Wednesday, January 7, 2009

The Host

The thing about Jesus is that he sounds like the kindest voice I know. I drive to work - the hour it takes me to get there sludging through the tangled city and then shoot like a rocket onto highways of sometimes black ice, or blinding snow, or summer heat hovering like ghosts above the soft asphalt- and Jesus sits beside me in the passenger seat. We hold hands. Threaded. He smiles a lot. Says good things. I drink coffee. He may wish he still had a body.

Once, when I was a kid, I asked someone why Jesus floated off into the clouds and didn't stay on earth forever, and they, the somebody, told me that he had left so that he could be nearer to us than bodies allowed. Closer than skin touching skin, or hands holding hands, and inside our souls. But still, there have been nights or mornings or long afternoons when all I've wanted to know is the shape of his hands, the cut of his collar bone.

There is a friend who prays for me and I swear I could mark the moments when those prayers hit heaven, because some days I stop and turn, and Jesus is talking to me in that kind, slow voice, filling up the empty spaces between my cells, rushing through my lungs and pushing against the blue veins in my wrists. It is a mystery. My heart only knows to lub-dub varying rhythms of fullness and desire in response.
Some days, all I know to say to that bodiless closeness is, "I miss you. I miss you."

7 comments:

Aaron Stewart said...

This was very pleasant to read. :)

Cherie said...

Angela, Jesus used you to speak to my heart today.

He really is our peace and hope, isn't he.

A resting place.

Thanks.

Amber said...

That was my tiny box - or for me, a new piece of colored glass.

Amber said...

I'm listening to A.A.Bondy's "How Will You Meet Your End." You've got to find it. It's for you.

Please. If anything.

oh ... did I tell that your letter is one of the most precious things I've ever taken in with my eyeballs? Thank you.

Amber said...

Crud. Me again. I guess I should be emailing. A.A.Bondy is super, but I meant to say Alexi Murdoch's Orange Sky. That's the one for you.

Mike S said...

It's alway such a wonderful sensation when the The Creator speaks to us. Sometimes it's not that we're not being spoken to, rather, that we're too busy to listen to the many voices employed to send us the messages.
This applies to all believers in a Creator. I believe all religions seek the same goals, the variance is merely in the route travelled and method of 'transportation'.

Angela said...

hey aaron. thanks kindly.

cherie,
good. i'm grateful for that chance.

amber,
oh good. i'm glad you liked your letter. i was feeling all vulnerable and nervous about it.
ya. alexi murdoch is dreamy. i owe a few post titles to his songs (on my old blog) and orange sky is fabulous, but, i'm glad you got mixed up, because i didn't know that a.a. bondy is super.
and,
i love coloured glass.

mike,
ya, it's a good, good thing when god talks and we hear it.