“If God is for us, who can be against us?”
––Romans 8:31
Last week, my good friend Brigita, who was back home visiting
family, reached out via Skype, wanting to share her cousin Wilhelm’s dream. She
believed it would convince me to let go of anger. She calls that my problem and
Brigita is the type of person who wants only to help, which in itself sometimes
makes me angry.
When Brigita and Wilhelm were children, she dreamed one day they
would marry. Now she says she can hardly stand him. According to Brigita, he’s become
a womanizer and a cad. When he visited her here in the states a few years ago,
she paid for his every entertainment and washed his every dish, or so she said.
Still, she was driven to share Wilhelm’s dream with me. For
her it was no mere dream; she called it a vision. “A warning,” she said, “for
you.” Her pale skin seemed almost blue in the frosty room from which she spoke.
“I’ve recorded it all right here, in English, on my phone. It’s your own future
if you don’t change.”
“OK,” I said. “I’ll listen.”
Brigita knows well I have a tendency toward self-righteousness
and deep despair over the outcome of the US elections, a despair with which I
can only endure by taking action, more and more action. I have marched; I have
called; involved myself in repetitious discussions. Yet the newspaper
headlines, which create in me the deepest anguish, go on reproducing and morphing
into new more horrible realities at rapid and terrifying rates.
“Here,” said Brigita in response to my latest categorizing of
the good and the bad, the sinners and sinned against. She pressed play and held
the phone close to her computer’s mic.
For a moment, her face appeared to be float over a lavender
sky. A painting, which hung on the far wall of the family study, glowed
strangely behind her in a piercing morning light. It made Brigita seem further
away than ever before; thus it was easier for me to consider Wilhelm’s words.
Suddenly––his voice. I’d met him exactly once. Indeed, we’d flirted.
He’d bought me drinks with what turned out to be Brigita’s money. But the voice
travelling via routes I only barely understand––is it via satellites up in the
heavens or via cables under the sea––sounded more settled than I remembered. Sand
in a masculine throat. A seductive forceful sound but for his accent, which was
thick, and had me recalling, if only fleetingly, the Muppet character Swedish Chef.
After that particular neural pathway was carved, everything Wilhelm said sounded
like half prophecy half joke. An experience I could never share with my friend
Brigita.
I will now transcribe Wilhelm’s words as best a Skype connection,
her phone’s recording function, and my own memory allow.
“Well, if you insist.” I heard him say. “I will tell it again.
Say to your friend hello. Yes. I remember her. Hello friend.”
“Stop it,” Brigita interrupted. “It’s not for that. Not
everyone falls for your charms.”
Wilhelm sighed. Already my heart softened; I listened more
intently. Brigita can be unnecessarily stern, and thus I was naturally on
Wilhelm’s side.
“Okay,” Wilhelm continued. “So it was two weeks ago. I waited
for Yvonne to return to bed. Half-asleep. Yes. Overcome by this strange, well,
dream. Yes, a dream I will call it because I was half slept.”
“Your vision,” Brigita replied. “It’s a holy vision Wilhelm,
nothing less. And when visions arise it’s time to chase the women from your bed
not wish for their return.”
“My wife, Brigita. Yvonne is now my wife.”
“I haven’t met her yet, and so you say.”
Wilhelm groaned but continued. “So, I waited. Yvonne, who you
will meet, was somewhere down the hall. But I must have been asleep. Then, like
a dream, I saw, no, felt myself rise over a crowd of––um––people, many people.
Lifted heavenward. So, this must be a dream, no? A feeling of being lifted
heavenward over a sea of, hmm, humanity below me? Yes! Humanity. The word I
look for. A float sensation. Then I was given golden armor. Do you know about
this? Remember? Oma’s icons. St. George and the Dragon? But it was me, of all
people, lifted into heaven, given the golden sword, a helmet, a shield. No harm
could be done me, I knew. I tell you, the light of heaven shone upon me. Then, down
on a battlefield I went with heaven’s rays over me. I saw I was twice, no 10 times
the size of other men. My men. Soldiers doing battle. Slewing enemies. Banners
blew all around us, like in a movie, and horses kicking dust. We sliced through
them all, enemy hordes at every side. Mountains of men. Horses too, falling. They
made mountains around us. Soldiers climbed corpses to fight, going heavenward
on the enemy’s back. My men they too cut down at times, but we were winning. I
was sure of it. The light on me was strong. The enemy arriving. I slaughtered,
wielded my sword in a glorious light. A brutal battle, yes. Losses on all
sides, but while the slaughter continued, I held not one doubt. Our cause, my
cause––a righteous one. No question. It was easy to kill. I did it easily. Then,
suddenly, the fighting stopped. We––no––I had won. No one left to slaughter. The
enemy at our feet. All their bodies broken. Survivors, my army, me, we should be
rejoicing, no? The light dissipated. I felt this horrible awakening. The golden
sky it was cloudless and gray. For a moment, I stood alone on that field,
Brigita, surrounded by carnage, which was my inheritance. The bloody field––my
prize. The world as I had known it, everyone I could have ever loved wiped from
Earth. My soldiers and me, we had made a new world, and we stood upon its
foundation. The bodies underfoot. All that loss that was our victory, a
terrible victory. Yes our enemy defeated, but loss that’s what we’d won. Our brothers; our family; our humanity gone in
the fighting. I understood then, God was on our side because God is on all sides
at once. God goes where we go, Brigita. We cannot be without God. This is why
we must be careful. Go where ever we go with love, so the world we create will
be beautiful in his––”
“In her,” Brigita interrupted.
“Yes. All the Gods. So the world will be beautiful in Gods’
sight, we must go with love, Brigita. Do you understand?”
“Yes, of course. I understand! It’s why I’m recording. Do you
understand? From now on, you are meant to lead a chaste life.”
“Oh, Brigita. I’m not sure you do understand. There is nothing
wrong with sensuality. We have these bodies––
“Is that what you call it sensuality when you lie to women,
when you make them cry?”
“I never lie, Brigita. I…”
But she huffed in such a way he shut up. He took a breath. “I
am not sure you understand this,” said Wilhelm, “this dream I had.” Years of
the cousin’s old enmity leaked into his voice and then a whiff of an old
flirtation too. “Your friend, she will understand?”
“My friend,” said Brigita, more cross than I have ever heard.
“She will hear your vision, and if she is smart she will make good use of it.
But you should be given no credit for having it. It only passed through you,
Wilhelm. Don’t go thinking it means anything special about you.”
The voices suddenly stopped.
On my screen, Brigita’s face frozen in a less than beautiful
state. I waited for the technology of the ages to catch up with time itself.
For surely in that other far off place, Wilhelm had gone on talking and Brigita
would have had something more to say to me about her cousin Wilhelm’s dream.
Briefly the Skype connection sputtered back to life. Momentarily,
Brigita’s face bounced about the screen, appearing first on one side then the
next, but I couldn’t understand a word she said. The pace of her voice was out
of sync with the movement of her lips.
“Brigita,” I called out. “Say nothing. I can’t hear you.” Once
again that face of hers froze in place, but this time the frosty room’s light
shone upon her just so. The painting framed her head in such a way that she
looked like a painting herself. She was my Brigita. Lit up with urgent love for
me and, I suppose, for Wilhelm too. She was a pleasure to look at, glowing
in a distant light. I took my breath and waited and adored.
*A note to readers. This story, like all stories is based on
some truth. Brigita leaped into my consciousness some time ago and Wilhelm soon
followed. They help me explore things that might otherwise be difficult write
about and share.
