The never-ending adventures of God: the visit.

Episode 5

He was safely back, infinite once again, the self-without-end—and he was breathless.

The idea had been so simple, to live as his creation did, briefly, vividly, fueled by aspirations, appetites, dreams and fears, and to do it as all who lived and died must, without anything more than the collective rumor about something greater that hid behind the sky.

That unprovable belief justified the brevity of life, the inevitability of death, and gave meaning to both.

So he hid who he was from himself and was born, delivered out of a dark sheltering safety, with tears and straining muscles, into the arms of a mother.

Though her lips were cracked from the dry heat of the place and she was exhausted, she was the beautiful sun at the center of his universe.

He remembers now the musty smell of old hay, damp and dusty, the itch it caused as he took his first deep wailing breath.

Everything about life was like that. So sharp, so close up, as if he had pressed his face into it.

Human, he could no longer scan the broad vista of space and time.

He could barely pause long enough to consider it, driven as he was by the sharp nail of hunger, made to groan by the dense mouthful of dark bread, surrounded by the noise and chafe of life.

He somehow knew that he should stay small and modest, working, like his father, with his hands. But although he never understood what was happening his divinity leaked out into the mundane world, drawing attention.

Water into wine? All he had felt was a keen desire that the young couple and their family not be embarrassed. So he wished for wine and it came, not just a new and common wine, but the best.

Walking on water he had shown off like any young guy–proof that he was fully human.

But the healing, the raising from the dead? He did that because he felt their desperation, and a need to stand up for the infinite kindness of a creator he felt inexplicably close to.

By saying things that felt true to those who had nothing, but angered those who held wealth and power in a tightly clenched fist, he began to gather followers and enemies.

For a moment he allowed himself to feel the deep pleasures of inhabiting a body: sun on skin, a cool draught of water going down a parched throat, the flutter in the chest that was hope.

Then he was awash in the agony of his final hours. Death inflicted so brutally, those he loved turning away as if they didn’t know him.

He understood now because time was a thread that ran through his fingers, all of it available to him, that his brief visit had left an indelible thumb print on all the future generations of mankind. He had given the mystery behind the clouds a face.

He would be called on by name to come, lift this burden, save this child.

And he wondered whether those who sought him gave him too much credit.

He was the origin of all, the dark as well as the light.

But like him, his creation inhabited both.

The balm of good would be spread in his name along with infinite cruelty.

And so here he sat, reawakened as the all-knowing and infinite being-without-end and he held his head. Like the clang of distant bells, supplications, were already rising, bearing the name that had been his on earth. But once again he was far above the clamor.

Untouchable, unknowable, alone…and suddenly he missed the simple brotherhood of perishable arms holding him close.

Note: To read the earlier episodes of The Never-Ending Adventures of god, click on the header on the left.