The Atua Man: A Novel

Lillian and Alex sat at the small game table in the parlor staring at her parents, Lloyd and Nancy Harvey, who seemed to be in deep thought. Lloyd, a thin ascetic type, was a law professor at Chester University, and an honored solicitor. Nancy, always the good wife and a beauty like her daughter, was there to support her husband.

Finally, Lloyd broke the silence, “So Jason allegedly does what? Astral travel, or something like that?” He was also a deacon in the Anglican Church, and had always been very conservative.,

“He just meditates and disappears,” Alex told his grandfather. Lloyd gave him a look as if to say children, even thirteen-year-olds, should be seen and not heard. “It’s true. I’ve seen…” Alex stopped—not because of his grandfather’s glare—but because he thought this should be kept secret from his grandparents, too.

“Even in your church, Dad, you accept a spiritual realm,” Lillian said. “Even if you personally don’t believe it, your church accepts miracles and angels and a transcendent reality that alters the commonsense notion of existence.”

“Are you putting Jason on the level of Jesus Christ, or are you saying that he’s an angel?” Lloyd said. “Give me a break…”

“Do you think he’s a fake, Dad? He’s sitting in your den.”

“He’s like all those other evangelicals who are in it for the money.” Lloyd never approved of Jason. He opposed Lillian marrying him, he had always rejected New Age thinking, and was appalled that Jason was in his house at this moment.

Lillian struggled not to react and blow up at her father. “Jason has the gift to heal. I’ve seen it. I’ve experienced it. He thinks everybody has the same ability. Maybe that’s a fault, but all he’s ever wanted to do is show people that they don’t have to suffer the ills of the world. What’s wrong with that?”

“Why does he need a mansion in the heart of London with all those people saying that this is right and that’s not? He’s creating another church, another religion.”

“That’s a mistake we’re trying to correct.”

“By appearing out of the blue and causing hysteria?”

Father and daughter stared at each other like adversaries in a courtroom. Lillian, the acclaimed stage actress, versus the gaunt academic, skilled at convincing judges that his was the correct argument. Alex had never seen this kind of exchange before in his family, and he liked it. Maybe he should follow his grandfather into law.

Nancy cleared her throat and got everyone’s attention. “None of this addresses the situation at hand. How do we explain Jason being here and where did he come from?”

“It’s ridiculous that Jason is not in this conversation, Father.” Lillian nodded to Alex who ran out and brought Jason into the discussion.

Jason entered the room filling out one of Lloyd’s dress shirts. The sleeves were too long, and he still wore his jeans covered in Iraqi dirt. He was barefoot and completely inappropriately dressed for this family. Lloyd was appalled at Jason’s appearance.

There wasn’t a seat for him at the table.

“How on earth do you just appear?” Nancy could barely hide her anxiety.

“I can give you my theory.”

“How can we stop you?” Lloyd said. “You can appear wherever you like.”

“Would I ever appear at your house looking like this, Lloyd?”

Alex pulled an ottoman to the table and gave up his seat to his dad. Lloyd wouldn’t give Jason the benefit of the doubt.

“Lillian, Alex and I have struggled with this since it first happened, and I’d welcome your input in dealing with this problem.”

“So, you think it’s a problem?” Lloyd said.

“Of course, I do. It goes beyond what I’d ever planned to teach in my healing courses.”

“You can’t teach people to heal,” Lloyd replied. “They’re not like you, freaks of nature.”

“Father! Don’t make this personal.”

Lloyd wouldn’t be interrupted. “For the rest of us, all we want is to suffer through this world with some dignity in hopes of a better one to come. But if you’re the new messiah, enlighten us.”

“There’s no need to be hostile, Lloyd,” Nancy said. “We’re family and that’s a fact. Just deal with it.”

Lillian burst out laughing. “I’ve never heard you stand up to Dad.” Her mother’s glare quickly shut Lillian up. Even though her mother looked like a pensioner, albeit a beautiful one, with her permed white hair, she was tough as steel.

“Well then, you don’t know me very well. You think your father and I have survived forty-five years of marriage without some push and pull?”

Jason broke the tension. “I’m not a messiah, Lloyd, and I have no explanation for this phenomenon that I experience. But in theory, if there is a transcendent dimension of life and it coexists with the physical reality, someone with a spiritually developed consciousness can shift between these two worlds.”

“Who’s to say there’re not three or four or five?”

“There can be an infinite number if you accept God as infinite. But in the same way that physical disease disappears in the presence of a spiritually realized individual, can’t that same person have a similarly boundless experience? As Mrs. Eddy said, ‘I am at once the center and circumference of the universe.’”

“She’s a heretic!”

“Even in your church you accept God as omnipresent. Couldn’t someone in God-consciousness be omnipresent also? Or appear somewhere in seeming violation of physical law.”

“I’ve read the accounts of St. Theresa of Avila levitating,” Lloyd said, “and she tried resisting it. Why don’t you just resist it, if you’re such a healer?”

“My whole life has been built on not resisting physical belief or limitation. It’s the only way to heal.”

Lloyd left the room, and quickly returned with St. Teresa’s book The Interior Castle. “I see you’ve been reading this,” he stated holding up the book.

“You have a wonderful library, Lloyd.”

“Do you know what made her a saint?”

“Her union with God.”

“No, her resistance to rapture, Jason. Man isn’t supposed to know or feel the things of God. To look upon God is death. That’s what you’re playing with Jason—death.” Lloyd slammed the book on the table defiantly.

“If you’re such a scholar on St. Teresa you can’t dismiss her autobiography.” Jason closed his eyes, recalling a passage; “In her own words, I quote, … ‘Occasionally I have been able to make some resistance but at the cost of great exhaustion. At other times resistance has been impossible: my soul has been borne away, and indeed as a rule my head also, without my being able to prevent it. Sometimes my whole body has been affected to the point of being raised up from the ground.’”

“Every airy-fairy guru who claims they can levitate refers to that passage as if it were fact,” Lloyd said.

“I’m not claiming that as fact, Lloyd, but it helps explain how I got here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was here this morning when you got up. No car. I didn’t walk…”

Alex jumped up from the table, ran to the front window, and peeked out through the curtains. “Mom, the car that followed us here is gone!”

“Hallelujah!” Nancy got up and followed her grandson to the window. “Perhaps they’ve given up trying to crucify you, Jason.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Lloyd muttered.

“We should go,” Jason said.

“Why? What purpose will it serve going back to that prison before we have to?” Lillian joined her mother and son at the window.

“I have the TV symposium tomorrow,” Jason reminded her from the parlor. “I hate to ask this, Lloyd, but I need to borrow a pair of shoes and a jacket.”

“Can I come?” Alex implored.

“Sure.” Lillian and Alex walked back into the parlor, and Lillian took Jason’s hand. “How do you feel about that? Are you up to it?”

“All I can do is be myself.”

Lillian bit her lip, put on a brave face, and embraced her family. She saw her parents in all their tradition and drew Alex and Jason close to her.

“I guess we better hit the road then,” Lillian said.

Lloyd stood next to Nancy as his daughter and her family left. He looked sternly at Lillian, assured in his righteousness. Nancy, torn between husband and daughter, remained at her husband’s side. They looked like Boaz and Jachin, the pillars in King Solomon’s Temple. They were the strength and stability of God’s promised kingdom, upholding that tradition on earth.