Skunk Hollow and Uncle Hugh's Fish Bowl

Norma Jean and I moved to the island and into grannies beach glass bungalow far away from the prairie and the foul temper of my father. There I met my first and truest friend, a dog named Dingo. Dingo was some kind of terrier, the kind that skips and skitters through it's life always managing to find a kitchen floor or vacant pavement to tap dance along. I can't say I cuddled Dingo or fell in love with him but, you could say he was plain and comforting . In a time of high surrealism, where all the colours were a little too bright, he was perfectly ordinary. It was my mother's fairytale family that carried all the richness and brilliance and even out dazzled the glass bungalow they were all like glass prisms and they all resembled movie stars .

My grandmother Lillian with her porcelain skin and flaming red hair was Tahlula Bankhead, her husband Art was definitely Humphry Bogart, uncle Bill was Ernest Hemmingway, Norma Jean was of course playing herself, Uncle Jim was a ballroom dancer and a collector of pistols and he was very Paul Newman. Uncle Bud was a 1950's comic book hero only he wasn't any Captain Marvel, he was more the quintessential Clark Kent - khaki pants and horned rimmed glasses a man of his generation and that left Uncle Hughey - the dark horse, Uncle Hugh's face bore the scars of an inner crucifiction and sorrow. Hughey was the drunk, he was Montgomery Clift without the big Hollywood break. Uncle Hugh got no respect because he was a lush. And his brother from the Captain Marvel magazine hoisted him out of the gutter on skid row and rushed him into rehab every decade or so. Uncle Bud thought that his brother drank because he had a love affair with the booze, he didn't understand that Uncle Hugh was isolated and lost or maybe he did . There is no halfway house for isolated and lost.

My mother's name sake Marilyn Munroe had made a film called the Misfits and in the movie more than anything a pathos emerged and despite their best efforts using all their celebrity my mother's family was hung with a veil of depression and there was no Clark Gable around to show them how to not give a damn. They were overc-ommers and had all risen out of the ashes, that is all but Uncle Hugh. They were survivors of an early childhood growing up in a very funky landscape called Skunk Hollow in East Vancouver. I asked my mother one day why they called it Skunk Hollow and she said because the only thing that would grow there were skunk cabbages. The air reeked of them in the steaming heat of the summers.

Bogey drank all the money he made from his machinist trade and the children seldom had enough food. The ironies were piled thick and high for they were hungry kids and got to smell the bog of inedible skunk cabbages cooking all summer long in the blistering heat. Tahlula sharpened her knives in their scabby kitchen because if she'd had a dollar she could make a marvellous meal out of it. She had fabulous culinary skills.

At some point Bogey put down the bottle and took a look around his family and noticed the scaring his lawless appetite for drink had done . Finally Tahlula went to the market for fresh meat and poultry and took to buying her vegetables from an old man in a very old truck who came right round to the door. Tahlula bought rhinestone cigarette holders to smoke her home made rollies in and made salmon loaf, and black bottom pudding, pork roasts and apple pies. There was Neapolitan ice cream and scalloped potatoes made with evaporated milk, and real Irish stew. The table was groaning everyday with cream pies, and salads of every description and in the end all the movie stars amazed each other with their conservative successes and their good lives, all except Uncle Hugh.

Uncle Hugh was a vagrant of the most romantic sort. All of my mother's family were good looking and they all resembled movie stars and Uncle Hugh was no exception. He had a lustrous head of auburn hair and a soulful silence that easily upstaged the boisterous performances of his siblings. They were all good dancers and moved around their individual dance floors with an easy grace in lush costumes of tweed and silk, cotton twill and organza. They became what they wanted to be, despite a father who drank all their innocence. My grandfather was the downtown equivalent of Humphrey Bogart riding the little ferry from North Van to East Hastings of a Saturday morning sipping a cocktail of methyl alcohol and milk on the ten minute ride, and by the time the tiny boat docked he was loaded. And on those occasions, those appalling Saturdays, my mother would bring along Clark Kent and Paul Newman. It was acting of the mannerist school and Uncle Hugh was not in the cast, but rather it seemed he got to be the boom boy or sound engineer. He had no role to play, Uncle Hughey never got in front of the camera.

My mother a small girl herself held the plump hands of her movie star brothers tiny bit part players though they were and followed their teetering dad through the scariest part of downtown Vancouver at week's end each and every week. Norma Jean never let on that any of them ever met with foul play left as they were to hang around the back door of whatever drinking hole Bogey staggered out of. She said they were always safe.

Eventually all the little stars made good, Clark Kent got a degree from Oregon State University, Paul Newman got one from UBC and Ernest Hemmingway developed a love for cats and took over the family business. Norma Jean took very good care with her appearance and married my father a real scene stealer. He was a man's man he had a part in all the best clichés and he was brilliant and finally Norma Jean had deserted him to his petty genius.

On that faithful day it was Ernest Hemmingway who came to gather us from my curious father and his up and coming lifestyle. Uncle Bill loaded up his green station wagon that day and we left while my father was at work and none the wiser. I was a little girl and an accomplished stealer of ice cream and was violently scooping the stuff out of the bucket when Hemmingway bound in the kitchen that day in the early morning causing me to drop my spoon and tip over the stool. As we drove my mother let me sit in the front seat with her brother and I was afraid to look at him for the shame I carried at being discovered at stealing the strawberry ripple. Marilyn had no shame and she never looked back.

Uncle Hughey married no one and realized no ambition. Instead he was the disenfranchised, the rejected, and the embarrassment. Where the others grew character Uncle Hugh grew a sponge to sop up the rivers of cheap wine he drank to take the edge off.

Midway through life Humphrey Bogart discovered the secret to real happiness and began to build a credit rating. His aim was to buy a family bungalow to welcome in his children and grandchildren - it was a tour de force in denial. The beach glass bungalow came with one bedroom and my grandfather built a second one in the form of an extension off the back of the little home. He liked to fly by the seat of his pants and used ingenuity to build the new section as opposed to a silly old foundation any common builder might start with. After some time the second bedroom began to sag a bit and moisture crept in. It was meant for guests and it was the room that Norma Jean and I stayed in when we escaped the heavy restrictions of my father. I would lay awake at night in that room black as pitch and smelling like freshly mowed green grass, the lawn teasing it's way up through the floor joists, waiting for my mother to come home. First came the acrid aroma of her cigarette and then I could see the pilot light on the end of her smoke signalling that Marilyn Munroe was coming in for a landing. It was there when the moment hung and I would lose time and space and fly to the end of that cigarette like Tinker Bell and make myself like nothingness, and pray for fairytale tomorrows.

Bogey built a guest house in the back yard for Hughey, it was only big enough for a single bed and no bigger. It was a tiny building with a big picture window and a flower box and granddad had added some ornamentation that made the whole thing look like a ginger bread house come fish bowl. Uncle Hugh would navigate his minimal quarters in full view of the good actors in the family, that way he could be watched as though he were on television. Here Uncle Hugh was kept until like a lemming he responded to a mysterious call and hurried away to the skid row of Vancouver to live out his father's legacy.

The summer I arrived at Tahlula's and Bogeys' bungalow seemed like the hottest and brightest of my lifetime. When the sun hit the house the effect was dazzling and hypnotic, the multicoloured shards of broken glass mixed into the mortar became rubies, sapphires diamonds and peridot. The yard was full of hybrid fruit trees, 2 cherries, 2 plums, a winter king apple, 2 pear trees, blackberries and raspberries, all tangled up and rubbing up against each other in the back yard. Tahlulah had a clothesline darting across the backyard one end off the beguiling cottage the other attached to Montgomery Clift's fish bowl cabana in the back yard. My grandmother seldom went outside, she was too pale and cool and didn't like the warmth of the sun on her skin and would teeter precariously on the end of the imaginary back porch and gingerly string her delicates out on the clothesline, the ash from her home made smoke free-falling off the end of her cigarette holder. The front yard of the house was overwhelming, roses and rhodos, giant daisys, and willow trees. Granddad had a double lot and had also bought the house next door with it's big lot and huge willow tree. No one trimmed the willows and their graceful limbs would woo little children in under a dreamy canopy of cinnabar green. There we'd lay on our backs and let our imaginations fly up through the ladders of branches up, up in to the great blue beyond. The roots of the great willow had bumped their way up through the green grass making cradles in the earth. And in that wholesome way children have of ransacking their environment we'd tear the slim branches off that swept the ground and make blankets and costumes out of them and so there we would lie wrapped in the arms of the giant willow and laying in the cradle she'd provided, and we'd dream in safety. I grew to love the music the tree made as the winds would shift, parts of the tree sounded a melody as the leaves moved in the breeze. On occasion in the summer a very windy day came around and I would run away to my secret place under the willow cocooned in a blanket of gentle arms and listen to a full orchestra of the green kind.

It was always me who went to the freezer with Montgomery Clift for the Neapolitan ice cream and on occasion I would walk with him along the railway tracks not far from our house. On these meandering silent trudges both of us sharing his blanket of sorrow, I felt a peculiar initiation taking place. It was my first introduction to the long silences where despondency lives, the catatonia of despair. This was the road in that Uncle Hughey had made and so this is how I first experienced that dreamy landscape, a lost soul at home. It was all in the eyes of Monty Clift the look of a ravaged spirit.

And then one day Uncle Hugh would just disappear and then he'd come around when he was short of cash. Soon his visits were non existent as the booze ate him up. Many years went by before any mention was made of my dark horse uncle. Finally, I'd gone to see Uncle Hugh because Clark Kent and Ernest Hemmingway said he was not long for this world and I felt relief for my Uncle Hughey and went to the halfway house to see him off. My mother and her celebrity brothers wore their yoke of tragedy like a lovely waltz when they got together branded as they were with that soulful kind of grace.

Uncle Hugh wore his grace like it belonged to someone else, it seemed to me everything he had always belonged to someone else, or what he had got taken away from him. He was teased mercilessly and the little movie stars liked to push him around. Then Hughey turned inward and so my mother Norma Jean says. Tahlula was a bit of a sorceress in her way and liked to air her bitterness and rage out by telling terrifying truisms to small children. Hughey sopped up the mess without complaining. Tahlula always took the call when Uncle Hugh phoned in from skid row with one of his stories and she'd quietly go to the drawer where the guilty money was kept to send Hughey off more cash.

One thing I know for sure that hearts broke for Uncle Hugh in the end and he'd said his good byes in the quiet way.

Norma Jean has only Paul Newman's hand to hold now, as the curtain came down some time ago for Montgomery Clift, Ernest Hemmingway, Clark Kent, Tahlula Bankhead, and Humphry Bogart. Heaven is a cool cool place called Skunk Hollow, where Tahlula has real gems in her cigarette holder and the cabbages grow tasty and big and there are beach glass bungalows for everyone.

Rhonda S

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My “Place” Persons tribute parody song

(sung to the tune of “Hey there Delilah” by ‘plain white “t’s”)

We all know a girl
Who lives in Victoria city,
She says our prayers and leads communion
And always looks so pretty
yes it’s true,
She sees right through to you
There are so few

She does ballet, jumps around and she likes cheese,
She loves everyone she knows
And is so good at saying please
When the time arise(s)
She wears her soul inside her eyes
It’s no surprise…

OHHHHH it’s Janet Doherty, OHHHH it’s Janet Doherty…
OOHHHHH it’s Janet Doherty, OOhhhh it’s Janet Doherty
She looks so pretty…….

We all know a guy
Who lives in Saanich city
He talks a lot and says big words
And often is quite witty
When it’s due
He thinks he might be smarter than you
It’s prob’bly true

He loves his wife and kids
God, lacrosse and hockey
It might not be in that same order
‘cause it’d make his life too rocky
Be his demise
He is a little disorganized
It’s no surprise

OOOOHHHHH it’s Pastor Randy, OHHHH it’s pastor Randy,
OOOOHHHH he loves Philosophy, Ohhhhh it’s Pastor Randy
He loves Theology…….

Bridge:
There are so many who work so well
At keeping us from going to hell
Every Sunday they give all their heart and soul….
They lead worship, teach and pray
Watch our kids without any pay
Good community is their only goal…..
They go to meetings without any fuss
Organizing stuff to include all of us
Even though it takes a lot of their time
They hardly get a dime……

OHHHHHHHH it’s Dr. James Prette
OOHHHHH it’s Jason Nassi
OHHHHH it’s either a Kingsley
OOHHH it’s Simon Prittie
It’s Penny or Kristy
It’s Janet Doherty
It’s anyone who ends with “ee”…
Anyone who ends with “ee”…

OHH , OH OH oh oh OOOOOOOoh oh OH OHHH, OH OH….
OHH , OH OH oh oh OOOOOOOoh oh OH OHHH, OH OH….

OHHH It’s Pastor Randy
he loves orthodoxy……

Launa Kremler

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Hear My Reply

Song fills the air:
A new melodious song,
An attempt to quench.
Your deep soft voice
Whispers to my soul,
  “Come and be baptized.
  Hear a new song,
  Leave the sea behind;
  I am the jungle.”

Chaos! Hear my reply.

The jungle cannot still
This melody of mine;
Instead, united as one,
We can joyfully sing
From nature’s awesome song.
My spirit soul sings
The song of the
Sea; the elapsing waves
Create my song’s melody.

Miles P

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Medusame

I could see him out of the corner of my eye. he was impossibly tall, grey ash all in a big sheet, like yesterdays news. moody. The breeze would kick his hips out when a hot burst of air gathered and stirred a tropical heat around the room. He smelled smoky and sweet, faint hot breath of jasmine. It was an old smell, something lost. I sensed he could see me and see me for what I was, and in the condition I'd been left.

The pythons shifted their weight.

I'd seen the snakes in my hair for the first time when I was five, and I pretended not to see.

The house was lurching and decrepit. The one my granny Viola shared with her brood of strange sons, it was a house of wax oddities. There was no light in the house and granny liked to keep the whole thing wrapped in plastic. My mother left me there while she worked, she'd married one of the sons.

Viola was a women who wore nothing but shades of purple, fully costumed everyday to accentuate her name and the creepy light of the wax house with its' blue TV screen light, illuminating two generations of frightening men.

Viola, in her mauve house dress with matching pinny intricately embroidered and immaculately ironed, Viola with her woolly mauve cardigans and the long braids done everyday and wrapped across the top of her head, one two and three times. It was a latticework of hair, shades of white and grey forming a steely crown, she was the queen of the stardust ballroom. It was a dance floor where no one ever shook a leg. Viola worked like a man in her wax museum of a house, her boys good for nothing, she had a favourite, though and by comparison unobtrusive and harmless even kind.

Uncle Mike, had a gardening shed where the sharps were kept sharp and artfully displayed along with two varieties of garden hose. Uncle mikes' garden was a Louisiana swamp, a copse of buggered fruit trees dripping with caterpillars . The floor of the garden nothing but deep furrows like the wrinkles on his face, my grandmother's face. The yard was Swiss chard, scarlet runner beans, potatoes and it was raining caterpillars. The ground was soaked with tobacco spit. I asked him for a pinch one day and he gave it to me, I was five. Uncle Mike also had homemade wine brewing in the basement and liked to give me some in a juice glass mornings to start my day, and then out into the dark garden we'd go. It was on one of those mornings I first noticed the snake. I could feel delicate lips kissing my brow the hiss of a wicked smile and I cocked my head a little and out of the corner of my eye the snake winked. Uncle Mike and I went to the shed for the tool he'd use to claw the stones and rocks back from the chard, dead bodies of naughty caterpillars heads smashed in, guts ripped out. It was on a morning in the swamp this hellish garden I shouted, "Hey Uncle Mike, there's a snake in my hair!". I gave it a yank, nope wouldn't budge, the snake liked it's new home and liked it fine. I could see the python the knowing smile, perfect ease - it was a dancer. Uncle Mike blushed the colour of cabernet and pretended not to see the snake - ignored me when I spoke. I'd said a bad thing. And then I could feel it, heart sinking shame rising, the snake coiled tighter around my skull. When I looked in the mirror I didn't see the angelic child with white blond hair, I saw hair out of place - a funny film of a girl. A life passing in celluloid. It was an act to be endured living this little girl's life, the dark secret circling around my head setting the knots in my hair.

That first summer, was the season of the caterpillar harvest, and the snake in my hair, a tiny white python to match the platinum curls of my head. And there I was this glowing creation standing in the deep furrows of the black soil where nothing would grow, because it was too dark and there was no sunlight allowed in. This was Medusa's garden.

Viola understood my desperation to rescue the dying caterpillars. Underneath the suffering fruit trees they would rain cats and dogs. The caterpillars decked out in their best faux fur would squirm in panic awaiting their fate in the form of a gardening tool, a claw raked over their backs, heads ripped mercilessly from their bodies and squashed unceremoniously under the clod hoppers of my Uncle Mike. It was a tragedy and a disaster of certain proportions to the girl with snakes in her hair and granny Viola gave her glass jars to put the caterpillars in to save them from their cruel fate. And forgot to tell her to poke holes in the lids. Soon all the caterpillars were loaded into the glass jars and displayed along the rail of the old back porch. After two days they had formed a stew in the oasis of calm I'd created in their glass houses the sun glinting off the torrid display of dead bodies. Undeterred a fresh generation of caterpillars was already snacking on the fugitive green of viola's dank garden plot - this time i poked the holes.

The snake smiled impishly as I worked, it knew something i didn't.

The others, the unviolated and safe would let their eyes land on the girl long enough to count to ten and then they had to look away, convinced she had the devil. That dirty secret. No one touched the girl, careful not to get within an arms length in case they would brush up against her. They wanted to ward off her advances , soon more snakes came and they grew there in the crown of her white blond hair, feeding on her shy smile.

She knew as she grew older the fairytales weren't real, no Santa Claus no Cinderella, no yellow brick road and no snakes in her hair. Her eyes were her enemies - she couldn't trust them.

This was an alternate reality and one she did not choose. The little girl had a hand mirror from Viola and she used to sit on the red vinyl chair in the kitchen dangle her feet and tilt the mirror in such a way as to take away the ground beneath her. A trick she learned while her legs dangled and her head swam.

It was the hydra, it was the black heart of Davey Jones locker. Medusa dove to the depths and took the pythons. They loved to swim. They craved the lack of oxygen and the hiss of strangled emotions.

Then the girl grew into a woman one day, carefully trained as no one’s lover, no one’s mother. She smiled and waved anyway, heart as sweet as a moon pie, large as the wooden roller coaster at the P.N.E. Her boyfriend took her on the ride 7 times, trying to give her emotion: crying, screaming, laughing, swearing. Her composure was in tact and the snakes were comfortable, content. She felt dizzy, a detached mysterious lost feeling of alarm somewhere in her gut, way down low. Medusa still kept her garden, dank and crawling. Medusa laughed lightly, she was beautiful and she new it and yet hideous, par boiled in solitude. Time meant nothing, she knew she would live forever that was her promise - an eternity with an itchy scalp.

Then came a day past the bloom of youth the Medusa looked in the mirror and saw the snakes, by this time she new she was crazy, they'd told her so. She felt alive now, rejection was the drug, an ugly obsession - she laughed out loud. Where'd those damn snakes come from, they were kind of pretty the way they would kiss her brow and hiss in her ear, ‘you got what you deserved', and she smiled at the revelation. This must be the truth and felt relief.

As she was looking at the reflection of herself in a plate glass window, admiring how the snakes could make themselves look like curls and coil in delightful shapes around the crown of her head she noticed the shape of a man. He looked like a spirit and he smelled of musk and oranges. She could feel him in the air and it grew heavy and a mist fell -the whiff of jasmine. Then he saw her, saw her hair with the snakes. The woman blushed and stammered, and he laughed a low laugh, like he'd seen this kind of thing before, like it didn't matter to him. When he spoke she heard every word and tried to understand what he said, his voice was like music and his words laid across her soul like myrrh poured from an alabaster flask. The snakes, grew intoxicated, the jasmine perfume loosened them up. Their eyes lolled up in their heads and they fell to the women's feet coiled like Uncle Mike's gardening hose.

Rhonda S

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The Beautiful Broken

Nonetheless,
         Emerging
From
The

   Brea- king

                To

The
Beautiful



             Bro- ken

Miles P

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Unconditional Love

Note: This piece spun out of Galatians and the Love Nest.

Unconditional love makes me think of angels, and not the mystical kind. Not the invisible ones who watch over us somehow through the bars of Orion. No these are tall and muscular, mighty, with gold or silver tipped wings. Wings with very fluffy feathers, and their robes are full and rich and yet light as air like chiffon or silk. They have beatific smiles with faces that remind us of our grannies or sweethearts.

The angels I think of when dreaming about unconditional love are also the plump Cherubim and Putti with creamy skin and silly smiles and yes some have tiny fiddles and little harps. They wear nothing but an unmade nappy that floats inexplicably over the angels' private parts, and they lit you pick them up and cuddle them like little children. These are the angels I imagine when I think of unconditional love.

Then I like to think of divine beings at a party. And all the angels are there: Cherubim, Seraphim and Putti are crowded together on the same fat cloud, milling around in confusion and mayhem. It's the Putti who are the mischief makers - they get emotional and the Cherubim are followers not leaders. Seraphim are naturally aloof and a bit vain. No rain, no wind, no biting cold, just a nip in the air, the aurora borealis not making much sense either, just sitting on the horizon, big blocks of light and colour, great walls of it, winking and fading on and off like fancy hotels. And the aurora makes noise too, like flute music and the angels pay no attention. They prefer their games - ping pong, and volley ball, and twister. The angels pay no attention to the music. They all gather up there like it was some kind of holiday and moved as they are by the breath of God they don't really know what holiday it is - why they are celebrating.

After they've gathered and teased each other a while someone gets the barbeque going and God sends over a platter of manna to do up, the kind that tastes good with sauce on it. Oh yes, God has a party when the sweet smelling incense of unconditional love wafts across His desk, makes Him set his pen down and close the book a moment on prayers that need to be answered. He gets philosophical, just a little, God that is. The angels know how to party and don't really care what the occasion is, and after the meal - God's sacrament and special communion meal with the Seraphim, Cherubim and Putti - they dance.

God and the angels dance around up there in the clouds to the music of the aurora borealis when one of the saints or sinners gripped by gravity puts out without expecting to get it back.

Rhonda S

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The Concession of beauty

If there was a moment in our brief conception we call life, that eclipses all other revelations its this, that beauty is the most revelant of all things humanity appreciates. I have found such beauty in things beyond the average scope of thought. Most would contend that beauty in itself is a man made creation, from the clothes we wear, to the bobbles which hang so perfectly from our extremeties. But there is a scope byond, a God given, Devine manufactured beautiful immaculate moving beauty. I once with a friend took an expedition to a waterfall which fed a stream, the snow had fallen, a blanket of purity to cover the scars of the earth. It must have taken more then a few millenia to carve its way through the rock face which it fell from, the spray from the water acting like a catalyst, a motion of molecules and atoms. I looked up and realized, that there werent many things that could compare to its ireverant perfection, water flowing in between the borrowed rubber boots i wore, to me the stream represented life, and the waterfall God. Forgotten, but always there, the Nourishment to sustain us through the unending pattern of exsistance. Beautifull and powerfull. We are taught in this society that things such as this fail in comparison to the life of greed we are equipped for in our young lives, that monetary gains and momentary pleasure that assist us in going through a colourless wilderness, full of envy and oasis's of deceit are more enthralling. We forget that christ was concieved in a moment of beauty, his life represented the extraordinary, a message which would change the world, and sometimes stain a beautifull painting with pitifull adaptation. There reaches a moment for all when beauty becomes relevant, because without it, where is passion or love, or compassion, or God... Some of the most beautfill creation was born of an imperfect canvas, Scars on a rockface carved to an imperfect Beauty.

Matthew J

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The Story

I saw it in her eyes, the pain which tells a story of rape. Her eyes, so beautiful filled with such a relentless fear told me she could never live it down. She would walk down the street, she would hear people calling her names, only seeing one thing she could offer and she believed it. She never thought she was more then what she was meant out to be, but no one ever bothered to say anything. At night she would relive the experience, nightmares, the scars and the mental ramifications. And each day a little more of her would die, she was just a shell of a person who once was; so happy so full of life, and hopeful. The scars which had long since healed left her feeling dirty, she would shower 3 times a day but they wouldn’t scrub off, she would scrub until it bled but nothing.

She was a beautififul girl, and at 19 she looked much older then she was, long dark hair and deep blue eyes, she had the classic hourglass figure and she was so beautiful to look at. She was in school to become an author; she wanted to write children’s books she was creative and very talented. She was named after the Goddess of Wisdom and war, Athena. Athena was never able to tell her parents what had happened to her, she believed they would think less of her, that they would reject her, just like her boyfriend did. Crying for most people alleviates the pain, but for Athena tears were a side effect of her pain, the tears would flow down her face making the make up run, the hopelessness when she cried was unbearable, But crying never helped Athena, it made the pain worse.

When I happened upon Athena she had been sitting in her usual spot at starbucks, her eyes relaying the pain of a young girl who’s innocence had been torn away, and as usual the crowds of young men had their eyes trained upon her as if she was an object. In usual circumstances I would have looked upon her, admired the seamless beauty she portrayed and continued on drinking my Grande Sumatra and thinking about ancient history. I suppose God himself tapped me on the shoulder. Because as my eyes strayed upon her, hers were locked upon me as well, and I was caught. Her eyes, spoke a story I had never known fully, but at that moment, I knew it was real.

For me I suppose the right words in the right circumstances just happen upon me, because something within myself informed me I had to tell Athena. I walked over to her, and as I looked upon her, I could feel what she felt, I could see him clearly, his body pushing against hers, tearing away at her. My eyes filled with tears, and they flowed freely, my heart had become heavy and I felt like I could lose the hotdog I had for breakfast. I struggled to overcome the sickness that had overtaken me, and I spoke to her. I asked her name and she told me “Athena”, I told her it was fitting for a Goddess. I looked into her eyes to relay the message that had happened upon me, “Athena” I said, “The pain in which you feel, is something I could never fathom. But I see it in your eyes clear as daylight, there are parables, which speak of Angels, sent by God to save the world. The pain they experience is nothing short of vile, but you must know that you are special, and an Angel, You will change others with the pain you have experienced. You will overcome, and you will experience some release, because he could never take away your being and your passion”. Athena looked at me, the tears forming in her eyes, she was unable to respond, but I saw that she understood. I was in complete awe, I couldn’t believe anyone as incredible as Athena could be defiled in such a way, and I don’t believe I will ever forget her beautiful eyes; tears flowing, the pain seemingly engulfing her.
It was a week later, when sitting in my usual spot, I saw her again. This time Athena was bold enough to come and talk to me. She asked if she could take a seat next to me, and ordered a cappuccino. To say the least I was amazed she wanted to talk to me, but my mind had needed a rest from the usual subject I was pondering, something about ancient Egypt. Athena sat, she took a moment to gather her thoughts, and she spoke. She asked how I knew what she was feeling, and why I would care. I replied that I saw in her eyes she holds a deep secret, the kind of secret, which tears at your being and causes you, to fall into yourself. I told her that I have seen that kind of pain kill people, I have seen it drive some to places they could have never imagined. It for instance, drove my sister to cocaine and prostitution at 14. And I never forgot the bruises she had from fistfights, and dates gone wrong. To her next question I replied that, I loved a girl who was like Athena, and who was so beautiful it took my breath away to think of her. I told her that, I was never able to tell her what she meant to me, and she ended up being used and hurt by various different guys, and that I swore I would never let it happen again. Athena thought about this as if maybe I had other motives, but seemed perplexed that I hadn’t made any remarks about the way she looked. Without needing the question, I said to her “Athena, I want nothing from you, but I want something for you, I want for you to be able to look outside and see the potential for you life, instead of the pain. I have no intention of trying anything that would cause you hurt in any way”. Athena accepted this.

I rang the doorbell, I was in disbelief that I was standing here, in all actuality I couldn’t believe that she had invited me to her door, but I was here. She had a small apartment, it was beautiful, and the suite in which she lived was part of an old Victorian home in the most beautiful part of town. Everywhere I looked, I saw inspiration, from the print of Mona Lisa, to the Oscar Wilde sitting on her table. I mentioned to her, the meaning behind the name Mona Lisa, that if one rearranges the name you would get Amon and Isis the male and female gods of fertility. She knew this, but was amazed that I did as well.

As we sat, I could smell the aroma of freshly brewed tea, I happened to glance out the window and I could see the ocean, with a slight breeze flowing through the trees near the causeway. At the same moment, Athena walked in and I could smell the perfume she always wore. We sat and drank tea in silence, finally as an icebreaker I asked what she was reading, she replied she had found Dan Brown quite intriguing and was reading demons and Angels. I of course had to mention the Da Vinci Code and the 76.5 million dollars it made, she then told me she knew this.

I could see the ancient in her eyes, and a power held there which I could only imagine ever happening upon. I remember when I was growing up my mother, an artist who doubled as a feminist had told me she had been raped. She told me, that every woman was special and perfect because they had the ability to make life and sustain it. All the women I had ever known whether they were of sound mind or not seemed to me, to be almost angelic. I had always wanted to see women as they saw the world, with emotion and compassion. And when presented with Athena I could see she lived this too, sometimes, she would sit in her little loft and read for hours, it seemed to be the only thing she was able to do that took the pain for a little while. She had tried smoking Pot and snorting cocaine, but the emptiness became a void, and the hurt seemed that much more intense. Athena and I chatted about politics, and different theories regarding the middle-east peace Process (we thought it was fruitless) and slowly settled once again, to Athena herself. I had never known a Girl who could captivate me as much as Athena, I found myself hanging off her every word, hungry for more. She spoke with an eloquence and sophistication that left me feeling envious, and when she smiled I could swear I was sinking.

Matthew J

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A Walk in the Thai Sun (a novel) - Chapter 1 by Greg M

Sam Watson peeled the tops back from two plastic cream containers and poured the contents of both into his coffee. This he stirred and then took out a cigarette and lit it. He took two long pulls and then gave his attention back to Jeff. His blond-haired green-eyed son was busy making adjustments to his carry-on bag. His hair was longish and parted down the middle, the two front ends curving inward like pincers whenever he leaned forward.
“You sure you don't want something?” Sam asked.
Jeff looked up. “They'll serve us something within an hour of lift-off and it's included in the airfare. I'll be fine until then.”
“You're too disciplined for your own good.”
Jeff smiled. “On our support level, you have to be.”
“Your father is willing to buy you a coffee and a piece of pie, you know, even at airport prices.”
“I know, Dad. But really I'd rather not, O.K.?”

“I'll bet you didn't even spend any of the money I've sent you the last Christmas.” Sam said.
Jeff said nothing.
“Well, did you?”
“I spent it.”
“On what?”
Jeff studied his father for a moment before answering. “Cassettes,” he said simply.
“Cassettes?”
“Yes.”
“Didn't you tell me you could buy good copies of pop albums for about a buck apiece in the markets over there?” Sam asked.
“Well, yes,” Jeff admitted.
“Now let's see... I sent you three hundred dollars. That means you bought three hundred cassettes?”
“Six, actually.”
Sam drank from his coffee, flicked the excess ash off his cigarette, and sighed. “That money was for you, Jeff,” he said.
Jeff gave his father a weak smile and said nothing.
“There are a lot of Asians here, you know,” Sam said. “At least half a million… maybe even a million. It’s not like you have to go…”
Jeff held up his hand. “I have a call, Dad, a call to work among the people of Thailand in Thailand. I have to go. Otherwise they’d all have to come here to hear the Gospel. Which is easier?”
“The call, ah yes the call…” Sam shook his head slowly. Why was it that his own son was the only person on the planet that made him feel completely helpless? “I’m sorry, Jeff,” he said.
“I’ll miss you too, Dad.”

* * * * *

Ute went out from the police box into the Thai sun. He could al-most feel his skin turning brown as he stood looking down the road. Brown skin was peasant skin, the skin of those who did their labors in the sun, the skin of those who had no future. He put on his hat. Ute was fair, with a wave to his thick black hair and a slight crook in his smile. It made his way with women easy, a bit of good karma.
A 90cc Honda motorcycle with a yellow-helmeted driver was approaching from the north. The combination was instantly recognizable, the young Christian missionary from Canada. He probably owned the only yellow motorcycle helmet in the entire province. He gave Ute a cheery wave as he passed by, on his way, no doubt, to the tiny Christian church in Khoksamrong. Ute had never been there but his friends had told him the church was full of lepers.
There was nothing else of interest on the road, only a song-taow that had stopped by a large mango tree to let off a passenger and her baskets of vegetables. The vehicle, a one-ton truck with two benches in the back and a canvas roof, was one of many that drove down the road at ten-to-fif-teen minute intervals picking up anyone who happened to be waiting. For five baht one could ride to Banmi, the next market town.
Practically everyone in this songtaow, a group of perhaps twenty, had disembarked to allow the woman's four bas-kets of veg-etables to be unloaded. She paid the driver and then turned to arrange her baskets in the shade by the side of the road. She sat beside them, put a plug of betel nut in her mouth, and began chewing, waiting for the next pedi-cab driver to happen by and take her, and her vegetables, to the village.
Ute looked back through the door into the police box. Kwanchai, his partner, was asleep on the bench. Ute sighed. Barring some major crime, the two of them would be off in an hour. It hadn't been much of a day: half a dozen traffic cita-tions and two one-hundred-baht “gifts” from logging trucks bearing illegal tim-ber. He had been doing traffic detail for nearly three months, his reward for challenging the “official version” of what happened when he foiled a gem shop robbery in Banmi a few months earlier. That version had given the credit to Lieutenant Lup Law, his superior, who wasn't even in town at the time.
Ute looked down the road toward the woman and her baskets again. There was a small pickup with a canopy bearing down on her from the oppo-site direction. It seemed to be heading right for her, but at this distance it was probably heat distortion rising from the road. He turned away. A sudden dis-tant screech brought his eyes back to the truck. One of the bas-kets, now empty of its vegetables, was rolling in a spiral towards the middle of the road. The woman was on her feet swear-ing at the driver of the pickup. The driver and a passenger got out of the truck to survey the damage. Ute climbed on his motorcycle.
The passenger shouted at the driver and pointed in Ute's direction. The driver saw Ute and bolted into the trees. The passenger glanced back quickly at the truck, hesitated, and then followed the driver. Ute pulled the motorcycle up beside the woman and shouted for them to stop. Neither man paid any attention and they were soon out of sight.
Ute watched them disappear. It seemed absurd to flee the scene of an accident when the only damage was a spilled basket of vegetables. He looked at the truck idling in the midst of squashes, cucumbers, and tomatoes.
“Did you see what he did?” the woman shouted. “Did you see?”
“Yes, madam, I saw,” Ute answered, still studying the truck.
“Well, aren't you going to chase them?” She asked, practically pushing her face into his. Years of chewing betel nut had reddened her gums, teeth, and lips to the point that her mouth looked like an open sore.
Ute turned away, walked behind the truck, and opened the canopy. In the back of the truck, pressed up against the cab were three full burlap bags.
“I said, Aren't you going to chase them?” the woman persisted.
“No, madam, I'm not.”
“Why not? They almost killed me and look what they did to my vegetables!”
“No backup,” said Ute simply. He crawled into the back of the truck and took out his pocketknife. The bags, he discovered, had two layers, the outer burlap and an inner layer of thick plastic. A small in-cision yielded a white powder. He took a small amount of the powder, rubbed it between his thumb and finger until most of it had fallen away, and then tasted it. A smile spread slowly across his face.
When he backed out of the pickup, he found the woman busy sal-vaging what she could of her vegetables. She did not even look at him as he mounted his motorcycle and started it up. Evidently she had decided that she would get no satisfaction from him. This suited Ute just fine.

“Kwanchai, Kwanchai! Come on wake up! There's something I want to show you!”
Kwanchai slowly sat up on the bench, shielded his eyes, and tried to focus on Ute's back lit form in the doorway. Kwanchai had stocky build, a cheap brush cut, and a thin red mark across his face where it had been in contact with the hard edge of the bench. He began rubbing this. “What's the matter?” he mumbled.
“I had a little fun while you were asleep. Come and take a look.” Ute turned and began walking toward the pickup. Kwanchai followed him out into the sun. Beside the pickup a pedicab driver was now helping an old woman load baskets of vegetables on to his three-wheeled bike. Even from this distance Ute could hear the woman's loud monologue about how useless the police were.
“What's her problem?” Kwanchai asked, catching up.
“The driver of the pickup lost control of his truck and knocked over one of her baskets. I saw the whole thing happen and, as I was riding toward them, the driver and his passenger ran into the woods. Wait until you see what I found in the back of the truck.”
The old woman glared at them as she mounted the pedicab. Ute ignored her but Kwanchai gave her an apologetic smile.
“Come and take a look at this,” Ute said, climbing into the pickup.
“What is it?” Kwanchai asked, peering at the burlap bags in the back of the truck.
“My ticket out of that box,” he said gesturing back down the road. He collected a little of the powder and put it in Kwanchai's palm.
Kwanchai sniffed at the powder. His eyes widened, “How much is there?”
“At least a hundred kilos,” Ute leaned back against the pickup and grinned.
“Don't you think we'd better get after them?” Kwanchai asked.
“On foot through that?” Ute gestured at the thick woods by the side of the road.
“Well...”
“Remember it's two on two and these guys were transporting heroin. They know the laws about that just as well as you do. Do you think they're going to put much value on our lives under the circumstances?”
Kwanchai frowned. “We'd better call in for reinforce-ments.”
Ute shook his head. “No. At least not yet. I want to make sure lots of people know who found this stuff before it gets back to Lup Law. Otherwise he'll take credit for the whole thing. Besides, it’ll take us at least half an hour to get backup out here. Those guys will be in Laos before then.”
Kwanchai looked doubtful and then nodded agreement. “So what do you want to do?”
Ute studied Kwanchai for a moment before answering. His partner had been in the police for seven years longer than he had. He was supposed to be the senior partner, to be in command. Ute smiled to himself. “Well, we'll have to get this truck back to the station, of course. Why don't you do that? The key's in the ignition. Tell them we'll file a report on it later and don't let on what's in the back. Then meet me over at Charlie's.”
Kwanchai considered this and then nodded slowly in agreement.

Lieutenant Lup Law made one last attempt to give his atten-tion to the pile of papers in front of him and then took out a cigar-ette and lit it. He placed the cigarette into the right-hand side of his mouth directly below two nearly parallel scars on his lower cheek, souvenirs from a dog attack when he was very young. He puffed on the cigarette for a few moments, then looked at the papers again. He fingered the new amulet around his neck. It was supposed to bring him luck.
“Lieutenant, sir?”
Lup Law released the amulet and looked over at Kwanchai stand-ing in the doorway. The officer bowed to him in a very self-depreciating way.
“What can I do for you, Kwanchai?” Lup Law asked.
“I have something I think you'd better come and take a look at, Sir,” Kwanchai said quietly.
“Really? What's that?”
Kwanchai's eyes seemed to search the wall for hidden menace. “I...I think you'd better just come and look, Sir,” he stam-mered.
Lup Law studied Kwanchai carefully. “All right. Where are we going?”
“Just down to the parking lot, Sir.”
“The parking lot?”
“Yes, Sir.”
Lup Law gestured for Kwanchai to lead the way and then followed the young officer down the back stairs that led to the parking lot.

“...and when they saw me coming toward them on the motor-cycle, they just ran into the woods,” Ute laughed. It was a long loud laugh fueled by too much drink. He had just spent two hours at Charlie’s telling and retelling the story. “So I thought to myself, why are they running from me when all they've done is knock over a basket of vegetables? The worst thing that could happen is that they would get a reprimand and a small fine. Hardly worth abandoning a truck for... So instead of giving chase, I decided to see what was in the truck.” He shook his head. “There's got to be a hundred kilos of heroin in there, Sir.”
“And where is it now?” Lup Law asked.
“It's still in the truck, and that's parked outside.”
“You just left a hundred kilos of heroin in a truck?”
“Well, Sir... It's only been there for a few minutes,” Ute lied. “And I didn't want to disturb anything in case you wanted to check for prints and things like that.”
Lup Law stood up. “Come on, then. Let's go take a look.”

It was now late afternoon and the midday heat was just beginning to dissipate. A few police officers had gathered under a shelter next to the station to smoke cigarettes and socialize. They watched Ute as he led the lieutenant across the parking lot.
“Is this it?” the lieutenant asked as he approached the truck.
“Yes. The stuff is in three bags in the back,” Ute said confidently.
Lup Law gave Ute a long sideways look before opening the back of the truck. He then opened the canopy and crawled in without hesitation. Ute looked across the parking lot at the men under the shelter. One of them gave him a little wave.
“Are you sure this is the right truck?” the lieutenant said from inside the canopy.
“Yes. Why?”
The lieutenant crawled out of the back of the truck and began dusting off his knees. “The bags are full of cement,” he said as he began walking back to the station.

* * * * *

Sam Watson felt for the keys in his coat pocket. Their edges were sharp, mildly irritating to his hands. They were made the previous day at the locksmith's, the third time he'd lost his keys in less than a year. He wondered why he found it so easy, these days, to think about such trivial things while working.
The photographer was busy snapping the girl’s body from a variety of angles. Sam could see her nose had broken and long enough before her death to allow some swelling to occur. Dried blood flaked from her lips and chin, and the angle of her left thumb told Sam it was dislo-cated or perhaps broken. Puncture marks were on both arms, partially hidden by long greasy black hair, hair that was matted with blood from the top of her head. She was fourteen, maybe fifteen. He stud-ied the face again: familiar somehow, but he couldn't place it.
Sam looked around for a weapon but there was nothing obvious. He shuffled his feet and felt one of them kick something, a cardboard box from a donut place. It was only one of several such containers that littered the floor of the room, surrounding the old mattress where they had found the girl. The only other piece of furniture was a wooden chair freshly painted bright yellow. On this were a few pieces of clothing and an old Radio Shack ghetto blaster. Sam popped this open and pulled out a cassette. This too was Radio Shack, with the words “Cowboy Junkies” hand-written on the label. He replaced it, closed the machine and looked around the room again.
The only new paint in the place was on the chair. The pale yellow walls were mottled with mold and the window was cracked. The main doorframe was bent and the area around the lock showed evidence of numerous past attempts at prying the door open. These days a good shove was all that was needed. Like many of the rooms in the hotels of Vancouver's eastside, what was inside would nor-mally have little need of security. This was the subsistence zone. You had to be pretty desperate to steal anything found here, but then desperation was the defining characteristic of the area.
“Do you know her?” asked a voice behind him.
Sam glanced over his shoulder at Collins, who had just entered the room. Collins was nearly twenty-five years Sam's junior, a college cop recently promoted to lieutenant “No,” Sam said simply. He lit a cigarette. “This was all we found when we got here. One of the other residents called in and complained about someone screaming and a lot of banging and crashing in the next room. We found the door to the room wide open and her lying there dressed only in a T-shirt. There was paraphernalia all over the place. Tony is next door talking to the guy who called.”
The two men stood aside as the paramedics placed the body on a stretcher and covered it. They watched silently as the paramedics carried her past them and into the hall.
“Just think, Watson, only three more months of this stuff.”
“Just think, Collins, you've got another twenty-five years of it, ”Sam said. “If you make it.”
“I'll make it.”
Sam studied Collins. The lieutenant was in his early thirties, but he'd been with the force nearly eight years. He was thor-oughly cop, both in his attitude and his social life. “Yeah, you probably will,” Sam said. He stepped into the hall and took one last look at the girl. As he did the covering slipped off her face. Then he knew.
“What's wrong?” Collins asked. “You look like you've just seen a ghost.”
“The daughter of a ghost,” Sam said almost inaudibly.
“What?”
Sam nodded toward the receeding stretcher. “Her name was Nicki. She was the daughter of a hooker I used to know back when they were all working Davies Street. Nicki was only four or five the last time I saw her. I guess that's why I didn't recognize her right a way.”
“The daughter of a hooker?”
“Yeah, a hooker,” Sam said. “Same one they found in the dump-ster down on Homer a year ago last June.” Her name was Sandy, he added mentally, and she was one of my few indiscretions as a cop. The kid was sleeping right in the room.
“Well, at least they got the guy,” Collins said.
“Didn't help the kid, did it?”
Collins said nothing.
In the silence Sam took his keys out of his pocket and looked at them. They all worked despite the fact that they looked nothing like the originals.
“New keys,” said Collins matter-of-factly.
“Oh, you’re good,” Sam said stuffing the keys back into his pocket.

* * * * *

Ute was no longer a person. His personhood had been given up when he entered the monastery six months earlier. He was now a phra, a monk, and he was counted with the Buddha statues, the amulets and other sacred things of Buddhism. He was a sacred object, a holy “it.”
He walked down the street, eighth in a line of twelve monks, carrying food bowls in the early morning. As a Buddhist monk, he had a right to food, to walk down the streets and alleys at dawn, and receive offerings of rice, fruit, and vegetables. A woman put a spoonful of rice in his bowl. He did not thank her or even look at her. He was simply fulfilling a function, acting as the means by which the woman earned good karma, and she understood that.
Ute tried to keep his eyes on the back of the monk in front of him. He was supposed to be dispassionate, to be unaffected by what went on around him. When the people looked at him, they were supposed to see a being walking along the road to enlightenment, but whenever his eyes strayed and he saw his reflection on the glass of the store front windows, he winced.
The line of monks slowly began making its way back to the monastery as the sun climbed higher in the sky. There they would eat the food given to them, receive spiritual instruction, medi-tate, do tasks around the grounds of the temple, and take care of stray dogs.

Ute walked slowly back to his quarters. He had eaten and he had listened to the Abbot talk about the impermanence of all things, about suffering and how it was the result of attachment to the impermanent things in one’s life. Now it was time to begin the meditations, to begin the various exercises that were designed to release him from his attachments. It was the part of the day he dreaded most. He could not attend to the sound of his own breathing, mull over the teachings of the Abbot, or in any other way quiet his mind. It was the best he could do to put on a mask of serenity to fool the others. When he assumed various meditation postures, and began the exercises, it was not peace that came. It was not a sense of calm. It was not detachment from the impermanent things in his life. What came was yet another replay of his loss of face before his fellow police offi-cers, the laughter. What came was Lup Law's amazing discovery of a single thirty-five kilo bag of pure heroin in a squatter's shack down by the railroad, his subse-quent appointment to the captaincy, and the arrival of a new B.M.W. that did not come with the job. What came to Ute was hatred and a desire for revenge.
There was nothing Ute could do to satisfy this desire. Everyone he knew feared Lup Law and, by himself, Ute could do nothing. So he strove to defeat the desire itself, to control it, to rise above it. For an hour and a half he grappled with it, trying to trick his mind into going elsewhere. He attempted to empty it of thought, grasped at every image of seren-ity he could think of, and finally forced himself to breathe so deeply that he nearly passed out.

Ute stepped out into the bright sun and squinted. When his eyes adjusted, he noticed Bom. The sixteen-year-old novice was sitting under a bo tree meditatively puffing on a cigarette, his legs arranged in the proper lotus style. Bom had been left in the care of the monks when he was only seven years old, and had grown up at the temple. He clung to Ute, hoping the former police officer would use his connections to find him a job so he could leave the place.
“Where are you going today?” Bom asked.
Ute did not answer immediately. He had several rotating des-tinations for his daily penitential walking meditations. “To the high school,” Ute said finally, knowing that Bom would want to come along no matter what he said.
Bom stood up. “Good place. Good place. I like to X-ray the girls as they come out of their classes.”
“I'll be walking without sandals and avoiding the shade,” Ute said.
“A little pain and discomfort to blot out the past?” Bom asked.
Ute said nothing and began walking through the hot dust toward the temple gate, all the while attending to the precise movements and sensations of his feet. Bom grinned, slipped on his sandals, opened his umbrella and followed.

“You know the first thing I'm going to buy when I get out of that place?” Bom asked, breaking a silence that had lasted nearly half an hour.
“No, what?” Ute asked reluctantly though his attempt at walking meditation was going poorly.
“One of those new Honda water-cooled scramblers!” Bom's eyes seemed to glaze over. “You can really sit high in the saddle on one of those things. You could hit a buffalo and go right over it without feeling a thing. A truly amazing bike!”
Ute smiled. “They're nearly 45,000 baht, you know,” he said.
Bom dismissed the fact with a wave of his hand. “I'll get the money somehow, even if I have to go into debt for the rest of my life.”
“You probably will,” Ute said as they neared the school.
There was a small restaurant across from the school gates. They sat in the cool under the awning and ordered two Pepsis. As monks they were not allowed to eat solid food after midday but liquids were permitted. The woman poured two iced bottles of Pepsi into plastic cups, handed them to the two monks and bowed before them. Ute and Bom ignored her. They were again being used by someone to earn good karma.
The students began to trickle out of their classes and make their way home. The young men wore black shorts and white shirts. Their names and the name of the school were sown in blue across the shirt pocket. Black socks in various stages of disintegration clung to their ankles and descended into brown canvas shoes. Their hair was cut short in the manner of a new military recruit.
The young women were also required to wear uniforms. They wore black or navy skirts that came down to just above the knee, white socks that were generally better preserved than those of the young men, black plastic shoes, and white blouses. Their hair was worn in straight bobs and not permitted to touch the collars of the blouses.
Bom kicked Ute under the table. “Look at that one!” he whis-pered. “Isn't she something else?”
The young woman was about sixteen, had a delicate but perfectly proportioned figure, huge eyes with long lashes and a bashful smile. She was the closest thing to perfection that Ute had ever seen and she was surrounded by young men who were behaving like buffoons. “Do you know who she is?” Ute asked.
“You mean you don't?” Bom asked in amazement.
“Should I?”
“That's Chiang, Lup Law's daughter.”
The color slowly drained from Ute’s face.

* * * * *

Captain Lup Law rolled his pen between his fingers as if re-hearsing a conjuring trick. The action betrayed the practiced cold attitude of the rest of his features. His daughter sat in one corner of his office sobbing. In another corner stood Tanait, her twin brother. The young man was bamboo thin almost to the point of emaciation. You would think I didn’t have the money to feed him, thought Luplaw.
“No, father, no! I can't do it. No!” Chiang sobbed.
Luplaw brought his attention back to his daughter. The Captain had arranged for Chiang to see the doctor at the hospital that morning. She had come to her father's office in-stead. “Listen to reason, Chiang,” he said in a subdued near-whisper. “It would ruin everything...”
“What are you talking about? I love him and I will not kill his baby!” Chiang shouted.
Lup Law closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “It's not killing,” he said quietly. “The baby has not yet been born. It has no life of its own until it's born.”
“Not according to the Abbott,” Tanait said.
Luplaw turned his attention to his son. “The Abbott? You went to the Abbott?”
“Yes. We asked him. He said that an unborn child has already experienced the transmigration of the soul and so to kill it would be a sin. It would break the Buddhist precepts.”
Lup Law looked hard at his son and then sighed. He was beaten. He could not be seen in public encouraging his daughter to get an abortion, not when the Abbott at the temple had declared it to be a violation of the Buddhist moral code. “All right,” Lup Law said, his voice now projecting. “If that's what the Abbott has said, then we must keep the child.”
Chiang looked at her father blankly for a moment before real-izing that she had won. “Thank you, father,” she said simply and bowed to him, a smile beginning to grow on her face.
“Now, you go home and get some rest. I have work to do here.” Lup Law followed his daughter to the office door and watched as she walked down the hall toward the stairs that led to the ground floor. He turned back to Tanait.
“This did not involve you,” he said.
“I didn’t want you to make a public mistake,” Tanait said.
“You don’t achieve a position like mine by making mistakes,” Luplaw said. He moved to the window and watched as Chiang emerged from the building, and climbed into the back of a pedicab beside Ute.

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LPC and the ‘hood

A group of 10 to 15 of us met for 5 weeks in the fall to talk about Eric Jacobsens’s book Sidewalks in the Kingdom and think a bit about neighbourhood, community and our Church.

Our last week became a rich discussion about LPC’s calling as a church and what our building needs are to meet this calling. We also talked about how church buildings in the 70’s were very functional and how we could improve a sense of beauty not just for Sunday services, but for the building as a whole – the idea of a dedicated chapel with maybe some stained glass came up.

With Engagement on our minds as well as our recent learning about difficulties in creating community in suburbia and new approaches to urban development, we brainstormed about how Lambrick could become more involved/connected to its neighbourhood. Here is some of that discussion:

In thinking about who lives in our neighbourhood (keeping with the definition of a neighbourhood being a 5 minute walk from edge to center), we remembered that there is a Seniors Center right across Feltham from us. There is also Lambrick Park High, the Middle School, and community sports fields very nearby. We thought about the United Church on Feltham, the Anglican Church on San Juan, the Catholic Church on Gordon Head and wondered what kind of joint activities or services we could offer to our neighbourhood.

We dreamed about buying up property around the Church for a housing project, maybe with a bent to university students – who knew about the large vacant lot on the other side of Tyndall? What about our community garden project – or is this something that works better in a high density neighbourhood? Could we host a Gordon head “market” of some kind in the LPC parking lot in summer or fall? How about jazzing up our sign out front to let more people know we are here. And if we had mixed Place and AM Service geographic-based small groups wouldn’t that facilitate carpooling as well as build local community in the Church and throughout Victoria?

What got most of us excited was the discussion about creating a permanent Community Café with internet access, that would be open to the community during the week. The café could be a gathering place in Gordon head, as well as serving:

* pre-school parents dropping kids and picking them up from Wiseways, as well as parents attending sporting events on Saturdays;
* maybe a source of lunch for high school kids as well as the seniors across the street; and
* could provide work for university students.

One of the unique features could be access to a dedicated chapel that would be open to people throughout the week for quiet prayer, reflection or meditation.

There are of course, lots of things that work against the idea, including zoning, finding an entrepreneur with the vision, changes to the building… But we think it is worth some further discussion and exploration. If you would like to join us in that, talk to Margot Spence, Heidi Fandrich, Ross Porter or Doug Makaroff, or James Kingsley and we will make sure you get the details about when we hope to meet in February.

Margot S

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Hope Anew

Gazing to earth from outer space
Trapped inside my lonely place
Something has me in a daze
Peace is shrouded in a haze
I want to, see it, touch it, feel it

Miles P

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Dear John, I'm off to Africa

How many people here have been in a serious relationship? I am not talking about flings but serious relationships that get in to the nitty gritty of the two people involved, maybe even 3 if you are a polygamist. After awhile there comes a point where you need to decide do I want to marry this person. Some simple questions that might go through a women’s head are

- Do I see myself spending the rest of my years with this person?
- Will this person be able to support me or would I want to support
them?
- Do we have the same values?
- Do we have the same goals?
- Have I done my part to save the world before I get married?

Believe it or not I have seen many great relationships end based on this last question. Let me explain. A lot of relationships end, there is no doubt, some just are not meant to be. But sometimes relationships end for odd reasons, like “ I think you are a great guy, you have so many qualities... I just don’t see marrying you because I need to go off to Africa, it has always been my dream and I really feel like god has called me there” Some of you may be laughing, but this actually happens. For most guys who hear this the first question that goes through there head is “ I have never even heard you talk about Africa”.

Being that I can account for at least 10 relationships where this has happened I am beginning to wonder, why isn’t Africa rampant with white evangelical women? So many of them are “called” to be there. You would think with the amounts of women who talk about it there would almost be an epidemic of women there. Is there?

I want to set something straight, life doesn’t end when you get married. Just because it ended for you mother doesn’t mean it has to for you. Marriage can be a beautiful thing, where two peoples paths intersect and they start a new journey, a journey carved out between them and hopefully God. I would hate to think that the person I choose to marry one day would
wake up one day and feel like they didn’t get a shot at living the life they wanted. Did you know they make planes that can carry more than 1 person at a time, maybe just maybe that person might also want to go to Africa...

Warren Bitenko

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God and Time

There is, at the moment, orbiting above us a relatively small but extremely sophisticated optical instrument known as the Huble space telescope. Scientists put the Huble telescope into orbit because with it they could have an unobstructed and undistorted view of the cosmos. Earth bound telescopes have a problem in that their instruments have to cope with distortions and obstacles that come with the earth's atmosphere but the Huble telescope is above the atmosphere so it has a has a clear view. So, even though it's many times smaller than the major telescopes on earth, the Huble telescope nevertheless allows scientists to see much deeper into space.

Previous to the advent of the Huble telescope scientists believed, based on very careful calculations, that the universe was about 15 billion years old. But the Huble telescope was able to see so much further into space that scientists are now saying that the number is probably closer to 20 billion. They also say the Earth is about five billion years old, that dinosaurs flourished on the earth for 250 million years and died out about 65 millions years ago and a recent discovery has them now saying that anatomically modern human beings appeared on the Earth something like 160 thousand years ago. Those are numbers that play havoc with the world views of many Christians. Many if not most of us believe in a relatively young Earth and the more conservative among us believe that the Earth and the universe for that matter were created by God about 6 thousand years ago based on a their understanding of scripture. To arrive at that figure you take the statement in Genesis that God created the heavens and the Earth in 6 days as meaning six literal 24 hour days. Then you take the genealogy in Luke's gospel and calculate the time for each generation and add that to the nearly 2000 years that have passed since Jesus' death and resurrection you will wind up with figure somewhere around six thousand years for the age of the universe. Some Christians take Peter's statement in 2 Pet 3:8 that one day is like a thousand years for God to mean that God created the Earth in six thousand years. That would double the previous figure to 12 thousand years. Still there is quite a discrepancy between 12 thousand and 5 billion years.

Now there are really two problems here. The first of these concerns the way that science interprets its data and the other, I believe, may be the various Christian understandings of the way time functions in the Bible. I am not a scientist so I am not going to address the way that scientists come to the conclusions that they do, I'll leave that to Christians who are scientists, but I am a Bible student. I do have theological training and I've spent a lot of time studying Biblical interpretation. And one of the biggest problems confronting anyone who seriously studies the Bible is the whole question of how time and words related to time are used in Scripture. Today I would like to talk about some of these problems and more specifically to talk about God's relationship to time. I've entitled this talk "God and Time" because the key to understanding time in the Bible is understanding God's perspective on time.

The first Bible verse I would like to look at today is John 8:58. It’s a very short but important verse. "I tell you the truth", Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am".

This verse occurs at the end of a long section in John's Gospel in which Jesus is defending his authority to do the things he is doing against attacks on his personal integrity from the Pharisees and other Jewish leaders. In much of this passage Jesus talks about his own person and his relationship to God the Father. When he finally says "I tell you the truth, before Abraham was born, I am" the people decide to stone him because with this statement Jesus comes very close to claiming to be God. In Hebrew the words "I am" sound very close to the words for "The Lord Almighty". Jesus was probably speaking Aramaic at the time, which is a close sister language to Hebrew, so the effect would have been much the same.

What I'd like to do with this verse, however, is to take it out of it's context for a moment and look at it grammatically. Those of you who know me well will know that creative writing is a passion of mine. Therefore I tend to be quite sensitive about the correct usage of the English language, particularly with regard to writing. And this sentence is grammatically incorrect because Jesus is mixing his tenses. The first part of the sentence is in the past tense and the second part of the sentence is in the present tense. Its that way in the Greek too. If it was grammatically correct the sentence would read, "Before Abraham was born, I was". But that's not what it says. It says before "Abraham was born, I am." To us this is a clear grammatical problem because our existence is governed by linear time. We have moved from the past into the present and we will move from the present into the future. We're on a time line that is continually moving forward. Our use of language reflects this fact of our existence. But Jesus does not say "I was" when referring to the past here, he says "I am". And in doing so he reveals that his relationship to time is not the same as ours.

This is not the only place an "I am" statement occurs in relationship to God. In Exodus 3:14 God uses it in response to a question from Moses about his name. It reads "God said to Moses, "I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I am has sent me to you." Now this is a very important Bible verse Jewish people because it is how God chose to identify himself before leading the Jews out of Egypt. It is also why the Jews were so offended by Jesus's use of the words "I am" because by doing so he identified himself as God.

The Exodus passage is odd because God answers Moses' question about his name with a simple statement of existence. I am, I exist, I am present. What a strange thing to say in response to a query about your name. Presumably Moses already knew that God existed other wise he wouldn't be taking to Him would he? Actually, at this point, Moses was talking to a burning bush, a bush that although it was burning was not being consumed. So Moses knew he was talking to an entity with supernatural power. And God had already identified him self to Moses as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. So Moses already knew what He was. What he didn't know was who he was. He wanted a name. And God identified himself with the simple statement of existence, "I am."

If you asked me my name you would not only get a name but you would get a history. Every part of my name has a historical context and I suspect the same is true of everyone's name here. In my case you get Gregory, a name my parents liked and chose to give me, you get John, a name that has been given to every first born male in my family tree for the past four generations, you get Clark which is my mother's maiden name and you also get McKitrick, a Scottish name that has been traced back 600 years to the Ettrick forest in Scotland. But God does not give Moses a name that has a historical context. He gives him a simple statement of existence, "I am". Because God has no history.

Now wait a minute, Greg, you say. What about all those things that God did that that are described for us in the Bible? Those are historical events. From our perspective, yes, but from God's perspective they are not. Because the Creator of the Universe not only created the Universe and everything in it, He also created time. And just as God exists separate from his creation and is not part of it, his also exists separate from time and it's passage. In Malachi 3:6 God says, "I the Lord do not change." He means that statement quite literally. Change is a fact of our existence brought on by the passage of time but it is not a factor in God's existence because God is outside of the passage of time. He exists in a perpetual non-changing present tense. The "I am" in these two passages is a simple statement of his non-changing outside-of-time existence.

When you think about it, this has to be the case. God can not be an all-knowing God unless he has the whole picture. When you and I pray there are probably thousands if not millions of Christians praying at exactly the same time. Ever wonder what kind of computer God has that allows him to handle all that simultaneous input? He handles it because he has and controls the whole picture. Not only is God aware of all our prayers simultaneously, He is simultaneously aware of every prayer that has ever been spoken in the past and every prayer that will be spoken in the future. He is simultaneously aware of a butterfly flittering across the Nile 2000 years ago, how each of you is receiving this message right now and what the descendants of my children will be doing in a hundred years time. God sees all of creation including the entire passage of time. And he sees it all at once because he is an all-knowing God. What all this means is that's God's perspective on the passage of time is very different from our own.

There are a couple of passages in the Bible that touch on this problem. The first is PS 90:4 which is in a psalm written by Moses and reads "For a thousand years in your sight is like a day that has gone by or like a watch in the night." The other verse is 2 Pet 3:8 which I referred to earlier and which reads "With the Lord a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day." Both of these verse point to the problem of our perspective on time being different from God's.

2 Pet 3:8 is particularly interesting because it was written very near to the time of Peter's martyrdom around 67 A.D. By that time the Christian Church had been expanding for over thirty years and for much of that time the Apostles had been talking about the imminent return of Christ. They had been telling the Christians that Jesus would return soon. There are several places in Apostle Paul's writing, for instance, in which he talks about the return of Christ as if he expected the event to happen during his lifetime or at least during the life time of his fellow Christians. He doesn't come right out and say this will be the case but it is clear that he expects it. In Rom 8:23 Paul says "We wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies." In Phil 3:20 he says "Our citizenship is in Heaven and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ”. You don’t wait for something that you don’t expect to happen in your life time. I am not waiting for the birth of my children’s grand children because it doesn’t make any sense for me to wait for an event I’m unlikely to see. Paul is not only waiting, he is waiting eagerly for an event that he clearly sees as immanent. In I Thes 4: 13-18 it's even more obvious. In this passage he is talking about what will happen to people who believe but die before the return of Jesus. It reads "Brothers we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a load command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that we who are still alive and are left will be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever." And it's not just Paul. James 5:8 reads "Be patient and stand firm because the Lord's coming is near". And of course at the end of the Book of Revelation in verse 22:7 we have Jesus saying "Behold I am coming soon!" So the expectation that Jesus would return during the life times of the early Christians was very real. And so in 2 Peter 3:8 the apostle is addressing a problem that had begun to show up in the early Christian church, that of unfulfilled expectations. And his way of addressing this is to simply point out that God's perception of time is very different from ours. "With the Lord a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day."
In the book of Revelation we have Jesus saying "Behold, I am coming soon" and yet here we are 1900 years later and he has not returned. Now I'm sorry but from my perspective 1900 years is not a short period of time and were Jesus to return today I would not say that he returned soon based on his statement in the book of Revelation. 1900 years later is not soon from my perspective and that's where the problem lies. There are statements about time written in the Bible which are written from the perspective of an all-knowing all-seeing God who stands completely outside the passage of time. He simply sees time differently than we do and that means we have to be very careful when it comes to interpreting time statements in the Bible. 1900 years may in fact be too soon from God's perspective. And the only human beings that I can think of who would see 1900 years as a short passage of time are astrophysicists, geophysicists and paleontologists, the very people who say that the universe is 20 billion years old, that the earth is 5 billion years old and that dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.

When my son Sam was three years old we had a little drill we used to use to teach him about the family. We'd hold up one hand and we'd use fingers to represent the members of our family. This is Sam, this is Daddy, this is Mommy, this is Isaac and we'd include Jesus in the family by making him the thumb. We'd make a fist and say, "see how Jesus holds our family together?" Sam got quite good at reciting this little explanation. One day Sam and Isaac were out on the landing playing in a basin of water. They'd been at it quite a while when Sam suddenly burst in the house all excited and ran up to me. "Look Daddy, "he said holding up his hand," Mommy is wrinkled, Daddy is wrinkled, Isaac is wrinkled, Jesus is wrinkled! He found the idea that Jesus could be wrinkled utterly amazing. Yet this is one of things that we, as Christians, have to deal with when we consider the person of Christ. That for a brief period of time The Lord of the Universe allowed his Godhead to take on human limitations, including the problem of having his skin becoming wrinkled if he stayed in water too long. "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." And because God did this we are now able to approach His throne, enter into a relationship with Him and receive forgiveness for our sins.
God's decision to become human, however, presents an interesting problem for us with regard to the things we have been considering. Because if God exists outside of time, what does that say about the person of Jesus in whom God took on human limitations? Because if Jesus was truly human then he has to have functioned within the same parameters as each of us function. He would have to have lived his life in linear time, going from one moment to the next and changing as a result of his fleshly experience. And in fact that's exactly what happened. Both the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew give us accounts of his birth, and Luke also tells of an incident that occurred at the temple when Jesus was twelve. So we know that he went through the human experience of being born and growing up. However most of what we have in the gospels deals only with the last three years of Jesus's adult life. Nevertheless we know that he experienced hunger, pain, fatigue, thirst, weakness and other aspects of human physical existence. And we know he also experienced a variety of human emotions, including joy, sorrow, compassion, humiliation and the feelings of being betrayed and abandoned. To go through all of Jesus's human experiences we would need to read through the four gospels, but I'm going to assume that most of your have already done that or are at least aware of the basic facts of his life.

The problem is that these are historical events and, as I mentioned earlier, God has no history. I pointed out that God exists outside of time and I quoted Mal 3:6 where God says, "I the Lord do not change." There is also a parallel verse in Hebrews 13:8 that refers specifically to Jesus. It reads "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." It's an interesting problem because we have the accounts of the historical acts of Jesus set against the idea that he has never changed, that he remains the same, yesterday, today and forever.

Again what we have here is a problem of conflicting perspectives, ours and God's. Because from our perspective every thing that happened in Jesus life is historical, an aspect of the linear time that governs our lives. But, remember God has the whole picture. You and I see time from a point on a line on which the past is behind us, the present is now and the future is ahead. God sees everything that has happened, is happening and will happen at the same time because He is outside of time. For him it is one big picture. What this means is that God knows, has always known and will always know every aspect of Jesus' life.

Now here's the interesting part, even though it is true--and I will not pretend I understand exactly how this worked; its one of those mysteries that we will understand more fully when Jesus returns--even though it is true God has the whole picture and sees time in its totality, when he became Jesus he had to step back from that. Now exactly how he did this, by somehow dividing himself up so that God the Father, who has the whole picture outside of time co-existed with God the Son who took on human limitations and became part of creation, we don't know. But we do know that Jesus, when he was on the Earth, was totally human including a linear perspective on time. Or to put it more simply Jesus, during his early ministry, was not all knowing. He had limitations. Even with his limitations his knowledge was far greater than any of us, but he never-the-less had limitations. Let’s consider Matt 24:36. This verse occurs near the end of a lengthy discourse given by Jesus on the end times. God the Father had given Jesus the Son a prophetic understanding of the things to come but he had not given him a total understanding. Jesus says, "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven nor the Son, but only the Father." So we know that Jesus, during his earthly ministry, did not have the whole picture. He had very human time limitations.

I'd like to read one more verse where this limitation is clearly evident but I'd like to read it in the context of a much longer passage. The verse in question is Mark 15:34 but I'd like to start way back at Mark 14:27 and read from there.

27"You will all fall away," Jesus told them, "for it is written:
" 'I will strike the shepherd,
and the sheep will be scattered.'[a] 28But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee."
29Peter declared, "Even if all fall away, I will not."
30"I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "today—yes, tonight—before the rooster crows twice[b] you yourself will disown me three times."
31But Peter insisted emphatically, "Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you." And all the others said the same.
32They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, "Sit here while I pray." 33He took Peter, James and John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. 34"My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death," he said to them. "Stay here and keep watch."
35Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. 36"Abba,[c] Father," he said, "everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will."
37Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. "Simon," he said to Peter, "are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? 38Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak."
39Once more he went away and prayed the same thing. 40When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. They did not know what to say to him.
41Returning the third time, he said to them, "Are you still sleeping and resting? Enough! The hour has come. Look, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 42Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!"
43Just as he was speaking, Judas, one of the Twelve, appeared. With him was a crowd armed with swords and clubs, sent from the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the elders.
44Now the betrayer had arranged a signal with them: "The one I kiss is the man; arrest him and lead him away under guard." 45Going at once to Jesus, Judas said, "Rabbi!" and kissed him. 46The men seized Jesus and arrested him. 47Then one of those standing near drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear.
48"Am I leading a rebellion," said Jesus, "that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me? 49Every day I was with you, teaching in the temple courts, and you did not arrest me. But the Scriptures must be fulfilled." 50Then everyone deserted him and fled.
51A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, 52he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.
53They took Jesus to the high priest, and all the chief priests, elders and teachers of the law came together. 54Peter followed him at a distance, right into the courtyard of the high priest. There he sat with the guards and warmed himself at the fire.
55The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death, but they did not find any. 56Many testified falsely against him, but their statements did not agree.
57Then some stood up and gave this false testimony against him: 58"We heard him say, 'I will destroy this man-made temple and in three days will build another, not made by man.' " 59Yet even then their testimony did not agree.
60Then the high priest stood up before them and asked Jesus, "Are you not going to answer? What is this testimony that these men are bringing against you?" 61But Jesus remained silent and gave no answer.
Again the high priest asked him, "Are you the Christ,[d] the Son of the Blessed One?"
62"I am," said Jesus. "And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven."
63The high priest tore his clothes. "Why do we need any more witnesses?" he asked. 64"You have heard the blasphemy. What do you think?"
They all condemned him as worthy of death. 65Then some began to spit at him; they blindfolded him, struck him with their fists, and said, "Prophesy!" And the guards took him and beat him.
66While Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the servant girls of the high priest came by. 67When she saw Peter warming himself, she looked closely at him.
"You also were with that Nazarene, Jesus," she said.
68But he denied it. "I don't know or understand what you're talking about," he said, and went out into the entryway.[e]
69When the servant girl saw him there, she said again to those standing around, "This fellow is one of them." 70Again he denied it.
After a little while, those standing near said to Peter, "Surely you are one of them, for you are a Galilean."
71He began to call down curses on himself, and he swore to them, "I don't know this man you're talking about."
72Immediately the rooster crowed the second time.[f] Then Peter remembered the word Jesus had spoken to him: "Before the rooster crows twice[g] you will disown me three times." And he broke down and wept.
Mark 15
1Very early in the morning, the chief priests, with the elders, the teachers of the law and the whole Sanhedrin, reached a decision. They bound Jesus, led him away and handed him over to Pilate.
2"Are you the king of the Jews?" asked Pilate.
"Yes, it is as you say," Jesus replied.
3The chief priests accused him of many things. 4So again Pilate asked him, "Aren't you going to answer? See how many things they are accusing you of."
5But Jesus still made no reply, and Pilate was amazed.
6Now it was the custom at the Feast to release a prisoner whom the people requested. 7A man called Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising. 8The crowd came up and asked Pilate to do for them what he usually did.
9"Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?" asked Pilate, 10knowing it was out of envy that the chief priests had handed Jesus over to him. 11But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have Pilate release Barabbas instead.
12"What shall I do, then, with the one you call the king of the Jews?" Pilate asked them.
13"Crucify him!" they shouted.
14"Why? What crime has he committed?" asked Pilate.
But they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!"
15Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.
16The soldiers led Jesus away into the palace (that is, the Praetorium) and called together the whole company of soldiers. 17They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him. 18And they began to call out to him, "Hail, king of the Jews!" 19Again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and spit on him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him. 20And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him.
21A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country, and they forced him to carry the cross. 22They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means The Place of the Skull). 23Then they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. 24And they crucified him. Dividing up his clothes, they cast lots to see what each would get.
25It was the third hour when they crucified him. 26The written notice of the charge against him read: THE KING OF THE JEWS. 27They crucified two robbers with him, one on his right and one on his left.[h] 29Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, "So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, 30come down from the cross and save yourself!"
31In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. "He saved others," they said, "but he can't save himself! 32Let this Christ,[i] this King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe." Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him.
33At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. 34And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"—which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"[j]

You see when Jesus asked God why he had been forsaken this was not a rhetorical question. It was not a question that he already knew the answer to. One does not ask a rhetorical question when one is bleeding to death from having been nailed to a cross. Rhetorical questions are the stuff of intellectual discourses and are not spoken amid the agonies of the most painful death imaginable. Because even though Jesus knew he would be crucified, there was something about that horrible experience that he had not been prepared for. Something that made him ask "Why, God?" Just like many of us have when something goes terribly wrong in our lives. It is a question that comes right out of the humanness of Jesus. It is question that each and every one of us can relate too. So we have in Jesus a God who understands our humanity not only because he created it but also because he experienced it, he lived it and died it. But I'm taking in the past tense here and God has no past tense.

The apostle Peter says in 1 Pet 3:18 "For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous (dying for) the unrighteous, to bring you (all of us) to God." This statement of Peter’s is also in the past tense. Peter is stating a truth about what Jesus did for us in human terms. But from God's perspective there is no past tense. Jesus died on the cross nearly 2000 years ago to save us from our sins. We are grateful to him for having done that because we who believe in him are receiving the gift of eternal salvation. And every Easter we take special pains to remember what he did for us all those years ago... But God has no past tense. We remember what Jesus did for us on the cross but God, who sees the whole time picture, right now in his continual present tense is continually aware of every second of the agony and humiliation that Jesus suffered. That why Jesus could die on the cross once and achieve eternal forgiveness of sins for each of us, because from God's perspective that act never goes away. It's front and centre in His all-knowing consciousness. It's something he went through when he took on human limitations in the person of Jesus, but it is also continuous present tense for a God outside of time. So when we read in Hebrews 13:8 that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever”, we are reading a statement that has a divine and not a human perspective. We can rejoice in what that means for our salvation, but we also need to thank God for what He is continually going through on our behalf.

Greg M

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