(Cont’d)

D: “Boss, all I can say is your kind of promise drives a hard bargain.”

G: “I’m feeling better already!”

D: “Do you want a quick run-through, a little Q&A ? We both know the main points…

G: POINTS!?? You dare to call them points!!!? Each one carries a whole universe of questions on its back! Each is an exhalation ..a torrent of words ..an eruption of vehemence and misunderstandings! Points, you call them?!!!

Yes, let’s run them all down , you and I… before my tzaddiks get a hold of them and construe me a tail!!”

D: “Relax, boss! It’s bad, but think of the flip side. What rabbi wouldn’t consider himself in heaven to be able to debate with YOU and Elijah and Moses and Samuel…. With all the prophets and all their fellows! With David the psalmist! And not only that, but for as long as it takes for this Zoom-dream trial to resolve all your issues- to absolve you of all the confusion you’ve caused, and for them to accept heaven as you actually promised it?”

G: “I think that when it becomes clear that they are, indeed, a unique people that shall be preserved as the remnant for some eternity or another… however long a people should exist… I think they shall be satisfied. Their worship, their wisdoms, their customs as changing and unchanged as they should conceive will be all I want, along with their tolerance of interpretations…..

D: “We shall put it in their heads then…

G: To partake of a dream in which to meet all the saints and martyrs, all the writers of commentary, every faculty of the Great College in an eternal dispute …with me…about interpretation… haha.. that could only be held in the synapses of a dream–THAT SHALL be a picture of heaven!

D: “… and for any rabbi’s wife it will be a blessed peace to hear their husband and students jabber in the next room, leaving them alone.

G: But of course you’re right. It’s not just the tzaddiks but even their students and families…and of course, any one who has ever yearned for peace can be in the call…

D: “But you wouldn’t force them to watch, would you? Could you? An eternal debate would be hell for anyone but a scribe!!”

G: “I should let that dawn on them. Having always to be right is for momma’s boys. I guess I once was myself…we’re just now getting past that, as you’ll see. But no, there’s no way I’d even WANT everyone to stay on the Zoom. (You know how students paid attention on classroom zooms during the Pandemic). Heavens no! Let them wander about in the dream for however long the rabbis are having it out with me. Let them come back and look in whenever they please just to make sure they’re not dreaming this up by themselves. Let them see the real Isaiah and Daniel and Jeremiah and Baruch having at me for Jesus’ sake…..”

D: “And the prophet Mohammed?

G: How eternal must we make this? Like you said, I’m going to have to go on trial for the Nicene Creed, and for each of the churches in turn… you’ll need a big hall in hell just for technocrats to support the servers….

D: “There’s space enough in Purgatory. It’ll be the Total Technocrat’s heaven. The place for the innocents, the pure materialists who live without doubts and further my cause with the drag of their recalcitrance.”

G: “The good souls who can’t recognize souls.”

D: “They feel it you know. They just refuse the name.”

G: “I believe you’ve come up with the answer here, m’boy… an infinitely circular system of dream zooms, each putting me on-trial for the others’ dreams. We’ve got this heaven problem licked. That’s been one of our problems, kid. Different dreams of different promises. Different strokes for different folks when it’s all the same stroke.”

D: “The same promise you gave Abraham?”

G: “That I gave Adam… that got ratified when the Ark went into the Promised Land. I spoke to many people and revealed my promise to dozens of prophets from Noah on, long before Abraham. Jethro’s people knew me,...and they all knew my promise–even if it was a bit different to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It is all an equation of the most simple kind–but you wouldn’t know about that.

D: “Hold it, pops! You just called the Promise an equation!!

G: “I’m sorry for that little jolt. You bolted before I could explain the plot to you. We somewhat expected this of you then, even back then. But I didn’t see the denouement , or at least fully grasp the narrative. You see, I didn’t see exactly how you would come back.

D: I see you didn’t see…but…

G: We’ve got to put you to work. There’s a lot of cleanup, and going to be a lot more!

D: “Wait again, pops! There’s more? I thought I got you to switch the plot on your chosen people, but I’m the dummy now. You just called the Promise “an equation” and threw me into the knot that gets untied. The ‘denouement.’ You had a plot all the time that got switched around on me?!

G: “Of course, there’s always more, you know yourself. But yes, you were my first and we gave you the birthright….little thinking of the possibility you’d split on us. And once you did, your mother and I realized she’d have to play the silent partner in the family until you came back.

D: “OMG. Mom? You never told me this!”

G: “I told you I never told you”

D: “You never told me

G: “I TOLD YOU!

D: “Never…”

G: “You miss her? Your mom?

D: “You never told me…

G: “I know I did, I didn’t…that was the little surprise I mentioned earlier.”

D: “I’ve got a mom. I’m a knot that’s getting untied…all this is too much. And then there is this ‘equation’ bit… I don’t think we ever had that ‘facts of life’ talk every dad is supposed to have with… I know. I was a big-shot and left home before you had the chance. Big devil I was!! You’d better let me in on the story.

G: “And so I shall. You’re the biggest bellybutton there ever was. You are the knot to be ‘untied,’ you see, as it morphs with age and ceases to be a knot at all anymore. You are absorbed and grown into the belly around you.

“Your mother was a fabric artist, she spins thread from wool. She gave you the twist along with everything we made together. You see, you aren’t the origin of the twist you hold so dear. You are just the first in our image to wield it. But the wool, the cotton boll, the puff of breath all have the twist at the seat of their soul…from which they weave the fabric of their story and are woven into that of yours, and of mine…and ours. It’s our Ketubah and marriage contract and the fabric of this family of ours.

D: “And mom…? Where is she?

G: She’s here. She is in the next room carding, spinning, shuttling and weaving, sewing and stitching, designing all the repeats in the patterns…cutting, folding, hemming. Do you believe we could do any of this without her?

“But wait! What about the Thirteen Articles of Faith? What about your people and the prophets? Where was there any talk of mother?!!”

G: “She’s in it all alright. But the prophets had a better view of the Ketubah than anyone else. The prophets of the Assembly, that is. They created my people, witnessed the promise and understood the story better than any. The Torah is the Ketubah and it’s the rabbi’s–not the priests at all. The Torah belongs to the students of the contract that witnessed the promise and ratified it with the Prayer Book. And the siddur, the Prayer Book is everyone’s. Oh, they were clever …and now my legal team shall put me on trial and YOU, my son, shall help us set up the Zoom that will free your mother. This is the denouement. So when you asked me how I felt a ways back, it was THIS that I was realizing. It was this that was really on my mind.. and yet, I hadn’t considered the trial, or seen exactly what is to take place. Now I see. We shall free your mother of her vow of silence. Her oath that has bound her. An oath is slavery as well, slavery to a particular time, and while it was a positive promise for good reasons then, it binds you to a moment. ‘This love shall be forever’ and yet all things change. A tree grows and puts its roots and limbs over a property line. It must be constantly pruned. So is a promise a slavery too. Only my laws said there is a Sabbath year that all debts and slaves be freed.”

D: “Which should make you feel better about breaking your covenant, and giving hope to all people? A sabbath for wrath, perhaps?

G: “A sabbath for my wrath, perhaps. But there is not a sabbath for all promises. And in any event, I can’t voice for your mother’s wrath. She’s got Gaia pretty riled up. When your mom can speak again, we shall celebrate our prodigal son….oh, I hate to add MORE confusion to all this…you are such an arrogant bellybutton, and I imagine we shall have to accept it as it is…’’with the wisdom to know the difference’....and a feast of eternal thanksgiving! In dreamtime, of course.

D: So mom is coming out?

G: Like Aaron’s sister. What have you heard recently about the prophetess Miriam? Ruth, Rebecca, Esther…Deborah the Judge, and Rahab- the scion of David’s line, known as ‘the harlot’!

“Well, Rabbi Kaplan’s folk, the Reconstructionists (same difference) have done the work on the backstory. The women shall come out of the back room. Don’t worry, their story has yet to flower and seed a whole people!”

D: “This is where you lose me. Mother’s vow of silence…

G: “We shall see. It’s more complicated than it’s made it out to be. We shall see.

D: “All I know is that I’m grateful for all the freedom you gave me… And as much as you have reason to distrust me, you can believe me on that one.

G: “Ah yes…your freedom. And so you had to return. Your mother probably knew all along…but then she is often mysterious. The silent partner….she wouldn’t let me in on exactly what we’re doing…but then that’s actually her strong suite. Silence.

D: …and you’re driving at?

G: “Your freedom. It wasn’t me that gave it to you. Neither was it your mom. You need to understand that all of this…I will use a human intellectual term…is ontological. We exist as we do, as we are pictured because humans exist, and yet we are not …let us say…mere conceptions or pictures. The whole of us is the spirit of their species, an instance of their uniqueness, of their coding and structure and form.

D: “But I am there for the dolphins, too, you know….

G: “Ah yes, that you may well be. But not looking like you do, or challenging me about Job as you just did. In the bigger picture you may be there for the dolphins-–but if so, I think you’re more confused than you let out to be. The promise that shall be on-trial first is to free the human species from its slavery… to you…and to a wrathful me. The rabbis have no concern with dolphins nor the demise of any other species than their own. And in their case, their species is no more than a small tribe that I shall put on trial myself if they cross me!

“For when we speak of all of a species, which is ‘all God’s children,’ we can call the dolphins to the witness stand, yes, and then we ARE speaking of the dolphins again, and the human place is only this small dominion of theirs.”

D: “But they already have crossed you. They can do it again.

G: “The dolphins?”

D:…..