Friday, March 4, 2016

The Second Act of the First Church



Wheels for Caveman
Preface
 
Average reading time 25 minutes
6700 words

Outline:

I. How to escape Hell
2. Join Monastery
3. Hitch Hike
4. Eat Mushrooms
5. Meet Gabriel
6. Get Paralyzed
7. Write a book
8. Rinse & Repeat

***
I had been raised Christian.  After the Sunday school songs and Christmas plays, I never questioned what was true.  The thought that I had been duped not once crossed my mind.  Somewhere around middle school I decided to open the New Testament and read it cover to cover, but I wanted to read how it all ended first.  Revelations was a bit hard to comprehend with so many numbers and monsters that my imagination soared with possible meaning.  There weren’t many lessons, but I would look up at my ceiling at night and envision the beast of the apocalypse.


But I took my time, especially with the red lettered words of Jesus in mom’s black leather bound Bible.  Perhaps I looked too deeply as I examined the rule book, and maybe I was nitpicking, but things seemed to jump off the page causing me to frown.  


The saints of the Orthodox Church wrote about needing the proper piety to decipher the hidden meanings held within the parables, but it seemed straightforward enough.  The King James version was chalk full of thees and thous, but I grew accustomed to making the mental translation.  


There were so many passages that weren’t parables, and I saw that Jesus had been fairly direct, even blunt.  The sermon on the mount blew my mind.  Jesus upped the ten commandments to thoughts and said they were equal to actions in the eyes of God.  In essence, he told everyone on the hill that day that they were damned.  


My first frown was in recognition of my troubled thoughts.  I thought about killing people all the time, so I might as well have killed them.  Was that what he was saying?  I tried to understand the sermon on the mount from a literal perspective.  It didn’t make any sense until I read Jesus say that if you don’t judge anyone then you won’t be judged.  The one out.  


But it was baffling.  If I saw a man stab a baby in the throat with an exacto knife, apparently I shouldn’t judge.  Not if I wanted to get into heaven.  Was that the rule?  


There were two sketchy brothers in school I stayed away from.  They tied two cat’s tails together and threw them over a clothesline to watch them kill each other.  They made bets on which one would survive and then threw the winner into the Puget Sound. Over the Fox Island bridge guard rail, and everyone knew.  They had bragged about the strays they’d caught in their racoon traps.


The brothers were assholes, but if I wanted to get to heaven, via the non judgement clause, I suppose I shouldn’t have judged.  I didn’t understand the practical application of the Zen suggestion at all.  Without a lobotomy, how could one avoid casting judgment?


After the sermon on the mount, Jesus put some positive spins on life in the beatitudes.  He praised the poor in spirit, the peacemakers, those who suffer for his sake, etc.  The saints had been those things.  Done those things, but I wasn’t sure if making peanut butter sandwiches for the homeless counted for much.  


The rules of Jesus were insane, but like many of the parishioners in my church had told me, perhaps Jesus was simply trying to tell his listeners that no one is, or can be, perfect.


“But should we try, and what does that really mean?” It became the chicken and egg debate, and after broaching the subject countless times, I found myself placated with a bombardment of Christian cliches.  The lord works in mysterious ways, but what Jesus was calling for was reckless. The self condemnation alone was so antithetical to the American way.   


When I was nearly done with Matthew and Jesus killed a fig tree as he passed by, I was confused.  The tree didn’t have any figs.  If it had been fig season, I think I would have gotten the message, but the Messiah smote the tree in the winter.  There were no figs as he was about to enter Jerusalem, but couldn’t he have just miracled one?  If he had the hankering, God knew he had the ability.  Sup with that Jesus?  




I understood the allegory of not knowing when you’re going to be called home, but did Jesus need to kill the tree to make his point?  He was adept at coming up with quick witted parables on the fly, so it seemed to me that he could have taught his disciples a lesson without resorting to a smite, but smote he had.  Why?  Now no one would ever get a fig from that tree, so that didn’t really help feed the hungry--but I dared not judge, at least I tried not to.  The anxiety I felt over my earthbound course loomed, ominous and ultimately damning.


I flipped back to when Jesus had let Mary Magdalene rub some expensive oil on his feet, and like Judas, I questioned the fiscal responsibility of such an indulgent act.  Jesus explained that poor people would always be around, and I’m sure the foot rub felt nice, but trying to come up with the underlying motives of my contradictory savior was disconcerting.  Could Jesus have his cake and eat it too?


It was fascinating to read the New Testament as an avatar based story.  In Sunday school and church, we only read little snippets to focus on.  Peter, James, and John in the sailboat, out on the deep blue sea.  


But as I read, I saw that Jesus had chosen to be homeless.  He was wandering around and picking certain people, and telling them to quit their jobs and follow him.  Whatever way I flipped the script in my head, church on Sundays and the nine to five during the week did not a Christian make.  After finishing the four gospels, I was utterly perplexed.  There were churches everywhere, but the members weren’t really living the by the Word.  Lip service, literally. When Jesus praised the publican in the temple for smiting himself on the chest as he begged, “God be merciful to me a sinner!” I wondered what was up.  Who knew why the man was in such a state, what he had done or was about to do.




Jesus compared him to the pharisee who thought he was the shit, and thanked God that he wasn’t a tweaker out on the streets robbing and raping.  He thanked God for his discernment and the keen mind and heart to judge right from wrong.  Proud that he could tithe and had the self discipline to fast, he came to the temple to let God know how grateful he was.


Of course I knew that it was because the publican had been feeling so low that he couldn’t possibly judge anyone, but how was the pharisee different from anyone I knew?  Parishioners of the church were certainly thankful for their full and happy lives, did that disgust Jesus?  Certainly one couldn’t go about in a state of woe repeating “God be merciful to me a sinner,” all the time.


Poverty.  It was the one thing Jesus harped on over and over.  As far as I could see, it was the straight and narrow path that so many would fall off on the way to the grave.  Jesus  hated money.  


Most priests and adults said that we should view those parts of the Bible as inspirational to gain humility.  


“It was a different world, a different time, and we needed to live by the grace of God.  Doing good works can’t save us because we are all sinners.  No one is perfect and Christ realizes that we are weak.  That is the reason he died for our sins.”


When I pressed, flipping to marked tabs that explicitly demanded poverty, I realized that what I was doing was probably offensive, but the adults always smiled as they explained.


“Jesus doesn't actually expect anyone to go out into the world carrying neither gold or silver in one pair of clothing.  Not anymore.  Maybe his apostles, but they had been told to spread his word, and had done so, glory to God.  Not everyone is called to live like an apostle.  God gave each one of us unique gifts to share with the world.  We can live in the world, but choose not to be of it.  The main point is love.  To try and love one another is what Jesus wants.  We need to open our hearts and let his love and light into our lives.  It’s the easiest thing, and so freeing to experience his grace and accept it.”   


The patronizing love emanating from the adult eyes of different parishioners as they looked down at my confusion, hands on my shoulder, only momentarily appeased my investigation of our faith.  There were other things, like women covering their heads, that were taken so seriously among some Orthodox parishes, but such details seemed so trivial in comparison with what I saw as the main point.  But I knew they must be right, I just couldn’t see how.


Wasn’t a life of poverty at the center--the very core--of His word?  Hadn’t Jesus gotten all his disciples to tune in and drop out?  Hadn’t Peter been in the middle of fishing, just a hard working man, when Jesus told him to tender his resignation to the fishermen's union of Galilee?  Of course the fish nets had been bursting at the seams after the last haul, but after that, didn’t Jesus nab him?


And what about the young rich man who did everything right, lived with integrity and righteousness?  Jesus had told him that if he was serious about his spiritual endeavors, he needed to donate all his shit to the poor.  The man had quite a bit of stuff that he was unwilling to part with and walked away, dejected and sad.  


Jesus didn’t tell his posse that this Mr. Moneybags couldn’t get into heaven, it would just be a bitch.  Like a camel having to kneel to get through the small entrance of a city wall, the rich man would have a tough go of it.
 



Now whether Jesus meant that the rich guy’s soul was in jeopardy until he gave up his possessions, or if Jesus was implying that he’d barely make the cut, is what I wanted to debate.  But as I looked around my parish, I began to wonder: wasn’t everyone taking a helluva a chance by owning anything, let alone houses, cars and other such middle class thingymabobs?  Eternity seemed too high stakes to be wagering that absolute poverty wasn’t mandatory.  To me.


Over and over Jesus told people to follow him, leave society and render unto Caesar what was Caesar’s.  Money.  He flipped over some farmer's market tables that were set up in the temple, totally pissed about the people that were trying to make an honest and decent living by selling doves or changing out the various currencies.  Jesus wouldn’t tolerate it, not in his dad’s house.  WTF JC?


As I looked in the small gift shop in the entrance of our church, I couldn’t help but ponder the bags of incense and icons that were all for sale.  What would Jesus do?  God be merciful to me a sinner!




After I read through the fourth Gospel, things got even more intense in the book of Acts.  It began with Jesus ascending into heaven, but then some trippy happenings commenced.  Pentecost.  The disciples experienced some suspiciously psychedelic visions after eating the Bread of Life. 

 Tongues of fire and the holy ghost swept through the loft where they were possibly shroomed out of their minds.  In my fourteen year old imagination, I saw the tongues to fly around the room like the ghosts at the end of Indiana Jones and The Raiders of the Lost Ark.



Cityfolk in the streets of Jerusalem were astonished when the disciples walked out of the house and Peter gets up on a soap box.  They were used the preaching, but suddenly Peter is speaking multiple languages and they all could understand him.  I wondered if it was telepathically communicated, or a cacophony of noise.  Perhaps Peter preached the same thing several different times, but this had to do with whatever they had eaten that caused the fiery tongues to swirl about the room.  Either way, it was quite clear to me that Peter was possessed.


Jerusalem was a cultural melting pot of all different sorts of ethnicities.  It wasn’t so much what he was saying that captivated the people, it was the fact that they simultaneously recognized the language of the Holy Ghost that spoke through Peter.  The polyglot ability of the prophet was enough to convince some of the bystanders to sign up for whatever it was he was selling.  Others thought the disciples must have had a rager of a party in the house and were Peter was blatto.


It was disappointing to read that most people thought Peter was drunk.  The caricature of Peter I had envisioned, filled with the fiery tongues that must fly out of his mouth like Godzilla flames, wasn’t what others saw that day in Jerusalem.  The Holy Spirit had affected his vocalization, but I imagined him staggering around with his eyes rolling in his head after reading how many Jerusalemites thought he was wasted and walked away.  They had decided that Peter’s soliloquy was in bad form.  However uncharacteristic the performance had been from the former fisherman, his best friend had just died, so it was understandable.


A couple hundred people were utterly amazed by the multilingual display.  Sure it was from God, they got baptized and then gathered their possessions and placed them at the feet of Peter.  They needed to repent for having owned anything in the first place.  Peter saw that it was all distributed equally, and like some communist sorcerer, he went about possessed by the Holy Ghost with the Bread of Life, baptizing any and all who wished to sign up.


One day Peter and gang came across a paralyzed beggar, and made sure to get his attention.  They had been waiting for something like this, and now with a few starstruck followers looking on, it was show time. The beggar put out his hand to Peter.


“Are you asking me for money because silver or gold, I have none.  Absolutely nothing in that category.  In fact all that stuff is expressly forbidden.  But”--Peter winked--“I do have something I will give you.” He summoned the Holy Spirit and healed the crippled man with a power ball from heaven in the name of Jesus of Nazareth.  The old beggar could suddenly walk.  The news spread and thousands of people that were on the fence about joining the new cult did so.  Everything was distributed equally and all was well in the church as they broke bread and lived in harmony.  



The government was getting nervous.  The guard of the Sadducees didn’t know what to arrest Peter for, but if you can imagine everyone giving up their money and possessions, collecting taxes and controlling commerce would be impossible.  In the meantime, all the new converts were eating the Bread of Life and talking about how Jesus had risen from the dead.  Whoever he was.  


Herod and Pontius Pilate knew him.  They had thought the whole messianic fiasco would blow over after Jesus had been nailed to the cross, but things were still escalating after his death.  After his followers had seen him up on the cross, most came to their senses.  Rome wasn’t going to fall, and so they stepped back in line.  There had been only 120 trouble makers left after everyone saw how dead the prophet was, but now the numbers of the church were increasing by the day, exponentially.  


Herod and Pilate met with a few litigious minded gentiles, and a think tank dedicated to concocting trumped up charges to arrest Peter on was formed.  Could this new cult that was completely opposed to the monetary system really threaten them?  What was everyone taking?--giving up their possessions like that--and the rumor of miracles was spreading like tongues of fire.  Herod said that the tale of the lame beggar that could miraculously walk again grew in scope until some swore that they’d seen the beggar ascend to heaven with their own eyes.  It was all because of this Peter guy, and he had to be stopped.


Was Jerusalem experiencing mass hysteria?  It seemed that after the initiates were baptized and had a chance to break bread with one another, they lost their shit.  Gave it all up to Peter who made sure no one claimed ownership.  


For the book keepers of the city that logged land deeds, debts and trades, this new cult provided around the clock employment.  People that didn’t join wanted to make it clear that their property and assets were not confiscated by Peter and some new enforcers that were going around distributing and collecting.  Perhaps he could have been charged then, but Pilate and Herod decided to bide their time in order to make their arrest of Peter count.  They needed the charges to stick, because if they brought in this new charismatic cult leader, the likelihood of something shady happening was all but guaranteed.  Either way there might be riots, but if they could cut the head off the snake, maybe it could finally be laid to rest.  Technically, Peter hadn’t done anything illegal.  The property deeds were all torn up and he insisted that he owned nothing.  Not even shoes, but dogs if he wasn’t even more of a nuisance than Jesus had been.  Ascended?  Please.  


Acts 5:5


The church is finally an entity, thousands strong and growing.  There are men Peter has chosen to patrol and check to see that everyone is living by the Holy Spirit in absolute renunciation of worldly goods.  


There must have been some enforcement because it was brought to Peter’s attention that Ananias sold his land and pocketed some of the cash.  Peter asked him how Satan had tricked him.  Peter explained that the deal with the Holy Spirit was that no one person could own anything.


“You pocketed cash huh?  Just a little Ananias, couldn’t help yourself, was that it?” Peter asked.


“Yeah, just a little, just in case this doesn’t go the way you see it going, and I love you Peter.  And bro, I do believe in Jesus and all that stuff you were saying but--”


“Sorry buddy, and it wouldn’t be a big deal if it were simply up to me,” Peter cut in.  “But as things are, you’re in deep shit.  Jesus always encouraged people to give up their possessions, but the Holy Spirit is, as you will see, not nearly as forgiving as the Son of God.  We’ve all agreed to be broke as a joke in this church, and by signing up when you got baptized… well buddy, you’re kinda cussed.  You tried to pull a fast one.”


“No bro, it’s not like that--”


“You lied to the Holy Spirit!” Peter yelled, little white flecks of spit flying out the sides of his mouth.



Ananias dropped dead.  Herod and Pilate would never catch wind of that little miracle, but right then and there, like a blood clot to the brain, Ananias gives up the ghost. The Holy Spirit saw to it that Ananias never finished his sentence, and whether it was from a heavenly zap or the Kung Fu touch of death through magic hands of Peter, the Reaper’s blade cut Ananias down.  He was given no time to come up with an excuse.  There was no excuse.  Not when it came to the Holy Spirit.  


I closed the book a minute and thought about confession and repentance, the tenants that I had always believed extended from the foundation of the church.  What about mercy, peace, love and joy and all that which Paul would preach about later?


Trying to understand the rules was the reason I had picked up the book in the first place.  Had anyone, other than Judas and Jesus died yet?  John the Baptist got beheaded, but it was always the bad guys doing the killing.  


The miraculous healing of the paralytic and the breaking of “bread” was all nice and pleasant, but seeing Ananias, their former community member, drop dead, well:


“Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.”


Suddenly the church worked both ways.  The crippled could walk but it certainly came at a price.  One hundred percent commitment to Peter and the Holy Ghost or else?  Well now everyone had seen or heard about the execution immediately afterwards.  Death was the consequence for cussing it up.  If any had lingering doubts about the Peter’s divine powers, they were now ameliorated, and my guess was that most of the new flock were scared shitless. 



Was this my church?--because it reminded of The Lord of the Flies in the scene where Piggy’s final words are cut short.  Piggy tried explaining to his classmates that they needed to think sensibly.  If they were going to be stuck together on the island, they needed to adopt adult behavior as soon as possible.  That was when the Holy Spirit of a boulder had crushed Piggy’s skull.  Toppled by a careless child, and now the foundation stone of the church had extinguished Ananias.  Was Ananias hedging his bets, trying to think sensibly about the precarious looking future?  



Up until the moment he dropped, no one knew the true consequence of holding anything back from Peter and the collection crew of the church.  


Sapphira hadn’t heard about her husband’s demise and, three hours later, ended up lying to Peter about how much she and her husband had received after selling their land.  


“So just this much Sapphira?” Peter produced the original purse Ananias had shown his men.  The one Peter knew was short changed.  “That’s all you and Ananias got?”



Sapphira nodded.


“You’re sure?” Peter asked, his own nods mirroring the distraught looking woman.


“Yeah, I’m sure, but what’s going on?  Where’s Ananias?  I was cooking dinner and your men just came up and led him away.” Sapphira asked.  She was looking around for her husband, but all she saw was strange looks in the eyes of her knew congregation.  She hardly knew them.  Some looked scared, and at least half looked dumbstruck, their pupils dilated.  Their was a sneer on the faces of a couple of the men, and a woman she had met the day before wouldn’t meet her eyes.    


“How could you conspire to test the Spirit of the Lord? Listen! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also.”  Peter was once again shouting, his face beat red.  The life of Sapphira was stamped out like the flame of a burning tire under a waterfall.


She fell dead, and now two church members had been Holy Spirited away for keeping two nickels to rub together.  Imagining the terror-struck faces of the onlookers that witnessed the death of Sapphira and Ananias, I could hardly believe what Luke had written.  He had left out the expressions of the young men that carried her dead body out to bury it next to her husband, but I could see them.  Lit with the righteous zeal, filled with the Holy Spirit.


Acts 5:5

5 When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened.
6 Then some young men came forward, wrapped up his body, and carried him out and buried him.
7 About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened.
8 Peter asked her, “Tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land?”
“Yes,” she said, “that is the price.”
9 Peter said to her, “How could you conspire to test the Spirit of the Lord? Listen! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also.
10 At that moment she fell down at his feet and died. Then the young men came in and, finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband.

11 Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.

Peter’s cult wasn’t fun and games.  It wasn’t about peace and love.  It was about poverty.  It was true communism enforced by a totalitarian dictator who ruled in the name of Jesus of Nazareth.  
If you chose to walk the straight and narrow, you would be given the bread of life and the Holy Spirit would enter your heart.  But after baptism you’d either shape up or be shipped off to death’s shores to atone for your wicked deeds.  If Peter caught you.  



If he was around today, there’d be a lot less Christians rolling to church on anything but the soles of their calloused feet.  In the beginning, the spirit in the sky was no faith based deity.  The Spirit’s power was non negotiable as were the terms of being a member of the Church.  Absolute and utter poverty.  


***


After reading Acts 5, mincing words and hearing that some things were only metaphorical didn’t make a lick of sense.  Overlooking the very first things that happened after Christ’s ascension to heaven seemed more than foolhardy.  It was hypocrisy at its highest.  It was the first church, and directly after healing the cripple, the next act was a divine execution.  Both times money was mentioned, or rather the lack thereof. Peter had talked with the beggar and explained that he was broke.  Ananias and Sapphira were killed for having pocketed a little after selling their land.  Killed by the Holy Spirit.  As reread the first four chapters, I noticed that not much else had happened.  Jesus ascended and it was basically up to Peter and the disciples to convince others to join.  At the time, there were 120 in the church, but once Peter healed the paralytic, the church really got going.  And then boom--Ananias and Sapphira.    


I became haunted by Acts and wondered how anyone else in the church could live with the cognitive dissonance I felt.  It was true that much of what Peter preached about the prophets and books of the old testament were gobbledy gook to me, but I understood that forgiveness wasn’t even a small part of the new churches policies.  Could a true Christian only repent once?  


Suddenly my plans to get a job and buy a car seemed utter nonsense.  Many times, as I road the school bus home looking out the window, I wished I had stopped reading after the four gospels.  


As ignorance was no longer an option, I became obsessed with the rules and the saints of the Orthodox church.  They had at least tried to live by the Word.  I dove into the writings of the desert fathers and monks in the caves of Mt. Athos in Greece.  Their words and lives were full of miracles and enlightened moments of connection with God or the Virgin Mary.  There were saints that lived on pillars and so many that endured torture and death for the martyr’s crown in heaven.  I didn’t want to be tortured, but I figured a bullet to the brain for refusing to renounce Christ as my lord and savior sounded like the easiest way into heaven.  Death was easy, it was life that was impossible.


When I was seventeen in 1997, the year before renouncing the world and putting on the monastic garb, adult parishioners kept explaining that love was the ultimate message of Christ.  Be kind and humble and, “Whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”


But hadn’t Jesus said, “If you love me, you will obey my commandments?”  Eventually I stopped asking for clarification.  The equation had been solved long ago, and the adults I knew had ignored the answer.  You certainly couldn’t get beyond St. Pete if you didn’t love Jesus, and the dude hated money.  At least his bird did.    



There wasn’t any two ways about it--I needed to at least try to be a true Christian.  In 1998 when I was issued the black robe of a novice monk, I thought that St. Anthony’s Greek Orthodox Monastery would be my best shot at salvation.  I was a cuss up, but at eighteen I figured my chances of getting beyond those pearly gates had to be at least 50/50.  Banking on things like confession to up my odds, I wondered if I would still be accountable for every idle word I spoke on the day of judgement.  My big mouth would get me flung into a lake of fire if that little passage hadn’t been metaphorical.  



Six months later before I was able to make my monastic vows, the abbot sent me back home.  The monastery was no longer an option, and so I set out into the world like an apostle.  What else could I do?  My mind was abuzz with the zeal of a spiritual tweaker, but I had no direction or rutter to guide me any longer.   


The parish priest in Washington was adamant that walking down the road was not the same as it was back in the days of Christ.  There were cars now.  He encouraged me to pray for guidance, but when I looked into his eyes, all I saw was fear.  He was terrified of the fire within my soul, afraid that it would set his parish aflame.  


I needed to do what I needed to do and so I set out.  With a small Jansport school backpack on my shoulders that contained a wool blanket, I walked out of the little mining town of Wilkeson in the month of March.  Washington state was still cold, but my thumb was extended, and after walking a few miles, a small SUV pulled to the shoulder.  


Mark was running from a failed marriage, his child’s baby book and his most prized possessions were jumbled in the backseat.  Stopping for endless refills of coffee, he took me all the way to Platina California.  The Jesus Prayer was still sweet in my heart, but I was lost and as confused about my life’s course as Mark.


We drove up into St. Herman’s monastery where I told Mark that I might end up staying.  Maybe he should too.  The abbot saw my black monastic garb and asked if St. Anthony’s monastery knew where I was.  I explained that they did, and they had sent me back into the world.  The abbot, Fr. Herman, was a jovial man.  He saw my intensity and chuckled.  He didn’t understand my story, but he saw that I was confused.  



We were all sitting down for dinner at the long table in the monastery’s dining hall.  Fr. Herman spoke in a loud baritone voice at the far end, and countless colored Easter eggs were passed around in baskets to the dozen monks, Mark and me.  We were the only visitors, but the week before the monastery had been packed with pilgrims who had all come to celebrate Easter with the monks and had left a few nights ago.


“What have you been reading?” Fr. Herman asked me.  


“The Ladder of Divine Ascent and St. Isaac the Syrian,” I replied.  I had no books on the road, but those had been my two favorites.


“St. Isaac the Syrian!” Fr. Herman exclaimed and shook with laughter.


“No wonder you’re so confused.  You should be reading Emily Dickinson, but St. Isaac is much too heavy for you.”  Fr. Herman looked around at the other monks who were all smiling.


There was flush of red to my cheeks as both my intelligence and faith had been called into question.  If Fr. Herman had recommended some other saint or book of the church to read instead, perhaps I wouldn’t have reacted as I did.


“Oh holy father, if you are too good for the likes of St. Isaac, you are much too holy for me.”  Getting up from the table, I took a few steps back and bowed my head to the floor toward the abbot.


Filled to the brim with righteous indignation at this joke of a godly man, who was now telling me to slow down, I grabbed Mark and we drove into the night toward Redding on Highway 36.


Leaving Mark by his broken down vehicle by Garberville on the 101, I extended my thumb and was swept away.  Encouraging him to leave it all behind wasn’t my place as I saw him hold the baby book to his chest, smelling it like the head of an infant.  I had no such ties in the world, no strings to make me fret or frown, just a burning to find my place in this world.  The church of Peter.


The redwoods were glorious, but I became disillusioned by the same chain stores on every off ramp.  It was all the same no matter how far down the road I went.  The people and faces changed, but I couldn’t envision myself among them, living life as if I didn’t know any better.


The temperature plummeted in the mountains, and I spent cold nights wrapped in the thin wool army blanket, sleepless and shivering.  The ascetic reality on the road was much more harsh than in the plush air conditioned monastery.  The soft mattress was gone, but so were the long hours when I had stood, sweet tears puddling by my feet on the cathedral floor as I whispered the Jesus Prayer.  From midnight till morning, I now slept under bridges and in parking garages.  The longer I searched outside the monastery gates, the more I felt the flame of the Prayer dwindle, stifled.


In Santa Rosa, I encountered modern publicans.  Sinners that were so wrapped up in drug addiction, or recovering from life’s varying traumas, that they couldn’t really judge right from wrong any longer.  After meeting their eyes, I could see that they were cut from the same cloth as myself.  They seemed content enough to go to the soup kitchen before hustling up enough change up to get a drink or smoke.  These transient wanderers helped me realize that although I was lost, perhaps I wasn’t alone in the world.  


My parish priest had been right.  It was indeed a different world from the one Christ walked in.  There was no need to worry about multiplying fish and loaves of bread, because in America, the dumpsters were overflowing with food.  In Sausalito I feasted on shrimp linguini that was still hot in the white foam container someone had tossed near the pier.    


The morning I walked into the cathedral on Geary Street in San Francisco, I was desperate.  St. John Maximovitch was encased in a glass coffin, and I looked down to the blackened corpse, my forehead creased with concern in a wordless prayer for direction.  A character from the cartoon ‘Animaniacs’ interrupted my thought process: “Mr. Skullhead Boneyhands.”  The words made my stomach churn as I realized that my sinful mind had probably offended the saint.  



I left the cathedral, the lump in my throat was harsh, and the cold wind ripped through the black cassock I refused to part with.  Aimless, I headed toward Seal’s Rock when I noticed an old man in a wheelchair in front of a grocery store.  There was a piece of cardboard on his chest that explained that he was in constant pain, needed help with laundry, bathing--everything really.  He was asleep, so I stood, shivering and waited for him to open his eyes.  


They were blue and streaked with red veins as they opened.  He was slow in lifting his chin from where it had been resting on his chest.  I supposed he was a Viet Nam from the salt and peppered hair that stuck out of his baseball cap.  He looked at me for a moment, quizzical before either one of us spoke.


“I want to help,” I said.  The man’s expression didn’t change, but he began slowly nodding, the twinkle dim in his eye.  


“Looking at you, I can tell that I’m not the one that needs help.  I’ve seen the look you have in your eye right now back in Nam. Son, you only have one oar in the water and are going around in circles.”


“What should I do?” His eyes were tired, the lids sagging and rimmed red, but at the same time, they pierced like an eagle.  I felt like he was seeing the whole of myself.  The only other eyes with that kind of perception had been the Elder Ephraim's’ when he had told me that I was going to be a monk at St. Anthony’s.  Clairvoyant.



“Well, the way you’re headed now, you’re going to end up there.”  I followed his gaze to where he had indicated.  There was a mental hospital across the street.  “Or you just might end up jumping off the cliffs, but you can’t spin around the way you’re doing right now.”


“Well I would go back to the monastery--”


“You know that’s not an option.”


There was a small flutter in my chest as I recognized his authority on the matter was not of this world.


“But then what should I do?”


“Why don’t you go home?”


“Maybe I could.  Maybe I could fish in Alaska, but I don’t know.”  I felt there was no longer a direction home, but the summer before becoming a monk I had been invited to fish the salmon run up in Kenai.


“That’s a plan.  You need a plan right now--to set a course--and if it’s going fishing in Alaska, then make it your heading.”


Tears were in my eyes as I smiled and thanked him.  His plump fingers were calloused as I shook his hand.  I left the angel of Geary and felt a small flicker of hope.  No human could have possibly known that the monastery wasn’t an option, so I did not take the advice lightly.


After a summer of fishing salmon with some salty sailors, I drifted down from the spiritual heights I had attained in St. Anthony’s.  Slowly the Prayer faded to black within my heart.


But then there was light.





Someday I may return to the Suarro cactus fields in the middle of Arizona.  Maybe the abbot, Fr. Paisios, won’t recognize me.  I won’t attempt explaining how the veil of reality was lifted on a psilocybin mushroom trip in 2001.  Not to my spiritual father.  Not even during confession.  


He would explain that it had been the devil that had spoken that night.  Spake unto me.  Gabriel certainly hadn’t been an angel.  The baritone voice that peeled like thunder out of the night sky as it laughed at my confusion was not from heaven.    


“You’re a joke, and if you don’t like it you can jump off the cliff and die,” Gabriel had said in the voice of God talking to Arthur in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  I couldn’t jump then and haven’t.  Not yet anyway.


Fr. Paisios offset the planned trajectory of my life more than any other living man.  If there was one thing my spiritual father claimed to be able to parse out, it was the devil that could appear as an angel of light.  He had turned my spiritual life upside down by by sending me out of the monastery.  For three years I wandered about feeling numb and unsure of anything.  And then along came Gabriel, a voice who still helps me today with shimmers, suggestions and once in awhile, when I’m particularly gullible, he just cusses with me.  After all, if he was right and I am a joke, perhaps it’s alright to be laughed at.


But the monastery and the meeting of Gabriel will wait.  For now, let’s skip ahead in the story to Mackenzie Park in 2002 sometime in the fall--or was it winter? It's a time when I chose to live in a lava tube. When the world gets flipped on its head, sometimes the only way to hang on is to crawl inside.  

As of March 4, 2016 I'm surprised at how many drafts and revisions I've made. While it only took a month to write 168 pages, it takes about a week to edit 10 pages of it... and then, of course, I have to edit it again. Before the editors can see it, that is. I'm calling it Wheels for Caveman, and devil or not, I'm dedicating it to Gabriel, my unseen guide. Like Pinocchio without Jiminy Cricket, I'd be a jackass without him. As is, I'm just bad a joke.
I read this out loud in a half hour on two youtubes.  Kind of a tacky reading, but it should be about a 20 minute read, and that's what I'd recommend.  But video killed the radio star and radio killed books and books killed cave paintings and because my book is based around my time living in a cave, I suppose I wouldn't simply read the story instead of copying and pasting the links.  They're not blue, and that would take some time, and this is the internet.  So many rabbit holes, and I invite you to mine. 

Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdSAlYyX1hQ
Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iajW7LBmWKo