TEMPTATION
He blinked, and his face was pressed to the cool floor of the cave. A scorpion skittered by. How did one get here, through his circle? But this circle as made for those of ill intent, and in this armored creature passing by with its tail arced over its head, there was no harm.
When he passed into sleep again, there he was at the strange temple, and here was a naked man like all of the other naked man, but his eyes and the bridge of his nose had white paint washed across them. He reached out the way Judas had, and Jesus took the Devil by the hand. They walked in and out of darkness, his hand still firmly in the Devil’s grasp and, at last, the Devil pressed him against a wall and kissed him. The Devil or Pan? Yes, Pan pressing his hand against his stomach, stroking him, sucking him, massaging him.
At last Jesus lifted his robe and shrugged away his breechclout. In hunger be bent down and, in the temple, Pan took him by the hips and thrust into him. Jesus gasped from the pleasure of being fucked, and how well Pan filled him, pressing, pressing like a piston, wringing everything out of him, pressing him into the earth until, at last, claws gripped his back and Jesus screamed with pleasure and pain as Pan or the Devil, threw back his hands and came, shooting into him over and over again, staggering falling across him as thick seed filled him.
Jesus awoke splayed across the dirt and rock floor. He pulled himself up and walked into the blue night dominated by a great white moon. He was dizzier and more tired than he at first knew, and part of him remembered to gather his cloak and shoes and staff before journeying over rolling hills as he kept along the sea. He followed those sand hills into the night and heard a roaring siren. As night lengthened, he neared a rock, and he blinked intently at what he saw, a trickling stream from the side of a rock. He remembered poor Hagar with the dying Ishmael.
“I’m mad,” he thought.
I am mad from hunger. There is no clean water.
But even when he said it, it was a little spurt, and spurt became a trickle, and then he was pushing his face into water. Pitifully he sucked it until he could upright himself and duck his head into the spring, and as day approached he knew sanity again, and nearly regretted it.
Only a day, and not so bad, the hunger of the body was the hunger of the body, but the madness of the mind, this place where memory and dream became the same thing was something else altogether. How was the desert holy? How did Yocanon make a home here, or rather, how could he not come out of it mad? Was Moses mad? Had Elijah been so?
Who are you to talk of madness, being who you are? Saying you are who you say you are?
I am the All in All. I am…
If you cannot say it—not even to yourself—how can you proclaim it to the world? And if you cannot proclaim it, what the hell good are you?
Hell.
I will not leave here… until God comes.
It is good to walk in the blazing heat of the day, good to let the anvil of the sun burn you. Is it almost that time? That day of fasting, the time of Av the wrathful father, burning with hunger? And who can take the burning white heat of this wheel in the sky? His winnowing fan is in his hand. He comes like a blazing fire.
But I am the blazing fire.
And what if he was not in this world to be what prophecies said, prophecies made by mad men full of anger, prophecies full of hopelessness cloaked in wrath? What if he was not even here to be what John said? What if he was here to be what he was here to be. There he saw the image of the great burning Messiah, leveling hills and filling low places, a flaming sword in his hand, all falling at his feet, glory, glory. That was one way.
I saw it when I was a boy of just fifteen. I saw it and hid under a table, terrified by it. Saw the clouds open and angels spinning out like moths or like locusts, devouring the land, setting all to rights. There was an angel whose crown was higher than the temple, and he bowed before me with a sword broad as the Jordan River. He said, oh my Lord, I will destroy all of these for your, and there were kings and queens, great merchants, priests and all men of power, piles and piles of them spread before his feet. My my head, pounding like an anvil, I heard my cousin John declaiming:
“And I cried when they saw the smoke of her burning,
saying, What city is like unto this great city!
And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping
and wailing, saying, Alas, alas that great city,
wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea
by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate.
Rejoice over her, thou heaven,
and ye holy apostles and prophets;
for God hath avenged you on her.
And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone,
and cast it into the sea, saying,
Thus with violence shall that great city Babalon be thrown down,
and shall be found no more at all!”
He cried out, and I cried out and many cried out as burning white light, like the midday sun on the salt shore of the Dead Sea blinded our vision.
“And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse;
and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True,
and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.
His eyes were as a flame of fire,
and on his head were many crowns;
and he had a name written, that no man knew,
but he himself.”
And the rider, terrible and mighty, was me, and though I’d seldom rode a mule, I knew in many lives in many places I’d ridden steeds of every kind. The horse was mine, the battle mine, all mine, and the dreadful hymn went on.
“And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood:
and his name is called The Word of God.
And the armies which were in heaven followed him
upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.
And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword,
that with it he should smite the nations:
and he shall rule them with a rod of iron:
and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness
and wrath of Almighty God.
And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh
a name written, King Of Kings, And Lord Of Lords.
And I saw an angel standing in the sun;
and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly
in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together
unto the supper of the great God;
That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains,
and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses,
and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men,
both free and bond, both small and great.
And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth,
and their armies, gathered together to make war against him
that sat on the horse, and against his army!”
No, no! Not this! Anything but this. Anything but this rage, and this violence and this death!
But why not? Is this not the way to destroy evil. Is this not the prophesied way to victory? Wars must come and wars will come. What of the God who floods the whole world for its wickedness, the God whose righteousness could not be satisfied till all life was snuffed out?
Jesus remembers his childhood. Where is the blazing hot sun? Here, in his half madness is only this cool day in the Galilee, where the sky is slate blue and water falls and falls and the children play “Ark”, climbing into the shed. Joses is Noah. Sara is Noah’s wife. They hide between the warmth of the cows and goats and Milcah brings the kittens in while it thunders and the rain splashes.
“But what about the other people?” Jesus wonders as the the rain becomes thick drops splashing into puddles.
“They died,” Joses pronounces, his voice thick because of his always stuffed up nose. “They were all bad, so they drowndeded.”
“All of them?” Jesus says to his little brother. “But what about the nanimals?”
“They were bad too.”
“No… They couldn’t be. They couldn’t all be.”
“That’s what the story says.”
It is not the coolness of a rainy day, but the coolness of being under the shade of a rock. As the day continues, he swallows, he swallows. He half opens his eyes to the hot sun. His face itches. He would trim this beard if he could. It is too hot to be naked, but these feel like two many clothes.
According to Torah, here, in this burning land, was once the lush territory of Sodom, Gomorrah and the five wicked cities which displeased God. God had promised Noah and his descendants to never destroy the world by flood again, but here he found an evil loophole, and caused fire to rain down. For a moment his eyes are filled with the impossible picture of burning clouds and brimstone storms.
Jesus turns his back on angels with great swords and firey stones dropping to the ground. Yes, this vision was always before him, or behind him. It always terrified him, the idea that he might bring it about.
It is important not to simply think, but to speak, so before he can peel himself from the ground and seek water, he rasps:
“We will tell a different story.”
What will you do? Will you stay near this water? Stay in this cave? Did you come here to sit in one place and have visions, to sit outside of this cave and go mad?
Water is here.
Follow the stream.
There are no streams.
The stream runs underground. All true things go underground. If you have any sort of senses, follow the stream.
Out into the grey morning, walking under the whitening sun, he drags the staff along the ground, carries it over the boulders and through the wood, sniffs the waters.
I am the holy underground path. I am the river that never dies. I am the water that men cannot see, though they have their very lives and being in me. I am the one called Vac. I am the one the Hindus called Sarasvati.
Jesus walks under the hot sun, and this world is not empty. This world is full of plants and the plants tell the story of life. And this world is full of creatures, the little wicked toothed hyrax, the wild cat, the vulture, the eagle, all the creatures Moses said never to touch. Yes, you can live in the desert. The children of Israel did it forty years. Bread came down from heaven and water from the Rock, and the Rock, Tzur Israel, followed them for forty years.
“And the rock was Christ.
And the rock was Christ…”
As evening approaches, half out of his mind, he traces the circle about himself, traces all the magic patterns he learned from a witch on a hill who taught him, and he is thrumming with a strange power. He is unsurprised when a man comes to him and though he has rarely troubled to look at himself, he sees in his tallness, in his curling hair, in his ragged robe that it is himself. He is a beautiful man. He admits that. Amidst the flat stones, he sits down before himself saying nothing, and then, just as if it is nothing, he picks up one of those long flat brown stones, and rips it in half, setting one half on his lap, and taking the other, he rips part of it off and begins to eat it.
How in God’s Name?
“In God’s name, exactly,” the other one says. He takes another bite, then pulls out a flask and squirts wine in his mouth. He passes the half loaf of bread to Jesus. Puzzled, Jesus takes the loaf, his mouth watering, and then his brow knots in confusion and anger as he receives it and it is, just as it has always been, stone.
“What?” the Other one asks. “You can do it too. You are the Son of God. Command all of these stones to be bread, and they are bread. We were just thinking of it, how in the desert God made bread fall from heaven, sent quail every day.”
Other Jesus shrugs.
“Make yourself a feast.”
“That’s not what we’re doing right now,” Jesus says in a low and mildly angry voice.
“That’s not what... That’s not what…” his reflection cannot stop laughing. “That’s not what we’re going right now!”
Laughing, he nearly chokes on his wine.
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