Stargazing

Joshua and I spent as much time together as we could on that trip to Jerusalem. My father was blissfully oblivious. His mother was another story. She always had her eye out for him. Not in an annoying way, just in an overprotective mother way. And it drove him crazy. He may be the Messiah, but back then, he was also a teenage boy with a pretty girl and would get annoyed with his mother like any other young, hormone packed adolescent.

"Who's your friend, Joshua?" Joshua's mother asked as she joined us along the way.

"This is Mary, she's from Magdala," he said.

"Mary, what a good name" she said and smiled. I noticed they had the same deep brown, twinkling eyes.

"Mom!" Joshua replied, "shouldn't you be keeping an eye on the little ones?"

"They're in good hands," she said easily. "James is watching out for them. I thought I'd walk with you for a bit."

Joshua sighed and then smiled. And we so we spent a good part of the day talking and walking with Mary.

I should tell you that I always liked Mary--Joshua's mom. She was gentle and kind, with she had a devilish sense of humor. She was incredibly smart and intuitive. And full of faith, a trait I've both envied and admired. Mary was, for me, easy to talk to and good at listening. And I loved walking with her. The sting of my mother's death was still sharp and there was not only compassion from her, but that innate mom-ness that I craved. My own mother's illness had been both long (almost all of my life) and all encompassing. I was drawn to her and I craved being with her almost as much as I longed to be near Joshua.

At the end of that day, we stopped to camp for the night. Mary took me with her and I helped her make dinner, my father joining us and it felt like family. My first real sense of that. My life had so revolved around illness that the art of the family meal, sitting and talking about the day, laughing, telling stories--all that was somewhat new. The fire went from roaring to dwindling, and still there were tales being told. It was one of the happiest nights of my young life.

Our parents engrossed in conversation, Joshua grabbed my hand and we moved away from the crowds. The black night was framed by the brightness of the stars and we wasted no time looking at their patterns in the sky. He smelled like sweat and boy. It was the first time I had been so close to him, to a boy and he pointed out the constellations, discussing how they had been a guide for so many travelers. My eyes flickering back and forth between his arm and his face and those distant points of light. As quietly as we had left, we rejoined the group, our absence unnoticed by all but Mary. She smiled at us, but there was distress in her face.

I tried to sleep, but found myself awake, under the stars, wondering where they would lead.

Fishermen

I grew up in the fishing village of Magdala. Being out on the water is one of my first memories. In fact, I can't remember a time when I wasn't on a boat. When I was very young, my father took me on his small fishing boat for the first time. It was early in the morning. My mother was sick. He was afraid I would get sick with her disease and did not want to leave me, yet he needed to fish. He began to go door to door, looking for someone to keep an eye on me, but, as he tells it, looked down at me and "saw the soul of a fisherman." Although it wasn't usual to bring someone as small or as female as me onto the boat, he did.

What I remember from that day was the sun as it danced on the water, causing my eyes to squint, the smell of salt and air, birds that flew in formation and playing with the nets, fingers interlocking with the rope, until it was time to cast them overboard. We came home with a bigger catch than my father had expected and he began to take me with him on a regular basis. I loved it: the water, the boat, the sun and my father. From that time forward,we were fishing at least twice a week.

The summer when I turned 11, I made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover, along with many others from Magdala. It was the first time I had ever been away from the water for any length of time. It was my first trip there. Although many went yearly, because of my mother's illness, my father would go and leave me to care for my mother. She died just before the Passover that year, and so, with no more reason to stay home, my father and I together, with the rest of our community, made that trip together. I remember singing the Psalms of Assent as we made our way to the city, feeling like I should be singing Psalms of Lament. We walked and sang in the day and stopped each night until we reached our destination.

At night, on the road to Jerusalem, we would gather, pilgrims from all over the area, and together the mothers would cook and the men would talk and the children would play. Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, without a mother, I found myself wondering where to be, where to go. My father would stay with me, but after the second night, I sent him away to be with the other men. He had more to do than watch over me and he was lonely for friendship, needed to be away from the grief that surrounded us both.

I sat near the fire, alone and quiet, longing to be anywhere but on this road, wishing, more than anything to be back on the water,fishing, sitting in the sun. Lost in thought and prayer, I didn't hear his feet. Joshua, at 12, awkward and gangly, yet with that unmistakable semblance of otherness, of wisdom.

Whether he found me as a boy who liked a girl, or as God who saw a broken heart--it's hard to know. He was, after all, a boy and he was entitled to irrational love every bit as much as I was entitled to love him back. But he was that other too--that lonely and beautiful other. Something beyond human love, something I would later realize was more than holy love, it was love of God. But at that moment, at that time, it was just us--two kids with our parents, walking towards Jerusalem. And we found, me in my sorrow, him in his uniqueness, a strange place of abiding. And with him, my sorrow became, and not for the last time, a place of hope.