Jesus in the Desert

The altar of the All-being

I met Jesus on the railroad tracks and we walked together down to the homemade cross and altar on the playa near the tracks east of Cholona. At first he cursed this impingement, but as we neared and he saw the homemade altar and holy water bowl and rough cross made of nailed 4X4s with cracked paint, he mellowed and ruminated while staring across at the Black Rock. "Why don't you understand that I'm tired of the cross?" and then he swept an arm around--"Haven't you seen the altar of the All-being?"

Jesus, by the way, has a lot of reasons to be angry--the atrocities committed in his name, the continual insistence that "he" is a "man" and not human, as though the offspring of Gods--literally--would have some kind of gender. Especially angry at the continual emphasis on the father. "What about my mother? A cult of Maria. Don't you realize that if 'God' is my father then all of this"--indicating all around--"is my mother: the life earth. How could you twist my ideas so much?" And then Jesus is silent for a moment. "Just leave me alone, please? Solve your own problems for once. I'm through being your whipping boy."

"The bible, by the way, is a bunch of lies. I disowned myself completely of it by La Conquista and the Inquisition and the selling of papal bulls. But I never liked it. Don't you realize that I went into the temple to destroy it? What an insult to construct another on my already agonized back."

"Do you know what it's like to die on a cross? If you knew, you would never sanction violence as the charlatans do in my name."

"Violence belongs to the weak. The strength of my mother and father is to turn the other cheek and love thy neighbors. No matter how angry they make me."

"Another fallacy is that I don't have brothers and sisters. I have all of them--I am neither the eldest nor the youngest. We are all together."

We walked back to the tracks and he turned west and I turned east and we parted. I stopped a half-mile away and looked back, but he was gone.

Don't you understand I'm tired of the cross?