Thief“Now wait just one minute,” said the woman. She was patting
her cloak down, hands diving into pockets. The Lord waited, quietly, passing no comment on the fact that her foot was halfway over the jeweled foundation, her toe just touching down in the holy city. “Where is it?” She looked up at him with dismayed and clouded eyes. “What do you seek?” he asked. “My—” She stopped. Somehow she didn’t like to say. “Ah,” he said. He fished into his own pocket and drew something forth. It was ugly; that was the only thing that could be said with certainty about it. It seemed to be mostly the color of rust, rough-textured and misshapen but with a suggestion that it had once been something whole, lovely, and useful. It would not have been so terrible had it not seemed so mangled from its now unidentifiable original shape. Yet the woman did not look upon it with disgust. Relief flooded her face. She smiled up at the Lord. “I should have known you’d have it in safekeeping,” she breathed, reaching out for it with both hands. But the Lord dropped it into his pocket again. “I did take it from you,” he agreed, “but not for safekeeping. Rather, to release you from its claim and put the thing to death.” “To death!” shrieked the woman. “But you are the Lord of life! You don’t take life, you give it! How could you even think of killing this poor thing!” She reached out again, as though for a wounded animal. “It is not this thing that needs to live, but you,” said the Lord. “And you cannot live as long as it lives with you. It is much heavier than you think.” She saw his hand move toward the pocket again; she perceived the power in that hand, the power to crush the ugly, rusty, mangled mess into oblivion. “You are a liar,” she said, “and a thief.” “One who has lived long with falsehood has a hard time recognizing truth,” the Lord said. “But I will admit to being a thief. I have plundered many others before you of their treasured weights and chains. My life is stronger than these things. But yours is not.” “I want it back,” she said. “It has been your sin,” said the Lord. “If you take it back, it will become your death. Better to let me keep it.” “But I love it,” wept the woman. “I love it. I have loved it so long.” “It has never loved you.” At this the woman’s sad face was riven by something like a passing thunderstorm, but as with a storm, it cleared. In the quiet that followed, she murmured, “No. It has never loved me.” “Come in,” said the Lord, gesturing through the gate. “May I,” said the woman softly, but with new strength, “may I see you—do what you do to it?” “You may,” he replied, “but it will hurt.” “Not as much as carrying it.” The woman turned her palms toward her face. She perceived how they were covered with deep scratches, seething and infected. The Lord withdrew the thing from his pocket. It seemed to shrink in his hand, yet grew tougher, angrier, as if preparing for a fight. But the Lord simply closed his fist around it, and it was gone. “That was so easy!” exclaimed the woman, delighted. “Only, ” said the Lord, “because you had stopped loving it.” “But I would not have stopped loving it,” she countered, “if you had not first stolen it from me.” “Come in now,” said the Lord. *** Oh No“Oh, no,” said the man. “Oh, no. Oh, no.” The Lord regarded him. “It’s not you. It can’t be you. God help me. Are you really who I think you are?” “I am.” The man stumbled backward as if he had been struck. When he picked himself up, he said, “My entire life has been built on rejecting you.” “You have not only rejected me; you have maligned my name.” “And those who praised it,” the man added. He shuddered and pressed on, as if unable to hold it in, “And I have vilified your house. And I have despised your works. And I have mocked your ways. I have been the very embodiment of contempt of you. I have been contempt from head to toe.” The Lord nodded in agreement. “So now what?” said the man. “If you have any contempt left to express,” said the Lord, “now is a fine time to let it out.” “You want to hear more?” “There is no reason to leave anything unsaid.” Suddenly the man burst out, “Why did you never hear me? Or all the others who cried to you and to the one who claimed to approve of you? Why did you bring us no relief? Why did you show us no mercy? How could you just stand there and look on, all this time, while we, while we...” All at once the man was upon the Lord. He spat in his face and tore at his hair. He kicked, he punched, he scratched, he bit. “You fool! You madman! You deluded charlatan! You prayed and hoped like the rest of us and look where it got you!” “This is where it got me,” said the Lord, gesturing to the city through the gate. But the man didn’t hear him. His attack was so frenzied that he plunged, face and hands first, right into the Lord’s chest. He tore through the ribcage and dove out the other side, where he collapsed on the ground. Sprawled out, he looked up at the Lord, who remained whole and intact after the man’s boring through the middle of him. But older wounds remained visible elsewhere on his body. The man looked down at himself. He was covered with blood head to toe, drenched as though he’d been dipped in a well of it. Then he looked around him and realized that he was within the holy city. “Why did you let me in?” he asked. “All who enter here enter by my blood,” said the Lord. “But I assaulted you.” “Though you would not be covered by my blood on account of love, still you found your way to it and through it. It is enough.” The man stood. “Do you love all those who hate you?” “Them most of all.” “Then I should find more of my kind here.” “You will.” And the man walked on into the heart of the city.
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