CALEB LAY ON HIS BED IN THE DARK.
Well, it wasn’t really dark because the lights were flashing on his wall in reds and blues and greens. The television lights. But he was trying not to look at that.
A day had passed since the meeting when the wind had come. He knew it was a day, because Jason and Leiah had visited once. Leiah was beginning to see, he thought. Or at least she wanted to see, which was just as good, because it all started with wanting. The wanting and then the surrendering.
“Surrendering is like not wanting,” Dadda said.
“You want and then you don’t want?”
“You want to enter the kingdom and then you decide it’s worth everything in your life. You decide not to want your own kingdom. Like the man who sold all he owned for the field. See?”
He saw, but he’d never really understood why Dadda should call it surrender, because it didn’t feel like giving anything up. It had always felt more like gaining.
Until now. Now he was fighting; not watching the moving painting felt like Dadda’s surrender. And it was harder than he would have guessed.
He wasn’t sure why watching was something he shouldn’t do, only that he shouldn’t. Well, for one thing, it was mean things and bad people over there on the picture. At least to him it felt bad. And that could not be good.
He rolled onto his side and began to hum softly.
He had been doing well with the witch, he thought. He was eating all of his dinner food, because it seemed to please her. The bitter mush was an every-night thing now, but with enough water, it really wasn’t that bad. At least she hadn’t hit him again.
Martha had said that he’d go to two more meetings this week. They really liked that, didn’t they? Of course, who wouldn’t? The wind had been like God’s breath. Like something from the life of Elijah or Elisha, who were two of his favorite people. Not that he was really them; for one thing they were a lot older. And for another thing, they spoke to kings, and Caleb didn’t think he was really a prophet or anything like that. But when those prophets asked God, fire fell from heaven, and ax heads floated, and all kinds of amazing things happened. Things like God’s wind blowing on the faces of the sick and healing them. He chuckled.
Of course there was always Moses. Maybe he was more like Moses, and Moses was one of his favorites too. He didn’t speak well in front of people either, did he? He used Aaron instead. But when it came to calling down frogs and turning the sky black with insects and making the rivers red with blood, Moses didn’t seem to have a problem. He hit a rock once and water poured out— enough water to flood the monastery, Dadda said. That’s how much it would take for them all to drink. Maybe Ethiopia needed a Moses during the droughts.
A shiver ran through Caleb’s bones at the thought, and he smiled. Elijah had once been fed by birds. Did that mean he liked birds too?
Caleb had been walking in the kingdom a long time now, five years at least, but never had he seen how easily the kingdom could spill over into this world. Like light into darkness. But then he’d never seen so much darkness either. Definitely not in the monastery. By the way some of the people were acting in the theater, you would think that they no longer believed in people like Elijah and Moses. Or God, really. They no longer believed in God. At least not God, God.
The miracles were God’s choice, of course. Father Nikolous might think he had something to do with what happened, but really Caleb had done what he’d done because his Father had given him the power to do it. And because his heart felt so heavy at seeing the people. He could have walked off the stage, but why would he? Not with so many hurting. And he knew that it was all a part of God’s plot for sure. He wasn’t completely sure of the plot, but it was unfolding like a thunderstorm, wasn’t it?
An hour later Caleb was still thinking, not in meditation or in the light. Just thinking. In fact, he wasn’t really thinking about anything when he suddenly decided to sit up and look at the television.
He watched the colors and the figures running around, and his heart began to pound. It was terrifying and exhilarating at once. And it was only looking. That’s all it really was. He wasn’t going into the picture and joining them; he was only studying them like he might a book.
He watched them for three minutes before throwing his head into the pillow and wrapping the covers over his ears.
His chest felt like it might explode, and he began to cry softly. Then he began to shake with sobs. He begged his Father for forgiveness, and he soaked his pillow with tears.