I'm sure that many who've clicked into this diary are expecting a discussion of the Disciple Thomas Didymus (The Twin) and how he in actuality represents the human face of Jesus, perhaps even some mention of the bad wrap Thomas has received since the Gospel of John first began circulating sometime toward the close of the first century. Then there is the tragedy of Thomas' own Gospel being banished in 367 CE after getting smacked down at Nicaea and all but lost until its rediscovery at Nag Hammadi in 1945 (Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief) a bizarre fate for the disciple known to Christ as The Twin. So, if Thomas is Jesus' (human) twin, or, following along assertions made in Thomas's own Gospel to their logical conclusion, his spiritual twin, then, yes, I suppose Thomas is the face of Jesus. With every one of us being Thomas' twin as disciples, then, so are we all.
But this isn't about that. It's a different sort of Epiphany story as Advent comes again and God begins to show...
This is Thomas...
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And this is La Cara de Jesus (The Face of Jesus).
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It's a lousy photo (I apologize). This was one of the last pictures taken before that digital camera-beast of mine died while its close-up options had already deserted it. It's blurry but if you picture the left side of the stone outcropping as the profile of Jesus' beaded face pointing North, then you can see his head tilted skyward, his eye(s) closed as if dreaming peacefully, nose pointing toward heaven. Sweet dreams, no doubt. The dark (should be green) southern part of the island is his long flowing hair. See him? Yes? No?
This is actually the second installment of my road-trip journal; Even More Rambling Dispatches from The Religious Left of the Border that was first published in Dec. of 2008. I'd left off having just arrived in the coastal pueblo Isla De La Piedra (Stone Island). La Cara De Jesus is the stone Island of Stone Island. It was, in fact, the first thing I saw as I got out of my Plymouth Voyager and looked out upon the bay here. It's what I view from my cabana each morning when I rise and every night before bed. Although I didn't recognize the island as The Face of Jesus until the locals pointed it out to me as such, I knew as soon as I looked out that cabana window that I was going to have to stay right there (life is tough, huh?).
Actually it has been for some of our neighbors, our brothers and sisters here in Mexico and the rest of Latin America where poverty is a multi-generational way of life. Thomas and his brothers and sisters are only one result of this impoverishment where the average Mexican laborer gets paid around $6.50 a day. The streets of every pueblo literally run with stray dogs who are typically malnourished and lice and mange infested.
Thomas was a stray who hung around the cabana area getting free fish from Jose who valued the dogs guardian potentials. When I first met him he would flinch when I stretched my hand out to him. Pulling over twenty ticks from him a day that first week only reinforced this tendency to feign contact.
I suppose he's as much "my" dog now as anyones. I gave him the name after-all. I was thinking about the dog I had promised to get just as soon as I'd settled down in Colorado; only problem was I never settled down in Colorado. So this mutt, I figured, was his twin, separated only by time and space. Thomas is an easier name to holler for a dog than Didymus. Probably applies to disciples, as well.
I started to lather his mange with some prescription anti-fungal medication. Neo-sporane as well went on his open wounds on his muzzle and neck. He wound up getting as close to the full treatment that Jose and I were able to give him. One thing that isn't cheaper here in Mexico are veterinarians; they are few and far between as well, and let's face it, I don't have the money. Thomas was decidedly sick, however. He'd lay on a stack of nets and sleep all day refusing food. We did dose him with some antibiotics I had and Jose came up with some anti-parasitic medicine, all of which we poured down his throat for several days.
Thomas, I'm happy to report, is doing extremely well at this point. The mange spot between his eyes has healed and begun re-growing hair. While he was sick it was hard to pin an age on him. I figured he was maybe four or five. It seems he's closer to a young two at the most. His favorite past-time now is chewing on my wrist, trying to get it down to the stub he imagines it should be, if not destroying a pair of sunglasses or gloves. For Christmas he got a hardened leather chew bone. For me he ate one of my hammers.
Now, (back to the subject) which looks more like the face of Jesus to you? The stone mirrors an iconoclastic image the western world has conjured up as to what the Son of G-d may look like (while he's sleeping, I suppose). It's only alive in a geological sense. Oh, sure, there's an eco-habitation of sorts happening, but its "life" exists in very much a parallel dimension that does not intersect our own except through the illusion created by cultural artifice. Where is the human face that cried out, "My God, my God... Why hast thou forsaken me?" That very moment of reconciliation of God to man, when He voluntarily chose to take on all that is human and know the worst of suffering and even doubt as to His very own existence.
What a curious notion upon which to rest a theology. At the very least we can imagine of that moment that Christ must have been experiencing unimaginable agony and despair.
Indeed, terribly tragic are our crucifixes. They indicate a Christ not dead or sleeping peacefully, but suffering. Christ whom we adore on the cross is a Christ suffering in agony, a Christ who cries out, "Why, God?" It is to this Christ-- (Matth. 27:46)--to whom believers in true life agony pay homage, knowing despair all too well already. Among these are many who believe and have complete faith; who have faith in faith itself.
To live is to struggle; to fight for life and to live by struggle for many requires faith. I affirm, I believe, as a poet, as a writer, as a fisherman or sailor looking across the horizon beyond La Cara De Jesus, in the present moment but with a hopeful eye to the future. As a human being, as a Christian, even contemplating the unrealizable future (contemplating eternity) I look to the future with hope, yes, but with agonoizing doubt sometimes as well.
If the agony of being human traces to the inescapable knowledge that while God has created us, He has given us lives in which we all suffer, then the reconciliation of Man to God comes when He willingly chose to experience this agony Himself and we are reconciled to Him. And that is why, to the continuing bewilderment of many, the cross is such a compelling symbol and we preach Christ crucified. Where is the face of Jesus, indeed, the face of Christ, without suffering or even doubt?
So you tell me; where do you see the face of Jesus? In the rock or in the face of a sick stray with little faith in Man let alone G0d, in doubt and despair?
Anyway, needless to say, I am now the servant of Thomas, a desperate creature in whom I thought I'd glimpsed the face of Jesus.
It must be something in the water.
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Mi casa...