Adam sits at his desk and around him the walls rip off. He has no roof. He has no walls. His floor is sand and his desk is an altar.
He has cleared everything extra off this desk and now looks at a huge table with little on it except the computer and a lamp. He looks across the expanse of his desk, puts his head down and types. He needs to find out if God has anything to say to him. He needs to say a few things to God.
In the distance he sees a massive statue. His desk slides to it and it is an idol of Sasquatch. At the man’s feet is Adam’s broken heart, on the pedestal a plaque that reads, “Pride.”
“Why the heart? Why the broken heart?”
“I wanted you to be so much more. I wanted to understand and respect you. But he taught me things about you that I could not embrace.”
“Why were you listening to him? Why when everything he told you went against everything you stood for, why did you listen to him?”
“You sent him to be a prophet for me. You showed him that I needed you and I was supposed to listen to him and let him guide me back to you.”
“What about that seems right to you?”
“I don’t know. He was the man for the job.”
“And where in the Bible does that happen? When do I send the right man for the job?”
Adam sits back at his desk and, as he writes, his desk moves through the desert. His back hurts from the day. His rib is screaming from the chiropractor visit he had the other day, but he is moving on, waiting to see the next bit. Because he has written them all. He knows he has to bury something. He just has no idea what it is.
He notices an object not far from his desk and gets up to see it.
It is a stack of art, all sorts of things that Sasquatch drew. He hung them in his office because he wanted to encourage Sasquatch to do his work. But now that Sasquatch is gone, Adam has no use for them. Every time he looks at them he gets furious, and it is affecting the work and the office.
Adam does not stop to think it over. He immediately buries the art. He stares at the hole, now filled up and gone, and walks back to his desk.
He writes for a while longer before the walls return. The office returns. And sitting in the comfortable chair to his right is Vigil.
“Why have you come to me in this form?” Adam asks.
“Respect. Guidance. Love,” God says. “You feel all of these things for Vigil. And you have had strife with him in the past. Just like me. You worked it all out with Vigil. You can work it out with me, too. This form shows you that.”
I stay seated at my desk as I write.
“Why did you send Sasquatch for me?”
“Did I send him to you?” God says. “That was the assumption. But was it not you that taught him what God wanted and what Jesus taught? Was it not you that told him to respect his fellow man? Was it not you that taught him the face of charity? You handed this man down wisdom every day and you taught him over and over again about my word. You showed him what I was by walking the walk of Jesus and he learned nothing. Did I send him to you as a teacher or a student?” God says.
“I had no idea to look at it that way.”
“He was the perfect man for the job. Why would I send him? Why would I send a man of God to teach you about me? That is not how I operate,” God says with Vigil’s voice. “I sent him to you because you were not the man for the job, and in doing so both of my objectives were reached. You taught him. The lessons fell flat, but you taught him. And you taught the other person I wanted you to teach.”
“Kraken?”
“No Adam, you taught yourself about me. You were the greatest teacher of God that you ever had. What you didn’t know, you drew on from the others in your mind. You crafted a message for Sasquatch and yourself that you could believe and embrace,” God says.
“Why aren’t you reading the Bible I sent you?”
“Sasquatch has soured it.”
“You think that is it, but it is not. Let yourself let go of what he taught you and embrace the real reason that you are not reading your Bible,” God says. “It has nothing to do with Sasquatch.”
“My day is hectic, getting ready for work and being there for Bekah, and I don’t get it all done any day, and I can’t fit the Bible in.”
“That hit you wrong, didn’t it?” God says.
“Yeah. It did. The Bible makes time for itself,” Adam says.
“It does. Now hit me with the big one.”
“Why would you send everyone that does not accept your Son to Hell?”
“Does that sound like the work of a loving father to you?” God says. “No, that is a power play by the Christian church. They can tell themselves that, and they feel honored and higher than everyone else. The Bible is a guide to those that find it. Those that find other ways to God have a different message, and a different book. The path you find, you walk. That path will tell you that it is the way. Because then you can believe in it. My boy is a way to me. He is the way that some people find. But there are other ways that other people have found.
“But that is not your path. This is the way you have found. So through Christ you go.” God smiles.
“Hey Adam?” God says.
“Yeah?”
“I like your book.”
This chapter is from Reality of the Unreal Mind, Vol. 3: The Keep.
Jesse Teller 