the inmate's journal : spring fragrance vi

i feel as if the lord is calling us to pray.

 

no one chose to disagree.

 

i know we’ve been focusing on the challenges god has given us this past week and perhaps the lord is leading us to pray for a particular challenge, maybe even one that hasn’t been expressed, but i feel as if we should first ask for his help before we just jump right in and decide on our own what to do … that we should be open to his leading.

 

there were vague nods and vaguer murmurs of assent.  the people, in the spiritual realms at least, were compliant.  friday nights were their opportunity to get spiritually naked and let ferrelyn wash them with linen words, before they returned to the world and again dressed in their hard identities.

 

judas, perhaps you can lead us.

 

me?

 

but i was new.  i was young.  i was still recovering from the assembly.  i preferred a vicarious spirituality.  god had given me the role of observer.  what if i confessed my love for ferrelyn?  i had absolutely nothing to say.  sure, i said.  sure, i had to say.

 

dear jesus.  {long pause}  dear jesus.  jesus.  {long pause}  you know it’s been one of those weeks.  one of those weeks that just feels like … like … like, one of those weeks.  ferrelyn has told us that these weeks aren’t just those weeks but all the weeks and we can’t really expect anything else and that life’s kind of, well, futile.  but as she also told us, you’re there to sit beside us on the bench of futility and be the kind of jesus you were born to be and i guess by being that helping us to be the kind of people we were born to be.  which maybe we can’t help being otherwise, but that’s all whatever, because, who knows?  maybe you do, which is nice.  i guess.  so, anyway, we really don’t know what to pray about and i certainly don’t have a clue, which is sort of obvious, so if you could tell us or at least tell ferrelyn, since she seems to have more dual citizenship than the rest of us, that would be good.  we’ll wait.  thanks.  {long pause}  amen.

 

that was beautiful judas, ferrelyn whispered to me, smiling through a drizzle of tears.

 and so the people prayed and their words entered the rusty airwaves leading upwards to heaven’s mailroom, where savage editors born on day two translated the commoditized pleas for god’s primitive mind.

as friday became threaded to friday and a quilt of unheard prayers was sewn, i realized ferrelyn wasn’t so much someone who prayed as a bubble who carried the prayers of others.  she was a liquid bridge from the solid worlds of wall, madison, and sunset to the gaseous world of god.  if she burst as she rose higher, clawed by the lower angels, always hungry for human prayers and hardly pure, she never let on - for any pains she suffered were hid below her gentleness.  she was a compost, transforming the cruelties of daily life into tranquil meaninglessness.  she was a beeswax candle, scrubbing the air.  she was my pretty bubble, a spheric airy standard i longed for, but could never attain.

 

i know the virtual world - that impossible conglomerate of tv, web, mags, and movies, porn and pics and pucks - teaches us that there are certain standards of beauty we should desire.  some conglomerate of breasts and eyes.  ferrelyn conformed to none of these, being squat and lumpish, motley with strawy hair, with indeterminate breasts and maudlin eyes … but i desired her more than a ménage à trois with my ex-organist and sister gooch.

 

i tried to venture into the erotic domain with her after a particularly emotional friday evening when all of us, even the lawyer, genuinely believed we were living selfishly and were going to reduce our greed and gluttony to levels the third world might respect.  ferrelyn drove me home, weeping gently as she confessed her week’s avarice at the corner store; we sat outside my apartment complex and talked about jesus’ love and forgiveness and i knew that if there were a moment in the history of lust that spirit and flesh were one, this was it.

 

i ran my hand from her shoulder to her knee, then underneath her skirt up to the counsel of her panties.  after a few moments of silence and unrequited groping, i glanced up; her eyes were closed, hands clasped between her breasts. 

 

what are you doing?

 

praying for you.

 

praying for me for what?

 

that you will love the lord as you promised tonight.

 

can’t i love the lord and love you?

 

you must love the lord more than me.

 

can’t i love the lord more than you by touching him through you?

 

judas.  are you truly feeling the lord now?

 

yes.

 

the lord is not where your hand is.

 

but hasn’t it been said that the lord is in the burning bush?

 

the lord may be, but your hand doesn’t belong there.

 

how do you know my hand doesn’t belong?

 

the lord will take your hand away.