OUT OF ESSEX – CHAPTER 40

 

I have seen the Lord

Mary Magdalene

 

 

Stooping, Yeshua found a light switch. Then sat, silently, until upstairs noises faded back to slumber. He rubbed his head, still sore from the toilet roof. Then took in the visual cornucopia. Darkened wood, vinyl cushions on window seats. Anaglypta of a beer cream hue covered a low-beamed ceiling.

“Please ask for a top up,” requested a wall sign.

Above a window to the alleyway, a clock said 4.15. A blackboard advertised Nicholson’s guest ales, next to six sepia-tinted photos arranged in a rectangle. On another wall, a menu indicated maritime fare. ‘This hostelry was South East Essex Pub of the Year in 2012,’ boasted another sign.

Investigating the single malt shelf, Jesus sighted an 18-year-old Bunnahabhain. The rascal that had steered the outcome of the ‘Maggie meeting’ some six years previous, he recalled.

Its beginning released honeyed nuts and a salty tang, redolent of the sea. He looked out, through mist, to the ebbed Thames.

Slowly acclimatising, remembering his brief visit eleven months earlier. Out in the estuary. Here surfaces were compressed and oppressive. His body felt impossibly heavy.

The Bunnahabhain’s next stage comprised rich toffee and leathery oak aromas, then sherried nuts and a hint of natural oak wood. Subsequent dry notes mixed with varying spices. As the flavours bowed out on a light salt and sherry coda, soft steps carried from the alleyway. Jesus had unlocked the gate.

Siddharta entered the room, preceded by his habitual glow. They high-fived then hugged for a full minute. Yesh whispered to be quiet, indicating the small glass on the bar. Buddha sat with him at the small window table, stepping over his friend’s long legs. After Jesus brought him up to speed, Siddharta used his lowest voice. “To ask for your plan would be like requesting a lion to write a thesis.”

Jesus smiled. “We have a mission fit for lions. Gandhi will meet us in just over one hour. Then we travel to the City of Corruption.” Silently they enjoyed the whisky, before Jesus asked two questions.

“Did we hurry Maggie? And, had you been there, at the fatal, drunken meeting, would we have chosen her?”

Buddha reflected. The basic wisdoms never changed. “All souls make the best decisions available at any given moment. In epochs to come, our perceptions will accrue fresh colours. Something is unfolding, a process in which Maggie has enjoyed unique input. As has our friend Sal, who has been pining for his old existence.”

In payment, they blessed the pub, ensuring it would be successful, and a source of comfort, for decades ahead. Exiting, Jesus left the alley gate slightly ajar. Sal and Maggie would soon require access.

Old Leigh’s visuals mesmerised him. Surreal rows of wooden tables and benches; a sign proclaiming ‘Osborne Bros Seafood Merchants’; overwhelmingly yellow walls; the clapperboard of nearby buildings. Looking through screens was no preparation for this. They passed a white and brown building, The Coal Hole’, featured among the pub’s rectangle of photos.

Jesus said Gandhi would ensure their safe legal passage in the hours to come. “Many is the donkey that has conceded its back legs in debate with Mahatma,” agreed Buddha.

More views of the Estuary; then an old foundry. Cobbles beneath their feet, bared to ensure their souls were fully earthed. Other hostelries were here: The Smack, with SkySports, and the Mayflower. Lacking the softness of Palestinian inns.

“Of you, my great friend, I request protective powers,” said Jesus. They halted on the pedestrian bridge over the railway. Little of 21^st century Essex was perceptible in the dark. “Just as you protected this village from the tsunami,” he said. A train approached, passed beneath, vibrating the bridge. Yeshua felt air cool his skin. “Would you kindly guide us to Kent Elms Corner?”

Sid mentally selected a route to stimulate his companion.

A few trees were apparent, white blossom catching their gaze as they descended, opposite The Ship public house. Then up a hill, past an abandoned-looking building, sporting advice. ‘Live the life you love’. Hearts sat below the words.

“My students are but 50 yards away – shall we collect them,” asked Sid. “All can be ready in minutes.” Jesus considered; shook his head. “Plenty of work awaits them, later. We must stay compact, deflect gazes.”

A horn honked furiously. “Wot’s all this then, the faakin noooth Larndon derby or wot?” shouted an Essex cowboy, arm hanging from the builder’s van. “And where you get them faaakkin stilts mate?” Laughter rocked the vehicle.

Jesus was wearing his Tottenham shirt and joggers. Essene carpenter robes would have been too conspicuous. He realised with a grin that Sid was in full Arsenal regalia. He had seen it as Buddha’s everyday garb, paying no notice. They would surely accustom themselves to further banter.

Over the road a cobbled, uphill path beckoned. Black paint engulfed metal rails at either side. They stepped up, passing several housing terraces, glimpsing dewed gardens. A spired building came into view at the top. “St Clements church – you might want to look,” suggested Buddha.

They heard a motorbike pass the foot of the hill, nearing its destination.

 

***

Dawn Landais had woken early, with Genevieve in mind. She wished her daughter would stay in more regular touch. Steve’s snoring drove her from the bedroom, for a first cup of coffee.

Fragments of her dream nagged. Something about a field. And Mrs Thatcher. No dafter than most dreams.

She decided to start work, despite the dark. As much as anything, she wanted to be in the fresh morning air. And takings from the windscreen work were beginning to rise again, as the days lengthened. She pulled on a spare fleece and jeggings. Instinct said it would be a good day. Better than usual.

 

***

George called a very senior Essex policeman with the instruction to bury the Southchurch events without trace. “Evaporate any mess.”

He called the editors of every British daily to specify zero coverage. A similar instruction to his contact who controlled Essex media. Relatives of the dirty dozen would be told their kin had died bravely preventing a coup by a would-be dictator in Central Africa.

 

***

 On the Highway to Hell, Bob held court, surrounded by Satan’s six other cats. “He’s gone down again,” he whispered. “Jesus has gone in again.”

Rosie felt surges of excitement. She regurgitated a conversation between archangels Gabriel and Michael that she had earwigged. “They were talking about that very possibility yesterday, in the angels’ canteen. Michael reckoned it was about two thousand Earth years since all the New Testament shenanigans.”

Bob did the maths. “2,014 years since he last went down.  1,981 years since he came back.” 

***

 

In the churchyard, Yesh looked at his own crucifixion.

No shelter had covered his thorned head outside the Jerusalem walls. He and Sid walked on, past graves, to a road. A sign was visible. ‘Unified by Love and Hope, Jesus welcomes all.’ It puzzled him. Vexed him even. “I never told a soul to congregate in churches,” he said, softly.

Priests were little more than entertainers, in the charade begun long ago by the Church of Rome.

They walked along Leigh Broadway, his eyes revolting. Gaudy merchandise in windows. Unyielding surfaces, colours swirling like vomit. Above a shop, a sign specified ‘A Touch Too Wild’. Lifeless mannequins in scanty dresses.

Cohesion eluded him. “Science seems to have created a society in which a simple man can no longer be,” he groaned. “If the next Jesus exists in these streets, or the next Buddha, nobody will recognise them.”

Paving stones alone provided symmetry. They passed Leigh Road Baptist church, adjacent to Our Lady of Lourdes and St Joseph Catholic church. A statue entitled ‘Christ of the Deep in bronze’ adorned the latter’s gardens.

“How did this happen, these buildings?” he asked Sid. “When you become religious you become solitary, dive for the innermost core, the inner Kingdom where only you are. It is the greatest transformation. You may humbly try to bring that light to others. But these churches? People can only lose themselves, even as they fill the collection boxes.”

They passed the Poppies Café of Leigh, Havens Hospices, The Cooperative and a shop named Karma. “Stay calm – you’re only 50,” advised a pink balloon in a window. “Come on you Irons,” yelled a driver with a West Ham mascot under his front mirror, just before the St Michael and All Angels church.

Soon the houses were bigger, more boastful. They turned left, past the red brick of a school with royal blue railings, traffic increasing in volume. Raucous comments came from drivers. Down a hill, past the Love Leigh Lengths Boutique. White houses proliferated, accentuating wisteria in flower. Green and blue boards sheltered waste ground at the foot of the hill, near a dazzlingly bright pink house. Somewhere below the horizon, light announced its imminence.

He dived within himself, losing track of surroundings until they crossed a large road, where dandelion waves bordered the pavement. “What do you make of it, Sid? You have lived here, mixed with citizens. I have no sense of this, saving the sense that all are fast asleep.”

It satisfied him that he could not have guessed the answer. Buddha referred to ‘The Grand Cross’, an extremely rare astrological alignment that peaked in 14 days, on April 23. Pluto opposite Jupiter; Mars opposite Uranus. “The cross that they make combines the signs of Aries, Libra, Cancer and Capricorn. These signs all enjoy being the boss, leading the parade. All love to initiate change,” he said.

Yeshua rejoiced that his friend could lift him. “Advise me on how we should best be during this time, as we head for the Dark City,” he said, smiling now.

“Just be”, Sid replied calmly. “Be, stay gentle with yourself and others. But know that old patterns and constructs no longer apply. What was done historically will no longer work, does no longer work, so dare to dream vividly, of new ways of community and governance.”

Sid continued. “I shared your unease when I arrived; but found most humans possess good hearts. That will count during this shift point. Dramatic but positive outcomes will be chosen.”

A female voice spoke in Polish from a top floor flat. The thoroughfare was widening, light trying to broaden. “Caterpillars will become butterflies,” said Sid, confidently. “You have entered a world where information can travel in a split second. No longer does it take 300 years to move from Dark Age to Renaissance. It can happen overnight, if a few strong minds send clear messages.”

Red and white lines laced the emergent sky. The Buddha told of his initial astonishment at the Essex humans he encountered. “My head and gut seized control. I saw indentured servants walking the breadline, money shrinking or stolen, justice disappearing, consciousness traduced by media. The government and royal family manufacturing consent then milking people left and right. Bankers printing money like madmen to keep their lifestyles and grandeur afloat. Everything for sale. And everyone trained to submission, believing the little pieces of paper have value, allowing the money printers to harvest their energy.”

Jesus walked on the grass wherever possible. Early passers-by looked up at him with incredulity. Buddha continued: “But my heart took over. I saw love in how humans can and do treat each other. It was clear they lack time or tools to change the wider situation. People are exhausted and uninformed – so Earth’s elites do whatever they want, when they want. My role was never to judge, but to enlighten. The results at our centre have been pleasing.”

A woman crossed the road, shunning them, as Siddharta described the universe eliminating things that did not work. “That is natural apocalypse – the striking apocalypse of renewal that we are living in now.”

Buddha explained how each night – in the few hours when his disciples slept – he went into trance to watch spirit worlds. He had seen the pain felt by tens of millions starving in sub-Saharan Africa. “It manifests as a thin yellow light with flecks of red anger, hidden behind dark ghouls that inhabit these worlds. I heard the Earth itself yelping with pain, from the trees being felled in the Amazon forest.”

They turned left, opposite a church, a huge cross on its side. St Cedds. Siddharta told of his watershed vision earlier that night. “There was not a single ghoul to be seen, nor any yelp from Gaia. Instead a golden light was close. I sensed it is ready to fry the flat and manufactured language of assets, profit, and investors’ rights. And that you were here, with us, at last. Unbidden, my feet took me to the Crooked Billet.”

They crossed a junction. Traffic lights divided the dwellings either side; the humble and the prouder. Drivers were opening windows, recording the sight on their phones. Jesus’ high vantage point gave an impression that small, shiny but misshapen boxes were shunting and shuffling. Ahead, he read the Essex Ford sign, saw greater numbers of the shuffling boxes that needed the Earth’s minerals.

“Kent Elms Corner,” said Sid, two minutes later. “Here we are.” They found a bench, near a large curving bridge across the road. On the other side of the junction, a dark-haired figure energetically washed windscreens at the traffic lights. Coins slid into her hip pouch at regular intervals. The sun was rising brightly to the east over the A127 suburbs. A small, wiry figure wrapped in white approached, pounding the pavement with an equal energy.

As Gandhi crossed towards them, smiling, the car washer looked across. “It has begun,” said Jesus. He felt harmony and balance return, felt his vibration rise, felt his head and gut chakras take a back seat.

Acclimatisation to Earth was every inch the challenge Sid had described.