This story contains sexually explicit material.
Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Technical note: A gasp is a rapid intake of breath. In this story, it also means a rapid expelling of breath, since it is close to the sound I mean. Sigh, grunt, groan, pant and scream don't work.

Thom and the Minds of Fire

In the beginning I didn't know what I was seeing, but I knew it was real. I had to believe because I experienced it, and it changed who I was. I am only a witness, but what comes to be through our witness and our living in the world is greater than we might believe. I can try to describe what I went through and how it affected me, but I don't have the words to tell what I saw. A light shines in the darkness. For me, it begins like this.

One

I was alone in my room reading a commentary on John. I liked his gospel. The Bible was long and complicated and didn't all fit together very well, but I liked John, along with parts of the first two books, Elijah, Jeremiah, some of Isaiah, many of the Psalms, and the Apocalypse for its surreal quality. That much I could try to understand. People thought most of the Law in the first five books didn't apply to them, David seemed more about politics than religion, and I didn't really care what Paul said in all his letters.

I suddenly became aware of someone watching me. There was no one there, but I could sense a definite presence. It was real enough that I didn't jump when I heard someone mutter oops. We both waited. I asked softly if he was Jesus, which seemed unlikely at that point. He said um, no, he wasn't. I asked if he was a prophet. There was a pause. He said he had never thought about it before, but supposed he might be. He had seen some of nature's plan. But really he was just a lost soul trying to find his way. I asked how he was doing. He said he thought he was making a little progress and doing okay, relatively speaking, since most people didn't realize they were lost and few made much effort to find their way. I said that was true. He apologized for disturbing me and said that meeting me had been an accident. No one else had ever noticed him, but he should have realized that I might. I asked what he meant and got no answer. I was alone.

When I was born I had a twin brother. He had been much smaller than me and did not survive long enough to be given his name. When I thought of him I felt an irrational loss of someone I didn't remember. Did we share parts of the same soul? Or is there really only one soul, and we all share parts of it? Sometimes I heard echoes of thoughts I couldn't make out and wondered if it was him.

Two

The girl in the pew in front of us had on a pale blue tank top over a white tee shirt, and it was somewhat tighter than might be expected at a church service. When she came in with her friend I had seen that her two breasts, though not overly large, filled it out wonderfully, each with a distinct hint of nipple. Both the girls were in my youth group and I had noticed her before. She was sitting a little off to the side from where I was with no one between us, and by turning my eyes I could see part of the nearer blue breast protruding out past her bare arm. It kept moving around as she fidgeted. I tried not to let anyone see how distracted I was. The service continued. We stood up for hymns and sat down afterwards. Her jeans were a bit tight also and showed off the curve of her backside.

The sermon started. The minister talked about war in heaven. Satan was an exalted angel who rebelled against God and was cast out. I noticed her fidgeting had become less random. Her arms were still at her sides and her hands palm down in her lap, one held loosely on top of the other. I could see the large muscles in her thigh slowly tensing and relaxing, tensing and relaxing, as her hidden fingers worked at her crotch. God let Satan rebel because he wanted him to obey out of love, not from fear. Her breasts were rising and falling with long slow breaths. The world is full of disease and death from Satan trying to prove that God is not just. Her breath caught at the peak of her inhalation and then continued. Adam and Eve disobeyed and knew they were naked in the garden. We had to be punished. Now the muscles in her upper arm were tensing and relaxing enough for me to see. They moved at a faster rhythm than those in her thigh. Jesus was a blood sacrifice for our disobedience, his precious blood dripping from his wounds down into the earth. Her face flushed hot red and she started trembling. All her rhythms increased in tempo. Jesus loves us more than a mother loves the child sucking at her breast. He loves us enough to save everyone who believes in him from eternal death and torment. Her shoulders and neck stiffened with tension. Her eyes glazed over and focused on the glowing blues and reds of the figure of Jesus depicted in the stained glass window behind the altar. Then her hips thrust forward as her whole body spasmed, followed by a gentler aftershock, and then another. Her eyes flickered sideways for an instant and seemed to meet mine, but it happened so fast that I couldn't really tell.

While munching on pumpkin bread and sipping cranberry juice at coffee hour after the service, I asked her what she had thought of the sermon. She said she had found it very meaningful and was always inspired by our minister's preaching. I said there seemed to be a number of people for whom the sermon was an emotional experience. She said she had noticed that on previous weeks, and it encouraged her. I asked if I could drive her to our youth group meeting wednesday night, and she said yes.

We lived in a small city in the southern mountains, and there were overlooks and other places to pull off the parkway that ran through the hills. Three days later, after youth group, we found one that wasn't too crowded. I had my parents' midsize car (which, fortunately, did not have bucket seats) and a sixpack. Some of the soda I was supposed to get for the meeting had changed into beer that I had saved till now. We didn't have too long because we had to meet her friend at a fish place and take her home as part of our cover story. We each popped a brew and pretty much chugged them. I didn't know what to do, so I leaned over and kissed her. She put her arms around me and held on. I felt her breasts pressing against me through her same pale blue top and her long black hair sliding under my hands when I put my arms around her. The steering wheel was getting in the way, so I stopped and slid the seat back. She put her tongue back in my mouth, I put my hand on her breast, she undid her pants and pulled up her top, and I felt her nipple get hard under the thin satin of her bra as I worked at it with my fingers. She reached behind herself then lifted up her underwires. I got a glimpse of her small round pink nipple standing up before I sucked it into my mouth. I rubbed it with my tongue while I felt her undo my pants, reach into my underwear, grab my penis, and ask if I was ready. Ready, I said stiffly. She reached into a pocket, tore open a condom, and unrolled it over my penis all without being able to see what she was doing. She detached herself, flipped over onto her knees, and slid down her pants. They were white and not as tight as her jeans, so she didn't have any trouble. After a brief shocked stare at her glistening parts, I squeezed up into position. She reached her hand back between her legs to guide me home. She seemed to know I hadn't done this before even though I hadn't told her. She said yes I had, she heard me. At that point I stopped forming thoughts. I slid easily all the way into her tight wetness and would have started pumping away like mad, but she had me by the balls. Firmly. I was glad her fingernails were short. She paused and held me there for a moment, then slowly pulled back and slid me out, and forward and back in. After a couple strokes she sped up a little. My body did as it was directed while my mind drifted.

There was a roaring like static, like a black fire outlined in red and tinged with yellow. Piercing through it came lust, sharp and focused, not vague and unformed like mine. Her lust had a musky green scent, like new leaves. Images started to form in the static, like a 3D image coming into focus in what had seemed a jumble of colors. She was comparing me to her other lovers. There were more than twenty in various positions, which she thought was about average for a girl her age if you didn't count virgins. She thought that so far, allowing for my inexperience, I was about average or a little above, clumsy but cooperative. She wanted, badly, to let go of my balls and start fingering herself, but was afraid I would shoot my load as soon as she did. I could tell what she wanted. I put a hand on the side of her ass and pulled myself into her slowly and firmly and deeply, and just as carefully out. She let go and fingered herself frantically, whispering desperately to me in her mind don't come, don't come. So I didn't. And she came, gasping, her buttocks contracting beneath my groin, her mind filled with stained glass windows, and after a bit she came again, and then again, and again. She began to get frightened and wonder if I was ever going to come, and I realized I hadn't. So I did, gasping as I unloaded into her. The link between our minds worked both ways. I had experienced her orgasms, but she hadn't noticed anything strange until she experienced mine. I looked away (feeling her give a mental shrug as I did so and decide it was just another weird orgasm of her own) and found myself back in my own mind.

We finished our second beers and went to pick up her friend. We found her at a table outside the fish place with french fries for each of us, with malt vinegar to try to hide the alcohol on our breath. We gave her the two extra beers and dropped her off. We kissed chastely in the car after I took her home, and I watched the curve of her backside in the light from the street as she walked up the driveway to her door.

Three

This week the minister was asking for money. It was pledge month, which didn't effect me. I had to give half my allowance to the church. Two weeks' worth of what was left had only covered half the cost of the sixpack. The rest came from the youth group refreshment fund, which, after all, it was. I looked around at the people. I looked at the stained glass in front of me. I looked at the two tall candles burning on the altar. I could see their yellow flames even in the bright sunlight coming through the colored glass. The flames burned red. They expanded. I heard the distant sound of the minister's words through a roar of red static. It was happening again. The green scent of lust came through, as before, but it was different this time, more diffuse. As I paid more attention, it began to scatter, to focus, to separate into isolated fields centered on different individuals in the congregation, on all of the older kids, most of the parents, and many of the older adults. Other fields were too weak and I lost them. There seemed to be other emotions as well, resentment to different degrees for being lectured about money, smugness or superiority for having already pledged, and much boredom. People felt worried or angry or tired. It was too much. I couldn't tell where it all was coming from. Emotions and images were bouncing around from person to person, each thinking they were his own. People were sharing thoughts and feelings without realizing it. The resentment fed on itself. So did the boredom and lust. They balanced and partially cancelled each other out and everything became a blur.

I was nudged awake by the person next to me. The minister's voice was putting everyone to sleep. It was weird. They had found themselves agreeing with him without knowing they had changed their minds. They thought they ought to give more this year, and some of them intended to. We were all drawn into one big complacent contact high, and it felt good. People come in for their weekly fix. Where were our prophets? This is what they had warned us against. They were called radicals and dismissed. This generation felt more guilt about eating a pint of butter pecan than they did about foreign wars that killed hundreds of thousands of inhabitants. And then they go to church and get off on how much Jesus loves them. Read the Bible! Jesus had no use for the great and rich, the fat and sleek. There were wars and conflict that no one wanted to think about. There were too many hypocrites. People's actions didn't match their words, their words don't match bible, and most of what they saw in the bible wasn't really there. They didn't know what they were doing, it was was all just games, just sound and fury. I felt a sudden burst of anger, and it sent a jolt through the entire congregation. No one noticed anything other than an involuntary muscle twitch, except for the minister. He wondered why he had lost his audience but just kept talking about money. There is no past.

"How can you say, 'I am not defiled,
I have not gone after the Baals'?
Look at your way in the valley;
know what you have done –
a restive young camel interlacing her tracks,
a wild ass used to the wilderness,
in her heat sniffing the wind!
Who can restrain her lust?
None who seek her need weary themselves;
in her month they will find her.

"How well you direct your course
to seek lovers!
So that even to wicked women
you have taught your ways.
Also on your skirts is found
the lifeblood of guiltless poor;
you did not find them breaking in.
Yet in spite of all these things
you say, 'I am innocent;
surely his anger has turned from me.'
Behold, I will bring you to judgment
for saying, 'I have not sinned.'" (Jeremiah 2:23-24, 33-35)

"Return, faithless Israel, says the Lord.
I will not look on you in anger,
for I am merciful, says the Lord;
I will not be angry for ever.
Only acknowledge your guilt,
that you rebelled against the Lord your God
and scattered your favors among strangers under every green tree,
and that you have not obeyed my voice, says the Lord.
Return, O faithless children, says the Lord;
for I am your master;
I will take you, one from a city and two from a family,
and I will bring you to Zion." (Jeremiah 3:12-14)

To whom shall I speak and give warning,
that they may hear?
Behold, their ears are closed,
they cannot listen;
behold, the word of the Lord is to them an object of scorn,
they take no pleasure in it.
Therefore I am full of the wrath of the Lord;
I am weary of holding it in.
"Pour it out upon the children in the street,
and upon the gatherings of young men, also;
both husband and wife shall be taken,
the old folk and the very aged.
Their houses shall be turned over to others,
their fields and wives together;
for I will stretch out my hand
against the inhabitants of the land," says the Lord.
"For from the least to the greatest of them,
every one is greedy for unjust gain;
and from prophet to priest,
every one deals falsely.
They have healed the wound of my people lightly,
saying, 'Peace, peace,'
when there is no peace.
Were they ashamed when they committed abomination?
No, they were not at all ashamed;
they did not know how to blush.
Therefore they shall fall among those who fall;
at the time that I punish them, they shall be overthrown." (Jeremiah 6:10-15)

"Even the stork in the heavens
knows her times;
and the turtledove, swallow, and crane
keep the time of their coming;
but my people know not
the ordinance of the Lord." (Jeremiah 8:7)

Every one deceives his neighbor,
and no one speaks the truth;
they have taught their tongue to speak lies;
they commit iniquity and are too weary to repent.
Heaping oppression upon oppression, and deceit upon deceit,
they refuse to know me, says the Lord.
Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts:
"Behold, I will refine them and test them,
for what else can I do, because of my people?" (Jeremiah 9:5-7)

"Execute justice in the morning,
and deliver from the hand of the oppressor
him who has been robbed,
lest my wrath go forth like fire,
and burn with none to quench it,
because of your evil doings." (Jeremiah 21:12)

Jeremiah could do a good rant. These passages held special meaning for me. The first three say those who depend on magic ritual are slaves to their own desires (a pacing female camel and a wild ass in heat), do not follow the Law (oppressing the poor and lying about it), and can be forgiven if they start following the Law again (acknowledge their guilt). Then Jeremiah gives vent to his despair and frustration at the people's continued deafness and disobedience (reaping unjust gain and saying nothing is wrong). The last three passages express more despair (how can they change), hope (they are his people), and anger (deliver the oppressed). People needed to change their behavior and not depend on ritual or false promises to save them.

And Jeremiah was right. The strength of the ancient Israelites had been the people's commitment to the Law, in helping the poor and needy and taking care of each other. One Law for everyone had provided order and opportunity for all members of the community. As long as the Law was followed, the nation remained strong. It was the will of the Lord. They would be his people and he would be their God. Now the church says the Law can not be followed and what are needed are faith and prayer, and people remain weak and complacent. Instead of one law for everyone there is selective enforcement. Our law has gotten so complicated that it takes a specialized professional to understand it and a group of political appointees to interpret it. It is treated more as something to be gotten around than as something to live by. Radar detectors are viewed as a basic human right and necessary in order to level the playing field. People around here are not going to give up their barbecue pork, but the ten commandments should be more than a sign people put up on their lawns.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9) I knew I couldn't trust myself to them. From somewhere came the echo of a thought, they would kill me if they found me, knew of me.

Four

I usually drove to youth group, but this week my girlfriend had her parents' old Japanese car. It was sort of small but had fully reclining bucket seats that had worked well enough before. We'd given up on the beer as not worth the trouble, and had a little more time since my parents were out and hers weren't quite as strict. The overlook was crowded, but she found a spot next to the guy with the worn out shocks. She was wearing her favorite white pants but had them off and had climbed over the gear shift almost before I got the seat back and lowered all the way. Well, we couldn't reach each other if she stayed in her own seat and there wasn't room enough to take them off after she got here. She straddled me and worked on my belt and pants while I worked on her front buttons. She shrugged out of her shirt then reached down into my underwear for what she wanted, while I reached up both my hands to caress her glowing orbs. The smooth white fabric of her bra slid beneath fingers as I massaged her breasts and felt the hard bumps of her nipples inside. I felt her hand pulling on my penis from one side and her underwear grinding my open pants into it from the other. I pulled her down to me and kissed her. Our tongues battled. I sucked her lower lip between my teeth and nibbled it. She reached behind herself then pushed up, and her breasts swung free. I struggled to get my shirt over my head. She reached behind the seat for her towel and slid it under me as she pushed down my pants down past my hips and left them there. She contorted one leg out of her panties (she kept them around the other so she wouldn't lose them) and reached into my dangling pocket for the condom. She lifted herself up, and I unrolled it over my penis and squished one finger into her open vagina. She paused suspended above me while I slid it in and out.

I was about to swap places with her when I felt her full weight come down on me. I oofed. She whispered she wanted to be on top. I whispered okay. Her familiar hand slithered between us and positioned the head of my penis against her vagina. I felt her panties roll between our thighs and my penis press and slip into her as she pushed down onto me. I was back inside. She felt me sliding into her vagina and our pubic hair grinding together when she clenched the muscles of her buttocks, and felt me sliding out through her labia minora when she arched her lower back. Her legs were on either side of me, her arms behind my shoulders, and her breasts flattened against my chest. She was wearing only her white socks and a silver ring. I tried to keep my mind blank and pay attention to her sensations. We were broadcasting. The couple in the car next to us had been closer to orgasm, but now slowed down to match us. Another couple joined the link, then another, then all the couples and groups. Each thought it was her his own sensation and the excitement of hearing muffled sounds of sex coming from the cars around them. We all slowed down or sped up or hastily started or restarted in until we were a group of crickets chirping in unison. The various thoughts in our collective mind were blown I don't know where by the musky green scent of lust. We sped up together and the feedback kept us in unison until the energy exploded into what may have been the world's biggest simultaneous orgasm.

Nobody else knew what happened. The link collapsed as the sounds around us died away to silence. We lay there breathing. That hadn't happened before, and I was going to have to learn how to not do it again. She was starting to get suspicious. I tried to stay in my own mind but it bled through. I took a quick look for what she was most likely to believe, rejected that, and just before she started to speak asked what did she do. That stopped her. She hesitated, then asked what did I mean. I asked if she had felt something weird. She said like what. I said I didn't know. It must have been just the great orgasm. She should be on top more often. She didn't know what to say, so she let it drop. She reached behind the seat again, pulled out a blanket, and put it over us. Cars around us were starting up.

I decided we needed to be closer. I couldn't keep hiding from her, the strain was too great and would tear us apart sooner rather than later. So if we weren't going to break up we needed to understand each other better. If she found out what I could do and confessed to someone, others would find out and we would both be in danger. A lot of people had secrets. I thought I would start with something basic. I asked her if sex was wrong. She looked down at me, her face framed by her black hair hanging down, her thighs around my hips, and my wilting penis still inside her. She asked what did I mean. I said here we were, having sex every week. Was it wrong? She said yes, sex outside marriage was adultery, it was a sin. Maybe that had been too basic. I said I didn't want to stop. She said what we were doing was wrong and we should stop, but we were weak. We had to depend on Jesus to forgive us. Adam and Eve had tried to be strong and they had messed things up. I didn't like where this was going, but there was no way around it. I said maybe the Bible didn't mean what we thought it meant. It said not to eat ham, but we did. Maybe when it said adultery it meant harmful sex, sex that exploited or took advantage of someone and didn't involve love. She looked at me again. She didn't like where this was going either. She asked if I loved her. I said yes. She asked if we should get married. I said no, I couldn't even support myself. We had to finish high school, I wanted to go to college, and we were too young anyway.

She looked sad. I heard her tell me in her mind to please not say it. I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't have, but I still don't see any way I could have gotten around it. I think it was the right thing to do. I said I didn't think what we were doing was wrong. She put her head down on my chest and cried. We could have all the sex we wanted as long as we both believed it was wrong. But if I didn't, then I wouldn't be forgiven. I thought I could talk her into continuing, but I didn't want to. Sex isn't something you do to someone else, it's something you make together. In spite of what anybody else might have thought, I could see that she lived by her beliefs. I didn't want to mess them up. I rocked her gently. She started moving on top of me again, and my penis firmed up quickly. I entered into her belly a second time. I concentrated on what we could both feel, the surfaces where our bodies were in contact. The interpenetrating surfaces separated by a layer of latex, our groins thrusting at each other, her legs enclosing mine, our bellies and chests pressed together, our arms and hands holding on to each others backs and shoulders, our cheeks against each other through her hair, our breath on each others neck. The wave of feeling surged and died. I got an image of light playing over broken shards of colored glass. There was something else behind her words and fear. Most of the charge she got out of sex was from doing something wrong, from sneaking around at night. Now it was all too confused.

What does it mean to believe? Jesus was a man people could see. Asking them to believe he existed made no sense. Did he say people must believe that he was the son of God? I didn't see that. He didn't want people to believe in signs and wonders. Jesus said to believe in the name and the word that he spoke. I think what he meant was to believe in his teachings, to believe when he tells of earthly things and of heavenly things, to believe in the word and spirit of God that he brought. John says that Jesus is the Word, and that the Word is God. I think belief in Jesus means belief in his message. His message is grace and truth and light, his message is to care for each other, to do what is just, to love one another.

Five

I finished high school and started college at the local branch of the state university. I had decided to major in psychology and chemistry, and thought I would go into substance abuse counseling. Addicts' minds were a lot less rigid than most other people's, and they knew not to talk too much about weird experiences.

I was wandering through the stacks of the library at random looking at books whose titles sounded interesting, when I ran across a book on Edgar Cayce and started reading it. He was a psychic from the 20s and 30s who gave readings while in a sleep state, about health and past lives, to people who wrote to him. He was a devout Christian and never made much money, and his source never claimed to be anything other than part of Cayce's mind. At first Cayce did not want to accept what his sleeping self said about reincarnation, but decided it did not contradict the Bible. From the past life readings and other questions put to him, a story of the origin and purpose of human life emerged. All things are extensions of God. He created all souls at once to be his companions. They shared his Knowledge and wisdom and participated in the creation of the universe. Some were fascinated by creation and tried to influence it, which was forbidden. These souls or sparks of light became separated from God and trapped in matter, occupying creature after creature. They sought a way back to God and he had prepared one. The souls changed the behavior of apes and so their evolution. When humans appeared, souls could incarnate in them and work their way back by obeying God, by doing what is right, just and helpful. This reminded me of a passage from Genesis in two ways. Aspects of God are interested in the material world, and the spirit of God abides for a time in humans.

When men began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair; and they took to wife such of them as they chose. Then the Lord said, "My spirit shall not abide in man for ever, for he is flesh, but his days shall be a hundred and twenty years." The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown. (Genesis 6:1-4)

These sounded like Gnostic beliefs and I became interested in them. The Gnostics were called heretics, but their belief in a war between light and darkness sounded a lot like what I had heard at church. Many different belief systems were labeled Gnosticism. One of them is described in the Secret Book of John found in the Nag Hammadi library. It says the One is God and Father and invisible Spirit. Everything exists within it and it is eternal. It can not be seen or described. It is light, life and knowledge. The Father's intention came into being and stood before him. She is Barbelo, the first power, before everything. Her light is his light. The Father looked within Barbelo and she bore a spark of light, whom the Spirit anointed. The holy Spirit and Barbelo completed the self begotten son, and the invisible Spirit placed him over everything. From the self begotten the four lights and twelve realms arose, including Sophia, wisdom. Because Sophia conceived a thought without the consent of her consort, she brought forth an imperfect thing which she cast away. She named him Yaldabaoth. He took great power from his mother and created other realms and angels. He said he was God. His mother repented and the Father illuminated the waters. Yaldabaoth and his angels saw and formed Adam in his image to give themselves power. His mother wanted to take back her power, so the Father sent lights in the form of Yaldabaoth's angels, who said to blow some of his spirit into the man. He blew his mother's power into the man and he moved. The angels saw the man was more intelligent than they and threw him into the realm of matter. The Father sent luminous Life (Zoe) to hide within Adam and help and teach him. The angels made Adam mortal and put him in Paradise. They concealed the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but Adam ate and Yaldabaoth knew. He made Adam forget and tried to remove luminous Life, but she cannot be captured. He did remove some of his power and formed it into a woman. When Adam saw the woman, luminous Life appeared and he remembered. Yaldabaoth cursed his earth and cast them both out of Paradise.

That certainly turns the creation story on its head. Sophia created the angry God by accident, it was not man but the angry God who fell, the world was created by the angry God, humans contain part of the loving God's power and light, and eating of the tree was not original sin but part of the loving God's redemption process. It attempts to show why the angry God of the early part of the Bible is so different form the loving God of the later parts. Except the change actually happened by stages over several centuries, from the early part of Genesis, to Abraham and Jacob, Moses, David and the Psalms, the Prophets, and finally the Gospels. At the beginning of the Bible in Genesis it is man who falls, and at the end in Apocalypse it is Satan and his angels who fall. Some Gnostic ideas show up in the Gospel of John as darkness vs light, and in Apocalypse as war in heaven (which only takes a few sentences, most of it is about the slaughter that takes place on earth after God wins). Milton used the idea of a belligerent God opposed to a somewhat heroic and sympathetic Satan in Paradise Lost, which inspired William Blake.

Most people know Blake wrote a poem about a tiger, many have read some of his shorter lyric poetry, and some know he wrote obscure longer poems. Except for a few frequently quoted passages, the longest ones are only read by an occasional graduate student, or the insane. Blake used his ideas about Satan's fall, the world's creation, and man's redemption in his early poems, and wrote them out in his longer later works, the prophetic books, particularly in The Four Zoas, Milton, and Jerusalem. Blake changed his ideas after writing seven sections of The Four Zoas, which he had originally called Vala. He wrote a new version of section seven, then sections eight and nine. He was not happy with what he had and eventually abandoned it unpublished. For him, publication was a long and tedious process. He engraved his text and illustrations directly onto copper plates, his wife or he printed them by hand, and he hand colored each copy. He had to do all this between the illustration and engraving work he did for others, which paid the bills.

Blake never did things the easy way. He divided Albion (God or Britain or the Cosmos) into four aspects. He associated each aspect with one of the four Living creatures or Zoa from Ezekiel and Apocalypse, gave each a female counterpart, and had three of them fall from grace separately. (Zoa was already plural, but Blake didn't realize this. The singular is Zoe, living creature or life, the same word used for the luminous Life God sent to dwell within Adam in the Secret Book of John.) Most of The Four Zoas is made up of these various characters arguing or complaining. The four aspects are Love, Intellect, Creation and Imagination, and can be matched up with the four Lights from the Secret Book of John. Innocence and Experience represent Love and Intellect. One isn't good and the other evil, we need both to survive.

The Four Zoas starts with Tharmas complaining to Enion. Tharmas is the Zoa associated with eagles and water and is the power of Creation. He and Enion, his female counterpart or Emanation, live in Beulah, the garden of potential being. Enitharmon, the female counterpart of Los, has hidden inside of Tharmas. Enion complains about Tharmas's fear. Tharmas falls and becomes the sea, the chaotic watery darkness or deep which surrounds Albion or Britain. Enion spends nine days weaving the Spectre of Tharmas, which seems to be his shadow side or opposite, into her work as the circle of Destiny, since without Tharmas's power beings can no longer be created, they must be born. This is the first story of the war in heaven, about which we learn more later.

She drew the Spectre forth from Tharmas, in her shining loom
of vegetation, weeping in wayward infancy and sullen youth.
Listening to her soft lamentations, soon his tongue began
to lisp out words, and soon in masculine strength augmenting, he
reared up a form of gold and stood upon the glittering rock,
a shadowy human form, winged, and in his depths
the dazzlings as of gems shone clear, rapturous in fury,
glorying in his own eyes, exalted in terrific pride.
Opening his rifted rocks, mingling together, they join in burning anguish,
mingling his horrible darkness with her tender limbs. Then high she soared,
shrieking above the ocean, a bright wonder that nature shuddered at,
half woman and half beast. All his darkly waving colors mix
with her fair crystal clearness in her lips and cheeks, his metals rising
in blushes like the morning and his rocky features softening,
a wonder lovely in the heavens, or wandering on the earth
with female voice warbling upon the hollow vales,
beauty all blushing with desire, a self-enjoying wonder. (pp 6-7)

Los and Enitharmon are born to Enion and grow quickly. Los is the Zoa associated with men and earth, and his unfallen name is Urthona. He is the power of Imagination, of and poetry and redemption, the eternal Prophet, and he works as a smith. Enitharmon is his female counterpart and another weaver of life. They get born into the world of Time instead of falling there.

Then Eno, a daughter of Beulah, took a moment of time
and drew it out to seven thousand years, with much care and affliction
and many tears, and in every year made windows into Eden.
She also took an atom of space and opened its center
into infinitude and ornamented it with wondrous art.
Astonished sat her sisters of Beulah to see her soft affections.
They saw not not yet the hand Divine for it was not yet revealed,
but Los and Enitharmon delighted in the moony spaces of Eno. (p 9)

The daughters of Beulah are unformed spirits. Without Tharmas, they can only take on form by being born into the fallen world as beings or things or ideas. Los and Enitharmon wander the world. Because they are Imagination he can see the future and control time, she can control space. They fight and Urizen descends. Urizen is the Zoa associated with lions, tigers and horses. He is Wisdom or age or experience, the power of tyranny and regulation. He is the religious or intellectual or political order against which Orc rebels. He is Blake's prince of Light, and in his fallen state is the angry God. When Urizen convinces Los to marry Enitharmon, they and the world lose the power of Imagination and must submit to the regulations of Urizen. She still won't have sex with Los.

Messengers from Beulah arrive at the Council of God and tell them Albion is sick. They tell about Urizen plotting with Luvah against Albion. Luvah is the Zoa associated with bulls and fire. He is Love or youth or innocence, the power of rebellion. In earlier poems he was called Orc, which is his fallen name, and his female counterpart is Vala. Urizen tries to trick Luvah, and they and their sons fight. Urthona is at his anvil, and Enitharmon tears out of him and flees into Tharmas, which was the situation at the beginning of the poem. This time we are told Enion murders Enitharmon, hides her inside herself, and embalms her so she can't come back to life. Urthona seems to change into a raging serpent and be driven off. Urizen retreats, leaving Luvah to take the fall. This is a second story of the war in heaven. After the council hears all this, it elects the seven Eyes or spirits of God as saviors, the innermost of which is Jesus.

The daughters of Beulah beheld the Emanation. They pitied,
they wept before the inner gates of Enitharmon's bosom,
and of her fine wrought brain, and of her bowels within her loins.
Three gates within, glorious and bright, open into Beulah
from Enitharmon's inward parts, but the bright female terror
refused to open the bright gates. She closed and barred them fast,
lest Los should enter into Beulah through her beautiful gates. (p 20)

This is the first section or night. In the second and third nights Luvah has rebelled, Tharmas fallen, Urthona vanished, and Albion been smote. Without his Divine vision he doesn't know Urizen also rebelled, so he gives him authority and disappears into sleep. Urizen exults that his plan worked and sets about rebuilding the ruined cosmos according to strict rules. As Urizen works, Ahania, his female counterpart, fades.

On clouds the sons of Urizen beheld heaven walled round.
They weighed and ordered all, and Urizen comforted saw.
Thus were the stars of heaven created, like a golden chain
to bind the body of man to heaven, from falling into the abyss.
Each took his station and his course began with sorrow and care
according to their various powers, subordinate to Urizen,
traveling in silent majesty along their ordered ways. (p 33)

The stars will control the lives of men, but Urizen is still terrified of the future and the unformed void. Enitharmon worships the bright God, Urizen. She won't have sex with Los and drives the other females away. She flees her body and leaves Los holding a corpse. He drives complaining Enion to shadowy Ahania. Ahania tells Urizen that she had a vision of Albion walking with Vala. He idolized her, his own shadow, the work of his own hands. Luvah descended and smote the weakened Albion. It was a set up. Albion limited their senses and cast them out. This is a third story of the war in heaven. Urizen doesn't like Ahania's vision, says he is God, and casts her out. But he and his hosts fall with her. Everything he has built comes crashing down. It was all supported by his own rules and regulations, and he has broken them. Their fall into chaos rouses Tharmas, who cries for Enion. She dissolves and Ahania replaces her, wandering the earth.

In the fourth, fifth and sixth nights Tharmas sees the fall of Urizen's heaven as a deluge, from which Los and Enitharmon emerge together, and he mourns for lost Enion. He tells Los to rebuild the world, they fight, and Tharmas leaves. Los seizes Urizen's ruined furnaces and forms anvils. He creates time and a material body to bind Urizen, and is trapped by his own fear and anger.

But Urizen slept in a stoned stupor in the nether abyss
in mighty power. Round him Los rolled furious,
frightened with cold infectious madness, in his hand the thundering
hammer of Urthona, forming under his heavy hand the hours,
the days and years in chains of iron, round the limbs of Urizen. (pp 52-3)

Los and Enitharmon shrink into fixed space, and she clings around him and shrieks. The earth begins to turn. It convulses. Enitharmon groans and bears Orc, who is Luvah. She nurses her fiery child. Los builds Golgonooza on the lake of Udan Adan. An iron band grows around his chest each day and bursts each night, forming the chain of jealousy. He seizes the boy, and Enitharmon follows him, weeping, up the iron mountain. The chain falls from his chest, and he binds the boy. Later Los repents but can't free him.

Nor all Urthona's strength, nor all the power of Luvah's bulls,
though they each morning drag the unwilling sun out of the deep,
could uproot the infernal chain, for it had taken root
into the iron rock and grew. A chain beneath the earth,
even to the center, wrapping round the center and the limbs
of Orc entering with fibers, became one with him, a living chain. (pp 62-3)

The gate in Enitharmon's heart opens and closes, and Vala stirs. Orc's howling wakes Urizen, and he tells a fourth story of the war in heaven, which may or may not be consistent with the others.

My fountains, once the haunt of Swans, now breed the scaly tortoise.
The houses of my harpers are become a haunt of crows.
Nine virgins clothed in light composed the song to their immortal voices,
But now my land is darkened, and my wise men are departed.

O did I keep the horses of the day in silver pastures.
O I refused the Lord of day the horses of his prince.
O did I close my treasuries with roofs of solid stone
And darken all my Palace walls with envyings and hate. (pp 63-4)

Urizen arises and, leaning on his spear, explores his dens. He meets three women and curses them. He labors over mountains and deserts, annoyed by scaled and finned monsters. He heads toward Urthona, lighting his journey with a globe of fire, writing in his books of iron and brass. He comes to a place where he is always falling, and a place where there is no up or down. The world is the ruin of his once glorious heaven. He decides to start rebuilding where he is. He digs and forms metal instruments. The people are terrified of the turning wheels of heaven, and he gains dominion over all. These are still those who fell from heaven with him, his children and Luvah's. His hair turns white. He continues wandering. He comes to the world of Los and hears Orc howling. He descends toward the sound and is met by the Spectre of Urthona and Tharmas and their armies. Urizen backs up and calls down comets.

In the seventh and eighth nights the Spectre and Tharmas flee. Urizen descends to the caves of chained Orc. He sits on a rock and reads his books. Orc rages, and Urizen tries to cool his flames with his snows and storms.

Age after age, till underneath his heel a deadly root
struck through the rock. The root of Mystery, accursed, shooting up,
branches into the heaven of Los. The piped forms, bending down,
take root again wherever they touch, again branching forth
in intricate labyrinths, oerspreading many a grisly deep.
Amazed started Urizen when he found himself compassed round
and high roofed over with trees. (p 78)

The tree of Mystery is religion that represses sex and sensuality. Urizen reads from his book. Orc curses his hypocrisy and becomes a serpent. The Shadow of Enitharmon is drawn down to the tree of Mystery, and Los mourns. The Spectre of Urthona woos the Shadow. She tells him that Albion walked in Beulah and saw Vala. She became pregnant and bore Urizen. Then Albion saw Vala as both male and female and fled. Luvah, the male part, conspired with Urizen. She doesn't remember any more. This is a fifth story of the war in heaven. The Spectre continues it. Urthona was divided from Enitharmon in the womb of Enion. He fled but formed a male counterpart of her, Los, to whom he is now a slave. The Shadow weeps and embraces him fervently. She becomes pregnant and bears a shadowy female.

The gate in Enitharmon's heart bursts open, one of her three gates that open to Beulah. Many dead burst forth. These are those who fell when Urizen's heaven collapsed, died when he called down comets on Tharmas, and reappeared in Beulah as unformed spirits. The Spectre of Urthona reunites with Los, but Enitharmon flees. She eats the fruit of the tree of Mystery and sees that life feeds on Death. She despairs and gives it to Los. He fabricates bodies, and she breathes forth the dead, who inhabit the bodies. These seem to be the earth's first people. The shadowy female's delusion tempts the dead in Beulah through Enitharmon's broken gate. Enitharmon sets up her loom and weaves new bodies for them. Urizen attacks and sees the battle take the form of a vast shadowy hermaphrodite whom the soldiers name Satan.

The shadowy female, who is Vala and Rahab, prays to Urizen and becomes Mystery. What Vala wants, badly, is Luvah, or loving sex, but all she can see is Orc, or angry sex, who she thinks killed Luvah and took his place. Los's forges create the times and spaces of mortal life, and the daughters of Enitharmon weave clothing for the dead. Satan's mills unwind the threads, and Rahab reweaves them as despair and compunction and death. Rahab smites Jesus with her knife of flint and nails him upon the tree of Mystery. Los carries his body to the sepulcher. Rahab is confused and questions Los. He says he is the shadowy Prophet who fell six thousand years ago. He says Satan is a state, and there is a difference between states and individuals in those states. The seven Eyes of God were sent, which included Lucifer, Molech, Elohim and Jehovah, but only Jesus was willing to die for Satan. Rahab goes to Urizen. He embraces the shadowy female and becomes a stone serpent or idol. Tharmas feels the stony stupor, gives his power of creation to Los, and pursues vain hope into abstraction. Enion says Jesus has rent the veil of Mystery and Albion will soon return.

So Man looks out in tree and herb and fish and bird and beast,
collecting up the scattered portions of his immortal body
into the Elemental forms of every thing that grows. (p 110)

Rahab triumphs and takes Jerusalem a willing captive, but when she hears Enion's voice, no more spirit remains in her. She leaves and communes with Orc in secret, sometimes returning to Satan in pride, sometimes weeping before Orc in humility.

The ninth night is the Apocalypse or rapture. Los and Enitharmon weep over the crucified body. Jesus separates their spirit from their body, the heavens crack, and the falling fires of Eternity call the dead to Judgment. Orc and the tree of Mystery are consumed. Albion awakes and calls Urizen, who repents and is rejuvenated. Urizen drives his plow over cities and mountains, and sows and harrows the Seed of Men. Ahania appears. Luvah reappears as a cloud, Vala as a young woman. She learns to care for sheep and to worship and love a disembodied spirit.

And on the river's margin she ungirded her golden girdle.
She stood in the river and viewed herself within the watery glass,
and her bright hair was wet with the waters. She rose up from the river,
and as she rose her eyes were opened to the world of waters.
She saw Tharmas sitting upon the rocks beside the wavy sea. (p 129)

Tharmas and Enion reappear as a young boy and girl. Vala learns to care for and love children. Urizen takes his sickle and reaps. A feast is spread for the Zoas, who are all restored, and Albion rejoices. Luvah gathers the vintage, and the winepresses are filled. Enion, Ahania, Vala and Enitharmon work at their looms. Tharmas separates the lees and takes the Wine of Ages to Albion. Urthona grinds the grain and makes the Bread of Ages. The sun rises, seeds grow, and the earth beams forth life. Dark religions are gone and Knowledge reigns.

Six

I was sitting by the river in the park. It was early in the summer after I finished college and I hadn't found a job. I wasn't really looking yet and wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I was looking at the sunlight sparkling on the water in front of me when suddenly the whole park burst into flame. There was red fire coming from the grass, and flames shooting up into the sky from all the river birches and sycamores. No one else seemed to notice. The lady kept walking her yellow lab, the two people sitting at the concrete picnic table kept talking, and the kid kept messing around with a stick by the water. The fire didn't seem to be hurting anything. Nothing shriveled up and I didn't feel any heat. It looked like the black and red fire I saw in people's minds, but birch trees don't think. I sensed a hazy presence spread out through the grass and trees, something I had never encountered before, but no thoughts. After a few minutes, it began to coalesce. The flames and awareness slowly gathered themselves together, until a thicket of ash sprouts growing where a tree had been was the only thing burning. We regarded each other. It flinched, and the flames died. A green child stepped slowly out from behind its leaves and branches. She stared solemnly at me. She was bright green and naked except for the leaves that seemed to be growing from her. They covered a green arm, a green leg, half her chest, and part of her face. She looked about twelve. As I continued to stare at her, she looked down at herself, then made a blowing noise with her mouth and nose. I think it was a giggle.

I asked if she was a forest spirit. She said apparently. She walked over and sat down on the grass next to me. We stared at the water. She said this was a nice place, with the living water rushing through the rocks. I said kayakers liked to come here and fight their way upstream. She said it looked like a good spot for them. The water roared and gurgled. A bird flitted by. She said no one had ever noticed her before, except one person, whom she already knew. I said someone else had once told me that. I hadn't understood what he meant at the time. Later I found that I seemed to be aware of awareness, if that made any sense. She said she thought so. She said plants had awareness, but it was different. I said I hadn't known that. I was only aware of people. She asked what that was like. I said like black fire or static, and hearing people always muttering to themselves, like Popeye used to do in the old cartoons, except their thoughts crackled and sparked. It was annoying until I had learned how to ignore it. I sometimes had trouble separating out which were my own thoughts when I was in a crowd. I asked what the awareness of plants was like. She looked at me strangely, then asked if I would like to see. Before I had a chance to start worrying if I would ever be able to turn it off, I said yes.

She said I should lie back on the grass and close my eyes. She told me to breathe deeply. After a minute she said to open my eyes. I felt her smile. She seemed very pleased with herself. I turned to look at her, but she wasn't there. I asked where she was, and she said not to worry about that right now. I should stand up and keep looking at the river. I did. The sunlight reflected off the water didn't hurt my eyes nearly as much as it had before. She told me I was asleep. I said okay. She said when I was ready, I should turn around. I did, and saw myself asleep on the grass. I felt her disappointment that I wasn't startled at her clever trick. I said I was sorry. I was used to seeing myself through other people's eyes, though not usually asleep. I looked down at our green body with leaves growing out of places I tried not to think about. She asked if I was ready. I looked up and saw the sunlight shining through the birch leaves. I said yes. I felt her gently push. And we stepped out into the green.

It was. I don't know what it was. It wasn't like anything else. We were a film of algae attached to a rock in the river, absorbing the sunlight that shimmered through the water. We were a layer of lichen, a combination of fungus filaments and embedded cells of algae, clinging to a sunny rock above the current. We were a bed of moss, sheltering in the moist air at the water's edge. We were a clump of day lilies growing near a side stream, with our roots in the mud and our curved leaves spread out to either side. We were the forest of sycamore and birch and oak and pine and cedar and maple and beech along either bank of the river. We flowed upstream through the leaves and roots and branched off along a tributary. We went by a freight yard, golf course, and filling stations. We followed a creek past hemlocks, houses, and ball fields to the end of its valley and soared up with the cove forest into the mountains. We traced the line of a ridge through magnolia and hickory and sourwood as it rose higher, and finally paused on one of the peaks. We were a stand of dark and magnificent Fraser fir, the tree that gave the Black Mountains their name, swaying with the wind and towering over the world.

The trees did have an awareness. They were aware of the sunlight shining on their needles, of the wind and air moving in them and through them, of the water flowing into their roots and through their trunks and branches, of the soil and rocks supporting them and nourishing them, of the insects and birds and animals living around and within them, of the other trees and plants of their own kind and of other kinds who, together, were the living forest. It was humbling. I hadn't realized how much pride I had taken in what I could do, until I was shown how much more there was of which I had only been dimly aware. It is, isn't it. My companion and guide was commenting on my thoughts. She said it was like a dream. You could remember something of what it was like, but you didn't really know unless you were actually out here experiencing it. It was a different kind of awareness. The shadows of clouds moved across the ridges, and the sun moved toward the horizon. I said a mountain was a good place for worship. She said yes. I said she wasn't a forest spirit. She said no. I asked who she was. She said later. I couldn't sense her thoughts. She said she'd had lots of practice not thinking. Like I had to do so others couldn't tell I was there when I shared their thoughts.

We traveled overland on the way back, swooping down into the valleys and fields and gliding up over the mountains until we got to the river and the park. We lay back down on the grass and closed our eyes. When I opened them again she was sitting next to me. I said I had never been able to tell anyone what I could do, and now, the first person I could talk to turned out to be a kid. This seemed to amuse her. She asked if I thought it was possible for a nice girl to have five husbands? It was a strange question. I thought about it. I said it wasn't legal in this country, but if she loved them, and didn't take them away from someone else, it might be all right. Men in the Bible had more than one wife, and they had babies with other women under special circumstances. Jesus did not condemn the woman at the well for having five husbands, and people now days had alternative marriage arrangements. It would take a serious woman who was able to handle that much commitment. This seemed to satisfy her. She said she was sorry she couldn't tell me anything about herself, but there were other people involved. I said I understood the danger of people finding out about abilities like ours. I did want to be her friend and didn't mind waiting until she thought it was safe. It was nice not knowing about someone. I usually learned way too much, way too fast. She smiled and said she was glad I felt that way. I asked where did we go from here. She said she wasn't sure, and asked if I would meet her here three days from now to talk about it. I said yes. She smiled again and said good, she would see me then, and blinked out like a light. My life had suddenly gotten a lot more interesting. I turned and squinted at the sunlight sparkling on the river.

Seven

Three days later she stepped out from behind the ash thicket with her leaves partly covering her green body in a different random pattern. She was followed by a tall black man with dark brown skin. Long shaggy black fur covered his legs and shoulders. His ears were pointed, two short horns grew from his forehead, and he was bald. He had a huge dark uncircumcised erection sticking out, from which one drop of clear sticky fluid oozed. It paused for a moment, then stretched toward the ground, hesitated, and dropped. He was impossibly balanced on two goat hooves, and what should have been his heels looked like an extra pair of knees that bent the wrong way. If he had a tail, I couldn't see it. He stopped and looked down at himself. He looked back up at me and said excuse me? The girl laughed. It sounded ominous. She told him I didn't know what I was doing. I was getting ready to run. I was torn between grabbing her and leaving her behind. She said hello and asked how I was. I said um. She introduced Max and said her name was Owl. I don't know what I said. I don't think it made any sense. She said I didn't have to be afraid of Max. He wasn't as dangerous as he looked, and besides, he was in prison. We were both perfectly safe until he got out. She was trying to confuse me and doing a good job. I didn't know what to do, so I sat back down on the grass. They both sat down. He looked a lot more stable.

Owl said she was sorry she hadn't corrected my misconceptions earlier. It had been easier to not say anything than to figure out how much to tell me. She asked me to describe what I saw. I said she was prepubescent, and Max was over twice her age. I had first taken her for a forest spirit, then for a young girl with strange powers, and now she seemed to be involved in an inappropriate sexual relationship. Max looked like a satyr or demon, and I didn't know what to think about her. She said I was close. I saw her as she really was, but with some additions I must have pulled up from somewhere inside her mind. I had also gotten Max mostly right. She didn't know where I got his additions from, but she would give me the benefit of the doubt. There was one key fact I had gotten wrong. I had guessed Max's age correctly, but she was actually slightly older than he was. She was just short and flat chested. She said she didn't mind the way I saw her, but could I now let go of my preconceptions and see Max as he really was?

I thought I could do this. It was tricky to keep my thoughts separate when merged with another mind. The two minds tended to fuse, like two trees growing together, and to end up with shared thoughts that could not be traced back to either individual mind. It reinforced consensus reality, or what most people thought of as the real world, and weakened identity, or what some people called delusion. With the help of what Owl had said, I realized that part of how I saw Max was my own projection. I separated my fears and expectations from my image of him and saw a young black man sitting next to me with short hair, some muscles, a few extra pounds, and two normal feet tucked under his shins. He didn't look that much bigger than average. He said thank you, could he have some pants? I said sorry, since I experienced people's sensations of the own bodies inside their clothes, I tended to see everyone as naked. He was wearing a white tee shirt, loose gray pants, and athletic shoes. He had a nice voice. I turned to Owl. She was still green and naked but had lost her leaves. Her skin was a couple shades lighter and more earth toned, and she had short dark brown hair in all the usual places. I could see now that she wasn't completely flat chested and that her nipples, though small, were those of an adult woman. She said she had decided she liked being green and thought she would stay that way for a while. I noticed she didn't speak out loud but seemed to smile the words to me. When I said I thought she looked good, I smiled it, so people in the park wouldn't hear me muttering to myself.

They were from the north. Owl worked on environmental evaluations, and Max was in prison on a drug charge. He was trying to turn his life around and was studying math and science however he could, through courses or books or with Owl. They had met through his sister, Diane, and were in a primary relationship. They saw each other mostly in the dreaming when Owl traveled to him through the green, but also when she helped conduct Wiccan services at the prison. Owl also had a secondary relationship with Stephen, who was part of a group marriage with Diane and three other people. Thus Owl's question about five husbands to find out my reaction to polyamory, which she described as having a committed relationship with more than one other person. There could be open or closed groups, or a free form network of relationships, but everyone involved had to know about and accept the other relationships or it wasn't poly. This sounded a lot better then the cheating and secrecy I kept finding in other people's minds. Owl and Max were hoping to form their own group of five, a number that worked well for others they knew. Three worked well for some, but they wanted more. Four tended to break down into two couples. With six or more, subgroups made it hard to stay close to everyone. Which, again, worked for some people, but was not what they wanted. Jealousy could be overcome, but time was fixed. People had to find their own balance between how many relationships they had and time spent with each person. She said I was right. Multiple relationships took a serious person willing to put in more time and effort than most people cared to think about.

Owl said Max had an ability which she thought would compliment hers and mine. He could see things that were really small. She had never done two people at once (well, not in this sense) but wanted to try. Max looked a little nervous but didn't object. I said okay, what did we do? She said she was meditating and Max was taking a nap in his cell. He had a little while before he had to stand up for count. She had already joined with him so she could bring him here. I should lie down again and close my eyes. I did. I asked if they were ready. My question surprised her, but she said yes. And I stepped out into the fire.

I had gotten a lot better at this over the years. The hard part was staying out of people's minds, and of course, not letting them know I was there when we shared thoughts. For the first time this didn't apply. It was. I know what it was but don't have the words to tell what I saw. It was black fire, a dark brightness, a cold heat, a roaring silence. The human mind is like nothing so much as static, a random collection of dots and noise that only makes sense because we think it does. I wasn't. We were. We were a fixed point in a flowing stream. The molecules (molecules!) of water were tumbling at us like boulders with the taste of oxygen and hydrogen. Except we were the molecules that entered and left the space of our perception. I knew the space was microscopic in extent and time had somehow stretched out, but it looked like a vast cluster of raging stars which I could see and keep track of far better than with my normal senses and mind, even when enhanced by the minds of others. There were molecules of other substances dissolved and swirling in the water, and an individual particle of fine silt would, for an instant, fill the entire space with dancing rigidity. We moved downward into the sand and gravel caught between the rocks at the bottom of the river. As our space expanded, molecules became lost in crystals and compounds. We were a smooth worm moving between the grains, looking for trapped organic matter. We were a tiny clam sifting water through our intake and output siphons. We were a spiral snail scraping algae off a rock with our rasping tongue. We were an insect larva clinging to a plant stem. We were a crayfish waiting under a rock for something big enough to eat to come along. We were not any of the tiny fish darting about.

I felt Owl's disappointment. In addition to plants and mushrooms, she could perceive invertebrates, though cephalopods (octopus and squid) and large colonies of insects were difficult and obscure. With Max's help, she could perceive protozoa and bacteria. Fish had always been beyond her. She had hoped my ability combined with hers would work, but their intelligence was just too different. Although I had learned that I could sort of perceive apes and monkeys, fish were a complete blank to me. (The gorillas had been insulted at my intrusion. They have much more dignity than their wayward cousins, and they weren't fooled by my mind tricks.)

We crawled through the normally invisible life teeming in the river to a smaller side stream. We followed it and slid up a waterfall to a sunlit marshy pond. We were a water lily growing near the bank, with our root in the mud and our leaves spread out on the surface. We were an arrowhead plant with a pointed leaf growing up out of the water. We were a clump of cattails sheltering grasshoppers and a marsh wren. We were a tangled thicket of blueberry bushes growing along the slope by the water. We moved up onto the highway and hopscotched from the mind of one anxious and angry driver to another, heading for the city. We scuttled along sidewalks through the scents of fear and greed and joy, avoiding other people, peering into store windows, and heading for restaurants. We entered the lobby of an office building and rode schmoozing and futility up to the twelfth floor. We became the steel and brick of the structure itself and plunged down the height of the building. We were the gneiss and garnet and schist of the mountains. We descended past sea level and kept on going. We passed from the crust (the thinner top part of the lithosphere) into the mantle. We were networks of ions stacked into crystals, some crystals with one silicon ion for every two oxygen, some with one magnesium for each oxygen, and a smaller number with one iron for each oxygen. As the depth and temperature increased, we transitioned from the top solid part of the mantle (the thicker bottom part of the lithosphere) into a plastic region of the mantle (the asthenosphere), upon which the solid part floats. There was no hot liquid magma down here. Magma is mantle melted by heat generated by friction as one plate of the lithosphere moves under another. Magma also forms as a plate moves over a hot spot. We stopped, reversed direction, and popped up like a cork into the sycamore beneath which I was lying. I opened my eyes and saw Owl and Max sitting next to me.

Max was astonished. I was amazed. He said he had never been able to sense things much farther away than his physical reach. Previously, once Owl had carried him through the green, he could sense real things near his dream body, but his was the first time he had traveled to distant places through the microverse the way Owl traveled through the green. It had been totally unexpected. He had never been more that a few feet inside the earth before, and this time we had traveled miles into the interior. Last time with Owl, I had been able to sense the awareness of plants. This time with Max in the mix, I discovered that all matter has awareness. It is not consciousness with thoughts and feelings, but protons and electrons and neutrons did appear to have a basic awareness of themselves and of the forces around them. Even without Max helping I could still sense it a little. Plants and fish were still too different, but the awareness of atoms and elementary particles seemed to be the substance from which the awareness and consciousness of all larger entities was built. According to some scientific views, since awareness could not be measured or detected with instruments, it did not exist, which was just stupid. I knew I was aware whether science said so or not, just as I knew God existed. Many people couldn't believe in God without using the Bible as a crutch, and that's why they were afraid to let go of a literal interpretation, but the rest of us could see him everywhere and in everything. Now I could see him even more clearly. The rocks next to me had the same sort of awareness as atoms and molecules, only bigger. When my ability combined with Max's, we were able to sense the awareness of matter, and this enabled him to move through it like wind through the grass.

Owl listened to Max and me figure all this out. I said I had never been able to sense minds beyond speaking distance before. She had enabled me to jump from mind to mind. I could not sense a larger area, but I could shift my focus to a different area and reach minds that were farther away. Owl said she could jump from one plant to another that was nearby, but the distance seemed to vary. She had had to create a line of pine trees in the dreaming to get across the prison courtyard to the window of Max's cell. She could also travel with insects or other invertebrates, but they often didn't didn't go where she wanted, and plants were usually a lot faster.

Owl asked me how I felt about Paganism. She had said she was a Pagan priestess and Max attended her services. She knew many Christians were opposed to it and that Exodus 22:18 said thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. I said if you kept counting after the ten commandments and left out duplicates, that was the thirteenth. I thought it was mostly against sectarianism, which for a small band in hostile territory might have been dangerous, but that in an age of religious tolerance it didn't apply. Christians picked the commandments they liked. Even most literalists didn't give up their pork rinds, cheeseburgers, or shrimp gumbo. My opinion was that people who think they are worshiping heathen gods are mistaken. They are worshiping Jesus and honoring the saints, they just have the names confused. If she thought that when I worshiped Jesus I was really worshiping Dionysus or the Green Man, it came down to the same thing. It was what people did, not the names they used, that was important. God didn't write the Bible. He may have inspired it, but people chose the words, and everyone had to interpret them for himself. I had just seen that there was a lot more truth to the idea of spirits in rocks and trees and rivers than I had thought. The clay from which Adam had evolved contained the basic units of which his mind was made.

Owl seemed satisfied with my little speech. If she had any reservations, she kept them to herself. I took a shot and asked if I was the sort of person they might consider for the poly group they hoped to form. She said um. She looked at Max. He didn't say anything. She said yes, she thought I was exactly the sort of person they should consider, which was why she had brought Max to meet me, but the timing was off. She and Max and the others she knew had been out of college and living on their own for a while. I had just graduated and still lived with my parents. In two or three years, if I was still interested, she would be happy to help me find a group or start my own. Her opinion was that I and any group I joined would benefit from my having more experience of the world. I was disappointed, but I agreed with her and thanked her for being so straightforward. We wanted to talk more about our experience, but they were out of time. I gave her my address, and she smiled and said she would see me in my dreams.

Eight

I got a phone call from Lily, my former girlfriend from youth group. I saw her every week in church but didn't talk to her much. She seemed to avoid me, so I was surprised to get a call from her. Her husband, Seth, had the flu. At first he kept going to work, but after a couple days he had been confined to bed. He had seemed to nearly recover at one point, but then relapsed. The doctor just said to wait. It had been over three weeks and she was getting desperate. She asked could I come over and help? I was confused. I asked what would they like me to do? She said Seth didn't know she was asking, and she didn't know how I could help, but she had always trusted me. She asked if I would pray with them. I didn't understand but wasn't going to refuse. I said I would be right there.

I got to their house, and she and I went in to see Seth. He said hello and closed his eyes. Lily and I sat facing each other on two chairs next to the bed. I could see she had been crying. She reached out both her hands and held mine. She looked into my eyes, then closed hers. I could feel a connection that still existed between us, but I very carefully stayed out of her mind. It did no good. I was consumed by the fire.

O Lord, we pray for our brother Seth, that he may find his way back from this illness. Grant him the wisdom and patience to know your will. In the name of Jesus, who healed the sick, amen. The three of us were linked together in the fire. The shadow of a fourth flickered and disappeared. I could sense Lily's concern and frustration, but I couldn't pick up any thoughts from her. From Seth I got misery and self pity, but that was only on the surface. There was something else underneath, an overpowering anger. His anger had a smooth white scent, like raw coconut. It echoed in my own mind, and I stepped back to keep from getting lost in it. The anger reflected in Lily's mind also, and showed the anger she held back. Anger is anger. It always finds a focus, but that focus is often not the reason for the anger, just the nearest thing it can latch on to. Awareness is burning. I see it in the mind of everyone who is alive. Depression is embers. I could see them glowing in Seth's mind. Anger is flame and power. It needs a focus or the mind will consume itself. Seth's illness was the focus for both of them, but the anger was deeper and older than the illness. Their previous focus had been each other. That was why Seth couldn't get well. Their anger at each other would tear them apart. The illness held them together, but it was not a stable situation. Something had to be done soon. What was the deeper cause of their anger? To find out I would have to probe further. She had asked for my help. They both had strong minds. I decided to risk it, but I needed his permission.

I asked Seth if he trusted me. He asked what I meant. I said Lily had asked me over to try to help him. Did he trust me? He looked at her and at me. He was confused and defensive. He wanted to say no. He tried, but he couldn't. He looked away and didn't say anything. I lie a lot, but when I tell the truth people know it. They don't know how they know it, but they do, even if they pretend they don't. It attracts some people and repels others. I said I was sorry and would leave if he wanted me to. He looked at her. She looked at him. She didn't plead, even with her eyes. She just looked at him, and he saw her. He said if she thought I could help, then maybe I could. He closed his eyes again.

Anger is power. It gives people the strength to do what needs to be done. Anger doesn't need a reason or excuse, just a focus. The problem is finding the proper focus and using the anger, instead of letting it use us. Anger without a focus becomes stress. It will wear down the body and the mind. The focus used to be easy to find. It was the person using brute force to steal our food or our women. In our complex world of social conventions and hidden motives, it is not so obvious. Anger used indiscriminately is an indulgence. It is using a hammer to solve every problem. It works until you find something too fragile, something that will explode, or someone with a bigger hammer. Anger is always directed at the past, at something that has already happened. The same force directed at the future, at something that has not yet happened, becomes fear. They are two different aspects of the same thing. Anger needs to be focused and directed, but becomes useless if it is domesticated or tamed. It is the chaos demon, the beast who always returns, the primeval enemy of God. It is Leviathan.

In that day the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea. (Isaiah 27:1)

"Let the day perish wherein I was born,
and the night which said,
'A man-child is conceived.'
Let those curse it who curse the day,
who are skilled to rouse up Leviathan." (Job 3:3-8)

"Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook,
or press down his tongue with a cord?
Can you put a rope in his nose,
or pierce his jaw with a hook?
Will he make many supplications to you?
Will he speak to you soft words?
Will he make a covenant with you
to take him for your servant for ever?
Behold, the hope of a man is disappointed;
he is laid low even at the sight of him.
No one is so fierce that he dares to stir him up.
Who then is he that can stand before me?

"His back is made of rows of shields,
shut up closely as with a seal.
His breath kindles coals,
and a flame comes forth from his mouth.
In his neck abides strength,
and terror dances before him.
His heart is hard as a stone,
hard as the nether millstone.
He makes the deep boil like a pot;
he makes the sea like a pot of ointment.
Upon earth there is not his like,
a creature without fear." (Job 41:1-33)

O Lord, how manifold are thy works!
In wisdom hast thou made them all;
the earth is full of thy creatures.
Yonder is the sea, great and wide,
which teems with things innumerable,
living things both small and great.
There go the ships,
and Leviathan which thou didst form to sport in it. (Psalm 104:24-26)

Praise him, sun and moon,
praise him, all you shining stars!
Praise him, you highest heavens,
and you waters above the heavens!

Praise the Lord from the earth,
you sea monsters and all deeps,
fire and hail, snow and frost,
stormy wind fulfilling his command!

Mountains and all hills,
fruit trees and all cedars!
Beasts and all cattle,
creeping things and flying birds! (Psalm 148:3-10)

Yet God my King is from of old,
working salvation in the midst of the earth.
Thou didst divide the sea by thy might;
thou didst break the heads of the dragons on the waters.
Thou didst crush the heads of Leviathan,
thou didst give him as food for the creatures of the wilderness. (Psalm 74:12-14)

I probed into the minds of Lily and Seth. There was anger at his illness and at what it was doing to both of them, causing his pain and weakness, forcing her to take care of him, using up their vacation time and savings. There was anger at each other and at how neither would ever listen to or agree with the other, each seeing the other as stubborn and blind, each suspecting the other enjoyed yelling and causing pain. There was anger at the situation. They both knew how a marriage should be run, and their ideas didn't agree. Seth knew that the man was supposed to be in charge, the church and the Bible said so, and that Lily had promised to obey him when they took their wedding vows. Lily knew that woman was created to help man, not to blindly follow his mistaken ideas, and that she was supposed to be the one managing the household. Both knew that the first one to give in would be the underdog forever. Neither could afford let the other win. I had found what I needed and broke the link.

Seth was asleep. It was just as well. I wasn't a marriage counselor. My training in social work had taught me my limitations. I could tell Lily what I had found, but it would be up to her to use that information to work things out with Seth. If they needed professional help, they should go to a professional. We went into the living room and sat down. Lily looked at me expectantly and asked what I thought. I said I thought it had to do with identity. She waited. I plunged onward.

I said identity is completely arbitrary. Saying we are unaffected by others makes no more sense than saying we are completely controlled by others. Everyone affects everyone else. There are as many disagreements within one person as their are between people or groups of people. Each person has many different aspects. There is the child who wants excitement, adventure and romance. There is the parent who wants security, order and sex. There is the adult who wants to figure things out and always be right. There is a fourth aspect, imagination or the storyteller, who wants fantasy, alternatives and utopia where animals can talk, people can fly, and everyone always agrees. These aspects are in conflict with themselves and each other. They only work together when viewed as parts of a larger self. People can't agree when the only identities are those of the individual persons and there is no larger purpose. A group of people sees itself as right and sees other views as mistaken, false or blasphemous. This worked when there were small groups competing for scarce resources, like lions, apes or wolves, but not when people have guns and missiles. Survival depends on looking at the bigger picture.

She and Seth viewed themselves as individuals. They viewed a marriage as something that just happened, but any relationship between persons has its own identity. Two people can't work together toward a common goal unless they agree on what that goal is, unless they agree that the goal is worth working towards, and unless each is willing to give up some limited part of their own individuality in order to create a shared identity. Normally, people didn't even think about this. Sometimes their ideas were close enough for the marriage to survive. Sometimes one person gave in most of the time. Often people couldn't agree and the marriage failed. If she and Seth wanted their marriage to work, they would have to learn to respect each others ideas and find some way to agree about what they wanted and how to get there. After I finished, Lily sat and thought for a long time. She said that she and I had not been able to agree. I said no, we had wanted different things. She looked at me, then said she believed what I had said. Did I think that she and Seth could make things work? Yes, I said agreeably. They were both good people, and I believed that if they really wanted to, they could. She smiled a little and said thank you, I had been a great help. I said she was welcome. She said she didn't know what she would do, but would think about it some more and talk to Seth.

On sunday Lily told me that Seth would be able to go back to work the next day. Things weren't exactly going smoothly between them, but they had talked and worked out some compromises. He had started feeling better soon after she called me, and she felt tired but much less frustrated. I said I was glad she was able to get out of the house and looked forward to seeing him with her at church next week. She smiled and thanked me, then went to talk to someone else.

Nine

Owl did visit me in my dreams. Whenever she said hello the story would collapse, so sometimes she waited to see what would happen. I appreciated that, since I wanted to know too. I would have been embarrassed at some of the things she saw, but she had the same attitude that I did. Other people's thoughts were their own, and they were whatever they were. We had no more right to judge them than we did to judge the weather. People could control their thoughts, but most didn't know they could or never learned how or didn't bother. This time she emerged from the green as dragonfly girl, four inches tall in her bright blue racer back swimsuit, and I could sense that Max was with her. She sat down on the window sill and said she wanted to try something different. Three people in one head was crowded and too hard to keep separate. She wanted to be able to think her own thoughts. She asked if I was willing to trust her. I said yes. I didn't even have to think about it. She said good, because the first time she had proposed this to Max, he had chickened out. Before I had time to wonder if this was a good idea, the bed disappeared.

I was a small round red dot hanging on by my teeth near the base of one of her upper wings, except I didn't have teeth, I had biting mouth parts and eight short legs. Max was next to me, and we were water mite larvae engorging on blood until we were ready to drop off into a likely looking body of water. I wasn't sure I liked being an ectoparasite, but it was the only form in which dragonfly girl could carry us. Everything she picked up, she ate. We were flying over the yard toward the trees. I wondered how we got out the window. Owl said in the dreaming it was usually easier to obey the normal laws of space and matter, but sometimes she cheated. She had ridden the starlight out through the window, and that was what had caused the nausea I was feeling, not the blood I was sucking out of her. We continued between people's houses and partway up the creek and landed on the leaf litter next to a place where the water formed a small pool before flowing over an outcrop of rock. Owl had resumed her normal shape but had kept her costume and was still four inches tall. Max and I were the same height she was, he in his gray prison pajamas and me in the navy blue bikini briefs I was sleeping in. I decided not to worry about it. Owl said she wanted to shrink. Max said okay, and his pj's gave way to a yellow and black superhero outfit with a looping triskelion insignia and no mask or cape. It had black feet and calves, yellow legs which merged up into a yellow midsection that came to a wide point on his chest, black shoulders and arms, yellow wrists, a black belt, and was skin tight. It hid about as much of him as my outfit did of me. He put his hand to the circular belt buckle, and everything except us started getting bigger.

As the ribs and texture of the dead leaves under us got larger, Owl started moving us down through them. I could see into all the things around us, but it wasn't like they were transparent. It was more like my eyes were everywhere, and I could see the insides of things as clearly as the outside. Sight was acting more like touch but extended beyond our current reach, which Max thought was unusual. We sank through decaying leaves and plant roots and white strands of fungi mycelium. We were surrounded by an army of earthworms, which were the largest creatures down here and loomed larger as we shrank. The soil moved through them as they moved through the soil and ingested part of it. There were armored wood lice under the leaves, ants of different sizes moving through tunnels, beetle and fly larvae looking for food, fierce and voracious centipedes, and cylindrical millipedes grazing on the detritus. Owl said the smaller centipedes and millipedes were part of an artificial group called microarthropods, which was mostly made up of grublike springtails and an enormous variety of mites, but also included six legged wormlike proturans, and diplurans with two bristles as tails. The microarthropods were important for grinding up soil into smaller particles, moving around microbes and eating different kinds, and controlling the many kinds of nematodes, or round worms, which were everywhere and ate everything. Some wood fungi also preyed on nematodes, as a source of nitrogen, attracting them with scents and capturing them with nooses, or attaching spores which consumed them. I thought this was very strange. As we continued to shrink, we saw fat, eight legged, slow moving tardigrades, or water bears, that looked like the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. There were tiny multicelled rotifers with hairlike cilia around their mouths that could act like propellers and drew in food. There were different kinds of protozoans and algae and bacteria. The microfauna of the soil is more diverse than the plants and animals of a rain forest.

We were the incredible shrinking voyeurs and continued our excellent adventure through the lipids and proteins of cell membranes, and past microtubules holding up cells like steel columns in skyscrapers and serving as highways for movement within cells, and microfilaments holding cells together like the cables of suspension bridges and changing the shapes of cells when they divided. There were different types of intermediate filaments holding in place the nucleus, endoplasmic reticulum, golgi apparatus, mitochondria, and other organelles of the cells. We stopped shrinking and saw long molecules of proteins and fats and DNA as we moved through cells. Carbon has four hands. It can hold on to itself to make a chain and to two other things at the same time. In proteins it twists into useful structures and nanotech machines, in fats it stores energy in chemical bonds, and in DNA it stores information on how to make proteins. Owl knew more about molecular biology than I did, but I knew more about organic chemistry. Max knew more about particle physics than either of us, though he hadn't been to college and had no training. We moved out into a pocket of air between particles of soil. Nitrogen has three hands, and the triple bond of molecular nitrogen is one of the strongest in nature. It's a bitch to break apart. Most nitrogen stays as a gas in the atmosphere, and there is a mad scramble for what little is available in a form usable by living beings. Which is why a fungi isolated in rotting wood goes to the extreme measure of fishing for nematodes. We approached some grains of silicon dioxide sand that looked like small moons, and like infinite monkey bars as we passed through them, except there were no bars and the ions were bouncing back and forth in three dimensions and the holes and faults kept shifting. Silicon is carbon's idiot brother. It has four hands but only forms the relatively simple chains of glass molecules or crystals of clay and quartz. It never made the jump to life. We started shrinking again, and I tried to see a water molecule, but the idea of shape doesn't really apply to things that small. They keep shifting through different probability spaces as if they can't decide what they are. The problem isn't actually with them. It's with the electron cloud that gives them their properties. Electrons aren't really there, they just think they are. They are dragged into existence by the forces around them, but they never quite make it. I've sometimes speculated that there is only one electron, and it's really busy, moving back and forth through time and space trying to be everywhere at once. It is said that faith can move mountains. That is an understatement. The faith is the mountain. It is there as long as electrons and people conspire together to pretend it is. The humanists and creationists are both wrong. God does exist. Creation is a myth. Stop, I said suddenly, and threw myself backward out of the link.

I was back in my bed, dragonfly girl was sitting on the windowsill, and Max was somewhere in the background. I resisted the temptation to say bogus, but she heard it anyway. Owl said trying to keep our minds separate hadn't worked too well. It did as long as we had a form or creature to focus on, but when we reached a size where our forms didn't make sense, we became abstract consciousness and started to merge. I said that in our partially merged state, we absorbed some of each others ideas without the reservations and counter ideas that balanced them and had nearly thought ourselves out of existence. My ability to merge minds had nearly done us in. She said true, but only because she had wanted to stay separate. My experience and faith had pulled us out in time. Her ability to merge consciousness with plants and creatures somehow extended to Max because of his ability to sense matter. She dominated that polarity, but my ability and experience with human minds caused me to dominate when the three of us pooled our awareness. I considered this. Her envy had a foul black scent, like stagnant water. Envy is based on ownership, and ownership is a really strange concept. It has to do with proximity, use, and permanence. Sometimes a little redistribution of wealth is in order, but who can say when and how? Envy of an ability is somehow different. Is it even covered by the tenth commandment? I said I couldn't help having more influence on our connection. Owl said she knew and hadn't realized how much she liked being in control. Plants and insects were too different to feel like a threat to her identity, and Max coped with prison life by being unassertive. She said we needed to think about this some more before we tried it again. Max and I agreed.

Ten

We had enough in the midsummer picnic budget, after the fee for the state park and other expenses, for five bags of chips and two cans of tuna. We couldn't ask for more money because we were still in the mission fund drive, and then people would need a break before the fall pledge drive. Someone on the committee suggested making it a covered dish dinner. Someone else said we already had enough of those, and besides, the church always supplied the food for the picnic. Someone else said that this year we couldn't. I said what if we didn't serve hamburgers or hot dogs or ribs or sandwiches or chips this year. How much rice and beans could we afford? Two people calculated we could get thirty pounds of rice and twelve pounds of beans, which would make enough for everyone to have all they wanted. We would have to ask people to bring pickles, lemonade, a little ham, some bread pudding, or whatever else they wanted, but nobody would have to bring much. We would need some people to cook the rice and beans at home but wouldn't need to cook anything at the site. Not everyone liked the idea, but no one could come up with anything better. It was voted on and accepted.

The picnic turned out better than we had thought. People stood or sat at tables or on the grass while we waited to begin. Kids ran around or tried to climb trees. We had large, still warm, covered pots of rice and beans on each of the food tables and had said people didn't have to bring anything, but most did anyway. My family brought a small watermelon. Others brought green salad, Amish slaw, carrot and cucumber sticks, macaroni salad, boiled ham, ham with pieces of pineapple, fried chicken, snap beans, pole beans, broccoli, sweet potato and pecan and banana cream pies, oatmeal cookies, and red velvet cake. There would be a lot left over. All the nice single girls were pointed out to me. (Mother, I said parenthetically.) Lily and Seth were there, and her friend with her husband. Finally the minister said grace, and lines formed by the food tables. As we collected our food and sat down to eat, I looked around at the different generations gathered there under the trees and sharing a meal. I looked at the nice single girls in their white shorts or thin, flower print, cotton dresses and wondered how or if I fit into all this. Men and women my age were getting married and starting families. None of my relationships in college had lasted very long. They became intimate very quickly, but either the strain of hiding what I could do became too great or the woman realized I was lying to her, although she didn't know about what.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.

And God said, "Let there be light," one day, "Let there be a sky to separate the waters under the sky from the waters above," a second day, "Let the waters under the sky be gathered, and let the dry land appear and put forth plants and fruit trees, each according to its kind," a third day.

And God said, "Let there be lights in the sky for signs and seasons," a fourth day, "Let the waters bring forth living creatures, and let birds fly across the sky," a fifth day, "Let the earth bring forth cattle and creeping things, and let us make man in our image, male and female," a sixth day. God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply."

And God rested on the seventh day from all his work. (Genesis 1:1- 2:2)

Before God started the work of creation, he had apparently already won possession of a chaotic watery darkness or deep by fighting and defeating Leviathan, a huge monster or serpent, and was moving around within or over it. (It was a fish tank universe with water everywhere, except there weren't any fish and the wasn't any tank and the water was too muddy to see through, which was okay because there wasn't any light.) First he creates energy or fire or light, then time and days by separating this light from the preexisting darkness. Second he creates gravity or direction so there will be above and below, then a solid sky or heaven or firmament to hold some of the water up while gravity holds the rest down. This creates an empty space or hole within all that water. (Of course there's water up above the sky. It's blue isn't? And where do you think rain comes from? The opening of the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens causes the great flood. The sky is a big blue bubble holding back all that water.) Third he gathers the water below into one place and dry land appears. Now he can create algae, plants and fungi, presumably after creating viruses, bacteria, protozoans, and other microorganisms. (Apparently land existed before but was mixed together with the water. Creation seems to be mostly sorting things out and putting them together.) We now have matter, energy, time, space and life. This is the first three days, and may have been all there was in the original version, because now God goes back through the whole sequence again adding details that weren't mentioned the first time. The light is separated into the sun, moon and stars (early earth may have had diffuse cloudy light), the sea and sky are filled with creatures and birds, and the land is filled with creeping things and animals, including man in convenient male and female versions.

The Biblical account of creation is amazingly accurate considering the technology of the people who wrote it, even if the time scale is a little off. First there is light from the big bang, which separates from darkness during star formation. Second, planets form, Earth with clouds above and ocean below. Third, continents drift around and algae and plants evolve. Fourth, the perpetual cloud cover opens and the sun, moon and stars appear. Fifth, higher animal life evolves in the sea. Sixth, arthropods and vertebrates move onto land, and humans evolve. I may be wrong about the clouds. Birds came a little later than is stated, and you need to interpret sea monsters as giant squid instead of as great whales. The church survived Galileo. I don't see what the big problem with Darwin is.

While most of the congregation was still eating or digesting, I followed an unmarked trail off into the woods. Their gluttony had a bitter orange scent, like expensive chocolate. I wanted to get away from it for a while. Even without Owl to help, I was now much more aware of the trees and other plants around me, and I a had a vague sense of their awareness. The only sign of the miles of fungus throughout the forest were some shelf mushrooms growing on a fallen tree. I knew there were insects and other invertebrates all around me, even if I couldn't see or sense most of them. I heard footsteps on the leaves, and turned to see Lily following me down the path. That surprised me, because I was sure no one had seen me leave. I can tell when I'm being watched. I waited for her. When she came up to me, she said she knew I didn't like crowds. She wanted to thank me for my help with Seth's illness, and was sorry she hadn't talked to me much lately. I made her nervous. I didn't want to ask why. I said I made lots of people nervous. We continued on until we came to a small stream flowing down between some rocks. She told me she and her husband both dated other people and asked if I still liked her. I said yes, of course I did. She smiled a little and said good. I started to say something else, but she said we didn't have much time. She led me across the stream, then off the trail and upstream through the woods. We came to a tangle of green brier and she paused, looking for a way through. I had been this tangle with Owl. It looked different from the outside, but I took her hand and showed her a way around. We were out of sight of the trail and no one else would be coming back here any time soon. She looked me in the eye, backed up to a sycamore, stepped up onto a root, and pulled her knee up to her shoulder, lifting her skirt and showing off her dark black bush and pink juicy hole. I stared at them, at her exposed hips, at the soft bulge of her breasts inside her dress, at the line of her neck, at the scatter of freckles across her cheeks, at the dark olive and brown eyes that stared into mine. I said I didn't have a condom. She said she did, but asked could we do it without? She had her diaphragm in and trusted me, and said I knew how careful she was. I did, and I said yes.

I carefully lowered my shorts and underwear and stepped out of them. Her foot and sneaker dangled in the air. I stepped up next to them and slid my fingers up and down her well lubricated slit. I kissed her. I flicked my tongue over her lips and she sucked it into her mouth. I spread my index and little fingers and slid the other two into her. I stroked the inside of her vagina behind the clitoris and she moaned softly. It seemed like an awkward position, but she gripped the wide tree trunk with her buttocks and shoulder blades as I pressed her back into it, and didn't seem to have any difficulty supporting herself on one leg. She was holding up her knee with one hand and had the other arm around my neck, so I was supporting part of her weight. My fingers on the side she was open to were busy and the breast on that side was blocked by her leg, so I moved my other hand from the tree and squeezed my thumb between us. I felt the softness of her breast and the hard nub of her nipple inside her dress and bra. When she tried to squirm around the fingers inside her, I rubbed her sensitive spot a little harder, and she squealed her first orgasm into my mouth as I kissed her. I extracted my fingers and moved over slightly. I guided the dripping head of my penis to her opening but had to bend my knees and scrunch down a little to get an angle that worked. She tried to stand on tiptoe and climb the tree with her ass. I slid in and put both hands back on the tree. She dug her chin into my shoulder and stared over it as I started stroking in and out. I was aware of the dim speckled light around us, the sound of water splashing over rocks, green circles of brightness on the leaves above us, a shaft of slanting sunlight stretching to the forest floor, a swarming column of white gnats next to us, a metallic brown beetle behind her ear creeping up the smooth multicolored bark of the tree I had her backed up against. I was aware of the unusual sensation of my naked penis sliding in and out of her beautiful wet vagina, the pain in my calves from holding this position, the sycamore bark under my sweating palms, her humping body pressed against mine, her quickening breath next to my ear, the short series of soft huffs as she came for the second time. I couldn't hold out any longer, and gasped as I covered the back of her vagina with sticky white cum.

We rested against the tree, panting after after our exertion, my erection slowly softening inside her, and the results of our efforts gliding down our legs like lazy raindrops on a windowpane. I told her I was afraid to move. That if I did, we might both collapse into a heap on the ground. She started to giggle quietly. I started to panic. Her laughter caused me to pop out of her, and she wriggled out from between the tree and me. While I held onto the tree, she helped me straighten my legs and stand up. She pulled two paper napkins out of somewhere, and we cleaned up as best we could. After a minute we started back. No one noticed that we came back together or had been gone, except her friend did a better job of not noticing than anyone else. As we passed the desserts, I dipped a cookie in some excess cake frosting and handed it to her. She frowned at it for an second, then smiled and took a bite.

Eleven

That night I watched the thin crescent of the new moon following the sun toward the horizon and thought about the day and about my life. I seemed to be drifting, doing what came easiest and trying to stay out of other people's minds. Did I want to get married? The question didn't seem to apply. My situation was too dangerous to involve another person. Governments and business criminals would consider my ability and continued existence to be an unacceptable security risk. Everybody had something to hide, even if only from himself. Which led to an obvious line of thought that I had somehow avoided noticing before, even after all my classes in psychology. People spent years and fortunes going to therapists and psychiatrists, trying to find out what was in their own minds. I had been through counseling as part as my training. I had learned to understand and counsel others. Why had I never tried to read my own mind? As soon as the idea occurred to to me I almost lost it. It went skittering off like a drop of water on a hot griddle. It would be easy to ignore but was too obvious to forget once I had hold of it. I should try it now, before I became more frightened. I had also never tried meditation beyond simple breathing exercises to calm my mind. Calming my mind seemed like a good idea right now, so I sat up, straightened my spine, put my hands palm up in my lap, and slowed my breathing. After a couple minutes I thought I was ready. I didn't know what to do. There was no fire to step out into. I tried to take a mental step backward but couldn't. It was as if I was up against a wall. I turned around slowly, and everything turned with me. I stopped and turned quickly in the other direction. And fell into I don't know what.

I was drowning in a hall of mirrors. Nothing was orthogonal. Everything was odd angles and indistinct edges. There was the time someone had walked in on me when I was. There was the the time I didn't. There was the time I said. There was the time that my. There was the time I tried to. One of these memories by itself was bad enough. All of them at once was overpowering. I turned to kick to the surface. But I didn't. I let them come. These were events and emotions that had happened to me. I had survived them all. I lived through each one every time it surfaced. Some of these aversions no longer held much of an emotional charge. Some had been mistakes I had learned from. Some could have happened to anyone. They still bothered me, but I realized I was coming to accept them. I needed to find what else was here. I went deeper.

I was younger and on the floor with my die cast metal cars. There was the white Ford GT with a black racing stripe over the hood, the bright red Jaguar XKE, the Impala with the two flared wings over the trunk that I had been so happy to find and that was ruined soon after I got it, the white BP tank truck with the green cab that flipped up, the short high Unimog pickup with big tires, and the green John Deere tractor. In the same scale were HO trains beyond my oval of track. There was a layout with four black Norfolk Southern GP38 diesels pulling a half mile long string of coal cars, each with a different number, up a river valley. A freight yard with switching engines that moved at scale speeds and never got stuck, railroad cars that continued to coast when released, and couplers that worked. A town with brick storefronts along a main street, tiny people standing around, a park with a bandstand, a metal railway overpass with stone block abutments and a road that dipped to get under it, and grimy factories by railroad sidings with water tanks on their roofs. A red barn with a silo, fields, fences, bales of hay, cows, geese, a pond, a white farmhouse, and my green tractor next to it. The series of short switchbacks up the side of a mountain that I had seen in a layout book, a tunnel through a mountain with different kinds of trees, and a bridge over a gorge with a flowing creek. Another creek and a lake with summer cabins, people lying on the beach, and a dock with a canoe tied up to it and a sailboat moored nearby. There was Superman standing on the top of a building, the Flash talking to his girlfriend in the street, the disk shaped Millennium Falcon floating overhead, and the green Thunderbird Two hovering.

There were big flat peanut butter cookies, cranberry walnut oatmeal cookies, brownies with chocolate sauce underneath, cut up ripe strawberries on sliced shortbread biscuits with real whipped cream on top, wedges of cantaloupe, brown cinnamon covered apple donuts, white powdered strawberry donuts whose red filling oozed out when I bit into the side with the hole, chocolate iced donuts with yellow cream inside, vanilla and chocolate ice cream on sliced bananas with hot fudge and whipped cream, peach and pumpkin ice cream on cones. Hamburgers with pieces of green pepper and onion cooked inside and wide steak fries, Italian sausages in toasted buns with grilled onions and peppers, hot flaky cornmeal batter fried catfish nuggets, falafel with hummus and salad and tahini stuffed in a pita, thick pizza topped with onions, peppers, tomatoes, black olives, mushrooms and broccoli, a long crusty loaf of fresh Italian bread with olive oil and filled with sliced ham, Swiss cheese, shredded lettuce and ripe tomatoes. A round stack of diner pancakes with butter and thick maple syrup, a pile of scrambled eggs, crispy fried shredded potatoes, a pitcher of fresh squeezed orange juice, a breast the size of my head that squirted warm milk into my mouth every time I sucked on it.

The two girls in see through blouses and no bras that I had passed on the street one day, the short girl at the side chalkboard next to my seat with her arm raised as the chalk clicked against the board and whose breasts had bounced up and down with each letter she wrote, the cute mixed race girl who stood on the loading bay of the aircraft with her shorts around her hips and her top over her breasts and her nipples poking out as she hesitated before diving into the water far below, the naked black girl who had climbed off her black boyfriend and let her naked white friend climb onto him so she could outscore their naked Asian roommate who kept sucking off her fully clothed white boyfriend and totaling her points on an abacus, the woman with the perfect ass who had once walked down the street ahead of me, girls at the beach with their buttocks half uncovered by the thin stretchy material of their bathing suits, the girl at the nude beach in the white long sleeve shirt that was unbuttoned all the way down the front so that it partially concealed her breasts but fully exposed the black triangle of her pubic hair, the girl lying on her back in the sunlight at the nude beach with her breasts flattened on her chest who had finally pulled on her dark blue bikini bottom but then taken it off again before she and her friend went to talk to some boys, the girl in the red and white bikini at the less crowded end of a beach who was lying on top of her boyfriend and kissing him, then parted her legs and moved her knees and feet up his sides as she got more and more excited until he surreptitiously reached into the wide leg opening of his baggies, pulled out his erect penis, tugged aside the narrow crotch of her suit, slipped himself into her vagina, put a hand on either of her hips, and pumped until both of them came. Some of these attractions were familiar even if I hadn't thought about them for a while, others went back further than I imagined. Wanting things hurt, and eventually I continued onward.

I was adrift, floating in darkness, as still as a goldfish. There was a temple under the water. Part of a door frame, stubs of columns sticking up, round sections of columns lying in the sand, blocks of dull yellow stone forming broken walls, partly covered with growths of blue and red algae, a few fish slowly circulating through the windows and aisles. It could have been a Greek temple, or Jewish, Hindu, or Asian, or an American bank. What did I believe? Was Christianity just the ruins of other systems of thought? I rejected much of what the minister said, and the church, and the Bible. I had all sorts of ideas but had never tried to sort them out. My sloth had a dark blue scent, like lotus blossoms or hydrangea. Was I too lazy too do anything without being pushed by an emotional charge? Apparently. I was sitting around waiting for God to tell me what to do, and I didn't hear anything. I could twist the words of the Bible to mean what I wanted them to mean, after throwing away the parts I didn't like, as well as anyone else. What did the Bible mean to me after I let go of my preconceptions? I had been given a gift but hadn't done anything with it. What did God want?

The Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing." So Abram went, as the Lord had told him. (Genesis 12:1-4)

Now Sarai, Abram's wife, bore him no children. She had an Egyptian maid whose name was Hagar; and Sarai said to Abram, "Behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my maid; it may be that I shall obtain children by her." And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai. And he went in to Hagar, and she conceived; and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. But Abram said to Sarai, "Behold, your maid is in your power; do to her as you please." Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her. (Genesis 16:1-6)

And the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day. He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men stood in front of him. They said to him, "Where is Sarah your wife?" And he said, "She is in the tent." The Lord said, "I will surely return to you in the spring, and Sarah your wife shall have a son." And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, "After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?" The Lord said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh? Is anything too hard for the Lord?"

The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and Sarah conceived, and bore Abraham a son. After these things it was told Abraham, "Behold, Milcah also has borne children to your brother Nahor." (Genesis 18:1-14, 21:1-2, 22:20)

Now Abraham was old, well advanced in years; and the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things. And Abraham said to his servant, the oldest of his house, who had charge of all that he had, "Put your hand under my thigh, and I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and of the earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell, but will go to my country and to my kindred, and take a wife for my son Isaac."

Then the servant took ten of his master's camels and departed, taking all sorts of choice gifts from his master; and he arose, and went to Mesopotamia, to the city of Nahor. And he made the camels kneel down outside the city by the well of water at the time of evening, the time when women go out to draw water. A maiden came out with her water jar upon her shoulder. She went down to the spring, and filled her jar, and came up. Then the servant ran to meet her, and said, "Pray give me a little water to drink from your jar." She said, "Drink, my lord"; and she quickly let down her jar upon her hand, and gave him a drink. When she had finished giving him a drink, she said, "I will draw for your camels also." When the camels had done drinking, the man took a gold ring weighing a half shekel, and two bracelets for her arms weighing ten gold shekels, and said, "Tell me whose daughter you are. Is there room in your father's house for us to lodge in?" She said to him, "I am the daughter of Bethuel the son of Milcah, whom she bore to Nahor." So he put the ring on her nose, and the bracelets on her arms.

Now Isaac had come from Beer-lahai-roi, and was dwelling in the Negeb. And Isaac went out to meditate in the field in the evening; and he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, there were camels coming. And Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, she alighted from the camel, and said to the servant, "Who is the man yonder, walking in the field to meet us?" The servant said, "It is my master." So she took her veil and covered herself. And the servant told Isaac all the things that he had done. Then Isaac brought her into the tent, and took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her.

And Isaac prayed to the Lord, and Rebekah his wife conceived. When her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb. The first came forth red, all his body like a hairy mantle; so they called his name Esau. Afterward his brother came forth, and his hand had taken hold of Esau's heel; so his name was called Jacob. (Genesis 24:1- 25:26)

After these things God tested Abraham, and said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here am I." He said, "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah." So Abraham rose early in the morning and went to the place of which God had told him. Then Abraham said to his young men, "Stay here with the ass; I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you." And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it on Isaac his son; and he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together. And Isaac said to his father Abraham, "My father!" And he said, "Here am I, my son." He said, "Behold, the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" Abraham said, "God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." So they went both of them together.

When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. Then Abraham put forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.

And God said, "Because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you, and I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore. And your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies, and by your descendants shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves, because you have obeyed my voice." So Abraham returned to his young men, and they arose and went together to Beer-sheba; and Abraham dwelt at Beer-sheba. (Genesis 22:1-19)

The part about the ram was added later. When the two original threads of the story are teased apart and then recombined in a slightly different order, a version emerges in which Isaac was not saved. A young boy could not carry a large stack of firewood up a mountain. He must have been older and stronger than he is usually shown. The story doesn't give any other indication of his age, except that Abraham was able to bind him and lay him on the altar. Isaac was taught obedience and could have been bound before he knew what was going on. Abraham must have been a strong and capable man to have done all the other things he did, although he was old when he fathered Isaac. The E source, the thread that tells of the binding of Isaac, says nothing more about Isaac after the binding. Abraham comes down from the mountain alone. It is the J source that tells of Rebekah and Isaac, and the much later P source that mentions Isaac's death as an old man. It makes sense for the newer version to stop the sacrifice and for the older one to go through with it. An obscure Jewish tradition says Abraham killed Isaac, and then God brought him back to life and provided the ram. Was the sacrifice of Isaac the real fall of man? Or was it the fall of God? And was the sacrifice of Jesus the redemption of man or of God? How can any good come from killing someone you love? How much is obedience to authority worth? Maybe Jesus and Abraham should have just said no. That's what Thoreau did, and Gandhi, and Martin Luther King. God knew what would happen. The lesson was meant for Abraham. And for Sarah, who died of grief and finally gave God revenge for her laughter. What does it mean to be a man? Or for that matter, what does it mean to be a God? Did Judas sacrifice Jesus? Or did Jesus sacrifice Judas? He told him to do it quickly. Does God not have a plan? And is there no religion either?

Yes, I said unimaginatively, there is. I believe in God. It is man who gets confused and makes mistakes struggling to understand him. The Bible is the record of that struggle, not of God's words and actions. The struggle to understand is shown in the many stories as they unfold over time, and within the individual stories as they change over time to reflect that understanding. Four main sources can be distinguished in Genesis, Exodus and Numbers. There are four different Gospels in the Bible and more from the Dead Sea and Nag Hammadi and other discoveries. Does God know everything? Is he all powerful? Do the questions even make sense? I don't know, but I do know he is everywhere. I can see him in everything around me. How could all this beauty and wonder not be a miracle? Maybe I'm stupid, but what possible answer could there be to the question of why there is anything rather than nothing except because I said so? Jesus understood, and his understanding of God is what we are supposed to believe in. To find my way forward, I needed to go back to what I could find of his words and example under all the layers of interpretation. Meanwhile I continued inward.

I was walking down dark city streets between houses and office buildings. There were streetlights shining through the branches and leaves of trees, and scraps of lawn and shrubbery in front of the structures. I knew where I was but the streets didn't go where I thought. I found a wooden house where I used to live. I went upstairs to a room where some of the people who lived there now were sitting. I didn't know if I should remember them. I went down a corridor and up a twisting unused back stairway to a forgotten room. There were cardboard boxes full of stuff and an unmade bed and windows that looked out into the darkness. I wasn't supposed to be here. I went back down the stairway and there were different rooms than before. I went outside and I was in the same city with the same streets, but things looked different. The streets were connected differently and went to different places.

I was coming downstairs to the paneled basement to take a bath with with one of the girls who lived with the rest of us in the house. A tall girl with long light brown hair whom I knew from somewhere else and who was living there and a shorter man with dark hair whose bedroom was down here had been using the bathtub. They were drying off in the main room and the long haired girl started to tell a story. The pitch of her voice moved up and down with the different words she spoke. She said she often came down early in the morning to take a bath with the dark haired man who owned the house. She goes to bed early, and wakes up and can't get back to sleep, so they share a bath and have sex before she goes back to bed. One time he said it was their retreat, and later when they were about to have sex she yelled charge! The other girl and I were getting undressed while we listened to the story and waited for the two of them to finish drying themselves. I went into the bathroom still wearing my shirt because I needed to pee, but couldn't. The long haired girl came in and I woke up from the dream.

Dreams take existing ideas and memories that are associated in some way or at some level and try combining them in different random and logical ways to see what will happen. This goes on all the time and so rapidly that we are not aware of it. Usually only artists, composers, poets, mystics and the insane can directly access the part of the brain called dream, imagination, creativity, intuition or storytelling. Most people avoid it with food, alcohol, caffeine, tobacco, other drugs, distractions, television, or sheer cussedness. Some reach a distorted version of it with different substances. We all have dreams when asleep but forget most of them later. What is usually called imagination is really desire or fantasy. A little hunger stimulates the imagination. (Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.) The starving artist is a cliche.

Words force the brain to be linear. While one idea can suggest several others and build into a vast feedback complex or network, words let an idea be followed by only one other idea. Whether a third idea refers to the first or to the second idea is a problem of both presentation and interpretation. If I say there is an orange sign warning of construction work behind the tree, is it the sign or the work or both that are behind the tree? If I say there is an orange sign behind the tree warning of construction work, is it the sign or the tree doing the warning? The is no way to tell except by judging which is more likely. With more ideas the problem increases factorially, and each pathway in the network must be specified separately. While prose has one dimension, poetry and drawing and music have two, sculpture and film and live music have three, and opera and dance and rock concerts seen from close up have four. How many dimensions theater has depends on how it is presented. Texture and rhythm and color can add partial dimensions to words and music and art. When awareness is not based on words it can become possible to react to changes instantaneously, as in the martial arts and some other sports.

Ideas come from a part of the brain most people don't have direct access to. Of the other three parts of the mind (parent, child and adult, or aversion, attraction and thought, or conscience, devil and self, or age, youth and intellect), people can reach either of the first two if they want to and practice, and schools and universities are supposed to reinforce the third. Consciousness likes to think it is in charge, but most of what goes on in the body and brain is outside of its control and awareness. We know so little about ourselves and the results of our actions. We are billiard balls bouncing off each other, controlled by the forces of our desires and fears. Decisions we think we make are just rationalizations for our prejudices. I had come a long way and had a lot to consider, but decided to continue.

I seemed to be recirculating air, running heating plants, and purifying water, but I was breathing, pumping blood, and maintaining temperature. I didn't want to mess with any of the machinery at this level, so I let myself rise back to the surface.

Twelve

The next day as I sat by the river I thought about Lily and what we had done out there in the woods while the other people at the picnic were still eating their rice and beans. It had felt really good to be inside her again after all this time. It had been a long time since I had had sex with anyone. I had a few girlfriends in college but none lasted very long. Most of the time I had been alone. I was surprised Seth had agreed to let her go out with other men. He seemed too conventional, and nothing I had seen when I was in his mind had indicated he was any less conservative than I had imagined, though of course there were as many strange things in his mind as there were in anyone's. But Lily said he had agreed and she had been telling the truth. Hadn't she? Well no, not exactly. She hadn't been lying, but that's not always the same as telling the truth. What had she said? That they both saw other people. Did that imply Seth agreed? Yes it did, but she hadn't said so, so I didn't know if it was true. I knew she knew that Seth saw other women. I knew she saw other men. I didn't know if Seth knew she saw other men, and I didn't know if Seth had agreed to anything. She had been careful not to say anything that wasn't true and just let me believe what I wanted to believe.

I realized that I did know something more about Seth. He thought Lily was faithful to him. Seth had not agreed to let her see other men and didn't know about any of her other lovers. I didn't know how I knew, but I did. Maybe I had picked up the information from her mind but had avoided realizing it until now. Lily had tricked me into having sex with her at the picnic. She wouldn't have sex that she considered wrong unless I considered it wrong too. I did consider cheating to be wrong even if both partners did it. Cheating was lying or breaking an agreement. An open relationship was being honest and agreeing that it was okay to date or have sex with other partners. I hope I would have been able to say no if I had known she was lying to Seth. It didn't matter if she knew he was lying to her and having sex with other women. We both thought what we had done was adultery.

And God spoke all these words, saying,
"I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt,
out of the house of bondage.

"You shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself a graven image,
or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above,
or that is in the earth beneath,
or that is in the water under the earth;
you shall not bow down to them or serve them;
for I the Lord your God am a jealous God,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers
upon the children to the third and the fourth generation
of those who hate me,
but showing steadfast love to thousands
of those who love me and keep my commandments.
You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain;
for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Six days you shall labor, and do all your work;
but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God;
in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter,
your manservant, or your maidservant, or your cattle,
or the sojourner who is within your gates;
for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them,
and rested the seventh day;
therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it.
Honor your father and your mother,
that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you.

"You shall not kill.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet your neighbor's house;
you shall not covet your neighbor's wife,
or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass,
or anything that is your neighbor's.

"When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years,
and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing.
If he comes in single, he shall go out single;
if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him.
When a man sells his daughter as a slave,
she shall not go out as the male slaves do.
If she does not please her master, who has designated her for himself,
then he shall let her be redeemed;
he shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people.
If he designates her for his son,
he shall deal with her as with a daughter.
If he takes another wife to himself,
he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights.
And if he does not do these three things for her,
she shall go out for nothing.

"You shall not permit a sorceress to live.
Whoever lies with a beast shall be put to death.
You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him,
for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
You shall not afflict any widow or orphan.
If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor,
you shall not be to him as a creditor,
and you shall not exact interest from him.
The first-born of your sons you shall give to me.
You shall do likewise with your oxen and with your sheep:
seven days it shall be with its dam;
on the eighth day you shall give it to me." (Exodus 20:1- 22:30)

By leaving out duplicates, and taking the prohibitions of killing and stealing to include injury and damage, I got eighteen commandments in Exodus. The commandments in Deuteronomy came from a later period and were harsher. Except the eighteenth commandment in Exodus demands human sacrifice. Later editors didn't change this as they did the story of Isaac because they said it meant something different, that the first born son should be redeemed by a sheep or a tax, as Isaac had been. An eye for an eye applied only to pregnant women who miscarried (Exodus 21:22-24, look it up). I didn't consider the rules about the tabernacle or the priesthood to be commandments.

I've already talked about my interpretation of adultery, and I didn't have any problem with the rest of the first ten. Which day was observed as the sabbath and what constituted work was up to the individual. And if other people chose to follow a different set of ethics, I was not going to argue over the details. I was perfectly happy to free any slaves I owned after six years. The twelfth didn't currently apply. I didn't think anyone should sell his daughter into slavery, no matter what race she was. I've said what I thought of the thirteenth. I did not support bestiality but was not going to put anyone to death. Foreigners and aliens should have the same rights as anyone else. Widows and orphans and the poor should be helped. The seventeenth was a problem. Our economic system was based on charging interest, and there wasn't really any way around it except to avoid borrowing and lending money as much as possible. Opening a savings account was charging the bank interest for the use of your money. Did that count? I wasn't going to worry about it. The eighteenth I simply disagreed with. It was an outmoded way of enforcing obedience and supporting the priesthood. Anyone who has been required to sacrifice a child is going to take the rules very seriously. No one who has lost a child is going to want to end a war or to give back the conquered territory. We have had troops in Europe and Asia for generations.

Thirteen

When I looked at the Bible, I found that the parts I believed most were the words of Jesus. But how was I supposed to interpret his words? Wars had been fought over that question. Many, if not most, of the wars in Europe were religious wars, although the real reasons were territory and power. The Christian church did not give a good answer. The Old Testament and Judaism did not give a good answer. Islam and Sufism did not give a good answer. Strangely, I think the best answer came from Buddhism. The Four Noble Truths speak of suffering as a mental state that is not necessary, although pain is sometimes unavoidable. Since relief from suffering is also part of the Christian tradition, are they what Jesus meant when he said the Truth shall set you free? Buddhism also speaks of the way of the Bodhisattva, the path to enlightenment and becoming a Buddha in order to benefit all beings. This path consists of the Six Perfections, which are Generosity, Discipline, Patience, Enthusiasm, Concentration and Wisdom.

Generosity is overcoming attraction. It is not being afraid there won't be enough. People have too much stuff. They don't spend their lives living. They spend their lives taking care of their stuff, shopping for more stuff, working to get money to buy stuff. They need bigger houses to hold all their stuff, security systems to guard their stuff, insurance in case somebody sues them and tries to take their stuff. They go to classes to learn how to use their stuff, to psychiatrists because they worry about their stuff, to church so they can pray for more stuff. They don't own their stuff, their stuff owns them. They are caretakers of stuff. People spend a year working so they can take a vacation so they can get away from their job. Then they do it again. People think they want to be rich, but they really just want other people to have less stuff than they do. Think about it. What is the point of a housing development full of manor houses? Who is going to be impressed? Not the other people who live there. They have to import people from somewhere else in order to show off their houses. Having more stuff doesn't mean there will be less stuff you want. The only way to want less stuff is to have less stuff, down to a point. People do need some stuff. They need food, they need water, they need air. Most people need clothes to wear, and they need a place to sleep. People didn't use to need cars. They walked to work, they walked to the store, they walked to church. Before trains and cars, there weren't any rush hours. To start, get rid of clothes you don't wear, books you don't use, toys you don't play with. Worry more about how others can have what they need and less about how you can have more than you need. Jesus said that when a man asks for your coat, you should give him your cloak also. That when you give, your left hand should not know what your right is doing. Don't do it to impress people or for gratitude. Do it because it needs to be done.

Discipline is ethics. It is overcoming confusion and not working against yourself. We are all connected, what hurts one person hurts everyone. Jesus said to love one another but didn't give a lot of details on how to do this. Buddhism lists ten harmful or unwholesome actions. There are three harmful physical actions, killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct, which match three of the Ten Commandments. There are four harmful verbal actions, lying, divisive speech, harsh or abusive speech, and gossip or idle speech, one of which matches a Commandment. There are three harmful mental actions, covetous thoughts, malicious thoughts, and wrong views, one of which matches another Commandment. Of the five other Commandments, other gods and graven images may count as wrong views, and taking the Lord's name in vain may be abusive speech. Keeping the sabbath and honoring your parents are not covered. Divisive speech creates conflict and separation between people. Harsh or abusive speech hurts people, especially children and loved ones, even if it is not meant seriously. It is a way of not getting too close, of maintaining distance in a relationship. Sarcasm as a joke condones sarcasm as deception. Gossip or idle speech replaces what is important in people's lives, and is a means of self aggrandizement and social control through fear. Malicious thoughts are taking pleasure in other people's misfortune, hoping that someone will get what is coming to him. Sometimes a choice has to be made of whom to support, but wishing someone benefit is not the same as wishing someone else harm. Wrong views are covered under wisdom, the sixth Perfection. The ten unwholesome actions are caused by the disturbing emotions, attraction, aversion and confusion and their many variations. They are avoided by mindfulness, by being aware and keeping track of what you are doing. If you do recognize one of them, it should be purified as soon as possible by the Four Opponent Powers or antidotes. (Buddhists like lists and four is a popular number.) These are regret, reliance, remedy and resolve. Regret is not guilt. Guilt is self centered while regret is centered on those who were harmed. Reliance is taking refuge in the Three Jewels, the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, or in Jesus, his teaching, and the spiritual community, but it is not dependence. Even though you accept help, you still have to do the work yourself. Remedy is counteractive behavior which changes your intention from harm to benefit, such as correcting the harm, donating time or money to those in need, or prayer and studying scriptures. Resolve is the firm intention not to repeat the action, or to avoid it as much or as long as possible until it is finally overcome. Ethics is not a set of proscriptions, it is a work in progress.

Patience is overcoming aversion and not getting angry when things don't go the way you'd like. If you can change whatever it is, then just do so. If you can't, then there is no use getting angry about it. It just makes you feel worse. Anger provides energy, but it is better to do things without needing a kick in the pants. Jesus said when someone strikes you to turn the other cheek, and to love your enemies. Anger hurts, even unexpressed anger, but to someone whose feelings are dead, anger is a rush, like pain or bondage or abuse. When is anger justified? If someone hurts you or those you care about? Someone who hurts others intentionally has no more control over his actions or motivations than an insane person or a rock falling from the sky. Getting angry at him serves no purpose. You are better able to protect yourself and others if you are not in a rage. Should you get angry if someone insults you? If what they say isn't true, then it doesn't matter. If it is a fault you can change, then you should try to do something about it if you aren't already. If it is a defect you can't do anything about, then it is simply a statement of fact and need not have an emotional charge. If it is something that is not a defect, then they are exposing their own ignorance by saying that it is. In any case, anger doesn't help. Hostility is threat behavior to determine relative ranking within a hierarchy. It's a game. You need to decide what your status is worth and whether you want to be part of that hierarchy. The other person is unlikely to realize what he is doing. Anger does not show courage. It shows fear that a past action will be repeated. Learning Patience is not easy, but it is the basis of all other virtues, including Love, Compassion, Joy and Equanimity. It is worth the effort.

Enthusiasm as used here is delight in virtue for its own sake, because each person's happiness is your happiness, and each person's suffering is your suffering. (There is no English word that means both diligence and joy.) It is being connected and concerned about everyone. It is loving your enemies because you have no choice. It is realizing that until everyone reaches heaven, we are all stuck in hell. Enthusiasm is actually doing something, not just sitting around waiting for it to happen, or until you are ready, or for the perfect time to start. You will never run out of excuses. If you are not ready, then get ready. Generosity, Discipline and Patience are not things that can be developed overnight, and you need to start moving toward them today, right now, at this very instant. Enthusiasm is not getting lost in or distracted by enjoyments and trivial activities, no matter how important or admirable other people think they are. It is not desiring recognition or money. Enthusiasm is overcoming the aversion that arises when things don't happen as quickly as you'd like. It is getting over the rough spots and doing what you've decided. It is not getting discouraged. It is not giving up. It is having the faith to see things through. Many of Jesus's followers left him when he said things they found hard to accept, but the twelve stayed with him. When you fail, learn from your mistake and keep going. When you are overwhelmed, start on a part of the project you can do, or lower your expectations and work toward a nearer goal. Don't start something you are unlikely to be able to finish, but do challenge yourself and try new things. If you do start something, don't sit around saying you can't do it, because you'll be right. A positive attitude works much better. When you are tired, rest for a while and then continue. If you find that you have stopped, just get up and gently start moving again.

Concentration is a calmly abiding mind developed through meditation that can see without deceiving itself. It is mindfulness, awareness of your surroundings or of your own thoughts and emotions. It is learning to pay attention and to focus on one thing at a time, without your thoughts drifting or scattering. It is overcoming confusion. Discipline can overcome harmful physical and verbal actions, but concentration is needed to overcome harmful mental actions. It stops the disturbing emotions and creates peace, which can inspire others. There is no great secret to concentration, it is just awareness or attentiveness. Thoughts want to control awareness, but with practice awareness can learn to control thoughts. They are not the same thing. It is frightening or shameful when hidden ideas and beliefs are brought to awareness, but once they are accepted they lose some of their power and it becomes easier to change your behavior. You will need a place that is quiet and safe and reasonably comfortable, but it doesn't need to be perfect. You will need to stop worrying about other things and activities at least for a time. You can focus your attention on your breathing or on an object such as a deity, saint or flower. It may help to count your breaths. When you get to ten or lose count, start over. If your mind wanders, gently bring it back to your focus and keep going. If you get anxious or annoyed or bored, just let it go and don't worry about it. If disturbing thoughts or emotions surface, watch them go by and return to your focus. Slackness and excitement are both distractions. Maintaining focus is placement meditation. It can be done while sitting or moving and can include dance, gymnastics, ice skating, swimming, diving, tennis, karate, tai chi, yoga or carpentry if they are done with awareness of your body and what you are doing rather than while listening to the voice in your head. Drawing also works well, but not writing. It becomes easier with practice, but don't mistake a little bit of stability for enlightenment. There is also analytical meditation, which is thinking about the teachings or any other subject or topic that you want to understand better.

Wisdom is insight as direct perception rather than as abstract speculation. It is overcoming the attraction of wishful thinking. It is stepping back and seeing things from a more inclusive perspective. It is being able to hear what other people say and considering their views without your own getting in the way. In Buddhism, it is also dogma. (There seems to be no getting away from it. Even Jesus said he did not come to replace the Law.) We all have the Buddha nature. This sounds different from Christian doctrine, since Jesus said he was the only son of God, but he also said he was the son of man and that we can all be children of God. Actions have consequences even when others don't know about them. Nothing exists in isolation. Everything depends upon and is affected by everything else. Since nothing has an independent existence, all things are said to be empty. The reality of subject and object is called relative or mistaken, and the reality of non dualism is called absolute or true. (I don't understand how being related to something else or made up of parts makes something empty or unreal, but all the texts insist upon it. Buddhism says you are supposed to test and verify the teachings for yourself and also says if you don't believe them you will go to hell, of which there are several. The Six Realms are hell, hungry ghosts, animals, humans, angry gods, and loving gods, all of which are contingent and thus not real.) There is a bunch of stuff about reincarnation, which is not part of Christianity but does seem to be in the Bible. John was asked if he was Elijah and Jesus existed before he was born. Wisdom is seeing how each of the Six Perfections works with and depends upon the others, and that each of them contains the other five. Patience supports Enthusiasm, Discipline requires Concentration, and Generosity is Wisdom. All of them are about overcoming the attraction and lies of the world, the aversion and fear of hardship and death, and the confusion caused by the short sightedness of self interest.

I was at a party at a friend's house talking to someone when I heard a voice inside my head say there was need. I didn't know where it came from, but I knew it was true. I was in the middle of a sentence when I paused, but when I withdrew my attention from the conversation, the person I was talking to forgot I was there and wandered off, which I thought was pretty strange. It felt like I had turned invisible. I knew the need was upstairs. As I moved toward the stairs I saw a distracted woman hurry down them, pass by me as she moved through the crowd, and slip out the front door. From the top of the stairs I saw a man facing an open bedroom door and immediately sensed what he was staring at. Lily's husband's naked ass with his wife's naked legs on either side of it, caught on the bed in mid fuck. The shock and the excitement of what he saw had struck him dumb, but any second now he was going to start yelling. I nudged him into the room and pushed the door shut behind us. His wife, Lily's friend from youth group, tried to grab a sheet, but it was too far away. She pushed Seth off, closed her legs and flipped onto her knees, reached the sheet, and pulled it over them, giving me a split second view of her open vagina, dark pubic hair, and dangling breasts. Neither of the two on the bed had seen the woman who had been with the man before she fled down the stairs. I didn't see fit to inform them, but as he drew his breath to yell I muttered to him that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. He glared at me before he left, and I got two smiles of gratitude before I did. I heard the lock click behind me.

Fourteen

I was at church two days after the incident with Lily's husband and friend. It was coffee hour after the service, and since I didn't drink coffee, I took a cookie and some of the punch in paper cups they had for the children. Someone said my name and I turned. It was Lily's friend. She came to church every week but usually left right after the service. As I turned toward her, her eyes slid up from the side, met mine for an moment, then slid down to the other side. As we looked into each others eyes for an instant, there was a red flash of shared memory.

I was staring into her eyes in the harsh overhead light of her dorm room. They were a beautiful deep variegated brown, and she had just turned from closing and locking the door behind us. We had run into each other at the opening reception for an exhibition of basket weaving at the student union and had started talking. Without breaking eye contact, I put my hand on her upper arm and felt the tension in her muscle beneath the thin fabric of her shirt. I took half a step forward, tilted my head slightly, and put my lips against hers. Mine were too dry, so I ran the tip of my tongue over her bottom lip to add some moisture. Her jaw moved as she responded with a sucking action. We put our arms around each other and pulled together tightly, her breasts pressed into the bottom of my ribs and her crotch against the front of my thigh. I slid one hand down her back and over the waist of her jeans to caress her buttock. I felt her muscles bunch under my touch as she pressed into me harder. After a few minutes, she broke away. She turned on the desk light, turned off the overhead, and pushed me down onto the bed. Her roommate's bed was empty and I didn't ask where she was. She stepped out of her shoes and looked at me as she unzipped her pants and slid them down and off over her feet. She pulled her tight dark green shirt off over her head. She reached behind herself to undo her white lace bra and shrugged it off. Her breasts swung free as she peeled off her pale blue panties. She stood up and smiled. I stared at her long firm legs and black triangle of pubic hair and slightly rounded belly and crinkled nipples in their dark brown circles. I tore off my clothes. She told me to lie back and tore open a condom I hadn't seen her pick up. She licked off the clear fluid that was oozing out and unrolled it over my penis. She crowded into the bed and kissed me again. When I started slowly humping her hip, she pulled me up on top of her and spread her legs. Our hands met as we both reached down to guide my penis into her open vagina. I eased in until my balls were pressed against her ass, then back out. Each time I pressed forward, her hips rose to meet me. Each time I pulled back, they moved away as she arched her back under me. I kissed the side of her neck and dug my tongue into the corner of her jaw. She moaned and increased the tempo. I followed the rhythm of her breathing as it sped up until I was pounding into her with each gasp as she orgasmed with her mouth wide open, trying to be quiet enough not to disturb any of the women in nearby rooms. I felt the cum start moving up and grunted with each thrust as I shot it into her.

Her eyes slid down and to the side as she looked away from mine with a small smile. I said I was glad to see her and asked how she was. I heard her not say that I should know. Out loud, she said in a low voice that she was worried about her husband. She had stayed with Lily and Seth for the last two nights because he wouldn't speak to her, but he would have to relent soon since he couldn't afford the mortgage payments on his own. She just hoped he wouldn't do something stupid before then. She asked what I thought. I said I thought she didn't have anything to worry about as long as she made the first move at the right time. It was mostly his pride that was hurt. He didn't object to her outside activities too much as long as he could pretend he didn't know about them. She thanked me and said she knew I was perceptive and picked up a lot more about people than they realized. I just acted dumb. She saw the panic start to rise in my eyes and said see, she knew I would react like this and that's why she'd never said anything before. I was afraid of being exposed. I didn't know how much she knew and wasn't going to try to find out here and now. There were too many people around, and she would be sure to detect a probe since she was looking right at me and already suspicious. I decided to worry about it later. She thanked me again for my help and wandered off. I wondered why I had never picked up any suspicions from her and if anyone else had any strange ideas about me.

At once I was in the Spirit, and lo, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne! And he who sat there appeared like jasper and carnelian, and round the throne was a rainbow that looked like an emerald. From the throne issue flashes of lightning, and voices and peals of thunder, and before the throne burn seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God; and before the throne there is as it were a sea of glass, like crystal. And round the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like a flying eagle. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all round and within, and day and night they never cease to sing,

"Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty,
who was and is and is to come!" (Apocalypse 4:2-8)

After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, that no wind might blow on earth or sea or against any tree. Then I saw another angel ascend from the rising of the sun, with the seal of the living God, and he called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm earth and sea, saying, "Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God upon their foreheads." And I heard the number of the sealed, a hundred and forty-four thousand sealed, out of every tribe of the sons of Israel. (Apocalypse 7:1-4)

Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head, and his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire. He had a little scroll open in his hand. And he set his right foot on the sea, and his left foot on the land, and called out with a loud voice, like a lion roaring; when he called out, the seven thunders sounded. (Apocalypse 10:1-3)

And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery. And another portent appeared in heaven; behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth. Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they were defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world – he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had borne the male child. But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time. (Apocalypse 12)

Then he showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. (Apocalypse 22:1-2)

If only one hundred forty four thousand were going to be saved during the Rapture, then I thought the Christian thing to do was to not take a place away from someone else. Maybe all the Creationists would disappear, which would make things easier for the rest of us. Apocalypse is different from most of the other books of the Bible but is part of a long tradition of prophetic literature in different cultures, some of which can be seen in Daniel. John was writing of Roman persecution in his own time and the need for faith, not of events two thousand years in the future. He wrote in beautiful surreal and allegorical language to make his sedition less obvious. Preachers can use his words as he intended to encourage faith, but demagogues can also use them for self aggrandizement.

I heard a giggle. I jumped because the giggle was inside my head and it wasn't mine. I knew that giggle. Inside my head Lily said hello, it was about time I noticed her. I was too confused to panic. She said don't, panic that is. So I didn't, but I was still confused. I was about to ask her where she was, but I knew. I looked up and saw her on the other side of the room standing at the edge of a knot of people pretending to listen. She said no, I hadn't picked up what I knew about Seth from her mind at the picnic. She had been careful not to leave it lying around where I would find it, so I hadn't picked it up until that night when I wondered about it. She said I was right. How many lovers did Seth think she had? One, I said numerically. Himself. How long had she known what I did? Why hadn't I known she knew? And how had I reached her from so far away? She said she had known she'd have to explain that to me someday, so she had a speech ready.

She said she had learned I could read her mind at the same time that I had, the first time we had sex, in my parents car after youth group, when I first came inside her and she had experienced my orgasm from both sides, but she hadn't realized she knew until later that night when she was thinking about how she grabbed my balls to hold me inside her while she masturbated in her bed. (She had masturbated again when she got home? Yes, she saved the condom with my cum inside and put it back inside her after tying it shut. She liked having cum inside her. She used to have quite a collection, but all those used condoms had started to get nasty after a while. And she had worried what would happen if someone found them and their identifying labels.) She had tried to hide her thoughts from me just as I had tried to hide mine from her, and she had done a better job. She had seen me notice I couldn't see her thoughts as well as I saw those of others and not wonder about the cause. After a few more weeks and several more orgasms shared between us, she had noticed that while thinking about me as she masturbated she was using more than just memories. She was picking up my excitement and thoughts as I lay in bed and masturbated while thinking about her. There was a link between us through which she could reach my mind no matter how far away I was. She knew when I thought about her. She told me that I hadn't noticed her because we thought differently, that she thought in words and names, and I didn't. I thought in images and connections. That was true. When I used words it was like translating my thoughts into a foreign language. She said I did the same thing with Rose. I didn't think of her by name, I used an image from when they had been friends in youth group or from when she and I had been together in college. I looked over at Rose, who smiled back it's okay, she didn't mind. Lily said I should have been an artist.

That was a strange idea. I had thought about it but never considered it seriously. I asked why she hadn't told me this before. She said she had but not in so many words, and I just hadn't been paying attention. She had always said she liked my doodles. That was true, she always had. I had thought she was just being nice. I saw into people's minds, but I only saw what I wanted to see. She said that was true. My little friend had known that, and her negro lover. They had pointed it out and helped me see what they really looked like, but I hadn't generalized. I hadn't realized I had other blind spots. I had known Lily hadn't seen me go into the woods the day of the picnic, but she had easily deflected my question about how she had found me. She always knew where I was through the mind link, just as I had known where she was. Lily said she was glad I finally knew what was going on and was sorry she had been afraid to tell me. I said I understood. She said she knew, and that she was tired. Translating my images into words she could understand was a strain, so that being around me bothered her. That was the real reason she had avoided me for so long. She broke contact, but I now could tell the link was still there anytime either of us wanted to use it.

I sensed the link with Rose also. I could see some of her memories of sex. I learned she had cheated on me during the time we were together in college, and that she had liked watching Lily masturbate during church services as much as I did. She had never said anything to Lily about it and had wanted to try it herself, but she was afraid to do more than brush her nipple with the back of her thumb or squirm a little in her tight pants. Lily had known about me since high school and Rose since college, but I had been too proud of my own cleverness to suspect that someone might be hiding something from me. My pride had a rich yellow scent, like ginger or cumin. Love may be blind, but so is pride. That may be its purpose, to blind men to their own faults so that they are not too ashamed to function. I hoped that Eckhart was right when he said that no man can see God except he be blind, nor know him except through ignorance, nor understand him except through folly.

I thought about being an artist. I had just finished college and wasn't going to change my career path. Even if I had gone to art school, graphic design or selling artwork was not an appealing way of earning a living or something I was likely to be successful at. I did enjoy recording what I saw as lines and shading on paper and would like to do something with my ability. I could practice my drawing and sketching more seriously and then just see what happened.

Fifteen

Was Jesus a Buddhist? Buddhism had already existed for five hundred years at the time of his birth and had been carried to many different places. After the third Buddhist council in about 250 BCE, missionaries sent by King Ashoka of eastern India established communities in Alexandria and other Greek areas. From the Greeks, Buddhists picked up the idea of a God who looked like a man, and from the Buddhists, the Greek world (which included Palestine) picked up the idea of a Savior.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; and we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father. (John 1:14)

Jesus seems to have been influenced by Buddhist ideas. Both Buddhism and Judaism worshipped scripture, but Judaism made much more of a distinction between the teaching and and teacher. Jesus was viewed as the Word incarnate, which Judaism considered blasphemy. Moses was only handed the physical commandments to carry down from the mountain and saw only the back of God. Jesus was on a mission from God and had a personal relationship with him. He broke down the dichotomy between Man and God and said everyone could become a child of God, just as Buddhism said everyone had the Buddha nature and could become enlightened. The Jewish Law is about magic and doing what is fair. The Hebrew Prophets are about compassion and doing what is right. Jesus and Buddhism are about unity and love, about changing not just your behavior or your feelings, but who you are, about finding not one external authority or another, but your own inner light which has always been there. This inner light is not found explicitly in the Law or the Prophets, but it is found in Jewish Mysticism, which has continued to evolve.

God has taken his place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:
"How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked?

Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;
maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked."

They have neither knowledge nor understanding,
they walk about in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.

I say, "You are gods,
sons of the Most High, all of you;
nevertheless, you shall die like men,
and fall like any prince."

Arise, O God, judge the earth;
for to thee belong all the nations! (Psalm 82)

A few weeks after the church picnic Owl and Max visited me again. I was at home on my bed reading when I heard a knock on my bedroom door. That was unusual. My family just yelled from wherever they were when anyone wanted someone else's attention. I could tell it was Owl, so I sat up and silently told her to come in, which she opened the door and did, followed by Max. I thought that was quite a trick, since she wasn't really there. She said practice. If she put things back exactly the way she found them she could get away with some things. The secret was not to upset people's preconceptions of how things should be. She was wearing regular clothes, khaki shorts and a lime green tee shirt, though she was barefoot, and as far as I could tell, her actual appearance. I could see the tan lines on her feet from her sandals. Her natural skin tone was a darker brown than I had imagined, although she was apparently white, and she had short brown hair. Max had on a white tee, jeans, and his athletic shoes. He said he wasn't allowed to walk around barefoot. I had seen her only briefly since our misadventure and Max not at all. She told me she wanted to fly down and meet me in person, outside the dreaming. The real world was just, well, more real. The dreaming always contained a level of fantasy beyond what was possible when awake. I said that was fine, if a bit extravagant. She said she had a vacation coming up, wanted to meet me, and might as well take it in the mountains down here as anywhere else. She loved the extraordinary diversity of the plants and creatures of the cove forests and wanted to camp out part of the time. Max couldn't travel, and she had decided not to invite Stephen.

Owl sat cross legged on the bed next to me, and Max sat in the desk chair. I asked if they had decided where they thought we should go from here. Max said yes. They wanted to start exploring what we could do with our abilities again, but they wanted me to direct the gestalt. I was the one who knew most about how the human mind worked, what it could do, and what happened when two or more combined. We would decide together what we wanted to do, but I would be in charge of doing it. Anything else was too dangerous. I asked Owl if this was what she wanted. She said yes, we had been given our powers for a reason, and it was our responsibility to be ready when we were needed. I had shown her her power sharing issues, and it had taken her a while to work through them. Max had helped with his knowledge of Taoism and experience of a hostile authority. She knew I was a good person and thought she was now ready to try to trust me. I said I had been doing some soul searching myself. Buddhism taught that all things were connected, that an independent mind did not exist. It said nothing had its own inherent reality or self since nothing existed in isolation. I disagreed with the terminology. I thought connectedness made things more real, not less, though the boundary between self and not self was not as clear as it appeared. If seeing the dependence or connectedness of all things was like awakening or being born again, then not seeing it was like being asleep or dead. One could not be independent or have control over his own life until one realized how dependent and connected all things were, and how abstract the concept of identity actually was.

His disciples said to him:
On what day will he rest of the dead take place?
And on what day does the new world come?
He said to them:
That rest for which you are waiting has come,
but you do not recognize it.

Jesus said:
Blessed are the single ones and the elect,
for you will find the kingdom.
For you are from it,
and you will enter into it again.

Jesus said to them:
When you make the two one,
and make the inside like the outside,
and the outside like the inside,
and the upper side like the under side,
and in such a way that you make the man
with the woman a single one,
in order that the man is not man and the
woman is not woman,
then you will go into the kingdom.

Jesus said:
Perhaps men think that I came
to cast peace on the world,
and they do not know that I came
to cast divisions upon the earth,
fire, sword, war.
For five will be in a house,
there will be three against two and two against three,
the father against the son and the son against the father.
And they will stand because they are single ones.

Jesus said:
Let him who seeks not cease in his seeking until he finds,
and when he finds, he will be troubled,
and if he is troubled, he will marvel,
and will be a king over the All.

Jesus said:
Blessed is he who was before he became.
If you are my disciples and hear my words,
these stones will serve you.
For you have five trees in paradise,
they do not stir, summer or winter,
and their leaves do not fall off.
He who will understand them will not taste death.

Jesus said to his disciples:
Make comparisons, tell me what I am like.
Simon Peter said to him:
You are like a just angel.
Matthew said to him:
You are like a wise philosopher.
Thomas said to him:
Master, my mouth will in no way endue
my saying what you are like.
Jesus said:
I am not your master. (from The Gospel of Thomas)

Judaism did not say much about seeking or enlightenment. The Law was right there for all to see, it was written down. It only had to be known and understood. Jesus reinterpreted Judaism, as Buddha had reinterpreted Hinduism, to give the individual more responsibility and the religious hierarchy less authority. He was a humanist, though definitely not an atheist, and said to honor the Son as well as the Father. At the beginning and end of time God battles the great serpent or dragon sometimes called Leviathan, who is the Chaos demon that must be defeated. The Hebrew tribe Levi could be its namesake, indicating that at one time they were just another snake cult. The Biblical Leviathan derives from the the Canaanite sea monster Lotan, who is the enemy of the storm god and principal deity Hadad. In Norse mythology, the Gods lose their battle with the Midgard Serpent at the end of time, which makes more sense. In Greek mythology, mermaids or sirens lured sailors to destruction upon the rocks. However, in early Christianity, the fish was a symbol of Jesus and may have represented the Spirit. Laws and rules have and are, by their nature, limitations. Blake saw laws abused by church and government. Lily needed her own set of rules. Some Asian systems of thought, such as Taoism, accepted and learned from Chaos and change. In early Buddhism, the Nagas were serpents or dragons who lived underwater and were the teachers and companions of the great saint Nagarjuna, who was their namesake and the first to teach the doctrine of the middle way. This doctrine says one should do all things in moderation and be neither too worldly nor too ascetic, neither too much concerned with oneself nor too little concerned with others. It led to the idea of the Bodhisattva, one who works for the benefit of all beings. The altruistic and humanistic intention to benefit all beings consists of the Four Immeasurables, which are Love, Compassion, Joy and Equanimity. They are immeasurable because they apply to all beings everywhere and are without limit, and they are summarized in a prayer.

May all beings know happiness and the causes of happiness.
May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.
May all beings never be separated from the great happiness that is beyond all misery.
May all beings dwell in equanimity, unaffected by attraction and aversion.

Sixteen

A child was missing. It was Zachary, one of the children conceived the night of the great simultaneous orgasm that had been one of the first manifestations of my power. Most of us had been using latex that night, but several who weren't had been unexpectedly inspired to go all the way. Zachary's family went to my church, and because the distraction I caused had been partly responsible for his conception, I had taken an interest in him since before he was born. He had been playing with two friends in his back yard while his mother watched from a window, then gone around to the front to get something and disappeared. I had probed the entire neighborhood and found no sign of him and no indication that anyone knew what had happened to him. Max and Owl and I had combined our abilities and been no more successful. Owl was flying down as she had planned, and we would try again after she got here.

When Owl opened the door of her hotel room, I saw a short brown woman who looked just about like I expected, except less noticeable. There was an aura about her in the dreaming that was missing in real life. She asked me in and hugged me, which she had never done before. I could sense her worry, and also her calm acceptance that there might be nothing we could do. She said her trip had been stressful. She was never so far away from the green as when she was in an airplane, and being back down among the trees and plants was a relief. We sat on the bed facing each other, held hands, closed our eyes, and went to fetch Max. It just after evening count and he was in bed, so we should have plenty of time undisturbed. Her hotel was on the edge of the city, close enough to where the disappearance had taken place that we could start from there. We probed out in all directions for about a block, which was as far as we could reach and still be able to recognize Zachary if we encountered him. With Owl and me in actual physical contact, the area our awareness was much larger than it had ever been before. I wanted to look for him directly, since I knew him well, rather than take the time to probe hundreds or thousands of minds for information. Once we had established our field of focus, we started moving outward in a spiral. He was not in the nearby hotels or malls. We passed through part of the suburbs and the downtown area on the other side of the mountain. Nothing. More suburbs and malls. I picked up a faint residue of his presence from his house and the minds of his family. If there was a trail leading to him, it was much too weak for us to sense. We passed through the suburbs on the other sides of the city and out into the surrounding mountains. There were fewer people to check and we could move a little faster, slowing down when we passed through nearby towns. Nothing. He would have had to be deeper than the deepest cellar or flying by in an airplane overhead for us to have missed him. A few hours later we were out in the surrounding mountains and valleys encountering fewer and fewer minds. We decided we needed to stop and try something different.

If Zachary was in some distant isolated location, our chances of finding him were small. There was just too much area for us to cover. The area of cities and suburbs was much less, so we decided to concentrate on those. I got out my map of the United States, and we would cover the cities large enough to be shown on it, crossing each one off after we checked it. We picked the closest, stepped back out into the green, and continued our search. City center, parks, malls, houses, schools, factories, nothing. We crossed it off and started on another. Halfway across the next state we found him. He was in no immediate danger, was not going to be moved soon, and it was past dawn. Max had been asleep during our search, but Owl and I had been awake the whole time and could now barely think straight. We decided to continue the next night.

I slept part of the next day and went back to Owl's hotel in the evening. She had rested and then walked around the city a bit. We contacted Max and waited for count. When he was ready, we traveled back through the green to Zachary. He and three other kids, two boys and a girl, were being held by three men who thought of themselves as government contractors, which was why we hadn't considered calling the police. They didn't know exactly what the children were wanted for but had a vague idea that it was related to national security. Knowing more than they needed to was dangerous. They were in a house in a neighborhood that was run down enough that people mostly minded their own business, but not run down enough that the house was likely to be broken into. They had met their quota and were waiting to be told where to deliver the kids. Their confidence that they were safe from the authorities prevented us from seeking help there. Our inability to explain how we knew what we knew closed off most other avenues. If we were going to help the kids, we would have to do it on our own. I wept. I had known we were different, and Owl had said we would be needed, but it was only now that everything changed. I did not regret the next step. I knew it was necessary, but I did mourn for all the bright possibilities that were disappearing. We only had three sources of help. One was the knowledge of the captors themselves about snatching children and avoiding notice, which I could pick out of their minds. The second was the experience of Max's contacts in prison. The third was our faith. We spent the night collecting details of their security arrangements and considering various plans. The one that seemed most workable depended on our having a copy of the house key. I could see in their minds where it was, Max could see exactly what it looked like, and Owl used her experience of sketching biological specimens to make a drawing of it that was as accurate as a wax impression. Then we checked the sleeping minds of some of Max's fellow inmates whom he thought might know about making keys. We found Dozer, whose children had been taken by the Dept of Social Services and was willing to help. He knew someone who knew someone who was nearby and would make what we needed without asking questions. Owl and I spent the next day preparing, and the following driving her rental car to the city where Zachary was being held.

We parked in an isolated spot outside town and put some mud on the car so it wouldn't look like a rental, and a little on the tag so it would be hard to read, then got a couple hours of sleep. When it was late enough, we drove to the house and parked down the street where I could tell no one was watching. Owl and I held hands, collected Max, and contacted the kids. They were drugged. I had checked the previous night, and found I could bridge the drugged portion of their brains and waked them up. One of the boys I knew would start crying if anything unusual happened, and we would have to leave him behind. I checked that their captors were deeply asleep. Their greed had a spicy red scent, like nutmeg or cinnamon. Greed is the strongest emotion. Anger is the most common, and although it can last a long time, by its nature it has only short bursts of intensity. Greed just sits there and grows, like the monster that devoured Cleveland. I reached into his mind and said Zachary, come out, then did the same for the two that were on either side of him. While I could not control other people, in their still partly drugged state they were suggestible and were willing to obey someone they knew was trying to help them. Like other people, they believed me when I told the truth. The three kids got dressed and opened the bedroom door. It was not locked so that they could get to the bathroom at night, which they might need to do even through the drug. Two of them carried a chair over to where the alarm control was on the wall. One climbed onto the chair and punched in the code I gave her to deactivate it, and the lights blinked to off. I checked that no neighbors were watching, and Owl drove the car into the driveway. I walked to the front door and opened it with our copy of the key. Max had checked it, so I knew it would work. The door could not be opened from the inside without a key, so the kids couldn't have gotten out on their own. We all walked over to the car, and I distracted the sleeping men's minds so they wouldn't hear the car doors close. We dropped the other two in front of a police station and headed home with Zachary.

Zachary didn't know where he had been held, and could only say that a man and a boy he had not seen clearly had rescued him and two other children. The federal authorities questioned him closely and could get no more out of him. Nothing was found of the other two kids. It turned out that even before the police could raid the house whose location I had left in the kids' minds, national security had been invoked and the children returned to their captors. The house was for rent the next day, and the police never said anything. We searched for the kids, but I didn't know them well enough to find them again. We were all sorry there was nothing more we could do, but this was the end, I said finally.

Owl had planned our camping trip. We found the site she wanted, far back in the mountains and forests where she had needed to get a permit in order to camp. We set up her two person backpacking tent and unrolled our self inflating pads and sleeping bags, then cooled off our feet by walking on the sandy bottom of the swift flowing creek. I sat on a rock and she gently massaged the sore heels, arches, and balls of my feet. I felt a little uneasy when she bent down and started sucking on my toes. Then she took some aloe and rubbed it in. When I tried to protest she told me to shut up. She had brought sensible dehydrated camping food for our two night stay. (She had originally planned to camp out longer, but we had already used up part of her time.) I had brought peanut butter sandwiches and cookies and muffins. She had talked me out of the canned beans and complained about the trouble it would be to keep the bears and raccoons out of my food. We were told the water was safe to drink without boiling this high up, which made things easier. She shared the reconstituted bean and lentil chili she heated on her camp stove, and I shared my oatmeal, walnut and cranberry cookies. We listened to the katydids begin their three or four part calls as the daylight faded, and then to the krick krick, chirp chirp, katydit, whirr as other insects started up. She stepped into the green to show me different kinds of tree crickets chirping and green katydids calling that we heard all around us.

The tent was a bit small and our sleeping bags didn't zip together, but it was warm enough that it didn't matter. She wriggled out of her shorts and underwear and pulled her shirt off over her head. After she finished, I did the same. I put my arms around her and kissed her. In the near total darkness we couldn't see anything. I could sense my own body and hers, but had to use sound and touch to tell where they were in relation to each other. Our lips slid over each other and her tongue came into my mouth. I climbed on top of her and humped her thigh slowly. She moaned as my leg ground into her crotch. I slid my hand over her shoulder and down to her small nipple. I felt her electric thrill as I touched it. I knew when she wanted me to slide my hand over her belly and through her tangle of pubic hair and work my fingers into her slit and find her slippery vagina. She gasped, and as I rubbed the sides of her opening her breathing became deep and slow. It sped up as I rubbed the bottom of her opening and the inside of the top until she spasmed, digging in with her heels and thrusting up repeatedly against the pressure of my hand. I found my condom and struggled to put it on in the dark. She waited as patiently as she could. When I was finally ready, I guided myself into her and we began moving together. I kissed the side of her forehead since that was all I could reach. I felt the orgasm start to build up in her again, but it was taking its time. Our thrusting slowly increased in tempo as I felt the crackling of her lust growing gradually stronger, then she was gasping and thrusting against me once again. Her movements weakened as I continued to pound into her, then suddenly strengthened as another wave crested over her. I felt a stirring down near my balls that curved up through by belly and forced its way out through my penis to splatter inside of her once, twice, and again, until my weight collapsed onto my elbows and knees and the sweat dripped off my face and chest as I panted above her exquisite form.

Seventeen

The theme of the sermon the sunday after Zachary's return was salvation. The text was Jeremiah 30:10, I will save you from afar, and your offspring from the land of their captivity. The minister said all you had to do was believe and you would be saved, as the mysterious father and son had saved Zachary. But it didn't work that way. Jesus was the light, but if you were just going to sit there you might as well have stayed in the dark. Salvation was a difficult struggle and no Savior could do it for you. The kids had had to cooperate in their own rescue, and even so, only one of them had gotten away. Jesus had tried to save the Jewish nation, but even most of his supporters had misunderstood his message. The strength of Israel lay not in its military, but in the people's obedience to God's Law. When they cooperated and helped each other they were invincible, but when they were divided into factions and took advantage of each other and the foreigners within their borders, not even the hand of God could save them.

Some of the Cathars of Provence had believed that the favor of God had passed on to them in the person of Sarah Kali, the black queen, the Egyptian born daughter of Mary Magdalen and Jesus, whom she had secretly married at the wedding in Cana. Joseph of Arimathea had been the one to flee with Mary through the desert and bring the bloodline of Christ to their shore, and their land prospered for a thousand years while they lived together in peace. Neither the dark ages that overtook the rest of Europe nor anything the Church of Rome could do harmed them. Even their bishops supported their Gnostic and non orthodox beliefs. But when Peter the Hermit preached the first Crusade against the Saracens in 1096 to recapture Jereusalem, the Cathars abandoned their pacifist principals to support him and restore a descendent of Jesus to David's throne. Their karma returned one hundred thirteen years later when Pope Innocent III, supported eventually by King Louis VIII of France, declared a Crusade against them in 1209. Even though they were wiped out in the massacre at Montsegur in 1244 and much of what is now southern France depopulated, some of their ideas survived, in spite of the fact that the Dominicans, their former allies, invented the Inquisition in order to ensure that they didn't.

William Blake accepted the belief passed on through the Templars and artists such as da Vinci and Poussin that the bloodline of Jesus had survived and fled to Britain. He witnessed the evil that the government and the established church rationalized and perpetuated in the form of extravagant and meaningless ritual, poverty and hunger, long work hours and dangerous conditions, child labor, sexual repression, forced prostitution and military service, and expensive and ruinous wars. He stuggled to understand and depict what was happening, to find a better way of living, and to mold his artistic vision into something useful.

Before Blake changed The Four Zoas to Urizen vs Los, it was the Song of Vala. Can Blake's original story be recreated? Some of it was broken up into flashbacks. The first thing that happens, though we are not told about it until later, is that Vala, who is Love, seduces Albion. She may originally have been Albion's female side. She bears Urizen, prince of Light, the first being born rather than created. Albion flees when he sees Luvah, who is now the male side of Vala, and who may been part of Albion before they had sex. An early case of homophobia. Since his senses are dulled, Albion can't find his way back to heaven and eventually forgets about it. (After he separates from Vala, he is separated from Jerusalem.) He has more children, including Urthona and Enitharmon, and possibly Tharmas and Enion. Urizen grows up in the plains of Beulah. He convinces Luvah to rebel. Vala, separate from Luvah, fascinates Albion. He worships her and sins against himself. This makes him vulnerable to Luvah, but it is still no contest. Vala and Luvah are cast out. When Urizen rebuilds heaven, Vala becomes a worker. She mourns for Luvah. He is there, but she is unable to recognize him. After heaven falls again, Enitharmon bears Luvah as Orc. Much later, the Shadow of Enitharmon bears Vala as a shadowy female. She wants Luvah but is still unable to recognize him. Vala seduces the dead from Beulah into the world. She prays to Urizen, her son who has grown old, and spreads through the tree of Mystery. She sees Jesus clothed in Luvah's robes of blood and kills him. She cuts the robes of blood from him and reveals the temple of Satan to all heaven and earth. What is left when both spirit and body are denied? Seeing this divides her. She goes to Los and listens to his story of Orc and Satan. She goes to Urizen, who embraces her and turns to stone. She seduces Jerusalem and worships both Orc and Urizen, her lover and son. She returns after the Apocalypse as a young woman in a pastoral setting. She prays to Luvah and has a vision of Tharmas. At the end, she works at a loom with the other female counterparts.

Vala is responsible for Albion's fall, Jesus's death, and Urizen's degradation, who were all the highest God. She has a large role, but mostly sets things up so the other characters can do something. She is the Pagan Goddess Aphrodite, Ishtar or Inanna, with elements of Isis, Demeter and Orpheus, from the older mystery religions. Vala is the Goddess of Love who mourns her lost lover, Luvah. She journeys to the underworld to recover him, but she is the one who becomes a shade or shadow. She is Mary and the mystery religion that the church had become. In some of the myths, the Goddess's lover is reborn each year as her son. This resurrection or return represents spring and the growth of plants. Mary mourning her son, Jesus, and women mourning Tammuz, the lover of Ishtar or Astarte or Ashtoreth, are in the Bible. Aphrodite was Venus, the morning star and bringer of Light. In earlier myths she was the Dawn, and the two morning stars her twin lovers. This became Helen of Troy and her two brothers Castor and Pollux. In another story, Lucifer was the morning star, who in Blake becomes Urizen, prince of Light. Vala worships the twin idols Orc and Urizen, her lover and son, and sins against herself. Both become serpents, which Blake uses as phallic symbols in some pictures, and which are associated with Ishtar. (Urthona also becomes a serpent when Enitharmon flees to Tharmas, and Tharmas seems to be Leviathan, thus all men are snakes.) Vala starts as Albion's consort and ends as a textile worker. She is an ambiguous figure.

We are led to Believe a Lie
When we see not Through the Eye
That was Born in a Night to perish in a Night
While the Soul Slept in Beams of Light.
God Appears and God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night.
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day. (from Auguries of Innocence in The Pickering Manuscript)

Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
One thought fills immensity.
Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth.
Where man is not, nature is barren. (from Proverbs of Hell)

Blake originally wrote see With, then he changed it to see not Through, which improves the rhythm but obscures the meaning. He was looking for a quality. The enlightenment called it Intellect, but Blake saw that reason can be cold and can rationalize anything. He tried Love, but found love could be selfish and blind. He settled on Imagination, the ability to see what isn't there, or as Shaw and Kennedy said, to dream of things that never were and ask why not. Looking at the concern for the suffering of others shown in his work, perhaps a better word would be compassion. Sometimes we need compassion instead of intellect to see the truth. God is anthropomorphic, God has a human shape, God is not an abstraction. As you do to the least of my brothers, you do to me. Blake takes this literally. He uses many Gnostic beliefs, but disagrees with the idea that the body and the material world are evil or irrelevant. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, which says Innocence and Experience must be united into a single vision, may be Blake's clearest statement of his beliefs.

For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

And all must love the human form,
In heathen, turk, or jew;
Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too. (from The Divine Image in Songs of Innocence)

Cruelty has a Human Heart,
And Jealousy a Human Face;
Terror the Human Form Divine,
And Secrecy the Human Dress. (from A Divine Image in Songs of Experience)

The four qualities in each of these poems are earlier versions of the four Zoas. Mercy and cruelty are Urthona and Los, pity and jealousy are Urizen, love and terror are Luvah and Orc, peace and secrecy are Tharmas. Blake may not have had all the names and associations yet, but the ideas and qualities were already there.

How the Chimney-sweeper's cry
Every black'ning Church appalls;
And the hapless Soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls. (from London in Songs of Experience)

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes!
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee? (from The Tyger in Songs of Experience)

The Tiger is the rebelling Lucifer, and the stars his angels, who threw down their spears when the rebellion failed (the stars threw down their spears and fled naked away, The Four Zoas p 64). Why is there evil if God is all powerful and all merciful? The Gnostics reply he is neither. God (or a female aspect of God) made a mistake, which resulted in the deluded being who claims to be God and punishes people for breaking his rules. (Without the tiger there would be no story. The Jungle Book, and even Winnie the Pooh, needed a tiger.) But sea and forest, nature without man, are Chaos. Blake did not appreciate wilderness, he was an urban poet. When he moved out of London for a time he was miserable. The nature images he uses always represent something else. A tiger is not just a tiger and, in spite of what someone else might say, a rose is not a rose.

O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies the night,
In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy. (The Sick Rose in Songs of Experience)

I asked a thief to steal me a peach:
He turned up his eyes.
I ask'd a lithe lady to lie her down:
Holy and meek she cries.
As soon as I went an angel came.
He wink'd at the thief
And Smil'd at the the dame.
And without one word spoke
Had a peach from the tree,
And 'twixt earnest and joke
Enjoy'd the Lady. (from Blake's notebook)

What is it men in women do require?
The lineaments of Gratified Desire.
What is it women do in men require?
The lineaments of Gratified Desire. (from Several Questions Answered)

The modest Rose puts forth a thorn,
The humble Sheep a threat'ning horn;
While the Lilly white shall in love delight,
Nor a thorn, nor a threat, stain her beauty bright. (The Lilly in Songs of Innocence)

Rules were used by the church and state to separate and repress people. The lives of the mill workers were highly regimented. Women and children worked in dangerous and unhealthy conditions. When you use the Law to repress people and commit injustice, when you apply the prohibition against adultery (which originally protected women) to women but not to men, you are not just bending the Law, you are shattering it. The poor want freedom so they can get food and shelter and companionship (liberty equality fraternity), the rich want justice so they can keep their wealth and control (order and discipline). Both are needed so people can get what they need and not have it taken away. Not the letter of the law but the spirit. Blake's parents or grandparents may have belonged to a mystical offshoot of the Moravian church that had a secret inner circle that practiced ritual sex, which would explain where he got some of his unusual ideas. It is possible that he was abused. Blake hated the church but was radically Christian. On his death, his most explicit drawings and writings were destroyed. For the next poem to sound right, cabinet has to be pronounced with three syllables, as ca-bi-net.

The Maiden caught me in the Wild,
Where I was dancing merrily;
She put me into her Cabinet,
And Lock'd me up with a golden Key.

This Cabinet is form'd of Gold
And Pearl and Crystal shining bright,
And within it opens into a World
And a little lovely Moony Night.

Another England there I saw,
Another London with its Tower,
Another Thames and other Hills,
And another pleasant Surrey Bower,

Another Maiden like herself,
Translucent, lovely, shining clear,
Threefold each in the other clos'd –
O, what a pleasant trembling fear!

O, what a smile! a threefold Smile
Fill'd me, that like a flame I burn'd.
I bent to Kiss the lovely Maid,
And found a Threefold Kiss return'd.

I strove to seize the inmost Form
With ardor fierce and hands of flame,
But burst the Crystal Cabinet
And like a Weeping Babe became,

A weeping Babe upon the wild,
And weeping Woman, pale, reclin'd;
And in the outward air again
I fill'd with woes the passing Wind. (The Crystal Cabinet in The Pickering Manuscript)

The Crystal Cabinet is about sex. The girl's cabinet with glistening gold and pearl is her vagina and clitoris. She puts the narrator's wild and dancing penis there and he experiences a different state of reality, shining, moony and translucent. He starts trembling with feeling and burning like fire. He experiences her through multiple senses, touch and taste and scent, and in multiple forms, as lover, beloved and child (the moon and the three aspects of Beulah). She smiles and kisses with three sets of lips, her mouth and outer and inner labia. He strives to possess her inmost lips, his ardor grows fierce, he bursts into flame inside her, and he ends up weak and exhausted as a baby. After his orgasm he loses his vision. Now all he can see is a pale woman lying next to him, and he's not happy about it and doesn't seem to care about her. She may be a prostitute and he may see himself as a victim. He saw another girl while having sex with her, and it was this other girl that he wanted. She may have been an illusion or a lie, or an aspect of her which he lost when he tried to separate and possess it. There is no way to tell from the words in the poem.

Blake's poetry is about religion and politics, but it is also about psychology. The sons and daughters of the Zoas could be different types of people. Those who have to explain and rationalize and make rules for everything are sons of Urizen, sensualists and rebels are sons of Luvah, visionary artists and poets are sons of Los. I don't know who the sons of Tharmas are, perhaps the workers who build or make things, and women who bear children. Those who actually do the work or those caught in chaos. Ahania, the female side of Urizen, the Zoa of Intellect, is a shadowy and fading figure because Blake doesn't think women are rational. At the beginning of The Four Zoas are these lines.

Four mighty ones are in every man. A perfect unity
cannot exist but from the universal brotherhood of Eden.
What are the natures of those Living creatures the heavenly Father only
knoweth. No individual knoweth, nor can know in all Eternity. (The Four Zoas p 3)

Eighteen

Owl had flown home on sunday. I followed her on monday to check out the job situation there and meet some of her friends. I stayed with Owl and on tuesday found that if I wanted to move up here I could probably find a job without too much trouble. The next night she took me over to Karen's to have dinner. Stephen, Owl's other partner, answered the door and greeted her enthusiastically. We went into the kitchen to meet Karen and Frank, who were cooking, then back to the living area to sit down. Stephen said the five of them had what they considered a group marriage, though some of them also had outside relationships, like Owl and him. Karen shared this two bedroom apartment with Frank and him. Diane had a smaller place she shared with Leon, although sometimes he and Leon traded places, and sometimes everyone stayed here, or he stayed with Owl, or whatever worked out. I asked if they had considered all sharing one space. He said yes, that had been the original plan, but they found this arrangement worked well and decided to stick with it for now. Diane's neighbors had accepted that she seemed to have two boy friends, and the people here who noticed just seemed to be amused by the situation. Then Diane, Max's sister, and Leon arrived. She hugged me and kissed me a bit longer than I expected. She said she was glad to finally meet the friend of Max that Owl had been telling her about. I said I was glad Max had the support of family. I had learned that many inmates didn't.

Karen and Frank served their pasta and cheese and vegetable casserole in bowls, and we all stayed where we were. Leon was an artist but worked on web design. Frank had been in prison for a while and took whatever jobs he could find. Diane was going to school part time to finish her degree in accounting. Karen worked at a hospital, and Stephen did something with computers. Owl had said that they all knew what she and Max and I could do, but no one said anything about it. I tried not to pry, but did pick up that they were just being careful. The less they said, the less likely anyone was to overhear something they shouldn't, which I appreciated. When it started to get late, Diane and Owl disappeared into the kitchen. When they came back, Diane asked me if I would like to spend the night at her place. I didn't know where she was going and looked at Owl for help, but she denied me. So I said yes, I would like that. Everyone seemed pleased.

Owl had thoughtfully brought some of my things with her, so that we didn't have to go back to her place to get them. She said she was just being careful. She dropped the two of us at Diane's place and drove off with Stephen. Diane had a moderate sized one bedroom apartment. She offered me some tea and an oatmeal raisin cookie, and we sat on the love seat. She said five of them sharing two rents made things easier. They had to be careful not to accumulate stuff too rapidly, but they shared things and didn't require more distractions. She was used to making do with what she had. She said she missed Max and was grateful he had another stable influence in his life. I said I didn't know if stable described the things we tried together. Then I finally got what seemed like an obvious idea. I said I wanted to try something and asked if she thought it was too late for her to call Owl. She said it might be, but she could check if her phone was still turned on. It was, and I asked Owl if she would establish contact with me. A second later I sensed her in my head, then we reached out and included Max. I told Diane Max was here and asked if she would like to join the link. Her eyes got wide and she said yes, please. Suddenly Max was standing there in front of us in the apartment, followed quickly by Owl and Stephen. Diane hugged Max, Max hugged Stephen, Owl hugged me, some of us were crying, and everybody hugged everybody. Owl said Max had remained invisible to Stephen when she brought Max to him once before. She hadn't thought of asking for my help after we met. Diane was hugging Max again, and there was a tension in him that I knew I should be careful not to look at.

It was late, so after talking for almost an hour we got up and everyone blinked back to where they had come from, leaving Diane and me alone again. She warmed up my tea and we sat while I finished my cookie. Then she kissed me. I knew part of it was gratitude, but I also knew she wanted a stronger connection to someone who was close to Max. I asked if she had a basin and said I wanted to wash her feet. She said no, she wouldn't let me. I said it was Owl's idea. She had massaged my feet after I had cooled them in a creek and now I wanted to do hers. I knew I was pushing her good will a bit. She gave me a strange look and told me where to find the basin. I put a couple inches of slightly cool water in it and brought it out. If she had had a coffee table it wouldn't have worked. I knelt on the carpet and washed each foot, dried it with I towel I had draped over my shoulder, and massaged the heel, arch, and ball, firmly. Short fingernails made it easier. She enjoyed it, but felt a little uneasy when I bent down and started sucking on her toes. When I had finished, she stood up and took off her clothes. She had large breasts and fairly wide hips and her skin was a beautiful medium brown all over her entire body, except of course her palms and soles. Her nipples were large and almost black. She was medium height but quite a bit taller than Owl. Her nose was not as narrow nor her lips as thin as a white person's. Her muscles showed beneath her body fat, and she had an animal grace even just standing there with a knowing smile. She looked like, if I hesitated any longer, she would pick me up and carry me into the bedroom, so I stood and disrobed. Then she did pick me up and carry me, as easily as a sack of potatoes. I found it embarrassing, but my penis found it terribly exciting. She put me on the bed and let me put the condom on myself, then climbed on top and engulfed me. She was hot and wet and gripped me tightly with her vagina. Her thick black pubic hair curled tightly above. Her dark breasts bounced and rippled in the dim light as her hips bobbed up and down, and her nipples stood straight out. She flowed. I thought I wasn't going to be able to last very long, but she slowed down as much as she needed to and continued to milk me. When she felt herself getting close she sped up and, just as I felt her start spasming around me, I erupted up into her.

The next night everyone knew what was going to happen. Linda was a pagan and the only other person who had been able to see Max when he traveled in the dreaming. Owl had told her what to expect, and they had told everyone else and gotten their permission to invade their minds. We were at the apartment Linda's group shared. She and Mark and Jose were in and out of the kitchen cooking. Paul was telling me that in spite of their efforts their two bedroom apartment had not been big enough, but three seemed to work for now, and Judy was sitting with us listening. When Max was available after count, I went and opened the door and he walked in. It was late, but we had moved dinner hour back so he could be with us. There was again much hugging and rejoicing, and all those who hadn't met Max before were introduced. Then we all sat down at their extended table, the five of them, the seven of us from the night before, and Max at the place where a glass of wine had been set out for him. He took the glass and drank, then passed it around, and everyone at the table took at least a small sip. Since he wasn't really there this was the only way he could empty the glass. Most of the people here didn't drink, but an exception was made for tonight. Linda, who had short red hair and a full figure, had made her rice and beans with corn and broccoli. Mark had made a free form loaf of bread, of which people tore off hunks, and Jose's banana and peach cobbler was baking. Max sat between Karen and Frank, and when he served himself the pot didn't seem to get any less full nor the loaf any shorter.

I sat next to Paul and continued talking to him. He asked if I had read The Art of Loving. I said no and asked him about it. He said his group had found it very useful. It said falling in love wasn't enough to support a lasting relationship, and that love was an art that had to be learned, if not through examples of what worked, then through study and practice. It consisted of care, responsibility, respect and knowledge. I said that sounded like what I read in the Bible, although I hadn't realized it until I started reading about Buddhism. Jesus said to love one another and had shown how in his actions and stories. Love was not a competition where you tried to get something, it was giving of yourself. What you gave came back to you since we were all connected, like the vine and its branches. Paul agreed. He said that, like Jesus, the Greek Dionysus uses the image of the vine. He is the life that returns in the spring, so all food that comes from the earth is his body. Like both of them, the Norse Ymir (whose name means twin) is a dying God whose body becomes the earth. The mountains are his bones, the sky is his skull, and the salt sea is his blood. He also said the others mostly preferred Paganism or Taoism, which was fine since underneath they said basically the same thing, but he had gone to church every week while growing up on St Thomas and after his family had moved here, and he missed the words and images from the Bible that had been part of his life.

I said I understood. What was important for me in the Bible was what it said and taught about how to live, not the form in which that teaching was given. Another form that said similar things might work just as well for someone else. However, since the teaching was not just abstract philosophical concepts but was tied to the details of daily living, the form mattered, whatever it was, and the Bible as I had come to understand it was the form that was familiar to me. Jesus is not a personal savior who solves all your problems for you if you dump them on his head. He is the way, the path you can walk if you choose to, the name or word you can understand if you make the effort, the example of service you can follow if you open your mind. He is the truth that can set you free, if you hear and experience what he actually said instead of a lot of double talk that is called interpretation and explanation, free from the desires and fears and illusions that cloud your true emotions. He is the life, not of some far off heaven but of the world here and now as it really is, not of a bunch of self deluded hypocrites who fantasize about hell fire but of people who misunderstand or reject him and struggle to find their way, not of pure light and spirit but of beings evolved from mud and clay into an ephemeral and beautiful physical body. We are mind and emotions and body, and when we are told to love one another, it must include all three. We cooperate with those around us, take care of our families, and love whom we choose, be it one or many.

Nineteen

I left early friday morning and arrived home in time for the special meeting on child safety. Over half the congregation was at the church, and there were so many others that extra chairs had to be put out. Which was strange, since there had been very little mention of Zachary in the local media and none at all in the state or national. I did a careful scan and found that nearly all of the outsiders had heard of the meeting through word of mouth. I also found there was someone looking for psychics. I just brushed his mind and he didn't detect me. I did pick up that he was connected with the government and had been through a harsh training program that he mostly didn't remember. His was a broken mind without much ability. I had hoped to give some suggestions based on what I had learned from Zachary's captors, but with him and possibly others searching for the rescuers, I could do little more than sit and listen. There was too much danger of being exposed. The meeting started and the speaker was introduced. He was from a private security firm, and the list he gave of suspicious activities to look for was the exact same list that I had picked up from the captor's minds of things they didn't do, in the same order and almost word for word. I was able to pick up from the surface of his mind without being noticed that he had been sent to give disinformation and keep people in a state of panic, and that his employers worked mostly for the federal government.

The power of a centralized authority always seeks to expand. Blake saw it and called it Satan, the war machine that takes on a life of its own and the factory whose workers are expendable. The Russian secret police under Stalin used informers and torture, methods from the Inquisition. The Gestapo controlled Germany. The French used secrecy and murder during the Resistance as they had during the Revolution. The British originated the modern intelligence service during the second world war. The Americans developed it afterward. The Chilean and Argentine secret police learned to cooperate to control dissent. The Israelis used targeted killings. No one knew much about their intelligence service or how long it had existed in various forms, but the Germans used fear of Jewish conspiracies to spread disinformation and panic, and no American politician was able to criticize Israel. Assassins, government contractors, and black ops were romanticized by James Bond, The Man from UNCLE, and Mission Impossible, but secrecy and fear as tools will always turn on those who allow or accept them. The agencies of all these countries used mystery and awe to escape oversight and increase their own power. Those who spoke against them were seldom listened to.

"What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?
says the Lord;
I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams
and the fat of fed beasts;
I do not delight in the blood of bulls,
or of lambs, or of he-goats.

"When you come to appear before me,
who requires of you
this trampling of my courts?
Bring no more vain offerings;
incense is an abomination to me.
New moon and sabbath and the calling of assemblies –
I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly.
Your new moons and your appointed feasts
my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me,
I am weary of bearing them.
When you spread forth your hands,
I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
I will not listen;
your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your doings
from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
seek justice,
correct oppression;
defend the fatherless,
plead for the widow." (Isaiah 1:11-17)

"How you are fallen from heaven,
O Lucifer, son of Dawn!
How you are cut down to the ground,
you who laid the nations low!
You said in your heart,
'I will ascend to heaven;
above the stars of God
I will set my throne on high;
I will sit on the mount of assembly
in the far north;
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds,
I will make myself like the Most High.'
But you are brought down to Sheol,
to the depths of the Pit."

And the streams of Edom shall be turned into pitch,
and her soil into brimstone.
Thorns shall grow over its strongholds,
nettles and thistles in its fortresses.
It shall be the haunt of jackals,
an abode for ostriches.
And wild beasts shall meet with hyenas,
the satyr shall cry to his fellow;
yea, there shall Lilith alight,
and find for herself a resting place.
There shall the owl nest and lay
and hatch and gather her young in her shadow;
yea, there shall the kites be gathered,
each one with her mate. (Isaiah 14:12-15, 34:9-15)

Mystery and awe could be the definition of religion. Supremacy, power, and wealth are often its goals. The Gospel of Abundance did not originate with the Christian Fundamentalists. Worship has always moved toward workshop, toward the idolization of money, success, and prestige, from a spiritual to a secular ideology. The early Christians had to meet in secret because many of them were slaves and women. They embraced and shared the kiss of peace, ate a real meal that included wine, and waited for direct inspiration by the spirit. The later remnants of these acts were pretending to kiss the pope's ring, sometimes having a tiny piece of wafer or a small sip of wine, and listening to a priest read words from a book. Touch, food, and experience were eliminated from the service. In the early church, people validated each others spiritual experiences. Later, these experiences were labeled heresy and replaced by ritual, and those that refused to give them up were persecuted and purged. The early churches resisted Roman authority. Later, Rome reasserted and centralized authority, and equality was replaced with hierarchy and priests.

Isaiah wrote before and during the siege of Jerusalem by the Assyrians. Jeremiah wrote one hundred fourteen years later, before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. Second Isaiah, whose work begins in chapter forty, wrote near the end of the Babylonian captivity. Isaiah opposed sacrifice and pilgrimage. They had been around since the time of Abraham, but were tied to the old Canaanite religion. Jeremiah supported the great reforms of the Deuteronomist. He wanted sacrifice and pilgrimage that were based only in Jerusalem, not on every high hill and under every green tree. This was a new idea and a combination of prophetic ideals and popular practice. It also centralized religion and increased the power of the king. Abraham had a God tied to a particular place. Moses had a God he could carry around with him. The Prophets had a God whose influence extended into other countries. Jesus had a God who was everywhere. And for this he was lynched, hung from a tree to serve as a warning to others.

A voice cries:
"In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken."

A voice says, "Cry!"
And I said, "What shall I cry?"
All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
surely the people is grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades;
but the word of our God will stand for ever.

Get you up to a high mountain,
O Zion, herald of good tidings;
lift up your voice with strength,
O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,
lift it up, fear not;
say to the cities of Judah,
"Behold your God!"
Behold, the Lord God comes with might,
and his arm rules for him;
behold, his reward is with him,
and his recompense before him.
He will feed his flock like a shepherd,
he will gather the lambs in his arms,
he will carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead those that are with young.

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand
and marked off the heavens with a span,
enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure
and weighed the mountains in scales
and the hills in a balance?
Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord,
or as his counselor has instructed him?
Whom did he consult for his enlightenment,
and who taught him the path of justice,
and taught him knowledge,
and showed him the way of understanding? (Isaiah 40:3-14)

After the child safety speaker, the minister spoke again. He condemned the persons who had returned Zachary. He said current evidence indicated that they were the ones who had abducted and held him. His return was meant to demonstrate how much control they had over the lives of random children and was intended as an act of terror. I was surprised at his change of attitude, although perhaps I shouldn't have been. The attention of their so called sensitive was elsewhere, so I edged into the fire and saw that this new theory had come mostly from the people searching for me, as I had thought. Then a number of strange things all happened at the same time. A closed part of the minister's mind that I had been completely unaware of suddenly opened up, like a light being turned on in a dark chamber. There were Lily and Rose. He had abused them as children over an extended period of time. There were others, but I couldn't see who or how many because the light turned off just as suddenly as it had been turned on. Before it did, there was a violent mental shudder or exclamation from Lily, who'd been passively observing what I was doing through the link between our minds. I hadn't known she was there. The shudder echoed through to Rose, who then also saw the momentary flash of illumination. The shock of seeing themselves in those situations started to stir hazy repressed memories in both their minds. The shudder also turned the minster's attention directly to me. He knew his secret was exposed but saw something in my mind, so he asked, in the voice of doom, what did I know about Zachary? I shivered in the icy blast and cut the link immediately, but not before denying any knowledge. By the time their psychic realized there was something happening, it was over. He became dispirited.

The minister had asked his question out loud, and the unexpectedness of it had puzzled everyone. He managed to turn it into a rhetorical device. He was careful not to point me out, since he didn't know what had happened and didn't want anyone else to notice. But he did doubt my denial, and he was observant and shrewd. Since he had realized that when I told the truth he had to believe me, he had figured out that when he could doubt me I must be lying. He didn't know exactly how I was involved with Zachary, but I could read the reassurance on his face. Since we shared each others secrets he knew his own would be safe, and that was all he cared about. I realized I would have to leave the church. I had known when I accepted or assumed responsibility that there would be consequences. A few minutes later, before the next speaker started, I made my way to the back of the church and through the doors to the outside. I watched the sun setting over the houses across the street and the sky begin to darken. The brightening first quarter moon was high in the south, above the dark green leaves of the magnolia tree. Rose and then Lily came out and stood on either side of me. We all knew they would have to leave the church as well. I said I was sorry, I should have known earlier. Lily said there was nothing that could be done about it now, except to make sure it didn't happen to any more children. She and Rose could do that. If man usurps God's authority, he must accept God's responsibility. She hadn't thought it applied to them, but they did of course know what Owl and I had done for Zachary and were proud of me.

Lily was taking what she had found out well. She said she was only starting to remember. She had been scared at the time but not hurt, much. Through me, she had seen secrets other people kept from themselves, and this was no worse than a lot of people's. She had done worse by her own choice since. She tried not to hurt anyone weaker or stupider than she was. If that was what she had gotten that out of the experience, she was better off than most victims of abuse and counted herself lucky. Rose was quiet. She said it seemed like something that had happened to someone else. She had seen a few vivid images from the minister's mind, and so far only knew that it really was her. What scared her most was seeing another person's view and not being able to remember it herself. She was experiencing an important part of her life only from the outside. It was disorienting. How could she know what was true? I told her I could try to help her find her own memories. She said she might want that, later. She always knew where to find me, and right now, that was part of the problem.

Lily had betrayed me, though inadvertently, by drawing the minister's attention. She said she could have endangered us all and was sorry. She also said that she was jealous of Owl. I said there was nothing that could be done about that either. Things were what they were. I had made things worse when I reflexively denied knowing anything. We heard a crow call out and waited for the sun to disappear, then walked together over to the parking lot. I hugged them both and told them both to take care before we all drove off.

Twenty

It was sunday, and the fresh sunlight slanting sideways through the trees and window made an angled shape on the adjacent wall. I thought about Owl and she said hello, but she wasn't there. I knew she was at home in bed. She said yeah, it had happened again. I had created another mind link, and she had been waiting for me to notice. Which explained how she had gotten there so fast after Diane had called her the other night. She said she was sorry about the hell I'd gone through after what happened at church with Lily and Rose, but was glad I was coming out of my depression and wanted to help. She invited me over, so a second later I was standing next to her bed in my gray bikini briefs. The sunlight was at a slightly higher angle here. She scooted over and I got under the covers with her. It appeared I was overdressed, but I decided not to worry about it. She put one arm across my chest, kissed the side of my mouth gently, and said she had realized she was wrong about my needing more experience before I was ready to join a group. I said I had been waiting for her to notice. She said she would invite me to join the group she and Max were forming, except it seemed that I already had. I said I was glad to hear it. She asked if I could also create a mind link with Max? It would make commuting easier. I said no. I heard a sigh that sounded like Lily. I said if she was going to tag along, I didn't want any back seat driving. I sensed an imaginary pout, then nothing.

Owl said if I was going to officially join the group, we needed to have a ritual with the three of us together in bed. I would have gone with some solemn words and a glass of wine but wasn't going to argue with her. I was past being shy. We stepped out into the green and she went to him, tripping lightly through oak and hickory and pine like a dappled mare, bounding along ridge tops and over hills like a white tailed deer, and gliding along a gently flowing green river like a raving loon to a marshy wetland of sedges and cattails and various other emerging plants, from one of which a dragonfly hung with his four wings glinting in the emerald dawn. We were next to a tall chain link fence with coils of razor wire strung along the top. There was a row of pine trees that led across an otherwise bare courtyard to a series of multistory brick buildings. Owl said the trees were hers. She had put them there in the dreaming so that she could reach Max's window, and had to move them once when he was transferred to a different cell. We flowed across the cut grass perimeter, into the roots of the closest tree, under the watching cameras and up the trunk, out into the branches and needles, and across from tree to tree like a pair of demented squirrels or angels.

From the branches of the last pine tree, we peered in through the window and didn't see Max. The covers of his bunk were thrown back and the pillow placed neatly at one end. We didn't know where they might have taken him. Then we were inside and heard the sound of water. We turned around to see him standing there in his gray prison jammies, peeing into the metal toilet. Privacy was something inmates and mind readers learned to do without. What they say about black men is true, just not as true as I had imagined. He said sorry, you can't have everything, but not out loud. I said that was okay, I was happy with what I'd got. When he finished, he shook off his penis and put it away. I thought I had sounded funny and looked down at myself, then ran my hand over my head, and discovered I was a pudgy twelve year old with a buzz cut, a white tee shirt that said up yours, and an accent that sounded like Huckleberry Hound or Andy of Mayberry. I looked up and said touche, and asked if I really sounded like that to him? He said he noticed the difference, but regional accents among white people weren't as distinctive as they used to be. Television was starting to make us all sound like we came from Nebraska. He asked if I would prefer overalls? I said no, and wound up back in my gray briefs. Owl was still naked.

His cell looked even smaller than it had a moment ago. It was crowded, slightly damp, and depressing. It felt like a tomb, only not as quiet. He said it wasn't really a tomb. People who died in their cells were actually removed fairly quickly. We sensed one of his cellmates watching him through slitted eyes and trying to figure out what was strange about the way he was acting, so Max got back into bed. He closed his eyes but could still see us and the cell through the link. I felt something else strange about the atmosphere here. I looked more carefully into the fire and discovered that all of the men were on tranquilizers. Max said a lot of them had prescriptions, but they also put something in the coffee. He could taste the molecules of the drug, follow it through people's bloodstreams, and watch what it did to the neurotransmitters of their brains. He made allowances, and it didn't bother him as much in the dreaming. He told us he would have to stand up for morning count soon and then have breakfast, so he couldn't go with us now. He welcomed me to the group and said he appreciated my letting him see Owl's dream form while he was awake, but it worked better when he was sleeping. Owl and I returned to her apartment. She decided the two of us should have our own ritual now, and then one with Max sometime later.

On the third day there was a marriage at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there; Jesus also was invited to the marriage, with his disciples. When the wine failed, the mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine." And Jesus said to her, "O woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come." (John 2:1-4)

So they sought to arrest him; but no one laid hands on him, because his hour had not yet come. Yet many of the people believed in him; they said, "When the Christ appears, will he do more signs than this man has done?" The Pharisees heard the crowd thus muttering about him, and the chief priests and Pharisees sent officers to arrest him. Jesus then said, "I shall be with you a little longer, and then I go to him who sent me; you will seek me and you will not find me; where I am you cannot come." (John 7:30-34)

"I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me; because I live, you will live also. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me; and this is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." (John 14:18-21, 15:12)

We stood facing each other. I'm not sure if Owl was dozing or meditating when we left to see Max, but the bed appeared empty when we got back. Her skin was several shades lighter than its usual brown and covered with large green tattooed leaves that moved over the curves of her body as they swayed in an unfelt breeze. The wide heart shaped leaves drifted onto and off of her tight nipples and breasts, over her navel and belly, back and forth behind her patch of pubic hair, and around her hips and thighs. They were making my penis rise up and nearly burst out of the skimpy briefs, so I took it out and stripped them off. I put my hands on her, and the leaves under them were held in place while some of the others continued to wave. She reached down and threw back the covers, and we lowered ourselves onto her bed. I climbed between her legs, pinning more leaves in place, and she fed my stiffened penis into her hungry vagina. I felt us together, her around me, and myself in her. We started making love, our surfaces sliding over each other, and our arms and legs and senses intertwined.

What does it mean to love one another? John says in the opening of his Gospel that we can become children of God. Jesus speaks of the children of Abraham and of the Devil. John speaks of gathering the children of God who are scattered. At the supper Jesus calls his disciples children before he tells them to love one another, and again later when he asks if they have caught any fish. The virgin is represented by Mary and Martha of Bethany who lived with their brother Lazarus, and possibly by the maid who questioned Peter. The prostitute is represented by the woman at the well who had five husbands and by the woman taken in adultery, who is sometimes thought to be Mary Magdalene. The wife is represented by the bride at the wedding in Cana and by the image of the bride used by the Baptist. The mother is represented by the mother of Jesus mentioned at the wedding and at the cross, the mother referred to by Nicodemus, the mother of the man born blind, and the joyful woman delivered of child. There is a sequence of child, virgin, prostitute, wife, and mother. The brides as shown are supposedly still virgins, and the mothers are either rhetorical or have grown children, so the only women in John known to be sexually active are depicted as prostitutes.

Much of what we believe is based on tradition, not what is in the Bible. John does not say whether Jesus or any of the twelve were married. Given the near universality of marriage at the time, perhaps some or all of them were. They all traveled to Jerusalem for the final passover. The only other time John explicitly mentions the twelve as being together is at Capernaum after Jesus fed the multitude, which was near their home in Galilee. The term disciples is sometimes used in a broader sense that includes people in Judea and people who left him. It may not always have included all of the twelve. Some of them may have been farmers or fishermen with seasonal work. They might have traveled with Jesus part of the time and still been able to support families. Jesus speaks to Nicodemus of the need to be born of the Spirit as well as the flesh. He says at Capernaum his flesh is the Bread of life, and also that the flesh is of no avail, his words are spirit and life. He says at the temple the Pharisees judge according to the flesh, and their father is the Devil. He says at the supper he has power over all flesh to give eternal life. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Eating his flesh means accepting his words, which are spirit and life. Jesus is not separate and different and unique. He is the vine and we are the branches. He is in us, and we in him. When we realize this, his Father becomes our Father. We will have a life of the spirit, as well as a life of the flesh.

As I pressed myself against Owl and moved my being in and out of hers, my hands and arms and chest and groin felt the leaves they held in place on the surface of her skin strain first in one direction, and then another. They were shiny rounded heart shaped philodendron leaves, a monocot like lilies and oats with parallel leaf veins, in the order alismatales with seagrass and duckweed and taro. I sensed Max's interest as he sat eating his cornflakes. Owl had not completely let go of the link with him. It was a little disconcerting to have him watching, but I tried to cooperate and include him in what we were doing. He was respectful of our activity and didn't obtrude his own thoughts or comments. Through the silent crackling of the dark fire of our shared consciousness I felt a change take place as Owl gasped and came. Her decorations shifted into wide jagged heart shaped grape leaves, a rosid like beans and broccoli, and the only family in the order vitales. My balls had become a heavy cluster of purple grapes that slapped against her crotch each time I thrust into her. I didn't know how they fit into the space available, but it was primarily her fantasy. We kept going at it for a little while, she had a few more orgasms, and I began to wonder if I would ever come. Then the pressure of the juice within the grapes increased and the image shifted again. There were tapering triangular heart shaped ivy leaves, an asterid like sunflowers and tomatoes, in the order apiales with ginseng and carrots, and as I rose and came in her, these trailing leaves froze into the variegated radiant greens of a stained glass window.

Twenty one

Was there a virgin birth? It was only added to two of the Gospels, so it would seem not. Miraculous birth stories are nice but don't prove anything. Was there a mortality that John announced, Jesus lived, and Judas demonstrated? Jesus was the Bread, the Light, the Door, the Shepherd, the Resurrection, the Life, the Way, the Truth, and the Vine. But was he a concept, a man, or a God? The sayings of Jesus found in Thomas, Matthew and Luke are the earliest record we have of him, and someone said them. Were they inspired by the Spirit and attributed to a Jesus who appeared only in visions? If he was a man, how different was he if we can all become children of God? Did Jesus rise from the dead? This is an event in all four Gospels and the foundation on which the church is built, but it's really just another sign and wonder with meaning only for those of little faith. Nebuchadnezzar died one year before the Buddha's birth, so Second Isaiah's depiction of a Savior was not influenced by Buddhism. His suffering servant resembles Jesus only on the eve and day of his death, not during his life and ministry. If the abomination that is the cross is omitted, how much does it change the substance of the Gospels? I had my faith, how could I not? God is in your face. But if every Christian knew the answers to these questions, did I want to call myself a Christian?

It was late summer. Max and Owl and I were sitting in a sunlit room amongst brightly colored cushions. I was going on about these things and we were munching on chips and tuna. The estuary sparkled across a broad expanse of lawn, and faint rainbows from a faceted glass ball glided across the floor and ceiling. I suddenly became aware of a presence watching us, someone I had encountered once before. He said he was sorry for disturbing us but needed to tell me something. I should not try to do anything more about the child abductions yet. The men responsible were well organized and powerful. I would only endanger myself and others. I had shown them they were vulnerable, and that was enough for now. I said I had to find some way to help. I couldn't just sit there and let it continue. He said he knew that. Just as I had known when my time had come, I would know when it returned. I asked what he meant and got only a reference. Then he was gone. Owl and Max didn't know what to make of it either. I looked up the passage he had indicated.

"In returning and rest you shall be saved;
in quietness and in trust shall be your strength." (Isaiah 30:15)

Owl started telling me about an unexplained strangeness that had happened to Max and her. After she and Max had started having sex in his cell, she had discovered she was pregnant in the dreaming, though not in real life. The embryo had stopped growing at three weeks but was still alive and healthy otherwise. Since we were in the dreaming, Max took us in through Owl's labia majora and labia minora, we drifted along the length of her vagina to the cervix, and they showed me the white and red big headed embryo floating in the uterus. They both let out ectoplasmic gasps. I asked what was wrong. It looked fine to me and still didn't seem to be growing. Owl said it wasn't, now, but was twice as long as before and starting to develop limbs. It had grown for another week then stopped again after not doing anything for nearly a year. She and Max started examining the embryo as only they could. When they checked inside a nucleus, the chromosomes looked different to Owl. She began comparing them to hers and Max's. Sixteen matched hers, sixteen matched his, and fourteen didn't match either. It didn't make sense, but I was the only other person she had had sex with in the dreaming, so she compared them to mine. They matched. Other cells were the same. My DNA had somehow been passed to an already developing organism, and she now literally had two fathers, although seven of my chromosomes were paired with Max's. Owl had thought we wouldn't need a condom in the dreaming. They had determined I was disease free, and she was already pregnant. Since the embryo had stopped growing again, there was still something she was waiting for. We would have to wait and see what it was.

This is my version of the events that took place. Soon after, I found a job near Owl and moved in with her. There was more I could have said, but telling a story is mostly deciding what to leave out.

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