To Shake the Sleeping Self

by Jedidiah Jenkins

  The Christians hid behind the stone walls, peering out and shaking. Some of the Spaniards peed themselves from fright.

  Atahualpa had decided to bring only 6,000 or so of his 80,000-strong army to the meeting, thinking it plenty enough to make the right impression. And at the last minute, he instructed his men to leave their weapons behind. Atahualpa would show his power through sheer numbers. With reporting from his spies, he had deduced that the strange giant beasts didn’t eat men.

  Pizarro, remaining inside his chamber, sent his priest and a translator to speak to Atahualpa. Under Spanish and Catholic law, any foreign leader of conquest must be given the chance to convert to Christianity before violence.

  The priest walked up to Atahualpa, who sat high in his hand-carried throne, greeted him, and invited him into the chamber with Pizarro. The goal was to separate the king from his men. Atahualpa declined. The priest then began performing his duty and recited the Christian message. He said he had been sent by the king to reveal the one true religion to Atahualpa and the Inca people. He then handed him a special book of Christian tenets designed for moments such as this.

  Atahualpa looked at the strange object in his hands. He had never seen a book, or writing. He turned it in his hands, and had trouble opening it. When the priest tried to help him, Atahualpa swatted his hand away. The book flopped open, and he saw thousands of scratchings all over it. Writing. He was amazed. Then, confused, he grew angry and threw the book to the ground in disgust.

  At this, the priest turned from Atahualpa and ran, crying out in fury to the hidden soldiers, “Come out! Come out, Christians! Come at these enemy dogs who reject the things of God. That chief has thrown my book of holy law to the ground! Do you not see what happened? Why remain polite and servile toward this overproud dog when the plains are full of Indians? March out against him, for I absolve you!”

  Hearing this, Pizarro gave the signal to attack. Cannons fired at close range into the hordes, while armored soldiers on horseback galloped into the courtyard. They had tied rattles to their horses to frighten the Incas even more. The terrified Incas turned to flee but were trapped in the courtyard and began trampling one another. In their panic, men piled on top of one another, suffocating and crushing those underneath.

  The Spanish soldiers descended into the chaos and began hacking and killing and dismembering. The unarmed Incas were no match. Flesh and organs and blood soon covered the courtyard. The steel weapons made game of soft muscle and tissue. Meanwhile, the holy king was still held aloft by his personal guard of 80 men. When Pizarro’s men sliced one man down, another would move into place. As the Incas’ arms were cut off, they would continue to hold up the litter with their shoulders until their legs were cut or their heads lopped off. This awful cycle of sacrifice continued until the Christians reached the litter and tipped it over. At that moment, they leaped on Atahualpa and hauled him off to Pizarro’s chamber.

  In two hours that day, five or six thousand unarmed men were murdered. Not one Christian was killed. Of the massacre at Cajamarca, a proud Spaniard later wrote, “Truly, it was not accomplished by our own forces for there were so few of us. It was by the grace of God, which is great.”

  We had a long walk to the bottom of the mountain, and when our stock of games was exhausted, we turned to one another’s spiritual histories for entertainment. For a stretch of trail, Annabelle, Cyrus, and I were hiking together. Only I had known Cyrus before the trip, and not well at that. He was fast talking and cartoonishly handsome, as if created in Photoshop. But he’d won everyone over with his helpfulness and tender heart. Annabelle wanted to know where Cyrus had grown up.

  “Texas,” he told her, sounding embarrassed.

  “Oh, so super-religious conservative?”

  “No, no, no. Not at all. My dad’s Vietnamese. We didn’t really go to church. But in Dallas, you kind of have to be Christian.”

  “Are you saying you are or aren’t Christian?” she asked. Annabelle’s curiosity was disarming. Her questions seemed to come without judgment. She could ask you when was the last time you masturbated and you’d be likely to answer without hesitation.

  “No, I’m not Christian,” Cyrus said.

  “Wow, that must’ve been isolating.”

  “Yeah, I went to church with my friends, or with girlfriends because they wanted me to, but it never made sense to me. I’m not against the idea of God, but the whole Jesus thing didn’t make sense.”

  “You know, if I’m being honest, I agree,” she said.

  “My whole life girls have liked me and then asked me if I was saved, if I had a personal relationship with Jesus,” he said. “When I told them no, they’d be so upset. It’s like they were nice to me, and then they’d change, like I became an alien.”

  “It was sort of like that for me in high school,” Annabelle said, grimacing.

  Cyrus was confessing now. “I’ve had girls walk up to me at Starbucks and ask me if I loved Jesus. Just walk up and say, ‘Do you love Jesus?’ And I’m like, no.”

  Annabelle understood what he was talking about. “I remember wanting to date hot guys but thinking it’s not okay because they weren’t Christian,” she said. “I was like, how can I date someone if they don’t care about what I care about?”

  We were holding on to roots as we slipped and tripped down the trail. Leaves and branches reached out to whip us in the face. Across the canyon, we caught views of Macchu Picchu. To its right on a closer peak, a waterfall pumped an incredible amount of water into the canyon. The flow was so fierce, the mountain looked like it was purging itself.

  Annabelle brought us back. “Jed, you grew up super Christian, yeah?”

  “Yes. Well, I was agnostic in early high school, soon as I learned what that word was. I hated church. And I loved the Discovery Channel. Church teachings seemed to be at war with the Discovery Channel. But I was never atheist. Cyrus, are you an atheist?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think not knowing means you’re not an atheist. The whole definition of atheism is deciding that God isn’t real.”

  Ahead of us, Jordan had looked back to see us clumped together in conversation. He pulled aside to wait until we caught up. Valentin hiked close behind us, listening, not saying a word.

  “I have to be honest, guys,” Annabelle said. “This year, I’ve really lost it. Like I don’t call myself a Christian anymore. Which feels crazy. I used to be involved with Young Life. It was huge in my life. And now I don’t recognize that feeling.” Annabelle said she had struggled with how the Church makes the label “Christian” mean everything. Say these words or burn in hell. Believe this specific story or burn in hell. “One day I was like, I don’t think the universe is set up like that. It doesn’t make sense,” she said.

  “But Christians say God’s ways are not our ways,” I said. “He is so much bigger than our understanding.”

  “Yeah, but they’re starting with a premise that doesn’t make sense. You’re making sure everything makes sense according to a book written by men, instead of making sure the book makes sense according to reality. It’s backwards.”

  “How do you know the Bible was written by men?” I asked. “Why can’t it be inspired by God, intended by God, and written by men’s hands?”

  “Of course. Even Christians say that. They say it was inspired by God. But I just kind of got free from the assumption that life has to be reconciled to this book. That is only a reality because people say it is. I want my reality to be reality, and then test things against it.”

  “That’s what I believe, I think,” Cyrus said.

  Annabelle’s line of reasoning sent me into turmoil. Annabelle doesn’t call herself a Christian. How terrifying. How alienating. I am a Christian, but how many beliefs can I strip away before I am not anymore? Do I believe the world is six thousand years old? No. Do I believe the Bible is th
e infallible word of God? Hmm, I think it’s inspired, but open to interpretation. And maybe I think it’s simply man’s search for God, documented. The Jewish people’s record of their understanding of God. That would explain how God seemed changed over time, from a wrathful angry God to Jesus.

  And then I found myself going down the list in my head.

  Do I believe Jesus was crucified? Yes, I do.

  Do I believe He rose from the dead on the third day? I think so.

  Do I believe in sin? Ugh. I don’t know. Sin doesn’t make sense to me.

  From there, things crumbled. It seems the main belief of Christianity is “Jesus is the son of God and He died for our sins.” Okay. Well…if I don’t understand sin, then how can I understand God sacrificing His son for my sins?

  Uh-oh.

  I felt that an invisible census taker was standing over me with a clipboard, ready to check next to my name, “approved Christian” or “backslider” or “deceived heretic.” I felt my mother crying for my lost soul. I felt her blaming California and liberals and the media and relativism. I felt her worrying about AIDS. It all depended on this one word: Christian.

  Atahualpa, once in custody, buried his fear in regal stoicism. He was frightened of being killed at first, but he quickly regained his composure. He demanded his wives and servants and concubines and was appeased. His women fed him by hand in his cell. They collected the bones and scraps and anything he touched and put them in leather chests. Anything the king touched must be saved and burned. Returned to the sun.

  The Christians asked Atahualpa why he had come unarmed. He told them he had been told by his spies that the Christians were so few that they could be easily overtaken. What he wanted was the horses. He was very impressed by the mighty beasts and wanted to take them and breed them. His plan was to capture the Christians, sacrifice some of them to the sun, and castrate the others and use them as slaves. He never guessed that they would attack first.

  About now, Jordan fell back on the hike and joined the conversation. He said a friend of his had quit calling himself Christian when he couldn’t believe in heaven and hell, and that the only way to get to heaven was by accepting “the sacrifice for sin of one dude two thousand years ago.” Jordan said his friend had decided if he did find himself at the gates of heaven, and wasn’t let in, he’d say, “Well, what did you expect? I did what I could with the information I had. And the story I was told wasn’t convincing. Isn’t it up to y’all to convince me?”

  Jordan’s story reminded me of the James Baldwin quote: “It was really a matter between me and God. I would have to live the life he had made me to live. I told him quite a long, long time ago there would be two of us at the Mercy Seat. He would not be asking all the questions.”

  When I offered my trail paraphrase of Baldwin, Annabelle exclaimed, “Oh my God, yes, that’s it! We’re doing the best with what we have. But being out here in nature…honestly, last night, looking at the stars, I felt God. I felt that feeling again I had back in high school, singing worship with my hands up. I felt the bigness of it. That is God.”

  “Yeah, I feel God in that way, too,” I said.

  “Jed, do you call yourself a Christian?” she asked, turning her spotlight on me next.

  “Uhm, yes, yes, I do. It’s how I was raised. And the idea of selflessness seems to be most real in Christianity. Like believing we’re God is such a lie, so submitting to God, and the idea that God would sacrifice Himself for what He loves as an example to His followers, that just feels truer to me than other religions.”

  “That surprises me. We’ve been friends a long time, and you’ve never, like, talked about Jesus or any of that.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe that’s embarrassing.” I laughed. “I’m not sure it’s the truth. I just think it may be.”

  “I’ve never really heard people talk like this before,” Cyrus said.

  “Like what?” Annabelle asked.

  “Like, talking openly about faith and belief without already knowing what the right answer is. No one I know talks like this.”

  Annabelle said that it was pretty special to be in this place, surrounded by mountains, all together, talking about life and what it means. To meet one another in this way. “These are my favorite conversations,” she said. And we all agreed.

  “I am changing,” I said. “I can feel it.” And I could feel it. Annabelle’s comfort with unbranding herself challenged me. I was envious, but also cautious. I wasn’t ready for the finality of saying “I am not a Christian.” It felt too certain. Maybe that’s what I was rejecting now. Certainty. But that’s what faith is—believing without certainty. Yet I had been raised to assume otherwise. In my version of Christianity, certainty seemed propped up by a scaffolding of fear. Jesus doesn’t want you lukewarm, preachers said. Be all in or all out. Stay away from the middle place, the gray.

  “The heart is deceitful above all else.” A.k.a., don’t trust your feelings. The heart will trick you to get what it wants.

  “Lean not on your own understanding.” Don’t think for yourself.

  The scripture says, “Come let us reason together,” but this is code for “yes, you can share your thoughts with us, by all means, but if they don’t fit what we believe Scripture says, then those thoughts will have to go.”

  If you don’t believe, sadly, you’ll spend eternity in hell. So you’d better believe that Jesus loves you. He loves you so much, or else.

  Annabelle was talking it out, trying to bring the threads together. “Saying I am Christian doesn’t make sense for me anymore. But saying that something else is right or that there is nothing doesn’t make sense either. I have found more comfort and have felt a greater faith in something bigger than me, I have felt a bigger hug from the universe by rejecting the obsession to call it something. To name it. Maybe there is life after. Maybe there isn’t. Maybe it’s Jesus. Maybe it’s a giant oak tree. Maybe it’s energy. Maybe it’s stardust. Maybe we just shut off. But not calling it something certain has opened my heart more than when I was Christian, feeling like I was the lucky one who got to hear Jesus’s name and thus be accepted into the club. And quitting that limited idea, that the truth is so small, has given me deeper curiosity in the universe, my world, and the people around me. I love them more. I love everything more. Because I don’t see anyone else as right or wrong, we all just are. The not knowing feels so much bigger and more exciting and mystical and grand and beautiful than whatever words humans strung together to describe It, God, and how you attain It.”

  “There’s something there that feels true,” I said.

  “Same,” Jordan said.

  “I’ve never said it all like that before,” said Annabelle. “I guess I’m just really finding it.”

  “That’s called mysticism, I think,” I offered.

  “It is?”

  “Yeah, mysticism is when you don’t have intellectual certainty about stuff, but experientially you do believe in things, like beauty and mystery and the universe as a force for good. You move beyond the dualism of good and evil to a more unified whole, a sense that everything belongs.”

  “Oh my gosh, yes, I believe that!” Annabelle said.

  “Yeah, I’ve kind of been calling myself a mystic-Christian,” I said. “That’s what I’ve heard Thomas Merton was, and I think I’m down with that.”

  Even as I said it, I felt suspicious of the wishy-washy language we were embracing. Energy. Stars. Universe. It felt man-made, self-absorbed. But I was also thrilled. Walking in the wilderness of the lost Inca civilization, discussing God and what it means to be alive. I realized Valentin was still walking behind us. What did this Quechua man make of our odd American conversation?

  “We’re MYSTICS!” Annabelle yelled.

  “Myyysticcss!” we all yelled together into the mountains. The birds in the jungle around us trilled and squawked. Valentin
laughed.

  In the early days of his custody, Atahualpa observed the Christians’ obsession with precious metals, specifically gold, and proposed a plan. If he could fill a large room with gold and silver, could he buy his freedom?

  Pizarro said yes.

  Atahualpa sent word throughout the kingdom to collect gold and silver from the temples and have it brought to him. Over several months, a steady flow of ornate platters and chalices and statues came to the Christians at Cajamarca. The designated room filled with more than six tons of gold. The Christians had it melted down. Their eyes were feverish with excitement. So feverish that one of Pizarro’s soldiers got his arm lopped off in a quarrel with another one over gold. It was the only serious injury to a Christian during the Inca conquest.

  Once the room was full, piled eight feet high with gold from wall to wall, Atahualpa asked for his release. He was denied.

  Instead, the Spaniards tied Atahualpa to a chair. The priest offered him the chance to repent of his sins and accept Christ. Atahualpa agreed. He asked to be baptized. The priest baptized him. He denounced his belief in the sun god and repented of his sins and accepted the Jesus that had led his enemies to victory.

  The priest rechristened him Francisco, Pizarro’s middle name. Then, acting quickly for fear Atahualpa would change his mind, they strangled him to death.

  We’d reached the river. It was time to head into the little town of Aguas Calientes, where we would sleep at a hotel, wake up just before sunrise, and be driven up the winding ascent to Machu Picchu.

  I wanted to save all I had seen and heard, all we had said. I knew it was monumental somehow. Appropriate to Machu Picchu. A spiritual vortex.

  The next morning we woke before sunrise and piled into a rickety bus that took us up a zigzag dirt road with no guardrail. It felt like we were driving straight up the mountain. The driver, with half-closed eyes and a scowl, whipped the bus around the turns, terrifying all of us. We could watch gravel kicked up by the tires bouncing hundreds of feet down to the river. But I couldn’t look. I closed my eyes and clung to the thought that the driver had done this fifteen times a day for decades.