Chapter Fifteen
Waking Up after the Dreams
Though they didn’t all come on consecutive days, but over the course of more than three weeks, Walter had recounted major parts of twelve dreams that we stitched together into one day in the life of Jesus. At the beginning I hesitated to absorb two important ideas.
First, Jesus did heal everyone in a large mixed crowd without exception or excuse. Second, Walter was seeing this historical event portrayed vividly, almost cinematically, in this series of dreams. Even without Walter’s dreams, the notion that Jesus healed everyone who came to him was revolutionary to me, a bit of Scripture I had neglected since I’d first heard of it as a child. But Walter’s dreams seemed designed to revive the memory of that Sunday school lesson and to bring it as a challenge to my adult self, a challenge that rocked me off my foundation.
Later that week, after the final dream, I visited Walter at the nursing home. It was one of those February days that hold the promise of spring. I had no afternoon classes and didn’t resist the call to get outside and absorb some warm sunshine. At that time of year, sixty degrees seems balmy in these parts.
Walter was in the lounge playing Hearts with three of his friends. I sat and watched until they finished a hand before I persuaded him to come out with me for some fresh air. We walked across the street and then made a leisurely lap around the park. The trees had no leaves to shade us yet, but who wants shade on the warmest day of a northern February?
After that one lap, we sat on a park bench with our backs to the nursing home. The wind gently pushed a lock of his thin gray hair across Walter’s forehead. He made a habitual and ineffective brush at it.
“How are classes?”
My bout of spring fever induced by the weather clouded the answer to that question. More than that, however, the pressure I felt to account for the truth of those dreams in the way I taught remained a deeply irritating piece of unfinished business.
“It gets to be a habit after a while. I can easily go through the motions, recycling the syllabus from last year, and saying the same old things.”
Walter turned his head toward me. “Is that what you’re doing?”
I nodded. “It’s the default I slip into while I try to tame the wild animals warring inside my head.”
He raised his eyebrows and sat up a bit straighter. “That sounds pretty serious.”
I laughed a short and cheerless laugh. “Oh, I don’t mean you should call the exorcist or anything like that. But I know what I heard from your dreams demands a difference in me that I’m not seeing yet. Teaching those young people in that traditionally Protestant college would seem like an obvious place to start.”
“So what’s holding you back?”
I tipped my head toward Walter. “You’re not gonna let me off easy on this, are you?”
He squinted against the bright sunlight, so that it was hard to tell how much of a smile he was wearing. “Of course, I took this journey with you,” he said. “I know the impact it would have on any perceptive and sensitive person. And I know the images of Jesus pouring himself out and setting all those people free opened my eyes more than any spiritual experience in all my life.” He took a deep breath, as if talking for so long was a strain. “For me it’s much easier to respond to that than it is for you, I know. I got to live in those dreams.”
I wanted to back away one step from where I knew this was headed. “I’m still working on what I believe. I’m not to the part where I allow this revelation to overhaul my life.”
He uncrossed and recrossed his feet at the ankles. For a moment, it seemed to me that he was unusually fascinated by being able to do that, carefully observing how it worked so well, but I dodged that distraction.
I tried to dig deeper. “One thing I’ve had to face,” I said, “is the realization that deep down I assume God can’t really heal everything, that some things are too hard even for God. But the stories of Jesus healing everyone in the crowd don’t support my gut assumption. It’s as if I think of myself as so exceptional that I would be the one person in the crowd that he can’t heal.”
Walter picked up my point and drove it home. “And the sticky part of that trap is that it seems like it’s humility to think that I might be the one exception, when really it’s a sort of pride.”
I seldom came to Walter for back-patting comfort. More often he made me more uncomfortable with insights like that. He remained my teacher until the end.
Even in the throes of this profound conversation, I could see Walter struggling to keep his eyes open, reminding me of an old cat sitting in a tract of sunshine on a familiar rug.
“There’s time for a nap before dinner,” I said.
He looked at me, slightly startled, and the airy and unfocused way he responded made him seem old all over again. “Huh? Oh, yes. I guess I could use some rest.”
“C’mon, I’ll help you up.” I stood and offered a hand as he gathered his strength to return to his feet and wander back to his room.
Walter sat on his bed and made no complaint when I helped him slip off his shoes.
“Thanks, James,” he said, mumbling slightly.
“Have a good rest, Walter.”
He placed his glasses on his nightstand and lay back on his pillow.
I closed the door behind me, stopping at the nurse’s station to let them know not to disturb his nap.
The next evening, a Friday, I went to dinner with Jillian at her favorite Mexican restaurant, one that I hadn’t explored before. The warm aromas of cumin, corn tortillas and roasted chilies stirred my growing appetite.
“Chicken enchiladas molè is my favorite here,” she said as we opened our menus.
I peeked across the top of the heavy, plastic-coated menu and caught Jillian peeking back at me.
“What are you looking at?” She played the part of the shy girl pretty well.
“I was just enjoying how you’re content to simply tell me what’s your favorite, without trying to get me to like the same thing.”
“It sounds like you have some history with that kind of game.”
I laughed, shrugging slightly. “Don’t know where you would get that idea.”
“Mmmm,” was all she said.
“I’m not really hard to persuade,” I said. “But I’m really only an easy sale for people like Walter, and you, who know that pushing only gets push back.”
“So I have you under my spell, do I?”
“It’s not obvious?”
She smiled and returned to the menu.
“You know, if this relationship keeps going on like this, someday we’re gonna have to describe how we met,” I said
Now she laughed out loud, straightening up only a little to say, “Well, that’s why you have to write the book, so it’s easier for people to believe.”
“Hmmm.” It was my turn for an inarticulate response. “You think people will believe the story about the dreams? I believe it only because I know and trust Walter. Without that the whole thing seems incredible.”
“That’s not surprising. Most people only hold their most important beliefs because of someone they know and trust believing right along with them, or perhaps before them. Maybe you’re just supposed to be the first one Walter convinces.”
As with Walter, earlier in the week, I felt like Jillian was assuming that my faith level was well above where I would have placed it. Or was it just that I didn’t know faith even when I had it? Maybe they were right and I was just being too hard on myself.
“Well, I know Walter wants me to write it up, and I would welcome some way to honor him, so I think I will give it a try.”
“And maybe in the process you’ll get more clarity on just what’s real and what you can believe in.”
The waitress arrived to take our orders, giving me a break to consider Jillian’s speculation. The conversation faded in other directions as we ate chips and salsa followed by entrées, which we each enjoyed intensely. When I finally decide
d I had eaten all I could without regretting it, I thought again of having to tell someone how Jillian and I met.
“Did Walter ever tell you how he met Carolyn, his wife?”
Jillian wiped her lips with a cloth napkin and shook her head. “No, he hasn’t said much to me about his wife.”
I took a sip of water and tried to sort out the story. “If I remember right, Walter was studying in England, at Cambridge University. He was in his early twenties, something of a prodigy, and got some kind of scholarship a few years after the war.” I sat back, trying to get more comfortable after so much rich and spicy food.
“Carolyn was traveling through Europe with some girlfriends, privileged girls with money and time, and a desire to see the world. I always thought of Carolyn as something of a tomboy when she was young, for her sense of adventure, her love for the outdoors, and her tendency to wear men’s jackets or shirts. She was an artist, a painter, and that was part of her style.”
“Anyway, these young women had toured the old university and Carolyn was on her own one afternoon, sketching some ancient building or other. She sees this young scholar in a tweed jacket, sucking on a tobacco pipe, though nothing burning in it, and thinks he’s a local she can ask about the history of the building she’s sketching. The way Walter tells it, he put on his best British accent and made up some nonsense about the building to cover his complete ignorance of the architecture and history.”
I remembered Walter and Carolyn’s comic banter over the details of this encounter. “Carolyn claimed that she suspected something wasn’t quite right with this pretender, though I think she couldn’t put her finger on it. What they agreed about when they told me the story is that she didn’t say anything to challenge Walter’s pretense but went back to her sketching when he marched off triumphantly, under the impression he had completely fooled the American girl. But, as he was walking away, Walter realized he was attracted to the beautiful artist and wanted to get to know her. He knew he’d have to fess up about his real citizenship, with his real Midwestern accent, so he stuffed his pipe into his pocket and went back, hat in hand, to apologize for the masquerade and find out her name.” I laughed more at the memory of the disputed versions of the story between Walter and Carolyn than the story itself.
Jillian joined my laughter, watching me with appreciatively sparkling eyes. But my mind turned back to Walter as my mentor and friend, twenty-some years ago, when I first heard that story in his back garden, him still a professor with a respected following in school and even a national reputation in his field. And I recalled Carolyn serving us tea, which had prompted the England memories. I could picture her wearing one of Walter’s old fedoras that day, to keep the sun out of her eyes as she sketched a lilac bush next to the patio.
Carolyn had been gone now several years, and Walter seemed destined to follow her soon. Jillian’s gaze awaited me when I forced myself to reverse away from that anxious thought.
“I think I’ll go see Walter again tomorrow,” I said, to myself as much as to Jillian.
In fact, I visited Walter three more times at the home. Each time he seemed a bit more tired. I particularly remember the last time we visited.
I found him sitting in the comfy chair in his room, a book on his lap, his head back, and eyes closed. I assumed he was asleep and hesitated about whether to come in and wait for him to wake up or to visit again another day. But my momentary halt made enough of a disturbance to alert Walter. He opened his eyes without moving his head and looked at me.
“James.” His voice crackled like a distant AM radio station.
“How are you, Walter?” I said, just as I had done dozens of times before.
“Tired but happy.” He raised his head and looked more squarely at me. He picked up the worn hardcover book and put his bookmark in place. He closed it and perched it on his lap.
“Seems like you’ve been more tired lately. You keeping late hours with one of your lady friends?”
Walter grinned his sly fox grin and wheezed a laugh, as if his soul was amused but his body refused to commit to fully expressing it.
“Is that laugh a confession of guilt?”
He shook his head. “I’m denying everything.” He grabbed a couple of gulps of air. His breathing seemed almost conscious instead of instinctual natural breathing. He saw my furrowed brow after those obvious gasps for air.
“Oh, don’t look so worried. I’m feeling no pain, and that’s without meds.”
I acknowledged his encouragement but made no promise not to worry. I perched on the edge of his bed, but he moved to hand me the book in his lap. I rose to take it and lay it on his nightstand. Collapsed again into his sedate pose, his weary smile reminded me of his description of Jesus healing people at the end of the day, both more tired and more peaceful than anyone he had ever seen. Perhaps Walter had received some of that same grace to be both weak and content at the same time.
“You see Jillian last night?”
“Yep.”
“Good. You hang on to that one.”
That was the first time Walter had given me any kind of relationship advice since my divorce, and he offered it without caveat or moderation.
“You really like her, huh?”
He nodded. “So do you.”
I laughed. “You’ve taken up mind reading in your old age?”
“Doesn’t take a mind reader,” he said, his voice faint and yet confident.
We didn’t say much more, but before I left that last time, he stopped me and strung together more words than I thought he could manage at the time.
“You know, James, I’m very happy that I got to share these past several weeks with you. It meant so much more to have you along for the ride.”
That was the last thing Walter said to me. That night, less than two weeks after he received the last of the life-changing dreams, Walter Schrader died in his sleep.
I knew what had happened as soon as I got the call from the morning nurse. I knew he had flown away to hover over those dusty hills again, to see a glimpse of heaven on earth, before making the flight to that much better resting place.
That Jillian was there to help me arrange for Walter’s cremation and memorial service, including contacting his relatives, made the experience more tolerable. Walter had no children. I had become his de facto son and the executor of his estate. However, I still managed to feel like an outsider among his friends and family at the memorial service. There, too, Jillian’s presence comforted me greatly.
After the service and the reception, the crowd of unfamiliar people and the crush of disorienting emotions, Jillian and I walked to my car. We stood in the parking lot outside the Presbyterian church where Walter had been an elder and long-time member. She stopped and faced me when we reached her side of the car. Our eyes locked.
She wrapped her arms around my waist, and I drew her close to me. I allowed the energy of my pain and loss to fill that embrace. Jillian stayed with me, holding tight.
“You know, I’ve been thinking about why God healed Walter from his stroke, only to have him die soon after,” I said, loosening my grip.
Jillian leaned back and squinted, as if she was sizing me up.
“It reminds me of a time when I was a small boy and my father was on a business trip to Detroit,” I said. “The night he was due to drive home, there was a terrible snowstorm. I remember my mother checking the clock repeatedly, and looking outside every time a car drove past. When she said good night to me, I guess she could see in my quiet seriousness that I had inherited some of her anxiety. She tried to assure me, but I still had a hard time falling asleep. Much later that night, my father woke me up out of a fitful sleep to let me know that he had gotten home safely. After that, I slept more peacefully.”
Jillian’s face lighted at the analogy, but she waited for me to state my punch line.
“So, I see Walter getting healed before he died as like my dad waking me up so I could sleep more peacefully.”
Jill
ian’s smile broadened.
I released my embrace and took her hands. “Walter changed my life more than once,” I said.
She searched my eyes as if for the signs that would help her follow where I was going. Then she grinned and tilted her head slightly. “Mine too.”
Chapter Sixteen
The Teacher Who Changed My Life
Over my decades of teaching ethics in that college, with its religious foundations and modern intellectual reputation, I had refined a pair of approaches to enlightening young minds about how to live an ethically defensible life. The first tact led us through the lineage of philosophers who had survived the winnowing process of historians and subsequent philosophers, examining what they taught about the nature of right and wrong. On this trail I would carefully and respectfully set up each of these intellectual predecessors, displaying their system of belief as well as I could. Then I would tear it down, revealing its inherent weakness, often with the help of the next philosophical titan listed on the syllabus. And so it would go until all of the great minds had been vanquished, leaving us with a smug satisfaction that they were no greater than we are and at the same time offering little hope of truth or direction in life.
The second approach focused on the great hot-button issues of our day: sex, wealth, power, the sanctity of life, etc. While picking through the particulars of each of these contemporary questions, often in light of previous historical debates, we would examine the various options. Regarding protecting the environment, for example, we studied laissez-faire capitalism, which expected market forces to keep us from totally destroying the planet on which we all depend for life, and we studied extreme environmentalism, which verges on worshipping the planet and regales modern humans with a long list of accusations regarding our ill-treatment of Mother Earth. Where we end up then is some version of collapsing the defenses of the extremes by showing that they stand upon presuppositions that most of us didn’t share, and opting for a more balanced approach. Of course, as the professor, I got first crack at defining balanced.
And He Healed Them All: Second Edition Page 19