by Greg Kincaid
Angel’s timing was good. Ted had just asked himself the same question. There was, therefore, no hesitation. “Angel, for the first time in a very long time, I feel at home with myself.”
“That’s right, Ted, comfortable, at home. I’m very happy for you.”
The outskirts of Taos were littered with clumsy little strip malls and fast-food restaurants, but they quickly gave way to the far more charming historical city center. Angel found a good parking spot for Bertha in one of the public lots not far from the Taos Plaza. They walked the dogs in a nearby park and grabbed a cup of coffee and a thick cookie generously studded with nuts and chocolate. When Argo and No Barks completed their sniffing and territory marking, the four of them wandered about, shopping in Taos.
Angel excused herself to call Mashid and let her know they’d arrived. She was just leaving Denver and would not be back until late that night, she said, but they were not to worry. The key to her front door was in a pot by the mailbox, so they could let themselves in. She warned that because her Earthship home was off the power grid and short on lights, it was hard to find at night, and she provided detailed directions.
Angel had done a little research on the Taos Earthships and was intrigued by the concept of homes that were crafted primarily from recycled trash and functioned off the grid with their own power and heating sources. As they window-shopped, Angel described what she knew about Mashid’s home.
As the sun set over the desert, the four of them crossed the Rio Grande and watched in amazement as they came upon the compound of strange dwellings that stood on the desert floor. Ted felt like he had stumbled into a community of hobbits. The Earthships did not appear to actually be from earth.
Bertha’s headlights illuminated the strange but magically playful structures. Following Mashid’s instructions, they turned right on the second gravel road and then into the driveway of the darkened home on the left. They used flashlights to find the key. Once the lights were turned on, they could see that the interior was more traditional.
The kitchen space was combined with a south-facing greenhouse filled with vegetables. The nutrient-rich gray water from the kitchen sink drained into the plant beds. Fish swam in a small concrete pond at the center of the greenhouse space. Angel found a note on the kitchen table. After reading it, she summarized for Ted. “Mashid says the bedrooms are at the end of the hall. You can have the green guest bedroom and I can have her room across the hall. She’ll take the sofa when she comes home.” She set the note down. “The code for her router is here if you need it.”
“Sounds perfect.” Ted was looking forward to a traditional bed and shower and some time on his laptop. He went back to Bertha, grabbed his pack and Argo’s dog bed, and begged off for an early night. He wanted to thumb through some of the books that Angel had given him to read. But more important, he wanted to do some legal research for Aunt Lilly.
Once online, Ted searched legal databases to frame the central legal issue. He needed to know whether self-defense was based on an objective or subjective state of mind. Was it enough that Aunt Lilly thought Uncle Harry was going to hurt her, or did the fear have to be justified under some more objective “reasonable man” standard?
He was surprised to find that there was less law on the subject than he might have imagined. In a way, this was good. It gave defense counsel more room to argue. Open and ambiguous issues make prosecutors nervous and more inclined to offer a plea bargain. After an hour or so of research, he decided he would need a full copy of the police report, and, as Angel had suggested, he needed to interview Aunt Lilly so he could get a better understanding of the facts.
Ted got up from the small desk where he had been working, sat down on the bed, and beckoned Argo to jump up and rest beside him. He rubbed the old dog’s face and asked, “What are we doing, Argo? We’re in an Earthship in the middle of the desert and traveling across America with a spiritual consultant. Would Grandpa be proud of us? I’m as happy as that day I brought you home from the animal shelter. Kind of strange, isn’t it?”
Ted leaned over to the bedside table and pulled the Bible from the stack of texts that Angel had suggested he read. He thought of questions that he wished he’d had the time to ask Father Chuck. Ted could almost be jealous of those who claimed to be saved and to have a personal relationship with Jesus. No one was telling him to run for president, start a church, work in a ghetto, or firebomb an abortion clinic. He wondered why Jesus or God never spoke to him. The lack of dialogue made him wonder if he was just unworthy. Maybe it was his own fault for not trying to speak to Jesus. Even if he wanted to find God or Jesus, the distinction between the two was lost on him. Where and how was he to seek such a relationship? Was the Bible just a composite of very old and very tall tales or a doorway into something profound?
Ted flipped through the pages, and a sense of awe unfurled as he read the book of James. As he read the Gospel of Mark, he was overcome by a sensation he couldn’t identify. Was it physical or psychological? He closed the Good Book and laid it on his chest. He tried to put his finger on the feeling in his chest cavity. He sensed a connection with humanity. Loneliness—to which he’d grown accustomed and which often seemed to haunt him—was absent.
Even if what Jesus said had already been said by others before him, he said it in such a convincing and beautiful way that the text left Ted feeling inspired. There was a sense of the man, Jesus, behind these words. Was he experiencing real faith, or was it something else? Was this what allowed Christianity to put so much confidence in the power of believing? Ted recalled the lesson he had learned from Father Chuck, and it occurred to him that maybe all of these questions only made sense when God was objectified and treated as something separate from himself. Perhaps these were the struggles one needed to have to move past the primary grades of spirituality that Angel had started to show him. Perhaps, he concluded as he returned the Bible to the bedside table, the answers to these questions would become clearer with time.
Ted closed his eyes, not yet sleepy enough to turn off the lights, and rested quietly for a few moments before more corporeal questions and quandaries arose.
Ted could hear Angel rustling across the hall. He had to admit he enjoyed sleeping on the floor of the bookmobile—if for no other reason than it seemed to throw him into some nominal intimacy with Angel. Ted imagined her moving about in her room, with No Barks lying on the floor patiently watching over her. He wondered if he should manufacture some excuse to knock on the door and talk with her. Perhaps just to say good night. Ted lamented that his relationship with the wolf dog was progressing faster than his relationship with the tall, dark woman. He knew how bad an idea it was to even entertain such thoughts, but he couldn’t help wondering if he was becoming infatuated with Angel. Could any man spend three days with this woman—beautiful, courageous, wise—and not be smitten? After his own divorce and after handling divorces for so many clients, Ted had serious misgiving about marriage. Now here he was questioning whether it was healthy to go through life as a single man.
Ted turned off the light, shut his eyes, and tried to resist fantasies that would only set him up for disappointment. It had been a long time since he had been this close to a woman he respected and desired. He needed to savor every minute of their brief two weeks together and then get back to a healthier, saner life in Crossing Trails without her. Angel and No Barks would soon only be fading memories.
Giving up on sleep, Ted got up from the bed and sat down at the small desk, again opening his laptop. He went into his zone, drowning out uncomfortable thoughts. He went where he was good, brilliant, really. His grandfather had said Ted was the best researcher and brief writer he’d ever known.
As the night hours passed, Ted raced through cases one after another, trying out theories and piecing together the elements of Aunt Lilly’s self-defense argument. He found cases from courts as far apart as Maui and Chelsea. By 2:00 a.m., Ted knew what was behind, beneath, and beside this defense. He had a very good
sense of when it worked and when it failed. Without something more from Aunt Lilly, he knew, it would fail. As he suspected, the defense was firmly grounded in a reasonable-man standard. Reasonable men did not wake up from dreams and shoot people.
Ted made a complete list of his questions, the things he needed to know, and the arguments he might be able to make, with citations and cases to support them, then closed the laptop and slipped out of the lawyer zone.
20
There was a knock on the door. “Are you alive in there?”
“Barely.”
“Hurry up. I want you to meet Mashid.”
Ted dressed quickly. He and Argo joined Angel and No Barks at the kitchen table and the four of them waited for Mashid to emerge from the guest bathroom. Angel had showered and changed into a skirt and light blue T-shirt with a darker blue dolphin leaping over her shoulder. Her crossed legs swung back and forth as she ate a piece of toast. Ted tried to move his thoughts to their studies. “I’ve been thinking more about your aunt. I have some theories, but I need more information.”
“That’s good. We’ll be in South Dakota in a few days. You can dive in then, but today let’s work on the levels.”
Suddenly, Angel stood, walked across the kitchen, and embraced a dark-skinned woman in a hijab and blue jeans. Ted was taken aback. This woman was strikingly beautiful. What was a woman like this doing in the desert of the American Southwest? Ted realized his jaw was hanging open and tried to close his mouth and regain his composure.
Like most of the other coconuts, Angel had known Mashid for years. Just as Father Chuck was committed to showing the true path of the Jesus ministry, Mashid worked to bring an upper-level perspective or awareness to adherents of the world’s fastest-growing religion—Islam. Angel gave her friend a strong, warm hug. “How wonderful to see you again. You look radiant.” Angel then pulled away and made her introduction. “Ted, I would like you to meet my friend Mashid.” Mashid held out her hand and Ted nervously accepted it. To his surprise, she playfully pulled him closer. Ted felt a glow of warmth and acceptance emanating from the young woman. In a rare moment, Ted trusted his intuition and stepped closer to give her a heartfelt embrace. He stepped back and said, “Angel has said many wonderful things about you. I love your house! It’s a real pleasure to meet you.”
Mashid chuckled, turned to her old friend, and said, “Angel, your first student. How exciting!”
Angel did not want to belabor the point that her traveling practice had not been a smash hit, so she kept the focus on Ted. “And he’s a good one, too.” Angel took them both by the hand and led them back to the kitchen table. “Let’s sit and talk. We’re so grateful to you for sharing your morning with us.”
Ted let out three deep breaths and relaxed into a small pressed-back chair with a cane seat. He felt strangely comfortable around Angel and Mashid. A few weeks ago he would have been put off by their unconventional clothes and out-there lifestyle. But now being a student at Spirit Tech seemed normal. In some ways it wasn’t that hard. He just listened, asked questions, and let the curriculum unfold.
“Mashid, what took you to Denver?” Angel asked.
“I was at the airport. I just got back from doing a spot on BBC One in London. Tomorrow morning I’m off to Dallas to speak at a Sufi retreat. I’m doing the Enneagram.”*1
Ted had never met a television personality and was impressed. “What did you do in London?” he eagerly asked.
“I was a guest on a talk show. It was about being a lesbian and a Muslim, but more than that, I spoke about tolerance and the true nature of our life’s quest.”
Angel hummed knowingly and Mashid continued, “Tolerance and Islam are too often estranged these days. It is part of the Islamic crisis that we were discussing on the show. My faith is being torn apart by extremists, and I maintain that it is younger Western Muslims, like myself, who must lead the charge to defend the faith from first- and second-grade fundamentalism that detracts from Islam’s true message. What Father Chuck is trying to do for Christianity I want to do for Islam.”
Mashid grinned. Even she would admit that she enjoyed her role as the hip spokeswoman for her generation. Of course, she paid a price for this role. She worried about the threatening phone calls, the hate mail, and the fact that she had to call the sheriff every time she received a suspicious or unsolicited package. There were those who hated Mashid’s brand of Islam as much as Mashid detested the hatred and violence produced in the name of fundamentalism.
Angel knew that Mashid was a very busy woman, and she wanted to use their limited time together efficiently. She got right to work. “Ted has some general notions about Islam, but we need you to fill in some blanks. We have just begun to work together on the vertical levels and the introductory exercises. Ted is progressing very quickly. He’s ready for the third level.”
Mashid reached out and grasped Angel’s hand. “I’ll do my best to answer Ted’s questions about Islam.”
Ted interjected, “I tried to read the Koran and found it was, well, difficult.”
Mashid looked sideways at Ted, and her green eyes were so luminous that for at least a moment he allowed that Angel was not the only woman in his universe. He was wondering what her hair would look like if she let it down, when he noticed that her eyes were turning red.
Ted reached across the table and offered Mashid his napkin. “Was it something I said?”
“Oh, Mashid,” Angel gasped, “I’m so sorry.” She clutched Mashid’s arm.
“No. No. It’s not Ted’s fault. But now is such a troubled time for Islam and for the world as a whole. We are, you see, at a pivotal point in human history. Christianity and Islam are both in chaos right now for the same reasons. Islam has so much potential for humanity, but that potential is not being realized. Still, I have hope.”
Ted tried to reassure her. “Don’t worry, Mashid. Father Chuck made the same apologies for Christianity. He said that both religions have moved away from the teachings of their founders.”
“That sounds like Father Chuck!” Mashid said. “He’s right. This is why a discussion of either Christianity or Islam can become so difficult right now. Depending on the individual and their progress along the spectrum of awareness, these religions can look unappealing to an outsider trying to peer inside a mosque or a cathedral.”
“I read somewhere that Islam is the fasting-growing religion in the world,” Ted said. “But there’s all this extremism around the world and Islamophobia in the news. How does all that get reconciled?”
Mashid regained her composure and said, “Of course this is where I should begin. I’ll try to make this simple. Christianity and Islam are both grounded in events that may or may not have occurred thousands of years ago. The more time passes, the more adept our archaeology and scholarship become, the more we come to realize that much of what is described in the Bible and the Koran simply cannot be historically accurate. Perhaps it made sense to describe spiritual events in this way two thousand years ago, but not now.”
Ted offered his own explanation. “Or perhaps these stories were never meant to be interpreted literally in the first place. It’s not the ancients that were naive; it’s us!” Ted turned to his own private spiritual consultant for affirmation. “The literalism of the first- and second-grade worshipers pushes the rest of us away from religion altogether. Maybe that’s a shame.” Angel nodded. “I think you’re almost right, Ted. Critically thinking and well-educated people, like yourself, too often throw out the baby with the proverbial bath water.”
“Why?” Ted asked.
Angel rested her hand on Ted’s wrist and said apologetically, “At the point of realizing that the Bible and the Koran cannot be literally true, it’s tempting to reject the entire texts as a primitive waste of time. This is the tragic shortcoming of third- and fourth-level students: they fail to realize that the holy texts still point, like road signs, to life’s great truths.”
Ted raised his hand. “I plead guilty as char
ged. I often find myself wondering if it’s even possible to be religious in a modern world. When someone starts talking to me about magical things that supposedly happened thousands of years ago, I check out. I find it impossible to believe that God would manifest once and only once for Jesus, Moses, Muhammad, or the Buddha—or anyone else for that matter—and turn a blind eye to the rest of humanity.”
Mashid excitedly leaned forward, realizing that Ted had reached the crux of the problem. “What made these men great was not that God chose them over the rest of us but instead that these men found the path to open up and experience what is potentially available to all of us: the internal presence of God in life itself. We can be spiritual without disregarding science and eschewing rational thought. Thomas Jefferson, for example, created his own Bible by jettisoning the historical and magical-sounding material in the New Testament and focusing instead on the morality or the efficacy of the teachings of Jesus.”*2
Angel interrupted. “Sadly, Mashid, while I agree with you, it seems like this approach, as much as it makes sense to you and me, too often falls on deaf ears. In many ways the fundamentalists have won the battle for the soul of religion, and this is why young, educated people like my friend Ted here are leaving religion behind in droves. What remains of Christianity and Islam is therefore too often extreme and less acceptable to modern and more moderate thinkers.”
Mashid was undaunted. “Ah, but Angel, the times they are changing again. I sense a great wave gathering. And that is what has me so excited. Literalism and fundamentalism have shackled the last thousand years or so of religion, and I feel in my heart that we are on the verge of shedding those chains.”