“Are they going to have an execution?” The girl asks while the fire spits about her and the Ethiopian. He shushes her and shakes his head.
“He’s too popular. People wouldn’t stand for it.”
“Does Rome care what people think then?”
“Rome doesn’t, but Pilate cares very much what people think.”
“Because he is kind?”
“No, girl. Not because he is kind.”
“Why then?”
“You will understand one day.”
Shadows flit about their faces while men’s voices blast in larger circles off in the darkness. When the fire leaps up, it reveals – some ways off – Jesus of Nazareth, bound, surrounded, and looking anything but popular. Escape seems to be the last thing on his mind, and so his gold-plated guards mutter curses about the cold and fiddle with their spear butts. The girl glances at Jesus, but looks away quickly when she sees that he is looking at her. She had seen him only once before, and then on a donkey. The wind picks up, and the fire burns small and blue – the face of Jesus darts back into blackness and the girl sighs a little, with relief.
A mountain of a man shuffles up to the fire and stands next to the girl, his great hands outstretched. She observes him honestly, for he seems uninterested in her, the Ethiopian or anybody. There is a simplicity to his face, and this simplicity seems familiar to her, but from where she does not remember.
It’s a cheery Sunday morning when my one good eye pops open and I begin Sunday chores, which generally involves whatever is left over of my Saturday chores. Of course, church service is imminent so there are things that need doing. Coffee needs brewing, sound needs checking, candles need lighting. All to make the idea of church more appealing to the faithful. I was in Japan once, and scaled 1,000 steps to get to a Shinto house of worship. A monk told me the steps were there to deter the casual believer.
At the shelter, the phone rings.
The moon is all amber and grim, like the meat of a poisonous peach. It drips honeyed sweat through space to the earth and I lick it up. I gargle it. I paint stripes of it under my eyes. My, oh my, the moon says to me, your fury is shaking the whole planet. And you ain’t seen nothing yet. This ought to be good. Yeah, it will. 
When I was young, I amused myself on car trips by picking the tiniest detail from the oncoming scenery and focusing all my attention on it – an askew shaft of pussywillow or a sprightly sprig of grass. It thrilled me to think that no one had ever done just this before, had never given such rapt attention to this single, particular nook of creation. We’d drive by it at seventy miles an hour, and my eyes fastened on the twig as if hooked by a line, and I smiled. 
I admire trees. 
The Chicago homeless shelter I worked for was not technically a homeless shelter – it only felt like one. It was actually a church. It was “planted” (when churches are “started” they are said to be “planted” for some odd reason) some years ago,and was scraping by off a congregation that rarely topped twenty members on a Sunday morning. Even the ones who came had a difficult time expressing why they kept showing. As individuals, they seemed much like the church itself: tired.
the unbearable lightness of huckabeing 
