name," He whispered into the naked boy's ear. He ran one hand across the boy's face and then held it before the boy's eyes. "I have written you on the palm of My Hand!"
The hand the wrist, actually was scarred, branded with a mark of infinite love: the hole of a nail.
He pulled the boy closer, letting His love spread over the beloved creature who had finally come to Him.
"While you were in the womb, I knew you!"
And then, at last, it came.
The all-encompassing submersion of love. Love! Real love.
Love that would never betray him. Love that would never end.
Love that had created principle and integrity. Love that demanded obedience but forgave any and every transgression when offered humble contrition.
Love that gave Its own life to save the world.
The young God was ancient of days, and yet not much older than the naked boy-man He embraced. Only a few years, at most, separated them. Only a few ζons of time!
But there were marks on this God: holes in His hands. Holes in His feet. A long, ugly slash on the Man's ribs a mark that, ! in itself, would have killed.
And with knowledge that came from eternity itself, the boy-man knew that none of those marks was deserved.
God, Thy will is hard!
But You hold every card!
The child inside him cried, "Unfair!"
The bearded young Man smiled and stroked the boy's arms, then ran His Fingers through the long, dark locks of hair, pulling them together, then letting them go.
"For you," He whispered, smiling, "for you alone it was worth it all!"
A hasty stripping. The laughter of the crowd. The humiliation.
The binding. The pole. The whip across His back...
"One! Two! Three!" The praetorian calling out each stroke. "Thirty-one! Thirty-two! Thirty-three!" Each cut drawing blood.
Thirty-nine lashes. A cat-o'-nine-tails, studded with metal.
And then the crowning: thorns that slashed deeply into His flesh, pierced through His hair and sent rivulets of blood down His face, created instant bruises, dark and red and...
Purple. A robe of purple, the occupying army's ironic, sarcastic commentary on His claim of Godhood.
He knew all the humiliation, all the hatred, all the horror.
He even knew the erotic joy, for He was the Creator of Eros: He knew how the intense pain of sin could dissolve into pleasure, even in the body, when redemption was finally at hand.
She watched from her window. She rejoiced at their meeting, but she knew there was still much to come.
The Spirit and the Bride say, "Come!"
"Be my Bride," the Man demanded. His fingers traced through the dark veil of hair the boy-man wore, as if to confirm his status. He ran His hands over the boy-bride's arms. Then He lowered His hands to the boy's waist and hips.
"Listen," he whispered. His hands were wrapped around His bride-boy's waist.
From her window, another bride, loved equally and deeply, prayed.
Then he heard it!
How loud it was! Stunning! Hard and deep! Demanding and penetrating.
Beautiful.
"This is my beloved Son !"
"...I AM STILL MY FATHER'S SEVENTH HEIR, A! ND THE EIGHTH MASTER OF THIS HOUSE!"
"Father?" the boy whispered.
For the first time, tears filled his eyes. He knew that voice! He knew it well. He knew its harshness, its justice and its mercy.
He knew its safety.
He knew its love!
"Papa?"
The Beauty that held him embraced him with love and warmth and surrounded his soul. His eternally-wounded Hand stroked the tears from the man-boy's exquisite cheeks.
"There is justice, now," Perfection whispered. "There is cleansing. There is mercy and there is love." He smiled and squeezed His bride's arms. "Come, now!"
He turned toward the forest, where the trees and tangled bushes and untamed undergrowth carpeted the land. The gardeners had failed in their duties.
As the boy-man followed the Bridegroom's gaze, one man and one woman, both as naked as he, standing in the midst of greenery, smiled at him.
Instinctively, he knew there would be pain where the man and woman waited. But the Bridegroom gently drew him away. They waited for those who required a brief reprisal for years of neglect and waste. To accept true justice and unmitigated love. To join them, father and mother of humanity, in the redemption their solitary act of free will had denied to so many of their own children.
But he did not need to go there: he had turned toward Love, had confessed all, had felt the drops of water that cleansed his soul, just before he died.
"Live forever with Me in everlasting joy!" the Perfect One whispered. "You are my bride! My beloved! My dearest treasure!"
The tears returned. "But Papa?" the man-child whispered, once more filled with confusion. "And Mish?"
The Holy One smiled. "One day," He whispered, His Lips across the boy's face. "All who seek My love will find it," He promised. "Never again will you be alone." He tenderly touched the boy's forehead with His Mouth.
And then he did the unthinkable. He kissed the boy-man, deeply, tenderly, harshly.
He kissed him as His Bride
And with more love than he had ever known.!
From her window, she watched and saw him pull back, gasping.
"Sir?"
There must be over fifty-thousand
Screaming love and more for You!
Every one of fifty-thousand
Would do whatever You asked them to...
This was not the way a God was supposed to behave! A God was to be above all this, above the flesh, above desire, above everything of the earth!
Wasn't He?
Neither you, Simon, nor the fifty-thousand
Nor the Romans, nor the Jews...
Understand what power is.
Understand what glory is.
Understand at all...
From the window where she watched them, she choked back a tearful laugh. Her Celtic blood boiled within her, answering his confusion.
Could he hear it?
God to enfold me, God to surround me,
God in my sleeping, God in my waking,
God in my watching, God in my hoping...
God in my ever-living soul,
God in my eternity.
Whether he heard it or not didn't matter.
The Incarnation of God as Man had answered every human desire and longing and dream.
God the one God was above all! But born of the flesh, submitted to the law, He had emptied Himself of eternal power in order to show His love.
Christ smiled and ran His hand across the boy-man's cheeks, where tears had left deep tracks.
"Come, my beloved," the Man whispered.
And he would now know Love, unending, enduring, final and complete.
"It is finished...:"
Looking out her window, she smiled. Her tears fell, but she smiled.
"Father! Into Thy hands, I commend my spirit!"
"Our Father, Who art in Heaven," she whispered. The window fogged with her breath. "Hallowed be Thy Name..."
The dark-haired, exotic young man went with the Man Who loved him. Then he stopped, pulling away for a short moment from the Embrace of Love.
He looked upward. At her, she hoped? But no.
He looked up at the knowledge of grace.
Epilogue
She knew intuitively when she saw the email in her box. It was from Mishka: and she knew.
"Han is a memory... I took no more than two hours to to inf! orm you of this, as was his wish. I realize you are Han's very special friend... You have no idea the wound in my heart... I fulfilled one of Han's wishes... he died in my arms. It was alll I could do. If your God is just and merciful, He will give Han peace at last."
The e-mail ended abruptly, as if the sender could simply write no more and had sent out the word in blind obedience, but unable to complete his thoughts.
She smiled. And then she cried.
"Aunt?"
Her nephew crept up behind her and stroked her hair. Hers was neither as long nor as dark as the Son's. But child's fingers soothed her nonetheless.
"Han is with God," she said to explain her tears. "I hope."
The boy behind her leaned close and wrapped thick, loving arms around her. She could smell his innocence.
"He's gotta be," the boy said. "You've been crying for him for months!"
She shook her head, staring at the last words on the screen. "That doesn't make any difference."
The boy stroked her hair again to comfort her. It was a small thing, a childhood habit: hair-patting had lulled him to sleep as an infant. Now it lulled her mourning spirit, completing a universal Karma.
"Have you had a Mass said for him?" the precocious teen asked.
She shut her eyes: what an idiot she was! "No. Not yet."
Her tender boy released her and went to the secretary where the Mass cards were kept, sorting through them to find the one that would ensure eternal prayer for the dude his aunt had fallen in love with.
She closed the computer window, and went to her room.
Corner time.
There she stood, her tear-stained face pressed against transparent glass.
She wiped her nose, rubbed her cheeks dry, and began to pray.
"Credo in Unum Deum..." I believe in One God...
There was nothing outside but sterile suburban houses, asphalt and manicured lawns.
At least at first.
To conquer death, you only have to die.
You only have to die..."
When she looked out the window again, she could see him.
She thought, as ! she looked at him, that he raised his eyes, just a little, and could see her, too. But that was only her imagination, for the sun was bright on his shoulders and on the boxwoods, and her own room was darkened.
She was just the audience, now.
He was the star: her Will-o'-the-Wisp
**********
For now we see through a glass, darkly: but then we shall see face to face. (I Corinthians 13:12)
*********
"I WANTED TO WRITE LOVE STORIES,"Han once wrote me, "DEALING WITH LOVE, NOT LUST, AND LOYALTY, COMMITMENT, MONOGAMY, ACCOUNTABLITY, RESPONSIBILITY, AND TRUTH."
I pray that, in his honor, those who have read or will read Han's writings will see in them what he intended.
Jihan Rho-bin Kahn-Teurbenikov (aka, 7thSon) accepted Christ as his Savior on October 12, 2001. He had inherited from his childhood friend, Alexandre ("Skin"), the boy's Bible: he began to understand why.
On October 22, he lapsed into a coma and was hospitalized for a month. After his return home, I heard directly from him only twice: once encouraging me that he was getting stronger again,
On December 9, 2001, he was baptized at his home in bed.
His final letter to me was on Christmas Day:
"... I AM IN THE ARMS OF THE SHEPHERD-- I SHALL NOT WANT...IT'S ALL DONE AND FINISHED IN JESUS AND I THANK YOU FOR BEING A LINK IN THE CHAIN OF PERSONS RESPONSIBLE FOR LEADING ME TO THIS WONDERFUL PLACE IN GOD'S GREAT SCHEME."
On January28, 2002, Han died, leaving this world much darker, but brightening Heaven with his sweet, gentle soul.
Jihan Rho-Bin Kahn-Teurbenikov (my beloved and irreplaceable Han) is finally in the lap of the Father, Whose undivided attention and love only He could give to the son who has all his life innocently begged: "My turn!"
Eternal rest grant unto him, Oh Lord,
And may Light perpetual shine upon him.
May his soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed,
Through the mercy of God,
Rest in peace..
Be at peace, my Beloved. Be at peace it last.