Imagine

Things Matter

There are places I remember. Things of my past I left behind. Some have gone and lost their meaning. In my mind I loved them all.

So sang the poet of my youth, modestly rewritten. Or reimagined.

Forgive me, John. Forgive my indiscretion. To me you spoke of things that belonged to me. And are a part of me. Places I remember. Some are lovers and friends and some are not. And I know I often stop and think about them. The people and things…, I’ve left behind. In my mind I loved them all.

They connect me and that place in time. And make it unique, unique to me and the place and time where I was when I acquired them and made them my own as a part of me. As it is a part of you who know me. And so you are it and it is you.

I remembered something today. A nub of wax and a stick of candle. It was a fragment of a memory of an item of wax I bought on the streets of Jerusalem in 1976, a long, long time ago and an age where I was a young, young man ago. And I didn’t know what I was doing as many long ago young men ago don’t know but they do it anyway and so I was out doing what many long ago young men ago do and suffering the consequences of their actions for years to come, as is the custom of consequences for stupid young men in the long, long ago way behind time.

And I was in Jerusalem, Israel. In a holy city. In school. And I was twenty-two years old. And an idiot, but I didn’t know that at the time. Idiots generally don’t.

It was Easter, 1976. What a nice time. I had watched a parade of pilgrims entering the gates of Jerusalem from the top of one of the stone walls surrounding the Old City, my feet splayed around a chunk of iron workmanship left by the Romans or the Persians or Ottomans, I think, one of those, and it kept me from falling off the wall is all I cared about. I was an idiot, after all, and didn’t care about anything. I just cared that I was not falling from the wall I was sitting on like a stupid Humpty Dumpty sitting on a thousand year old wall. And thinking of what I could drop on the pilgrims entering the old city along the Via Dolorosa close to the ruins of the Antonia fortress. I didn’t drop anything on the worshipers, I am glad to remember. I’m sure they appreciated it.

Later I descended from the great gate to the city with my Nikormat camera in hand, ready to record relentlessly from the perch I had nested upon and followed the other pilgrims on their march, and entered the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the Christian quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem.

Quarters are important in Old Cities. There are four as defined by the British two centuries ago. They got into everything, those Brits. The Muslim quarter, the Christian quarter, the Armenian quarter, and the Jewish quarter. The Temple Mount was some sort of fifth quarter and off limits to annunciation or categorization, I guess. The Brits were all into dividing up former colonies. Just ask the Indians, the Ghanans, the various Americans, et al. That’s what Empire is all about.

And there I was. Et al, as it were. Sitting on top of a stone gate at the entrance of a medieval city with an iron rod in my crotch preventing me from falling into a place called the Old World of Somewhere or Other and wondering why I was sitting there in the first place. And there was a significant religious ceremony about to happen nearby and below me so shouldn’t I go and take a good look? And maybe I should buy a candle on my way there. Ah, what the hell.

So, unignited candle in hand I entered the Church of the Holy Sepulture in Jerusalem, Israel, the Holiest Place on Earth or Any Other Planet in Any Other Universe, I Just Dare You. Go ahead. Give it a Try. Here we are. The holiest place on earth during the holiest time on earth. How often does that happen?

Well, once a year. And I was amidst crowds of thousands. All holding dead candles in lifeless fingers wishing for ignition. It was intense. And then. At the tomb of Christ. The symbolic place where fifth century Christians imagined a thing called the Resurrection occurred, a miracle supposedly occurred in the spring of 1976. Fire appeared in the form of a flaming torch or lantern or Bic lighter or something from a priest in the Holy Sepulcher. I had been there already, of course. It’s just a stone box in the middle of a stone structure that calls itself a church with a shelf or a stone coffer that, if you really wanted to, you could imagine was a tomb for a demigod. Why not? Gods are a dime a dozen.

But this one was… Different. This one brought fire. And I lit my candle from the wave of pilgrims lighting theirs from the waves before them, all originating from that coffin of stone where a resurrection had occurred. Or so they told us. The light and radiance grew through the building and the throng that inhabited it. It just happened. All at once. And everywhere. A miracle, if you will allow.

This god didn’t seem like all the rest. Um, I don’t know. He’s just. Not the same. Or maybe it’s just me.

Or maybe it always was just me. Just us. Just you and me. Or me speaking for the rest of us, if I can regard myself as a bellwether. One speaking for all, like as I might. If I might. Like the John Lennon song. Maybe it’s us. Imagine. Imagine all the people. Living as one.

Just imagine. Maybe we can imagine a whole world. A whole universe. Living as one.

If only we could.

Imagine that.