Traveler’s Tale— Fourth Book: Returnings

By Roger Fiola

In this latest book of the Traveler’s Tale series, Jack Castro again encounters his friend, Yeshua, just after the Crucifixion, staying with him at the Resurrection, and remaining with the Followers for fifty days until their awakening. The series is a readable and thought-provoking work of spiritual fiction, yet these four books are not traditionally “Christian”. They remain a continuing effort, using story, to lead readers into personally encountering and connecting with the Divine, by whatever name they know Him/Her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546212478

Roger Fiola

Roger Fiola is a prolific spiritual writer and a businessman. The Traveler’s Tale series is his first published opus with this being the fourth book. He is a survivor of cancer and a heart attack. Both life challenges inform his days and work. A lifelong seeker, he primarily uses the spiritual vocabulary of the Christian mystics and modern contemplatives. Mr. Fiola has studied and practiced the Ignatian spiritual tradition of Roman Catholicism as well as several non-Christian disciplines. He has served on various religious boards, and formerly was an international trustee serving the NGO, Religions for Peace. This series began as an effort to give his children and his descendants a storied window into his faith. With the combination of radical fundamentalism in most religions and many young people opting out of the formal practice of religion and even spirituality, he believes this era languishes, struggling with a malnourishment of the soul. Yet, he also believes it to be the prelude of an exciting rebirth of spirit in the human experience. As a testament to these beliefs, Mr. Fiola chose to craft an engaging and relatable way to show how accessible and rich the Divine Encounter truly is. He continues that effort with his fifth volume. The author and his wife of over thirty years live on the central coast of California.

Book preview

Traveler’s Tale

Fourth Book

Returnings

Continuing One Man’s Adventure into

the Mind of Christ

A Narrative Series by Roger Fiola

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© 2017 Roger Fiola. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Young’s Literal Translation (YLT)

Scriptures are taken from The Young’s Literal Translation (YLT) Version of The Bible.

New International Version (NIV)

Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Published by AuthorHouse  10/26/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-1246-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-1245-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-1247-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017916351

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and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Dedicated in memoriam to my father,

                        Napoléon Eugène,

                                    my brother, Dennis,

                                                and my nephew, Nicholas.

All, like Yeshua, left far too young, but—in their felt returnings, usually in the quiet of early morning—unfailingly inform my communion and strengthen my hope for resurrection.

Contents

Dedication

Contents

Curtain up…

Preface

Acknowledgments

From the Holy Father’s File

Part 1:   Of Mourning Into Evening

Maps

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Part 2:   Of The Shepherd’s Return

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Part 3:   Of A Gift Indwelling

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Epilogue

Afterword from the Author

Appendix One

Appendix Two

About The Author

Curtain up…

—The Carpenters’ Play, the Resurrection, a mystery play (#38) of the York Pageant (ca. AD 1425)

Preface

The fourth book in this series is like its predecessors, a work of fiction. All are about encountering and connecting with the interior experience of the divine within each of us.

This is what they are not. While they are based on historical facts and are respectful of the Hebrew and Grecian context of Jesus’s life and the nascent church, the series is not another opus on the historical Jesus. There are libraries full of fine, scholarly books that deal with that subject.

Some exchanges, events, and sequences in these books are the products of imagination, included in the hope that they will move the narrative toward an end that serves the lessons of Scripture. Mostly, this is the story of one man’s encounter with God and the changes it made to his life. The man is Traveler. He is everyman and everywoman, perhaps even including Yeshua, the man we call Jesus. The historical references and research only serve to provide a backdrop, the realistic scenery for the mystery play of our own salvation.

If you remember this, then you should be able to move through Traveler’s story with the right mind-set, not questioning whether this scene is possible or did that thing or person really exist in history, but instead asking what lesson or understanding is trying to reach you.

If a passage is particularly unsettling, put the book down and reflect upon it. What does the disturbance feel like? How would your heart or mind change if this truly happened?

This is not a strictly factual book but one that uses some facts to bring you to a richer connection with the divine, a connection that I believe exists naturally in each of us.

It could also be expressed as the connection of love.

Okay. Let’s begin with that imaginary bow between us. Like those two monks who meet once again on a dusty Himalayan trail, we greet one another, hands folded prayerfully as we exchange a soundless greeting.

"Namaste!"

The God in me reverences the God in you!

Roger Fiola

Carmel-by-the-Sea, California

Easter, 2018

Acknowledgments

This series is the result of a suggestion made some years ago by my spiritual director, Sister Lorita Moffat. It grew from a spiritual exercise into these books, inspired by many spiritual teachers over the years: Saint Ignatius, especially from his Spiritual Exercises; Judge Francisco Firmat, who led me through those exercises the first time; Francis of Assisi, Duns Scotus, Fr. Richard Rohr; Fr. Thomas Keating; and Eckhart Tolle. One of my mentors, Caroline Myss, encouraged me and led me to the awesome talents of Ellen Gunter, who helped me fashion the narrative form of the books. Thanks also to James Finley for his sage advice and beautiful approach to the understanding and experience of the Christian contemplative and for his insights into the mystics.

I am ever grateful for the advice of Bruce Chilton especially for his perspectives on the historical Jesus. I sought his guidance, which led me to Charlotte Heltai, whose scholarly research helped make more realistic the settings and historical context of the first and, thus all, of the books. Thankful also for the talents contributed by editor/journalist/friend Tony Seton, Jules Hart, and most especially to the loving review and suggestions by Irene Long. I am appreciative of the efforts of AuthorHouse in assisting me in getting the words printed and doing so beautifully.

There are many others who contributed to my efforts or encouraged me: Maria Canavarro, who met with me weekly to tirelessly keep the writing fresh, and the Sperry family at whose home I wrote a substantial part all the books in the series.

Finally, continuing gratitude for the love and encouragement of Laney, my wife, and my children, Alexandra and Andrew.

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CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITY

NEUROPSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL

The dream slammed me again last night. A boat, listing upon the sea. I’m in the storm’s deceiving eye, its bright center a staring peace, a stillness that worms through me with fear. Terrible gales blow ‘round me, wild and deadly and fierce—but free,

Why does He call me out? In this moment? Here, in this deep place without mercy?

The eye retreats from me now, my Heart constricts in pain and grief as the storm’s wrath moves upon me. I’m thrown now and tossed like a leaf upon a churning, violent spoke of some giant’s wheel of water. The sea, a monster of briny mountains, is breaking apart my old vessel. I feel my deep longing return, rising like a tidal wave of death.

My Lord! Rabbuni!

I believe! Help me with my unbelief!

(como S. Pedro)

Subsiding now, the edges of the tempest pelt me only with a mist of rain. An uneasy dawn reddens the water, like blood …and light, the amazing Light, rebirthed in blood once more, like Him, like me.

Birth and Requiem—and Resurrection,

Again—Forevers of Agains!

What does He want with me?                +F

Part 1

OF MOURNING INTO EVENING

"The breaking of so great a thing should make

A greater crack: the round world

Should have shook lions into civil streets,

And citizens to their dens."

— William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra Act V, Scene I (AD 1606)

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MAP 1 FIRST CENTURY MEDITERRANEAN

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MAP 2 – FIRST CENTURY PALESTINE

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Chapter 1

He trusts in the Lord, they say, "let the Lord rescue him.

Let him deliver him, since he delights in him."

—David the King (attribution), Psalm 22:8 (before BC 587)

AD 2014, and the sixth year of the presidency of Barack Obama,

St. Thomas Mount, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

Jesus!

I trip over a stone on the dirt path and fall on my knees and hands. Cardinal Daniel and my wife, Sharon, rush to help me up. Right knee skinned and bleeding below the hem of my shorts, my palms raw and dimpled from the pebbly ground, I struggle back onto my feet with the help of a third pair of hands.

Thank you, sir, I hear Sharon say.

Brushing the dust off my shirt and shorts, I render an embarrassed smile as I turn to thank the helpful hands and then my jaw sags, opening my mouth like a hooked bass. I marvel at the startling appearance of the Archangel Micha’el. He’s manifesting this time in the form of a young Scandinavian tourist, also in shorts, much more tailored and groomed than the homeless man he appeared to be eleven years ago—when all this began in the oak forest near my home in Monterey.

He stands here between Sharon and Daniel, neither of whom has a clue they are talking to an archangel. They cheerfully chat it up with him about their hometowns in California and France. The good cardinal would be prostrate in the dirt if he knew. I’ll tell him later—if there is a later in store for me.

What’s Micha’el here for? Wait, I’m not ready to know. At least, not yet.

My big toe got stubbed and is leaking a bit of blood. Blood. The visual of Yeshua whipped and crucified flashes in my mind.

It’s been nine months since the elderly African-American minister, Grandma Fontaine, rode all the way from Mississippi on a bus so she could shove me into the last set of experiences. They ended with a much bloodier conclusion than I could ever have imagined.

Then they went even further, finishing with a scary descent into a cold, hopeless Hell itself.

So, I’m wary of the Archangel’s presence. Is he a hallucination? No, they’re conversing with him freely. He’s real and the three of them are walking towards the little church at the summit of this hillock. Sharon glances back once, checking on me.

C’mon, Jack! Sharon says.

You three go ahead, I’ll be along in a minute, I say, feeling a need to be alone right now.

Micha’el has come to get me again. Sharon turns toward the church and they continue on. Jumping a bit, I discover I’m not alone at all. Right beside me pops up a short, very slender woman. She looks familiar but I can’t place her and she’s so young that I take her for a teenager at first; then I notice the depth and sparkle of her blue-sky eyes. She wears her dishwater blonde hair as closely cropped as a high school boy in 1960—the year I was born. Punctuating her fine, angular features are two eyebrow piercings and a small golden bauble attached to the outside of her right nostril. I can’t help but focus on the hardware. It looks painful. On the side of her neck, there’s a tattooed figure mostly covered by the collar of her white blouse. I can’t make it out.

It’s a lion, she replies to my thought, tugging on her silky collar so I can enjoy the image of a resting male lion.

Where’s the lamb? I ask. You know the lion laying down with the lamb? My attempt at flippancy to mask my jitters completely bombs.

You will see soon enough, she says strangely.

Who is she?

The woman tucks her hands into the pockets of her blue jeans, her sleeveless white top tight around her slender upper-body. She wears a gold pendant with small red letters, proclaiming, Hail! She walks energetically beside me and has an indescribable, almost cat-like, quality to the lightness of her steps as if she’s half-floating.

Ha! She emits a slight giggle, beaming a brilliant white smile as if she finds me curiously funny. I love cats, she says, with another giggle.

Reading my cat-thought about her unnerves me more and now I wish I had stayed with the party of three walking about twenty paces ahead of me.

Who is she?

Hey, we’ll get to that in a minute, she responds, again to my unspoken thought. Settle down, now. Patience. Her smile disappears. You’re rushing things again.

There’s a rich quality, an unmistakable authority in her voice. Also, I sense again a subtle familiarity about her, like the vague almost déjà-vu feeling that I’ve met her before. A little disturbing because I know that until this moment, I’ve never laid eyes on her.

What can I do for you? I ask, quickening our pace as I watch the eyebrow piercings raise.

It’s been a while. Yeah, nine months—a human pregnancy. You’ve had some time to unpack what you saw. Right?

Unpack what? I reply. The gory death of Yeshua, my friend. My trip, or should I say, my entrapment in Hell? You people sent me to Hell!

She laughs.

It’s not a joke, I say. None of what I saw, none of what I’ve been through, is funny.

Oh, come on, Traveler! she says with way too much familiarity.

Don’t call me Traveler. I don’t know you, Miss.

Oh, but you do. Wait. Hmm… The bauble at the tail of her eyebrow shifts up slightly as she frowns in thought; lower lip juts out as if searching her memory banks. Yeah. No. Come to think of it, we never did meet directly, but I was like with you a ton of times.

She sounds more and more as if she just walked out of her homeroom at Monterey High.

Okay. It’s a hallucination. I’m going crazy. Again. Damn! When is this all going to stop? Am I going to live the rest of my days not knowing what’s real and what circuits are crossed in this tortured brain?

Christ, I say dejectedly.

Amen, she says, becoming more solemn. I am called Gavri’el.

Uh, what? I blink at her.

You named your daughter for me, she says to my vacant stare.

Gabriella? I ask. She’s named after her godmother, my aunt.

Well, it’s my name, too. Your aunt was named for me.

Tia Gabriella has been dead for fifteen years and this girl looks all of twenty. I shake my head to loosen up my grey matter a little. It makes me think of Eema, the name for Mom in Aramaic, Mother Mary’s chosen nickname replacing the more common Miryam. During the Annunciation, Eema consented in the name of humankind to give birth to Yeshua and thus facilitating God’s saving entry into history.

Is this slight, punctured female the Great Angel Gabriel?

I see the tattoo of a lion again. The lion. Some intel comes into my brain from a source I can’t discern; I call this a download. Was she with me on that first day, when the mountain lion lunged at a fleeing rabbit across the road? I remember swerving my big Benz to avoid them, almost having a dance with one of the thick trees in our community oak grove. It shook me so deeply that I found myself in a wilderness park to get rid of the jitters before going to a conference where I was scheduled to speak.

When walking into the forest, I met the homeless man who stands so close now, the Archangel Micha’el, but I didn’t know that then. Maybe, she was the lion just as Micha’el was the homeless man—both there at the beginning, both there to send me off on this crazy adventure called the rest of my life.

The angel protects, as Eema says.

Guess there were always angels around me. I let the wonder of that realization wrap me like a warm blanket.

You are ready to continue, she says with no question mark in her voice.

I am ready to continue on my tour of Saint Thomas Mount, I say handing her the brochure. See?

That’s not what I’m talking about, she says.

Understood, but I’m not going back today. Sorry. Tau’ma is trying to show me something coming to this place and I have to be here to see it. (Tau’ma is the Aramaic name for the apostle Thomas, meaning Twin.) Besides, I continue, my wife and the cardinal are here as well.

Oh, they’ll be fine. We’ll take care of them! she says.

You’re pressuring me, Gavri’el!

"Traveler! Nothing will be forced upon you—you know that. It is you who called us here because you’re ready, not the other way around."

My brows arch up, eyes widening in astonishment.

This is for you, she says softly.

You’ve made a mistake. I never called you here.

It is not in your thoughts as we can see, but your Wisdom-Heart has been calling out to us for some time.

I squint my doubt. Wisdom-Heart? What does she mean?

It is that part of you, Gavri’el answers, which lives in the Kingdom, like a river meeting another river, which is the part of you living in this body. She pulls at my dusty shirt. "At the confluence of these two rivers, there is a creation of a new and brilliant sea. It is God-in-Us and it is called the Wisdom-Heart, its waters moving in love alone. You sensed it with your brain. It gathered in your thoughts in Calcutta, in Kolkata, but your Wisdom-Heart resides in the Kingdom and communicates endlessly, eternally, with us all."

Oh, my head hurts with that one! I don’t know what she’s talking about exactly—although, maybe I do—for I have loved my wife and daughters. In some moments, great moments of intimacy, there are brief, deep connections I could call heavenly. I suppose that is when my Wisdom-Heart brings my awareness to the Light, to the Love-Field, and the Kingdom, even if only for a moment or two.

You are ready now to lay him down, says Micha’el, who is standing next to me, and be a witness to the returnings and the beginning.

I check out the threesome walking ahead and the Archangel Micha’el is still with them. Bi-location. Nothing surprises me anymore, not for long.

As we form a little triangle of discussion, Micha’el enters the conversation in low tones like a cello playing a somber air, in counterpoint to Gavri’el’s squeakier clarinet.

Hey, I’m grateful you came here, of course. I am. But really, I can’t go back now. I’ve got much to do here with Sharon—and in Kolkata, as well. I felt something there.

As I register the unwanted whine in my voice, I realize that not a second of my 21st century life is ever lost during these experiences—except, of course, if this body dies back there. Then, all is lost. It is both a real possibility and the greatest risk of these experiences.

Don’t you trust in God that He will deliver you? Gavri’el asks.

That’s a piece from Handel’s Messiah, the classical oratorio that I play whenever I do my journaling. It sounds like she’s quoting from a chorus the composer took from Psalm Twenty-Two. It resonated so deeply within me that I memorized it while in the hospital.

He trusted in God that he would deliver him if he delight in him.

I remember now the mocked Yeshua on the way to Gol-Goatha. I see him carrying the plank made from his friend, the tree, suffering the scornful abuse of those watching. My blood boils.

Do I trust in God as Yeshua trusted the One he called Abba? The next stanza of the beautiful song of King David floats up into my thoughts:

"Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.

From birth, I was cast upon you. From my mother’s womb, you have been my God."

The blood of birth and the emergence into light. Blood and Light like in a recurring dream I recall so vividly. There are so many rebirths in a single lifetime. There are also many small deaths. And most of them are pretty damn painful! I’m pissed off and full of wonder at the same time. I’m a living paradox in witness of the Great Paradox, the tension and relationship of polarized forces that seem to collide yet somehow reconcile in Him, converge into that divine pool. In me, too. The Wisdom-Heart Sea.

The archangels are here for me because I called them here. Clearly not with the upper three inches of my body, but certainly with this heart Gavri’el was describing. There’s always the reluctance of the immediate; the not-now-maybe-later-yes-tomorrow. Tomorrow I can make myself ready. Yet, there’s no tomorrow is there? Just now. It is the only place and time, God can call me into wonder again. Love cannot connect in the concept of tomorrow; love doesn’t connect in concepts period. It exists only in this moment.

But, I left Yeshua in the cool precincts of Hell. Is that the scene into which I, consensually, will insert my body once more? Do I want to yank open my heart with the crowbar of grief or test my mind with that experiential overload? Looking up at Gavri’el and Micha’el who await my response with the patience of the ages, I still hold all the doubt again—in fact, more than ever.

Questioning why me?

How is one man—one insurance guy—so darn important that he merits the attention of such great beings taking such great trouble to convince him to return to such a great God? I should be further along the path than I am; I must be the slowest case they’ve ever had.

Shoulds and Musts—the mortar by which Satan cements the stone walls of Hell.

Yet, I resist, heels dug in. Doubts running rampant in my brain without mercy. Yet, my yearning keeps bringing them to me, inviting me to take that bungee jump into the unknown called God.

The yearning is winning. I don’t trust fully yet, but I am willing to jump nonetheless. I remember the line from a movie, the title of which is long forgotten; a posse of men were about to ride into a gunfight and one of them quips fatalistically, Well, you’re gonna die from somethin’! Then into the fray, they charge.

Let me tell my wife and Cardinal Daniel, I say.

A moment of your life will not be lost, he says, You will return to this place and in this minute.

If I do not die there, I whisper.

We protect… Gavri’el adds, And we possess the Father’s power in this.

Well, if Abba, or Av’va, the Source, is choosing this for me, who am I to refuse?

I look up as Sharon, Daniel, and the tourist-Micha’el enter the small white-plaster church dedicated to the martyred Tau’ma. She glances at me and waves me over, obviously unable to see the two others with me.

Look, there is a stand of trees beside the church, Gavri’el says.

We three walk over to the shady bench under the branches. The leaves flutter in the thick, sultry breeze, and I sense the Father’s presence here with us. Yeshua calls it the Kingdom. I can only describe it as an all pervasive magnetic field, the Love-Field, magnetic in that its pull can be felt and witnessed as it brings you into full participation, tuning you into itself. It’s as real and as common as a mother playing with her baby, an old man feeding the ducks at the park, a gardener lovingly planting next year’s tulip bulbs, or even a pair of lovebirds sitting side-by-side on a birdcage branch. Not complicated, but to access the Love-Field, it requires the release of your story’s busy-ness for a moment or two. Reason and the mind’s chaotic thought-stream don’t take you there. Cannot.

Yeshua the Christ awaits you, Micha’el says and I feel moving into my heart, the peace of the Rabbuni; Rabbuni being the Aramaic name for Master or, Spiritual Teacher. It is the name that his followers called Yeshua.

I take a breath and look at the Nordic tourist and the slim American teenager, the two great archangels, and say,

Okay, let’s do this.

In those words of surrender, I feel my heels relax and the pace of my heart accelerate as Eema’s sentence of acceptance to Gavri’el comes into my remembrance.

Behold! I am here, the Servant of God! Let it be done unto me according to your word!

I sink once more into the familiar darkness. My heart beats irregularly for a moment and then returns to an excited rum-pa-pum-pum. Like in the Little Drummer Boy, the Christmas song. Like the boy at the Nativity of the Lord, I resolve to play my best for Him…

Chapter 2

Yeshua says:

"When you see your own likeness projected into time, it makes you happy.

But when the time comes that you are able to look upon the icon of your own being, which came into existence at the beginning, and neither dies nor has been fully revealed, will you be able to stand it?"

—Logion 84, Gospel of Thomas (ca. AD50-AD125)

AD 72, and the fourth year of the reign of the emperor Vespasian,

A hill near Chennai, India

The right knee is still bloody. I can see that first.

Before my eyes opened, there were only the colors of red and orange, yielding into a bright, breakfast-shake green. I’m wearing a short, chiton-like garment made of what feels like soft linen and it’s the color of pomegranates. On my feet are sandals that lace up the calves like Johanan’s Grecian pair that I wore in Ephesus, but these seem to fit better. I haven’t dared to look up from my legs yet.

Reluctant.

I’m not quite ready to engage with what surrounds me. I wait for a download. It’s not coming yet…

Taking in four deep breaths, I find the air is still familiarly warm and humid, but fresh, smoky-fresh. In this era, there is none of the vehicle pollution that spreads like a brown blanket of pestilence in India’s cities of the 21st century. A mangy, grey dog, skeletal, regards me hungrily. He then licks the blood off my wound and I let him. I’ve heard—but have no idea whether it’s true or not—that a dog cleaning a wound could aid the healing.

Who knows?

It feels good and seems to help him, feed him. A tranquil, ordinary communion. His presence relaxes me enough to enter the experiences and I raise my head. Just as I do, the download comes; I must have needed to become food first. I chuckle at God’s humor and it relaxes me. Scanning my surroundings, I see that I’m sitting in the shade of a tree, still on the Mount of Saint Thomas—but this place sure isn’t called that in AD 72! With a final lap of the pink tongue, the dog finishes his lite, dusty meal of my blood. Being alone up here, I beckon the mutt closer—his nose structure and brow are a strange mixture of some breed alien to me. His looks are almost computer-generated ugly but in an ironic way, he charms the heck out of me.

Come here, boy, I say, petting this flea-bitten mangle of fur and it feels amazing and good. He smells rank as he nudges his way under my arm, but India pretty much stinks to this first-worlder anyway, now and two thousand years later, so I try to turn off the olfactory settings and let the experience roll over me. Nothing much is happening on this hill right now. Still no other people, just me and my scraggly amigo.

Soon, it’s anything but quiet here. Men and women shouting and screaming as they run around, scattering like woodpile rats suddenly exposed. Uniformed guards carrying a type of spear I have not seen before trot in and survey the area of trees where I’m sitting. They stare at me, assessing the danger of this reclining, white dude. One comes forward, points the spear at my throat, and the grey dog growls.

Easy boy, I say, mustering up the calmest tone I can.

Are you with the Hebrew? he shouts at me.

I have seen no one, I reply.

Are. You. With. the Hebrew! he repeats the question as a demand.

No. I know no Hebrews here, I say.

I don’t know anyone here; I barely know where I am, although I suspect he’s searching for Tau’ma. My no isn’t the desired response and the scowling guard touches the spearhead to my nervous Adam’s apple, which bobs up and down with repeated dry gulps. I hold my breath. Apparently, he wants to run me through just for the fun of it—and I get that, in this place, he can skewer a foreigner like me if he chooses. I hope the archangels are close by. Another guard calls to him but, before he lowers the sharp edge from my throat, he nicks me; I shudder, feeling the pain and a warm trickle of blood coursing down my neck and onto my garment. He lowers the spear with a mixed look of aggressive satisfaction then disappointment; he turns and jogs off to his group.

Am I on this hill to witness the murder of Tau’ma today? If so, I’d rather get back to Kolkata and the Nirmal Hriday. At least there, I sense the presence of God in every smelly, tragic corner. To see an apostle butchered by the ignorant and murderously unthinking leaves me without any hope of redemption once more—like that descent into Hell, the descent into meaninglessness. The hole Satan makes in the world is to rob the human being of his or her sense of meaning in life. When done on a large scale, as it is trending towards in the 21st century, great danger lurks in a wake of incoherency that this theft of meaning creates. Without understanding or a sense of collective human purpose, we tend to start to fear and then to kill—sometimes just for the self-gratification of it.

My still-growling friend now barks at me. Not a vicious bark, but an instruction to follow him. So I get up, knee still sore, and dust myself off. Scanning the little meadow here, I see no Tau’ma around. The posse of men has left the hill.

Good.

Okay, buddy, I say, taking out a napkin that I know is in my pocket, I guess I’m staying alive for now and nothing else is on the calendar, so I’m all yours.

As I wipe the blood off my throat and ponder this too-close shave, he barks again, commanding me to follow. And I do.

"Where are we going, boss?" I ask, still checking out my surroundings carefully as we trod down a path off the hill and into a small cluster of what appears to be houses.

These dwellings are slapped together with stone, thatch, and other materials, melding into a collection of hodge-podge shanties providing human—and, obviously, goat—shelter. The grey dog leads me into one darkened portal over which a dirty cloth is suspended. My eye travels to a small fish symbol woven into the cloth.

May I enter? I ask into the darkness, not wishing to surprise any occupant, especially any spear-holding occupant. The grey dog barks.

"Avi-Valikatti!" I hear an old male voice.

The grey dog’s thumb-sized, excuse-for-a-tail wags, he bounds inside, and an old man laughs.

Enter, my longtime friend! the voice then calls out to me. Inside, it is surprisingly nice—large silken cloths, bright colors drape the walls. Some sunlight enters through a hole at the apex of a conical roof. The light from a single oil lamp bathes my host’s features in the palest golden light. He sits on a carpet petting the resting Avi-Valikatti.

Tau’ma! I say, knowing the man on the carpet although he looks nothing like the one the world misnamed Doubting Thomas, the brilliant young man, the great apostle, Didymus Yehuda Tau’ma. Yeshua nicknamed him Tau’ma or the Twin because he, more than Johanan or any of the others, mirrored the Rabbuni in unique ways—both physically and spiritually.

Except, perhaps, for Miramee. That was the nickname Yeshua gave Mary Magdalene. By his own declaration to me, she was the mirror of Yeshua’s deepest essence and being.

Back to Tau’ma.

Yes, he would look different now for forty years have passed since Jerusalem, since we were last together. This man must be in his late sixties, early seventies by now, yet he’s lean and muscular, looking at least ten years younger. He’s balding with his remaining white hair closely-cropped. He wears his white beard more abundantly; it frizzes out from his jaw, creating an overall peanut-shape to his head—kind of the style of an older, weekend biker you’d see on a rural California highway. His robes are simple and light weight for the heat. He looks like an Indian swami—and a biker. I smile.

Traveler! he says returning the smile, which is shy a few teeth. He doesn’t rise to greet me so I lean down for that fuzzy kiss on the lips I’ve come to expect from my Hebrew/Christ-Follower brothers. With an elegant gesture, he invites me to sit.

I choose a cushion a distance from him.

No, closer, please. My eyes are dim now.

I scoot nearer to him and sit crossed-legged. Avi-Valikatti eyes my bloodied knee again and licks his chops.

How did you end up here, old friend? I ask.

That is a distraction, he says. Knowing that story will do nothing for you or anyone. If it is important for you to understand my journeys, then it will be revealed. Otherwise, you see that you are there and I am here.

Okay. But doesn’t understanding his journeys help me learn what I’m here to learn? He cocks his head, wondering if I am challenging the apostle, Saint Thomas.

Nope.

Traveler, he replies, my journeys to here are like a bird’s flight in returning to his nest. After traversing the sky, the path disappears behind his wings. When he rests in his nest once more, all that matters is that he is there in that moment. And in this moment, our paths of flight have vanished and we are here with one another.

I shift my gaze to the dog.

And this nice dog as well. Avi-Valley…? I ask, forgetting the last part of his name.

Avi-Valikatti, he helps me out. In the local language, called Tamil, it means, Spirit Guide. The local people believe animals lead us in ways that persons cannot.

Do you believe that?

The Father uses all created things to guide us, Tau’ma replies. Dogs certainly. Sometimes, even the Tempter.

Stunning. The Tempter, the Robber of Meaning, seems to be the last resort in teaching humanity.

If you focus only on the light and good, you are in great danger, he expands upon my thought. We are Children of the Light but as such, we move freely, and without fear, in and out of the darkness. All comes from the Av’va, the Source, I AM.

He has no problem saying the forbidden name of God.

The guards were searching for you on the hill, I say, as long as we are speaking of darkness.

I know where to find them when the time is full, he replies as matter-of-factly as if he were describing his preparedness to go to the market and buy more grain. He is in control of life’s situations, even of his own martyrdom. He scowls at me. No, Traveler. I am not the one governing this life. I work and live out my days as they are given to me. The desire to control can yield no true path or plan. It leads to distraction, to folly. It obscures the sight and stays the breath of the Kingdom.

What do you mean by that? I ask.

"We asked the Rabbuni once, ‘When will the kingdom come?’ and he replied, ‘It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying here it is or there it is. Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it.’"

I sense this, even experienced it momentarily, I say, but I do not understand it, the Kingdom.

It is not a thought made by the mind, although the mind helps one to seek, he says. It is a meeting place. You know this.

Yes, I say, "that much has been given to me. This world we see around us and the Father’s Kingdom flow continually into one another like two rivers creating a marvelous sea. It is not an afterlife but