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18 June
on the final stretch to El Paso



It is safe to say that everyone who has ever picked up a pen, typewriter or
keyboard, with the intent of putting down words on matters spiritual, and with
an intended audience other than God or herself –rather than the other option of
shutting up and tuning in, using one or more of the many methods we’ve learned
as a species—is someone with an agenda to push.

I am certainly not an exception.  I’ve hedged my bets that writing about God is
something God wants and expects me to do, and it is the task for which I AM
has equipped me.  I’m too worldly to be a monk, too distractable to be a yogi,
and I can’t sit still long enough to meditate.  I am an anarchist, so I can’t study
to become a pastor or a priest or any other kind of “head” in a formal organization,
and I’m too afraid of my own shadow to stand up in front of people as some
kind of teacher or mentor.  But I was given the conscientiousness and inclination
to investigate what other people who have done these things have said, just enough
receptiveness of the ear to sift out the heart of these people’s words and assimilate them into a new and (hopefully) cogent set of
ideas, and the hankering to share these ideas with anyone who will listen.  Throw in the three most important qualifications of a fiction
writer –bad eyes, a broken heart, and a hyperactive cerebral cortex—and I believe I have the stuff of a genuine calling.  That is the
nature of my faith in what I’m writing, and hence, my agenda.

Unlike some writers on the subject of spirituality, I don’t believe that God has called me to these specific projects because they contain
some kind of absolute truth that the rest of you fools just aren’t getting.  At their best, they contain symbols of which one can
Truthfully say “God Is Like This” or “The World Is Like This,” and these will strike a spark of the Word of God in the reader.  In a
way you can call this a revelation, but I want it to be clear that the writer is nothing special for having done so.  To borrow an idea
from P&K., we are all here to deliver a new revelation, it’s just that some of us have the pleasure of doing so on paper.

So we write, not so much to deliver the Truth, but to inspire people to seek the Truth.  It is a hit-or-miss endeavor, and a lot more
miss than hit.  Take P&K. for example: If out of 100 readers, 50 are entertained, and of those 30 want to know more about the
subject matter, and of those 10 really investigate further (research, go to websites, read related materials and sources), and of those
three incorporate some elements of the ideas into their lives (go to chat rooms on websites, join discussion groups, write to the author
and tell him how cool he is), and of those ONE life is altered, changed forever for the better, then I will consider it a success of near-
Biblical proportions.  Those aren’t just low expectations either, that’s just the way it goes; my numbers might not be conservative
enough.

I’m going through a mental list of contemporary spiritual fiction I’ve read (“contemporary,” meaning not the various holy scriptures
themselves, and “fiction,” not stuff like this or essays and commentaries i.e. Alan Watts, Thich Nhat Hanh,   
D.T. Suzuki and  Max Lucado etc.), trying to think of ones that I could say have changed my life, or even the 3% of having been
incorporated into my life.  My pool to chose from may not be as long as some people’s, since I spend a lot of my reading time on the
categories I excluded, but there’s still a pretty good list, and so far only two have
made the cut.  The first one was Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; that
blew my mind, at a time when I was very ripe for something mind-blowing.  If I were ever asked to
trace the origins of my sense of vocation back to one particular, seminal influence, as writers are so
often asked to do, I would have to say Zen & Motorcycles.  (His sequel, Lila, didn’t really crack the
10% threshold for me) (and I don’t intend this section to become a book review, so just put that on
my “suggested reading list” and we’ll move through)  

The other one among the elite is J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey (that’s where the “Seymour’s Fat
Lady” quote from several chapters ago came from).  I may have read that a dozen times now and it
never gets old to me. It wasn’t too long after Zen & Motorcycles that I was turned on to the whole
Glass Family series by Salinger {NOTE: and I just realized I have my dear friend and comrade Jeff Bonfield to thank for both tips},
and they’re all wonderful, but I find F&Z to contain the 100% pure essence of the author’s spiritual agenda, just as is often said of the
Bhagavad-Gita in relation to the 10,000-plus page Mahabarata saga that forms the basis of Hindu belief and practice.

But that’s it.  Even Herman Hesse’s stuff falls in that 10 to 30% range for me.  It is hard to strike a spark that ignites into a burning
flame.  (An example of one that didn’t even make my 50% scale?  The Celestine Prophesy.  Ye gawd, what an awful book.)





                                                                       -message whitewashed on the side of a mountain overlooking
                                                                       Ciudad Juárez, México, and clearly visible from the I-10
                                                                       freeway in El Paso (it’s been there at least since 1995 when
                                                                       I first saw it)

Translation: The Bible is the Truth.  Read it.

¡Dios mio!  Is the whole world against me?!

Seriously though, what did Kazantzakis’ Jesus do that was so offensive to Bible-believing Christians?

At the beginning of the movie, it depicts him as tormented by the contrast between his human frailty and his godly inclinations; he is
racked by severe headaches that come and go without explanation.  They infer that he had a relationship with Mary Magdalene as a
young man, but either lost her or fell away from her because of his troubled mind and heart.  He seeks out John the Baptist not so
much out of “obedience” of the Father, but of the notion that this guy might have some answers for him.  His mind sort of cracks
open after that, and he finds release from his torment in renunciation of worldly comforts and the preaching of revolutionary
philosophy that starts to flood him.  Everything kind of goes by the “book” from there, until those scenes that begin as Jesus imagines
himself climbing down from the cross, at the behest of the devil disguised as an angelic girl who leads him through a series of lessons
where he embraces himself as an ordinary guy, leading a pleasant life and leaving the world without a Savior.  (Oh and Judas Iscariot,
the archvillain of the Gospels, played by Harvey Kietel, gets a much more sympathetic portrayal: a Zealot who is initially sent to kill the
meek Carpenter for building crosses on which Jewish revolutionaries are crucified [a brilliant fictional twist], Judas becomes one of
the devout followers, and actually helps convince Jesus that he must go through with his sacrifice to save humanity; he also snaps
Jesus out of his fantasy on the cross, thereby embracing his role as Savior.)

Some Biblians protested the movie when it came to theatres simply because it portrayed Jesus in a way that was not scriptural.  But
Kazantzakis, a devout Greek Orthodox, made it clear in a “disclaimer” for the book (included at the beginning of the film) that Last
Temptation was an allegory of the struggle in human life between spirit and flesh, using the historical figure of Jesus as the symbol for
every person –which oughta be OK since he supposedly represented all of us on the cross, right? —and not an attempt at re-writing
the gospels.  The protesters confused symbol for substance, again.

But I’ll take it one step further, and suggest that Kazantzakis’ Jesus depicted a well-rounded
interpretation of what the historical man might have experienced as a human being, in a way
that the gospels tend to ignore.  Christian theology holds that Jesus was not only “fully God”
but also “fully human,” and none of the things he did in the movie are atypical of a fully human
reaction to some extraordinary circumstances.  The gospels seem content to portray his human-
ness in terms of relationships and emotions, flesh and blood, but to me –and evidently to
Kazantzakis too—to be fully human also means to struggle to learn how to use his human
qualities in a way that will please God.  In other words, to be fully human, it’s not enough
for me to know that Jesus had a penis; it means that he must have once or twice or two
hundred times struggled over the question of whether or not to put it inside someone like Mary
Magdalene.  Being fully God at the same time would not have negated this human struggle –it
failed to negate his anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane, where it was said that he sweat blood
just before he was captured by Roman soldiers.  More likely it would have meant that the answers to his struggles were always found
within himself, not in the law or morality, and that his subsequent actions were always pleasing to “the Father,” or the eternal nature
beyond himself.

Being a Greek Orthodox Christian, Kazantzakis probably believed that the man they called Jesus Christ was the one and only person in
all of humankind to have this dual nature, fully human and fully God.  I do not share this belief; it is contrary to the findings of my
investigations and the intuitive sense of the Word in my heart.  There is too much evidence that suggests (suggests, never proclaims)
that this dual nature is inborn in every single person.  To not know that you have it is, in a way, not to have it, but only in a way.  
I hearken back to the words of Mahatma Gandhi:  “If Jesus was like God, or God Himself,” –and I believe he was—“then all men are
like God and could be God Himself.”  Incredible as that seems, I believe that is the only conclusion left to make, after all the
symbols are boiled down, and all we are left with is the substance of God.

*                             *                            *                              *

Well I’ll be dag durned.  Hell if I ain’t goin’ right back to from where I came.  Indianapolis.  Can you believe it?  Of all the destinations
available in the United States and Canada, I get to retrace my footsteps all the way back to Indy.  It’s all right though.   Before when I
was trucking that actually would have bothered me.  That seems so silly now.  It truly is all good out here.

Aubray and I decided to push back my hometime a week so I can help move her to a new apartment in downtown Ashland (assuming
she got the funds to consummate the deal today, I haven’t heard yet).  Technically the place will be “ours” –I certainly feel committed
to help pay for it—but essentially this will be the beginning of Bray living by herself and me living in Camerado.  I haven’t touched on
this subject yet, on purpose, and there is so much yet to be decided that it doesn’t seem like the time now.  But we have begun to have
"The Talk" –back in western Oklahoma, very early in the morning; she called the dispatch office to have them shoot me a message
because I hadn’t called since South Bend, when I realized that talking to her was depressing the hell out of me.  But that morning it
went differently.  We agreed that I wasn’t really fit to be a husband.  I admitted that to her for the first time, talked about how hard
that is for me to accept because I know that I love her so much.  I cried a lot, for the first time since leaving Ashland, first time in
quite a while in fact.  She really listened, sounded very sympathetic.  Now talking with her is much better; some barrier came down
for both of us.  What will it leave us?  I haven’t a clue right now.  I do know that she needs her situation to be just as it is now, and I
know that she knows that I need Camerado to do what I’m doing.  And I think we both know that we need each other in our lives, in
some way.  That seems like a heck of a lot to know for people in our shoes actually.  I feel grateful.

I’m going to put the notebook down for the weekend, so I can get a wee bit caught up on the typing, and spend some quality time
with P&K.  I think it feels neglected, watching me do eight to ten pages a day in some other strange notebook.  I’ll probably do a little
report on this week’s church service, which should be somewhere in Missouri.  Hasta luego for now.  –HC  Santa Rosa, N.M.

© 2004 by Hermit Crab
a Fish Out Of Water production

Next -- Chapter 11
www.theaterhaus-berlin-mitte.de
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Do you think this guy in the yellow coat is aware
that The Last Tempation of Christ is originally a
book written by a Christian, not the product of
Jewish "media moguls?"  Better yet, do you think
he has ever read a book???