Fog lay still in every space between people, counters, and tables . . . a hanging sparse and lazy gray, utterly unnatural against a vibrant backdrop of orange-lit, greasy air. Darren lounged in a glittery booth, slumped into its firm red cushion, thumbing dismissively across the face of his large iun like one might peruse a magazine in a waiting room. Mo and Ray sat across.
“How’s your relationship with God?” snapped Mo, his voice cutting like a warm knife through surrounding chatter as if to pierce Ray’s face at its nearest edge.
Ray remained still, choosing not to run with the first or second streams of thought that fought to trickle through. He saw the ways each response could be interpreted.
“I guess,” Ray began, almost smiling in concession as he glanced across from Darren back to Mo, “my relationship with God is, sort of, everything. It’s my whole process, y’know? How I see every… I mean, with what I’ve been working on all these years . . . the way it comes together . . . it’s like destiny, or a calling, or something. I don’t know if that makes sense.” Ray watched as his words were met by Faith’s incomparable light and made to glow hotter and brighter than stars shining through doorways to connected universes. The words and light swept outward together, reaching everywhere they could in nearly matching swoops and eddies.
And as he saw the conversation play out in time and other textures, Ray almost watched himself marvel at the fact that nothing at all had changed. Of course, the not-a-persons, fog, and all the rest had really been there all along, since decades or lifetimes before that night of strange anguish and breaking near The Church. Seeing anew served only to partly ease the effects of an old unrest, which sought now to clamor and tremble in every space . . . even to where ancient winds blew free through caverns sacred deep and secret dark.
“You have it backwards!” exclaimed Mo, his voice rising to monopolize more real estate in the busy crowded fast food restaurant air.
“I think what Mo means,” ventured Darren, speaking slow and sweet, “is it’s cool you have a process and everything. And you’re working on something, um . . . mysterious?” Mo and Darren shared a quick glance. “But—”
“But it’s not about your process!” concluded Mo. “Use your process for God, to spread the gospel. Truth does not warp to fit your process. That’s backwards!”
Faith and Ray might have made eyes then as well, if such were possible. And Ray felt a fluttering near his chest . . . a rapid river cresting in deep swells of warring unease as it was wrenched into every ironic shape like a best friend’s cutting words, slicing through in mirror shards across dimensions to draw the only truly intolerable pain. It was more than known that this pain would kill every single part of Ray if either fought or left to fully run its course.
Ray looked over again at Mo and loved him. For there was a sudden hazy sense of standing tall and fighting through anything to prize and defend the value of everything seen lit by narrowed beams. As empires and worlds to come must suffer violence to be taken by force, there would surely be a place up at the very front for Mo to reach, and win, and there be set to govern entire sets of thronging mobs.
Only a matter of time.
“Maybe you’re right,” Ray sighed, accepting something close to fate for not the first time as he witnessed every attempt to reveal or defend . . . or to argue for worlds housing unlimited prizes and endless places in boundless kingdoms . . . fail in advance at all but bolstering Mo’s resolve to dig in deeper and sacrifice more in defense of his devotion and its happenstance borders. And though it hurt how no words could give either of Ray’s friends ears to hear from his wounded heart, it was also okay.
“Dude!” encouraged Darren, “God is bigger! Whatever you’re going through right now, it won’t be enough to keep Him from reaching you and dealing with . . . whatever this is . . . and bringing you back!” Ray was not surprised at all to see on Darren’s face the exact expression of pure love and compassion as held on the faces of Grace and Friendship, identical.
And from where Ray watched, even automatic questions, which arose like a sea of snapping traps, seemed somewhat entertaining . . . the strings of perfectly predictable queries piling up like glitching pixels, demanding as always to know why him, and why was he so different, and why, why, why… And maybe Ray already knew. Maybe…
For a moment, he was with The Psychologist again, floored by gratitude just for having someone to talk with about all these new developments, not really new at all. The timing, of course, seemed too perfect to be a coincidence.
And still seeing The Psychologist as he watched his own gleaming words glide through to soften the teeth of hungry, gnawing, silent ponderings, Ray wondered if there might be others like him hidden off in secret spaces of their own, ready to accept what they too had likely seen along, and to…
Maybe one day Faith’s light could reach everywhere.
Glancing up into the kind, knowing eyes of Grace, Ray did not have to decide to believe the best of Darren and Mo.
All at once, he became oddly aware that he might in fact actually be this particular person seated at this booth in this restaurant, half involved in this conversation.
Was this really his life? Was he the one having these thoughts? Why?
And so many of The Pastor’s stories came alive in that moment as well, lit afresh by Faith amidst static patches surrounding the three at their table.
Mo seemed to twitch in his seat like a ball of pent-up life. “If you had just been honest with me…” Mo lamented.
Ray felt a familiar eerie grin arc all by itself across the whole lower half of his face . . . an involuntary contortion he knew had overtaken him at least once before, though this time felt far less ominous and more relaxed.
Everything I said was honest, Publican. I’m glad it wasn’t you that wrote me off. Not really you. I love you, Brother!
I don't know anything 