The human condition, part 2 - where we're going.

 Where we’ll end up. 

The human condition, according to Patmos John.*

 

Uncle Albert was sitting in his chair, reading his Bible in French. I was half-sitting, half-lying on the couch across the brass table from him, alternately reading Trout Fishing in America and staring into space.

     Steps coming up to the front porch, the click and clatter of the front door opening. Roz.

     “What’s for supper?” she said, knowing it wasn’t anything yet because I had called her earlier about if I should cook, and she’d said, “No. Nothing: It’s heat-up-leftovers Monday.

     “When I get home,” she’d said.

 

“Albert,” she said now. “What are you reading?”

     “L’Apocalypse,” he said.

     “Oh? Where?”

     “Voici que je me tiens à la porte et je frappe.”

    “Then, he comes in,” Roz said – her voice is like an angel’s, or a dove’s – “to ‘sup’ with them.”

     “Souper, yes, et eux près de lui.”

     “But not to spend the night,” Roz said.

     “Well,” Uncle Albert was careful, his voice soft as ashes: “We don’t know for sure. It doesn’t say.”

 

“What happens when Jesus overstays his welcome?” Roz asked him. Then she hurried on, looking at the floor: “I’m not talking about you, Albert. I didn’t mean that at all!”
     “No,” Uncle Albert said. “You wouldn’t.”
     She was still rushing forward: “It was a theological question. Not even about the story. Generally.”
     Uncle Albert looked at me. I said, “I don’t know.”
     “Dogma,” Uncle Albert said. “Or/and ritual. That’s what happens. The church adjourns to the study or the theater.”
     “It leaves poor Jesus in the kitchen by himself,” I said, “washing the dishes.”

08.17.21

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 * Revelation, chapter 3.

   Illustration: dirty dishes [https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soubor:Dirty dishes.jpg]