A Dream
by Chris MacCormick

 

I was walking with a friend in a familiar village. The day was handsome, open and warm, and we were just going along. 

On a board fence we noticed a poster that looked like a square-dance or boxing handbill—raw letters, some of the lines in boldface—and went over to read it. It said that Jesus had come back and was going to perform three miracles that afternoon at the softball field at the edge of town. It seemed preposterous; but having nothing else to compel our interest, we headed in that direction.

When we arrived, things seemed about ready to get underway. There was enough of a crowd to fill up the infield, all sitting on the grass. On the pitcher's mound stood a bearded man with long hair and a long, soft robe, looking like nothing so much as a picture of Jesus you might have seen in Sunday school.  We couldn't see or hear well from where we were watching, across the outfield fence, but I was impressed by a glow of enthusiasm about the crowd. I saw no shows of skepticism, anyway.

The Jesus character spoke a little, and then his performance started. A silver globe not much smaller than a bowling ball appeared on the edge of the crowd, flying in a swift, smooth circle. I couldn't figure it at all. I made what must have appeared quite a stunned look in my friend's direction, then turned back in time to see a white dove fly in from the direction of the woods beyond the backstop. The dove flew alongside the silver ball, twining with it just out in front like a porpoise at the prow of a boat.

I don't remember how that ended. I was taken aback, so much so that I failed to register the next events, only taking the sense of amazing things continuing to transpire. Meanwhile I kept tripping over the idea that what I had just witnessed was something I couldn’t even have made up.

Somehow while I remained preoccupied and inward we drew closer, while still remaining apart from the others. The man looked at us directly and asked whether something was troubling us. I got myself roughly in order and answered him.

I said that I was tremendously impressed by what I had just seen. I had been disabused of my expectation of witnessing a cheap fraud, and was glad of it; but I was still bothered. I believed that what he had just shown us had not been in the spirit of Jesus at all. In my understanding, Jesus didn't perform miracles—not the sort of fancy magic that the gullible are bound to find irresistible—but had rather evoked signs of God's will to transform base things into noble ones, dullness or contempt into love, impairment into health. By the time I finished speaking I had regained my sense of the high ground, and although I continued to show deference toward him, it was the kind that doesn't cost anything, that just sort of projects itself when one’s luck is easy.

He smiled, still giving me his steady look. Then the whole scene came to an end in a sort of rush in which all the individual faces of the crowd, none of which I'd especially noticed before, bloomed into distinct focus for a long moment that only faded as I awoke.

(Return to Metaphysical Times Home Page)