Christian Clarity Review

Chapter Nine

The Institute:

The double helix slowly rotates on the screen, slowly flashing in various lengths up and down the whole. Some sections glow at the same time; other alone. The image of the artifact glows in small sections from within and on the exterior that correspond to the areas on the molecule in a running sequence.

Henry stares.

Dmitri: “I changed the parameters to look for part instead of whole symbol.”

Henry stares and a smile slowly grows on his face.

Dmitri: What?

Henry: I had a dream the other night. I discovered the cure for cancer. I got in my car to go and tell ..somebody, I don’t remember who. You know how dreams are. But as I drove it became obvious that my car wouldn’t let me out and wouldn’t let me stop. So I was trapped in my car. All this weird stuff happened. I passed a gang in an old chevy and they took offense because I wouldn’t stop. I guess I had a look on my face. See? I wanted to stop and tell them, but the car wouldn’t let me. It didn’t do anything to hurt me. It just wouldn’t stop. They followed me around, threatening to hurt me if I didn’t stop. But they finally gave up. I drove on. The streets were wet but it wasn’t raining.

Dmitri: What happens?

Henry: First time in my life I ever woke up praying for a wreak.

Dmitri: Hmm.

———————————

Underground—

The subterrene leaves a small tunnel it its wake. It pushes silently forward, going deeper and deeper at a slight angle into the heart of darkness.

Sitting in front of the panel inside, Mike is content. He checks the CO2 levels again: normal; the same with the oxygen and nitrogen. He does another diagnostic on the system that vents toxic gases created by any malfunction in the reactor.

All is as it should be.

All the lights were green. Every alarm is quiet.

Beyond the assurances of the technology of being safe he watches Mary, Gregg, and Baxter go about their own duties, absorbed in the details of precision and diligence.

Conversation is minimal. They collide casually and without incident into each other through speech, finding peace and a certain safety in silence: one ear always out for the unusual sound.

His prayers are not prompted out of habit or because of an awareness of any present need or urgency. God speaks as God often does. Mike finds fear and joy in the speech spoken through him; in the thoughts he has as prayer. God prays through him for peace and prosperity and for the birthing and building up of new creations in Jesus Christ. He prays through him for prosperity and an end to lies and for works of righteousness forever. He prays for the benefit of collectives: countries, groups, political parties, single people. He prays for individuals: Jennifer to get the job she wants; for the mission to end succesfuly; for the war to end.

He prays to understand prayer as understanding God. He prays for an end to what is called piety as merely doing something against the standards of the emotional world and to receive a deeper truth of simple existence in God as fundamental reality.

With the words come an assurance that God has of course, heard His own word and that these things, in the very middle of evil and death are coming true in him; around him. He watches them come true sitting in one place with all the lights green.

He remembers suddenly, “I slept, but my heart was awake.” and “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea exists no more.” and had no real answer of why the two now and no explaination for why each should seem to be its own unit as well as part of a larger whole.

It comes again, welling up in him, beyond his ability to surpress it. The old Mike is the heart that tries to know itself apart from God and then bring that knowledge to God.

God disregarded his the old Mike and spoke his prayers.

He understands that he is the purpose of God’s gesture and the recipent of His attention and His word, but not as one is looked down on or across at or seen from behind, but a boundaryless sameness the old Mike tries not to recognize forms the event that is beyond an episode.

The closest he will ever get to describing it to others is to say that God is the breath and word that are his thoughts. He is witness and part of what is witnessed in the same instant. He has not gotten anywhere with his reaching out by the old Mike, but God has come the whole Distance, done it all and together they are, oddly: sobriety.

Something flows through him not his own and yet his own. There is a flash of anger at some foreigner inside him that resented this clarity, as if it proved Mike should be free of himself.

But which one?–the one that insisted on evaluating and pronouncing value on every small detail–and even now wanted the ‘episode’ to be over so that it could then decide whether to pronounce it good and enjoyable or bad and something to be avoided in the future instances–the he that is a prisoner to past moments of emotional trade as words were exchanged, feelings shopped and traded–the same he that had no say and no control over God–and resented it, pronouncing it ‘evil’ to desire to be one with God? The same he that God had overcome with His word to be one with Mike. Or the new Mike?

Every time he happens, every instant of his immortality he is attacked again by his flesh over the rightfully use of the word ‘I’; over fundamental identity. Each time, every time he will know, God will know for him and with him that he is no longer his flesh but a new creation still marveling at his being one with God.

It is a wonderful, fearful thing it to have God live in him! He knows once again what it is to rejoice with trembling. His own flesh despises him for it.

As the weakness of his own flesh and death strike him, he is no longer one with his flesh but God-in-him and he rejoices. He knows the days of words in his flesh are numbered and coming to a close.

It is not slogging through a jungle of thoughts and a breaking out into a clearing of understanding. It is certainty of oneness that cannot be articulated by any other means than of joyful laughter far beyond any relief of circumstance. That he is free of his old self even for one instant makes him happy. That he knows and recognizes he is being participated with by God, sharing his reality with Him and that he always will even if he is blinded to the awareness of it for an instant, or for hours, or even for years at a time gives him the lucidity of joy.

The laughter, the joy is the evidence of what cannot be seen or handled.

His safety in the world of flesh in past times was to suppress the laughter by applying pressure elsewhere. Having as an instinct the certainty that it is rude, even risky to laugh in public, Mike has become a master of pinching himself, tightening his fists or sereptitiously biting his lip.

Now gumming his lips together stubbornly to get past it, he tries to stare straight ahead and beyond and ignore the faces that began to watch. He wants to point to the lights and say “See? All green. Nothing to see here.”

But he laughs anyway and with his eyes open.

The pencil in his hand snaps.

The anesthetic of the norm vanishes as the tears and laughter pour out of him.

Gregg’s hands hesitate over the keyboard; Mary’s face appears to the side of a report.

Turning their heads to one side they hear his laughter up close and something else in it of absolute necessity to life from a distance.
Glad to hear it again, Mary and Izzy are unsure why they had been tense and relaxed.

Hayt, tries a merry guess in hopeful comraderie and to laugh his way toward understanding what had sparked the sound. There is desire of flesh in his effort but no God. He sounds hollow; in the technical miss of attempt, evil. He stops trying by degrees, frowns and flips the switch on the com link to send it home.

The “ “ flows out through the antenna array, traveling through the earth and coming from all around and underneath the lab in Virgina, bursting out through the speakers.

————————-

The Institute:

Peters hears the laughter in the middle of everything else and hits the intercom: “Yeah, it’s really rough down there. They’re having a party.” and keys the mike. “That’s really appropriate on a rescue mission.”

Henry sits in his chair holding the artifact. He breathes on it again to outline the edge of the curves.

Dmitri bangs out a new program to relate distances, timing and placement of the setions of artifact to the components of the DNA molecule.

The laughter erupts into the room. The artifact explodes with light.

Henry jumps and drops the artifact on the floor, and shields his eyes.

Dmitri is transfixed and stares.

—————————

Underground:

Gregg is furious. Without permisson–and in front of the others! With no time to prepare, he tastes Mike’s experience and life, participating in a oneness for which he has no desire. Grinding teeth in silence and clinching his own fists, the laughter is crowding him into a bunch of people with only one privacy to go around.

But Mike’s awareness is too honest, his laughter too candid to be taken back.

No one says anything or looks at each other.

He laughes, unable to stop; even forgetting to put his hand over his mouth.

Then, he hears: They know. They hear.

He doesn’t want it to make a difference. But the sudden thought already has.

The thought of rudeness and being in the open creeps into the laughter. He falters, finally subsiding into a full stop and a kind of stunned saddness.
In the vacuum at the end of laughter and out of his own privacy, he looks around.

An audience confronts him. The faces are a kind of shout, a demand that he explain himself.

The vacuum generates a pause of its own.

The hum of the ship and rock surrounding them filtered through into the silence.

He is confused and sits unsure what to do next.

Everyone continues to stare.

“Excuse me. I didn’t mean to…disturb..” he says, blinking wet eyes, making a discrete effort at clearing his throat and having to do it again. Taking his glasses off, he wipes his eyes with the back of his hand, suddenly knowing above all else he needs to blow his nose.

There is inappropriateness; a kind of ignorance so complete they are ashamed to know how experienced they are as he apologizes. He is an evangelism of joy in motion as he is apologizing for it.

Too late, now.

He has to get out of sight, out of the thought that everything is abrupt and witnessed. He turns to the panel and begins the diagnostics again.

“The quiet ones.” Gregg said. “It’s always the quiet ones. I got my eye on you.”

Izzy smiles at Gregg.

The stir of activity slowly resumes.

Gregg munches a potato chip. “We’ll have to start calling him Mike-a-delic.” He adds with a snort of his own laughter. “He’s a trip.”

Mary wonders if anyone knows what begins that makes laughter end. Izzy writes his name down, suddenly curious to see what it looks like on paper.
“Everyone should be able to hear it once.” Mary said to Jimmy as she wipes his forehead and checks the I.V. “Whatever it is.”

Albrite is asleep.

Coming up through a layer of dreams and impressions, past a layer of curious sensations toward something that had called Jimmy hears the hum of the ship. The light hurts his eyes as he blinks slowly. “What happened? I heard something.”

———————————

The Institute–

Dmitiri is sitting, staring at Henry, unblinking with tears in his eyes.

“Dmitri?”

“Did you see?” Dmitiri asks hoarsely.

“Yeah”

“Did you see it?!”

“Yeah. It just ..lit up. I never saw anything like it.”

“It was horrible! I almost died!”

“What are you talking about?”

“It exploded! I thought I would die at the light. Nothing like you’ve ever seen–or could see. It…” Dmitri touched his face with one hand. “I can’t see. Is it still happening?”

“Still happening? No, it..”

Dmitiri is confused. “I can’t see.” he says again. “I’m blind.”

——————————————————————

Psalm 37:12,13 The wicked plotteth against the righteous, and gnasheth his teeth against him. The Lord laugheth at him; for he seeth that his day is coming.

Job 12:16-25 With him is strength and effectual knowledge; the deceived and the deceiver are his. He leadeth counsellors away spoiled, and judges maketh he fools; He weakeneth the government of kings, and bindeth their loins with a fetter; He leadeth priests away spoiled, and overthroweth the mighty; He depriveth of speech the trusty, and taketh away the judgment of the elders; He poureth contempt upon nobles, and slackeneth the girdle of the mighty; He discovereth deep things out of darkness, and bringeth out into light the shadow of death; He increaseth the nations, and destroyeth them; he spreadeth out the nations, and bringeth them in; He taketh away the understanding of the chiefs of the people of the earth, and causeth them to wander in a pathless waste. They grope in the dark without light, and he maketh them to stagger like a drunkard.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen