You who would not believe in God yet fear ghosts - for you will Jesus have to mount the cross , again and again. FROM HAZEL

You who would not believe in God yet fear ghosts - for you will Jesus have to mount the cross , again and again. FROM HAZEL

on Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 12:15pm

He had been in this dark zone before. But now, coming out of it and rubbing his eyes gently, he was beginning to see the landscape clearly. Beginning to see that the figures he he thought were ghosts were after all just shadows of his own fears. Life was ebbing back into his legs and he could stand steady. he found that he could even walk and it felt like a normal walk. In fact, it felt even better than normal. "It is like I am walking on thin air, gliding effortlessly towards a goal I have never set for himself but a goal I know sow well."

The thought of his goal reminded him of the last time he was happy. "She was so nice then and talked as in a dream. There was nothing but happiness in her voice and in my mind." An unpleasant memory of what happened after that nudged him out his blissful feeling. A day after that meeting, he had gone back to dance with the ghosts that occasionally took control him, led him inexorably into what at first always seemed a palace of joy but which later turned out to be a dome, a prison-hell, utterly dark and sealed from all sides.

But he had come out of it now. But his thoughts went back temporarily also to how she had once seriously believed that he did not really her but had used a magic facade to molest her. “ I was a child when you seduced me with your magic words,” she ad said. That day , he had been devastated by this accusation and , may be, that had made him vulnerable when within days, the old ghosts returned to seize him.

But today, now, at this hour and at this place, he was feeling like he had emerged from a cave " I must talk to her immediately. I must tell her I am out of the dark dome, that I have defeated the ghosts and broken free, perhaps for ever," he said to himself. He felt convinced she was listening already as he said this, doing it almost as if he were addressing her in a letter:

“I am back with my god - ego, pain, guilt, desire, all blasted out in a night long strafing of my soul. And I m feeling very light, For well over two harrowing days and nights, all kinds of ghosts were let loose on my verdant landscape. They danced and ploughed through my body , mind and soul, shredding and mashing them together into bloodied and gory soil. it was a waking nightmare, but it is over. I have faced the jury; I confessed and begged it not to prolong my agony, pronounce me guilty and award the punishment so that I could restart my journey. My prayer has been granted, and I am out here, ready to serve my sentence, which is so much easier than eternally awaiting the judgment.”

He looked far into the distance and he saw that she was not his only audience at that hour. Something inside him also listened as did the hushed night and the mildly twinkling starts, who peered at his words as children do to a fairy tale. “The Universe is listening”, a voice breezed through his mind. And he resumed his letter:

“ I have no more ghosts to deal with, and have come far enough to see that if even you have any, they too would most probably be the off springs merely of a childish wish for a reason to cry. God has given us so much to be happy and grateful about that it really requires a skill to invent reasons for misery. And for this, you have to deny your garden where every plant is tended , spruced up and is in full bloom. So, you either take a rickety old craft to fly into a perceived past and search for spots that resemble burning coals, pick them up, hold them in your palm and cry out ,"These are the burns that singe my soul."

She had been complaining for sometime that she can never be “certain” of their relationship, that he was so unreliable despite his strongest feelings of love for her. He continued:

“You fly into a zone which looks like " uncertainty" because you have never known what it means to be loved, because the one love you got, you never trusted. And where you thought love was or ought to be, there was none. But here, right in front of you, love has always stood, arms outstretched in a gesture of eternal begging and eternal giving. But you have got used to different gestures. So, there you stand , looking appropriately grave and sad and you tell yourself against the evidence of your soul: : "No one knows what lies in store for us now. . No one can ever be happy with the fleeting present because it will always pass. You have gained the keys to the ragged hills and plains of uncertainty. And you want to be always adequately worried so that you are ready for worry when it really comes. You are complaining to the present that it passes. The present can do nothing else. You can not seize the present but you can, if you want, seize the happiness that it carries and is always willing to bequeath to its past and present it to its future.”

And then, in a slightly louder breath, for emphasis: “ You don’t’ want to feel sure and certain and confident because you think only the ignorant can be happy! Only the foolish can be confident and sure.You think unhappiness is a badge of wisdom.”

“In time, you will have children but your wonderful children will not be able to convince you there is a treasure of happiness around you -- stars sprinkled across your path. Your success at work has not freed you from the punishing thought of how hard you have had to work for this. The love in your life that has come flying across continents and across decades to be back with you, in your arms. It has come to reveal to you that your ghosts of child-molestation were just effigies of your own love with pain and that your molester was in fact the greatest lover your soul would ever meet. Your love of feat has turned ropes into snakes, and those are not just illusions; those are real snakes because you won’t believe them to be anything else. These are the effigies of your ghosts.”

She was listening now, and this was not just a make believe. She was really there. And he saw that a beam of happiness flitted across her lips, like the sunshine briefly revealed through the leaves. That sunshine revealed the thoughts in her mind at that time. “The prophet who came into my backyard had been declared a satanic fantasy and put on the Cross!”

And as he read her mind written on her face, he heard the forest speak to them in his own voice, the voice that had grown a little thicker because of his days in the dark dome:

“You who would not trust God yet fear Satan, would not embrace the angels of love and happiness and yet complain against the ghosts of pain and betrayal -- for you will a Jesus have to bleed again. The first time he came, it was to save you from your foe. His Second Coming will be to save you from yourself. But the age is evil. The savior will not be saved. Because you will have his blessings but you will refuse to be happy. If you are unhappy, he won't be kept away from the Cross. He is stubborn. I called him "mulish" once, and his mullahs' got after me. But all prophets are "mulish" -- they are so obstinate about your happiness they will get their children bricked alive or go and sit in fire or drink poison. Do you think prophets are ever reasonable?”

Suddenly, he saw that she was leaning against his right arm, her eyes closed, her face reflecting the peace of the quiet forest. He thought he saw a hazy figure stand behind her , sun rays forming halo around her head.

He saw her silently sway from side to side and remained quiet for a while. Then he moved hihand gently on her hair, and said, “There is nothing you need to learn from these prophets. All your ghosts will be found buried in ash! Be happy. I love you.”

(This is a rough draft)