"Yes."
"...'bleeve he was the Son of God?"
"Jesus said, 'He who hath seen me hath seen the Father.'"
"B.S. What do YOU say?"
"I believe we are all God's children," I said. The boys she had accosted watched from a distance. A small crowd had gathered to watch us, such an unlikely couple, a well-dressed woman and a freak, sitting in the dirt with people and cars passing on all sidesof us.
"You bleeve he was divine?"
"I think we are all divine."
"Then what made him so special?"
I thought of the questioning at my ordination nine years before, a lifetime ago it seemed now. That frail old man had asked, "Do you bleeve in the Virgin Birth; do you bleeve He's the Son of God?"
Now here I was sitting in the a dirt parking lot at a music festival with a woman who was wearing a dress that cost more than I could make in six months, again answering questions about Jesus. However, she wasn't looking to verify my beliefs as the old man had been. She was trying to purge her own. I tried to think of something she could accept.
"Maybe he was a mutation," I said, "someone with gifts far ahead of his time, ahead of us even, since we still can't do what he could do, miracles, healing, like that."
"You believe all that crap?"
"I think he could look into someone's eyes and know them on the inside," I said, looking into her eyes.
"NO HE COULDN'T," she said, lurching to her feet and stalking away. She went over to a white Lincoln convertible with its top down, parked a few cars over. A man in a suit and a huge black Stetson was asleep at the wheel. She threw herself into the passenger seat and elbowed him hard, "Let's get the hell out of here," she demanded. He didn't move fast enough for her and she hit him again. He woke up with a start. He started the car and they backed out with the squealing of tires, scattering people, and roared away in a cloud of dust, leaving a group of astonished people, including me, with our mouths open. ***
The Jesus of the Plants
I was having a cup of coffee in the Chuck Wagon, the UT student snack bar, when a girl of about nineteen came over and sat down at my table.
