A Tale of Two Cities

Part One:
RATION OF THE CHRIST

And by his stripes we are healed..

There are times when the city remains the same. The prospective of individual dwelling within its walls may change thus opening up such a person to aspects, views and cadences of the city thus new and; sometimes in total opposition to what the resident may have experienced beforehand.

I was about to have a major change of prospective and I didn’t even know it yet. Life for me in the bustling yet still small town atmosphere of this south west city had been quite good. Although I had resided in the city for little more than a year, I had managed to land a prestigious position and commanded a salary almost twice that of the working Joe. It was truly the best of times.

Because of the large population of retirees living and then dying in this city, large late model behemoths and luxury cars were rather inexpensive. I happened to own a hybrid of the two. Sunday morning as I drove to the park, my cabin cruiser on wheels loaded down with articles to keep me entertained for the outing; little did I know that fate was to crash down on me…hard!

I generally make it out to see on the average of three to four movies a year. With such a self imposed small allotment of cinema time,  I make great effort to choose only those pictures that I really, really, really want to see. Seldom have I succumbed to public or private urgings to see such and such. The Friday prior to Sunday excursion to the park, I had uncharacteristically succumbed to such urgings. On my quarterly phone conversations to my birth mother. And believe me, quarterly is sufficient enough to curtail the drama, nuff said? Anyway, like a bull fighter,  I continuously have to maneuver my mother around and away from family dramas, guilt trips and negativity in general. I believe the phone was invented for much more pleasurable topics and conversations. Miraculously, as I steered my mother towards topics such as entertainment, she exploded with excitement and positive energy.

I did not grow up in my mother’s household. I had been placed into adoption in my preschool years and did not see or hear from her until around the time of high school graduation. My mother had lived a questionable lifestyle and did not find a path of socially responsible living until well in her late forties. She had found Christ or vice-versa. I had been re-introduced to her in time to see her transition and it was real. All her superficial bad habits and vices were dropped almost instantaneously with no backsliding and without the need for counseling, twelve steps, treatment centers, nicotine patches etc.,etc.

Now the drama, that’s another story and speaking of drama; my mother, now quite the holy roller, had recently went out with her church group to see ‘The Passion of the Christ’. She went on and on about the movie. She was on a spiel, at least it was positive and almost it brought me enough of no need to respond time that I could clandestinely move the phone away from ear and hearing and do other things around the house. Ladies, it’s a men thing, you wouldn’t understand. Towards the end of her rambunctiously review she urged, almost demanded that I go and see the movie.

The movie had been out for sometime at this point and was no longer even a first run film. Everything that could have been said about the movie in all the entertainment rags, digests and even straight up news, had already been said. Let’s recap, its bloody and violent to the point of being sadistic, its in a foreign tongue, so foreign that even I, mostly a Los Angeleno  would not be able to follow a single line without reading the subscript. This just did not seem like a movie I cared to see. When I patronizingly said I would try to check it out, I was just giving her the okie doke.  

Further more, I knew the story line. In fact I believed I knew it frontward and backwards.

Jesus Christ Superstar is my idea of Passion Play and I had put in two years of spotty  yet for me regular church attendance.

So on that fateful Friday, I did find myself at the mall attending to other matters. My journeys took me past the Cineplex and to my surprise, this movie was still be shown. The south west town I resided in did have a considerable church going population which I could reason why this movie was still being shown in a first run theater or maybe, just maybe, it was my Good Friday.

OK, I had a pocketful of money, no date, items found and purchased so, what the Hell.

The movie was indeed graphic, unnecessarily so I thought and I still got more in touch with the character of Jesus in portrayals such as Jesus Christ Superstar and Last Temptation of Christ and they didn’t need all that blood.

Sunday was going to be a beautiful day. I got an early start. Traffic was light and the main road to the park was as wide as a highway. Up ahead several lanes had been closed. Cones were placed in the road. The high profile vehicle in front of me proceeded into the left hand turn lane. The light had just changed from green to yellow as HPV and I proceeded into the turn, the HPV for reasons unknown slowed almost to a crawl. Maybe they just couldn’t navigate the turn, at their current speed from their personal Bradley fighting vehicle. This hesitation left me exposed in the intersection as the light for oncoming traffic turned green. A minivan driving probably twice the speed limit rammed straight into my passenger side door. How the minivan could not have seen me is beyond me. The impact sent me across the three lanes of opposing traffic and into a utility pole and up onto the sidewalk.

I served in the United States Navy and I have heard big guns and all manner or ordinances go off at close range but I never heard a noise as loud as the one that impact generated. The whole passenger side of my car was crushed. The car was beginning the formation of a “U”. My head and neck must have been jolted so violently that my eyeglasses had rocketed from my face and been embedded deep into the cushion between the passenger’s rear seat and door panel. The fact that neither I nor the police officer could locate my glasses, in areas where we thought the glasses should have fallen’ casts suspicion on me and accusations that perhaps I was in violation of my driver’s license’s mandate that I wear corrective vision. I did find the embedded glasses until days later while at the junkyard retrieving personal effects from my totaled vehicle. The airbag had not deplored, whose knows, when you buy used cars and you are not checking that’s a chance you take. Better use Car Facts next time.

Although shaken to the point that I could not immediately supply the officers with vital statistics, there was not a single scratch on me, not one drop of blood shed and, at least for the first day, I walked away just fine and had refused medical attention.

A word of caution here to readers, go to the hospital if you are involved in a major wreak. The next day I could barely walk and had to support myself on crutches for almost three days afterwards.

But, getting back to me emerging from the accident scratch free, not spilling a single drop of blood. Only my faith can do the convincing. Yet somehow I know that by Christ’s stripes and by his shedding of blood as reveled to me in the cinema the previous Friday was the saving grace that protected me the proceeding Sunday. There are scores of movies, hundreds of movies both foreign and domestic that in various styles attempt to tell the life of Christ. Enjoy them all but remember one thing, in fact the most important thing, when selecting a portrayal of  Jesus bear in mind that
real Jesus’es bleed; they bleed a lot.

© Phillip Ghee 12/24/07 

phillipghee@yahoo.com 
and for website posting ghelove@aol.com