The Warrior...Part 2

Part 1 - Upon the Rock

Part 2 - In the Upper Room

“Dude, that’s awesome!” 

“Then you don’t think the whole thing sounds a little bit cheesy?”  Dillon looked across the table at his friend.  Mark was Dillon’s opposite in almost every way:  Dillon was somber, Mark was enthusiastic.  Dillon was tidy; Mark was a slob.  Dillon liked the consistency of the corporate coffee house franchise; Mark preferred the chancy hot tea from the locally owned Indian tearoom.  Dillon often wondered when Mark would grow up; Mark thought Dillon needed to relax.  They were the best of friends.

“Cheesy?  No way!  I’ve got chills just listening to you!”  Mark extended his hand to illustrate and he was not exaggerating.  The hairs on his arms were standing straight up.  “Visions and voices AND a meeting with an angel; you must be so stoked.”

Today, they met after work for coffee.  It was Monday afternoon and Dillon, telling his story for the first time in the clear light of day, felt awkward and uncertain.  He stared down into his coffee mug as if the dwindling foam on top might morph into the face of the Blessed Virgin at any moment.  He was clearly uncomfortable with Mark’s synopsis.  Those words could just as easily have been in a psychiatrist’s notes.  “You don’t think I’m crazy?”

“Sorry, pal,” Mark grinned, “That’s not my area of expertise.”  He sipped his tea and grimaced.  “I’m just here to encourage you and maybe help you interpret the signs.”

“Interpret?”  Sometimes, Mark really pushed Dillon’s buttons.  He started to deny the need for any outside interpretation, but his insecurities had been gnawing at him all weekend.  Church on Sunday had been a surreal melodrama of religious rituals that left him utterly cold after his experience on the mountain the night before.  His friend’s patronizing smile made him want to scream.

“Hey, don’t get all worked up,” Mark replied, sensing his friend’s defensiveness.  “I just mean that sometimes it helps to have someone on the outside of your skull offer possible scenarios to validate the experience.  You might as well have ‘DOUBT’ tattooed on your forehead.  I just don’t want you to disregard this as a figment of your imagination.  It’s too important.”

“Sorry,” and Dillon meant it.  “It’s just weird to say all of that out loud.  It felt so real but it sounds so insane.”

“It’s ok, you’re just a product of the Age of Reason: all logic and no mystery.  That’s why you struggle with God and His supernatural attributes.  You can say He’s ‘omnipresent’ but you don’t really expect to see him sitting at that table over there.  You can say He’s ‘omniscient’ but you’re surprised if He knows your name.  You can say He’s ‘omnipotent’ but if He does something powerful, you try to explain it rationally.  That’s why you need help interpreting His words to you:  You’ll just try to make it Reasonable.”

"It's ok, you're just all caught up in your Age-of-Reason thinking: all logic and no mystery.  A supernatural God really throws you a curve.  You can say He’s ‘omnipresent’ but you don’t really expect to see him sitting at that table over there.  You can say He’s ‘omnipotent’ but if He does something powerful, you try to explain it rationally."  At that, he paused for a moment, brow wrinkled in thought.

"Omniscient?" Dillon offered.

"That's the one," Mark said, snapping his fingers in recognition.  "You can say He’s ‘omniscient’ but you’re surprised if He knows your name.  So, when He shows up, knows you and says something in a powerful way, you get all 'reasonable' and act embarrassed about it." 

“That’s probably a fair assessment,” Dillon conceded.  “So, what do you make of Caleb’s parable?”

“That’s the easiest part of the whole story.  We’re walking in a ‘dark’ world and our spiritual ‘eyes’ have adjusted to the darkness.  So, we are generally unaware of the darkness itself,” Mark paused and looked out the window behind Dillon, thinking.  Furrowing his brow, continued, “We’re not even looking for a light.”

“Ok, I buy that,” Dillon nodded, “But why does God withhold the light?”

“He doesn’t.”  Mark was looking just over Dillon’s left shoulder.  Dillon was sure that there was more to Mark’s answer and waited for a minute before snapping his fingers in his friend’s line of sight.  “Sorry,” Mark continued, “He said that the Sun will rise.  You just have to wait for the right time.  I was trying to piece together a verse from Isaiah:  Thick darkness is on all of the people but the Lord rises on you…”

“Kings will come to your light and nations to the brightness of your dawn.”  Dillon quoted the verse from rote.  His mind swam for a moment in a pool of memories from his youth.  He closed his eyes and it was as if he had been transported back in time.

The room was dark and the dark forms of his buddies surrounded him.  Off to the left, someone struck a match and used it to light a single candle.  The leader passed the candle to his left and began the verses.  As each member of the group took the candle and passed it on, they joined the recitation until they were almost chanting together. 

Arise, shine, for your light has come and the glory of the Lord rises upon you.  Look!  Darkness is covering the earth and thick darkness is upon all people.
But the Lord rises on you.
Kings will come to your light and nations to the brightness of your dawn.

“You are the light of the world,” the leader said.

“No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket,” the group intoned.

“Instead, he puts it on a lamp stand,” the leader continued.

“And it gives light to the whole house,” the group concluded.

This unusual “liturgy” had been the framework for their weekly meetings for over a year.  It had added a sense of mystery and power to scripture that somehow been lost to him lately.

Dillon took in the vision from his memory.  He remembered every detail of the room where his youth minister had presided over these meetings.  The room had been in an unused part of the church, behind an air conditioner intake in the rafters over the main sanctuary.  One wall was completely dominated by the top of a large stained glass window.  The approach required that the group traverse a catwalk, thirty feet above the choir loft.  It had been simultaneously beautiful and dark, sacred and dangerous.  The conversations that the group of young men had in the candlelight had been similarly colored.  He had learned what it was to be a Christian in that room and he had learned some of what it meant to be a man.

“Who has something to share?” the leader asked, though his face was shrouded in shadow, his eyes seemed fixed on Dillon.  The custom had been to pass the candle around a second time; each participant would share a passage from the Bible that had spoken to him as he read during the week.  Some would even offer commentary.  Dillon watched the faces of the young men as they passed the candle around and read from the scriptures.  He knew them all very well and their faces had been frozen in his memories.  All young and untouched by the stress and strife that adulthood had no doubt heaped on them to make them as cynical and unbelieving as he felt.

Finally, the candle came to him.  Dillon scrambled for something to share.  He had not often come to the meetings without a verse marked in his Bible, but the embarrassment that he felt on those occasions came rushing back to him.  He dropped his Bible in his lap and flipped it open randomly.  He let his eyes fall on a verse and began reading.

When you hear the sound of marching in the treetops, be ready to fight, for it is the Lord of hosts who goes before you.

When he looked up, the leader was sitting directly in front of him.  Almost out of reflex, Dillon handed him the candle.  When the light from the small flame lit the leader’s face, Dillon recognized it instantly.

It was his face, as he had looked in the years when he sat in these meetings.

“Let us not be hearers of the word only,” the image of young Dillon began.  It was the customary closing of the meetings.  Dillon felt the memory slipping away from him but he joined the other boys in the response.

“We are doers of the word.”

“What?” Mark was snapping his fingers in Dillon’s face now.  “Where were you just now?  Your mind wandered.”

“How long?”

“A few seconds,” Mark looked puzzled.  “You just finished the verse I was fishing for and got this thoughtful look.  What happened?”

“I was just remembering something,” Dillon paused, trying to put words to the memory.  “I was 17, I guess.”

“Go on.”

“We used to have these meetings at church where we read the Bible and talked about it and…”

“Up in the attic,” Mark commented, “Yeah, you’ve told me about that.”

“Yeah, that’s it,” Dillon looked at Mark.  He felt his ears burning and his cheeks begin to flush.  “It’s going to sound crazy.”

“Crazier than the angel story?”

Dillon chuckled, in spite of himself, and replied, “I guess not.  It was so real; like being there again.  But then I opened my Bible and read this verse that I don’t recall ever reading in the meetings.”  He went on to describe seeing himself as a boy when he looked at the leader.  “I remember how devoted I was back then, how passionate.”

“So, there’s two of you: one young and passionate, the other,” he paused as if he were trying to generate adjectives that would not be inflammatory.

“Jaded, unbelieving,” Dillon picked up his coffee and sipped it.  A comfortable silence fell between them for a few minutes.

“I have a battle to fight,” Dillon said finally, smiling at the elegant simplicity of God’s revelations, at the ways that the jagged pieces of his life could come together to form an epiphany.

“A battle against who?”

“Whom.”

“Whatever,” Mark seemed more stunned than annoyed.  “A battle against whom?”

“Myself…I think.”

Mark paused for a moment and looked seriously at Dillon.  Then laughing out loud, he raised his mug in salute.

“I hope you win!”

** Continue to Part 3 **