Counting Backwards
Page 12
But all shrank from laying hands on Christ.
He was King and knight himself, his nature God-given,
and none had the boldness to touch him in his dying.
Only a blind knight stepped out, holding his spear
that was ground keen and sharp as a razor.
He was named Longinus, and had been blind for long years.
Despite his protests, they pushed him forward
to joust with Jesus, this blind Jew Longinus.
No one else dared, of all those standing there,
to touch Jesus or take him down for burial,
only the blind man, who struck his lance through Christ’s heart.
Blood leaped down the shaft and melted the darkness
that sealed the knight’s eyes. As the light shone
he knelt and cried to Christ to forgive him
‘It was against my will that I wounded you,
I bleed to think of what I have done to you.
I yield to your mercy. Do what you like with me.
Take my land and my life, they belong to you.’
For a while in my dream I withdrew into the shadows
as if I would sink down into hell’s darkness.
There my sight cleared, there this was revealed:
out of the west a young woman came hurrying
gentle, benign, sweet-spoken,
compassion itself shining. Mercy was her name
and as she came she stared into hell’s mouth.
From the east, as it seemed in my vision,
her sister appeared, lightly stepping westward:
she was virgin, pristine, inviolable Truth,
wrapped in such virtue that she feared nothing.
When they met, Mercy and Truth together,
they asked each other about these signs and wonders
the din and darkness, and how the day dawned
and how a glow and glory lay at hell’s mouth.
‘I am dumbfounded, dazzled,’ said Truth,
‘I must go and make sense out of these mysteries.’
‘No mystery,’ said Mercy, ‘but signs of bliss.
A virgin named Mary became a mother
though no man touched her. She conceived by the word
and touch of the holy spirit, grew great, gave birth.
Without labour or loss she brought her child into the world.
God is my witness that my tale is true
and thirty winters have passed since that child was born
who suffered and died today, about mid-day;
it is his death which has darkened the sun
and made the bright world lightless, but this eclipse has meaning:
like the sun, man shall be released from shadow
when the light of life blinds the eyes of Lucifer.
The prophets and patriarchs have preached to us
that what was lost by a tree should be won back through a tree,
and what death felled, shall be death’s downfall.’
‘What friend of a friend told you that?’ asked Truth.
‘Listen to me. This is Truth speaking.
Adam and Eve, Abraham,
all their companions, all that are human,
all those prophets and patriarchs that suffer hell’s pains –
that light will never be allowed to lift them up
and have them out of hell – Mercy, stop mouthing
and hold your tongue, for I am Truth
and I tell this truth, that hell holds them.
Read Job, and let him put you right by his ruling
that hell allows no redemption.’
Mercy, unruffled, answered her sister.
‘I have grounds for hope, hope for salvation.
Poison drives out poison, the cycle is broken
Adam and Even shall find their redemption.
Of all venoms the worst is the scorpion’s.
No doctor’s skill can heal the site of his sting,
until the scorpion dies, and, held to the wound
drives out its own poison, turns sting to balm.
I would lay a bet with my life as stake
that this death will undo the deathly devilment
done to Eve in the earliest days.
And as the serpent seduced and beguiled,
so grace, which made all things, will mend all things,
and trick the tricksters by holy sleight of hand.’
‘Let’s stop all this,’ said Truth, ‘I see, not far off,
Righteousness running out of the north
from the cut of the cold. Let’s argue no more
for she’s the eldest of us, and knows most.’
‘True,’ said Mercy, ‘and look, from the south
Peace dressed in Patience, dancing towards us.
Love has longed for her so long, I think it must be that Love
himself has written to her. His love-letter
will enlighten us all. We’ll soon know the meaning
of this light that hangs over hell.’
When Peace, clothed in Patience, came up to them,
Righteousness curtsied to Peace in her rich clothing
and begged her to say which way she was going,
and whose hearts she would lift by the loveliness of her dress.
‘I am filled with longing to welcome them all,’
said Peace, ‘all those who have been hidden from me
by the pollution of sin and hell’s darkness,
Adam and Eve and a crowd of others,
Moses and more than I can name. Mercy shall sing
while I dance to her music: do so, dear sister!
For Jesus fought well for them, and this is joy’s dawning.
Love, who is my lover, has sent me a warrant
which declares that Mercy and Peace bring freedom
to release the human race from its prison,
for Christ has changed the nature of justice
into peace and forgiveness, through his grace.
Here’s the warrant,’ said Peace, ‘in peace I will both lay me down –
and to prove it is binding – and rest secure.’
‘Are you out of your mind,’ asked Righteousness,
or have you been drinking?
Do you really think that light there
has power to unlock hell?
Do you really believe it can save human souls?
When the world began, God gave his judgement
that Adam and Eve and their descendants
should die, and go down to everlasting darkness
for touching the tree and its sweet fruit.
Adam broke the law of our lord and denied his love,
by eating the fruit he gave up both love and law,
followed evil and fought against reason.
– by the letter of the law it is all over,
they must suffer for ever, no prayer,
no intercession can come near them.
They chose the fruit, let them chew on it.
And as for us, sisters, let’s not complain of it.
That apple bite was a landslip
which changed their landscape for ever.’
‘But I shall pray for them,’ Peace said, ‘for the end of their pain.
Joy and suffering are twined together so tightly
that one cannot be known without the other.
Hunger means nothing to full stomachs.
If all the world were like a swan’s breast,
who would know what white was?
If night never came, what would day mean,
and if God’s own tongue had not tasted death
how would he tell if was sweet or sour?
A rich man, living in health and ease
would never suffer, but for the death
that comes to all, equally, inescapably.
So God, who struck the light that began life
chose to be born human, to save mankind,
and be sold into death to feel the pain of dying,
which unknits all cares and ends suffering.
*
God placed Adam in peace and plenty,
God gave him freedom to sin and to suffer
to learn through this what his happiness was.
and God challenged himself to take on Adam’s nature
and know human fate in his own flesh.
He came from heaven, lived on earth, and now
will go down to hell, and discover
the depth of suffering. The dark world
opens to Christ, who lived in heaven’s light.
Christ will take the human race with him
on the same journey. Their descent into evil
will lead them to know where love is.’
‘Listen,’ said Truth, ‘I see and hear it happening.
A spirit speaks to hell and bids it unbar the gates.
‘Lift up your heads, O ye gates…’
A voice blazed from the light at Lucifer,
‘Prince of this place, tear these gates open
for the crowned King of Glory to enter them.’
Then Satan shuddered and said to hell
‘A light like this took Lazarus from us.
This is the moment of our undoing.
If this king enters, he will take mankind from us
and lead it where Lazarus has gone, and seize me.
Patriarchs and prophets warned of this
that such a lord and such a light would lead them.
Get up, Ragamoffyn, reach me those bars
from your Grandad Belial’s wife-battering
and I’ll stop this lord and his light.
Before this brightness blinds us, let’s bar the gates,
check his course, chain our doors, stop up the chinks
so no light leaps in at the loop holes or louvers.
Ashtaroth, get the lads moving, the whole gang of them,
to defend mankind. They’re ours, we’ll keep them.
Hurl down the brimstone, blazing and boiling
to flay the flesh of those who come near our kingdom.
Set the crossbows and the brass cannon
and blind his troops with our ammunition.’
‘Listen,’ said Lucifer, ‘I know this lord,
this lord and this light. From long ago I knew him.
No death can snuff out this lord, hell cannot cheat him.
Where he wishes, there he goes. But let him look out.
If he tears them away from me, he does it by force, not right.
For by right and reason, they belong to me
body and soul, the good and the evil.
For the lord of heaven himself promised it:
Adam and Eve and all their descendants
should suffer death and come to me for ever
if they touched the tree or picked the apple.
It was this same lord of light who gave the judgement,
and since he is truth itself, he must keep to it,
not tear from us what is ours, damned by justice.
We have had them with us for seven thousand winters,
legally ours, with no one arguing it.
Will he be untrue, who is truth itself?’
‘True,’ said Satan, ‘but all the same…
You trapped them and tricked them, trampled down his Eden.
Against his law and desire you slunk onto his land
and caught Eve alone.
Woe to those who are alone!
And when you had separated her, you seduced her,
then promised them both they should become
as Gods with God, judging and knowing.
With treason and treachery you deceived them both
and brought them to break obedience through false promises.
So you got them out of Eden, and brought them here at last.
It was deception, not fair getting.
God will not be mocked,’ said the Evil One.
‘Watch out if you try to make a fool of him.
Our title deeds to their souls are false.
My terror is that truth will come for them.
As you mocked God’s image in becoming snake
so God has deceived us in becoming man.
For God has gone about for thirty winters
in human flesh, travelling, preaching.
I sent sin to court him, and I asked him
if he were God, or God’s son. He gave me a short answer.
So he’s been out and about these thirty-two years.
When I saw what was happening, I plotted and planned
to stop those who hated him from martyring him.
I would have lengthened his life, for I believed
if he died, if his soul penetrated Hell
it would make an end of us all.
While his bones lived, he never rested
from his love lessons. ‘Love one another’ –
but the end of that love, and the aim of that law
is the end of us devils, and our downfall.
And now I see his soul come sailing towards us
in light and glory – I know this is God.
We must retreat, throw down our arms.
It would be better for us never to have been,
better to vanish from existence
than to endure the sight of this Christ.
Through your lies, Lucifer, we first lost heaven
and plunged to hell. You dragged us down.
We swallowed your lies and lost all happiness,
and now, because you had to lie again
and betray Eve, we have lost hell and earth
where we were lords and ruled everything.
Now shall the prince of this world be cast out.’
Again, that light bid the gates open. Lucifer answered
‘What Lord are you?’ A voice said aloud
‘The lord of power and might, that made all things.
Duke of this damned place, now undo these gates
that Christ may come in, heaven’s son.’
As he breathed these words, hell broke, and all Belial’s bars.
No guard could keep those gates. They opened wide.
Patriarchs and prophets, the people that dwelled in darkness
sung with Saint John, ‘Behold the Lamb of God’.
Lucifer blazed into blindness, and saw nothing
while those that our Lord loved flowed forth with that light.
‘Here I am,’ said our Lord, ‘body and soul,
to claim for all the rights of body and soul.
They were made by me, they were always mine.
My law and my justice promised them
that if they ate the apple they should die,
but I never condemned them to hell for ever.
Their deadly sin came by your deception,
you got them with trickery, trickery took them.
You crept into my Eden in the shape of an adder
to steal away what I loved and looked after,
you teased and tricked them and destroyed my Eden.
The Old Law teaches that tricks will catch tricksters,
and truss them up in a web of deception.
Those that take life must lose their own lives,
the Old Law teaches. A murderer’s life is exacted.
One soul must pay for another, the sin of my Crucifixion
wipes out Original Sin. For I am human,
and capable of making amends for human sin.
Through my own death, I undo death,
and I ransom all those crushed through sin,
and I trick the tricksters of hell through my grace.
So do not fool yourself, Lucifer, that I come against the law
to fetch any sinful soul by force,
but by justice and truth I ransom what is mine.
What was got with guile, is regained by grace.
As the hu
man race died through a tree
so by a tree they shall come to life,
And your deception begins to turn
inwards, and stab your own flesh,
while my grace flourishes.
You have brewed bitterness, now swallow it.
Doctor of death, drink your own medicine.
I that am lord of life, love is my drink,
and for that drink I died today, as it seemed.
I do not drink from gold cups, or refined teaching,
only the common cup of all Christian souls.
But your drink shall be death, and deep hell your bowl.
After the great fight thirst grips me still,
my thirst for every human soul.
My thirst is so great that nothing can touch it –
all your spirits and rare vintages
will never slake it, till the grapes are ripe
and the dead wake. Ripe, and purple, and heavy-hanging
in the valley of the resurrection,
and then I shall come into my kingdom
and bring out of hell all human souls.
By right I will lead them out of this place,
all those I loved, all who believed in my coming,
but because you lied to Eve, Lucifer, you shall pay for it.’
And the lord bound Lucifer in chains.
Ashtaroth and the others hid in hell’s crannies:
They did not dare even look on the lord
but let him lead forth whomever he chose
and leave behind him in hell whomever he chose.
The angels sang and swept their harps,
hundreds of angels poured out their music:
The flesh sins, the flesh atones for sin,
the flesh of God reigns as God.
Then Peace played these verses on her pipes:
‘Glittering sun after rain,’ sang Peace
The warmth of sun after rain-loaded clouds,
no love is sweeter, no friends dearer
than when peace comes after war.
Peace, armed with patience, puts an end to danger,
stills violence, destroys terror.’
‘Truly,’ said Truth, ‘Here is the heart of truth.
Let us offer one another the kiss of peace.’
‘And let no one say that we argue among ourselves,
for nothing is impossible to God,’ said Peace.
‘You speak the truth,’ said Righteousness,