SWNOVELS Chapter Prologue
Remember to welcome strangers into your homes.
There were some who did that and welcomed angels without knowing it.
(Hebrews 13:2)
“Remember Hosea?” the blond-tressed angel spoke. Appearing out of nowhere, as he was wont to do, Manuel sat in the other lawn chair outside Phil’s efficiency apartment. Phil was getting some work done on his laptop, which lay on the round table between them.
The sky was crystal blue with a faint breeze coming up from the ocean. Phil's work attire was now shorts and tank top, and he wore a baseball cap touting the California Angels.
“I remember him,” Phil replied, squinting through the midday sun’s glare back-dropping Manuel. “He was stuck in Yahweh’s Heaven. You said he hadn’t reincarnated because he couldn’t figure out something.”
“And you’re making the same mistake.”
Phil closed his laptop, pulled off his cap, and ran a hand through what was left of his thinning brown hair. His high forehead creased into a frown, and his dark eyes widened in wary surprise.
“I haven’t talked to you in weeks, and you show up unannounced, uninvited, and start in on me with tactless condemnations. What’s up with you?”
“Singular -- one condemnation. Although, I could add to it, if you wish. We could start with the Buddha’s condemnation of ignorance and go from there.”
Phil was pleasantly surprised Manuel didn’t regale him about his stupidity -- the angel’s pet peeve. “We can skip it," he said instead and slid his cap back on his head. "Why are you here?”
“We can’t skip it, because it’s why I’m here. The whole problem comes from Hosea. His Book gets read a bunch of ways. The closest to the truth was the temple prostitute one. Hosea, representing Israel, incorporates the goddess tradition, which is represented by his wife Gomer. But she -- the goddess tradition -- wouldn’t stay incorporated. Hosea said to hell with it and let her go, but Yahweh commanded him to bring her back. That’s where Hosea got himself stuck. He had no other way of incorporating all of it except through domestic violence.”
“What?”
“Read the text,” Manuel snapped. “Hosea 2 provides him with Divine role modeling. God said he would: ‘strip her naked,’ meaning Israel, and ‘make her like a wilderness,’ ‘kill her with thirst,’ and then God would go on to isolate her, refuse to provide for her, humiliate her to those who love her, and so on. In Hosea 3 he follows God’s lead, although the writers left out the gory details. Now Hosea is stuck, unable to reincarnate until he makes sense of it.”
“Why?”
Manuel gave Phil a sharp look. Apparently this question fell into the ‘stupid’ category.
Then the angel sighed, shook his head in disgust, lifted his head to the heavens, and prayed, “God, I’m having real trouble with this patience-thing. I mean, you’d think after all You put me through with this inane human, something would have rubbed off by now.... Okay, okay. No, I’m not complaining. Well, I am complaining, but You can’t blame me.... I am doing my best. Didn’t I patiently lay out Hosea’s dilemma?... The answer is obvious.... I’m not being rude. I’m clarifying the difficulty of this lousy job You stuck me with.... Mysterious ways or not, You locked our brainwaves together. I didn’t. You set before me the impossible task of teaching him how to navigate the realms of Spirit. I didn’t. In my mind, You set me up to fail. This is just the latest test in that string.... So? It was luck he passed the others. Luck won’t help here.... Come on. This time is different. I expect You’ll get a big laugh at the end of the game, and we’ll be sent back to square one.”
Phil became more and more uncomfortable with Manuel’s conversation with God. When Manuel compared life in the Cosmos to a board game, his distress doubled. Still, he couldn’t say anything as Manuel continued to converse with the Great Mystery.
“At least give me a hint, a clue, something to help with the odds. Please?... The Babylonian Captivity? That was a mess.... Okay. I’ll let him know about Sophereth. Will that help?”
Apparently this concluded Manuel’s chat and he smiled at Phil as he refocused on him. “The mistake Hosea made was patched up during the Captivity. It was then women came into institutional power. They already exercised tribal power that evolved during the monarchial period. Even at the beginning, though, Eve said she ‘created a man with the Lord.’ She claimed equal creative power with God, which isn’t far off. The daughters of Eve were equal to men, but their equality came from a division of power, like yin and yang. Israel’s tribal life reflected the balance. When they became city dwellers, though, female power needed to evolve. Hosea’s struggle marked the beginning of it. Sophereth’s story signified its resolution.”
Phil stared at the angel for a long moment before concluding, “I need to read up on it.”
“Yep.”
“Then what?”
“Then fix your own life.”
“Then what?”
“Then we’ve got another date with the Twins.”