All Living : A Seedvision Saga (9781621473923) (28 page)

“Let me show you something else, Lester. I just thought of this. In John 17:3, it actually gives the definition, God’s definition, of what eternal life is. There is no guessing. It’s right there in black and white. It does not say that eternal life is living forever or never dying. It does not even say that eternal life is a spiritual thing. It says, and I quote,” Al had typed in the verse to his laptop and it popped up just in time for him to read, ‘Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.’

“So, according to the Bible, which not only contains the word of God but
is
the Word of God, eternal life is constantly learning more about the eternal God and His son. That’s it. That’s eternal life in a nutshell as defined by the inspired scripture. But Cain did not want to waste time growing to know his Creator. Cain wanted to be known, and respected. He wanted God to recognize his worth. He wanted my parents to respect his efforts and he wanted his descendants to revere his authority. Cain wanted to set himself up on a physical throne over all the earth, to rule with power and an ever-watchful eye, because of course, no one could be trusted. Cain could trust only one person to hold steady and never waiver from the course that he had created, and that was himself.”

Al took a breath, tired from talking. Lester got up to get him a glass of water.

“So let me get this straight, Al,” said Lester, twisting the ice tray and dropping a couple of cubes into a rinsed out Burger King cup, “Cain kills his brother Abel, justifies it in his own mind as being a good thing, defies God and builds a city, steals a wife, starts a civilization based on his new philosophy of
me,
and basically taints humanity as we know it.”

“Pretty close, I guess,” said Al, wiping water from his chin with his sleeve.

“That’s insanity,” said Lester. “Cain the insane.”

Yes, but brilliant,” countered Al, “in his own perverse way. Cain took all his agricultural genius, his artistic ability, his powerful aura, and forged a society of freethinkers that still survives to this day.”

“Who are they, Al? Do you know? Do they have a name?”

“They have a calling card,” said Al, pulling out the still damp and muddy dollar bill that he had found outside and spreading it upside down on the kitchen table.

“A calling card? A dollar bill? I don’t get it,” said Lester, perplexed.

“Look at the pictures, Lester. What do you see?”

Lester stared at the back of the dollar bill for a full minute before realization dawned on him.

“The pyramid!” he said, his voice cracking.

“That’s it, Les. The pyramid, or better yet, the altar of Cain, with the eye of Cain looking down on his field. He was no longer able to cultivate the fields of soil to produce food, yet he managed to plant a seed of rebellion in that very same earth that has blossomed to form malignant human fruit. See the eye above it, glowing with a corona of light, knowledge, and power? Cain died when he was over nine hundred years old, but his quest for immortality lives on in the hearts and appetites of his descendants.”

Lester looked up. “Appetites is kind of a strange word to use to describe these people’s lust for long life, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” asked Al. “Let me show you something else.” He typed a few keystrokes into the laptop and pulled up another scripture. Matthew seven and verse nine.

“So much of what is written in the New Testament is simply quoting from the Old Testament,” said Al. “And so much of the Old Testament is just a record of thoughts and ideas that had already been around for thousands of years. Solomon said, ‘There is nothing new under the sun,’ and by the time he said it, it was a pretty accurate statement to make. But for those of us born before the flood, it seemed like everything was new.

“Every day was unlimited with possibility. Every action unfettered by previous failure, every conversation potentially incredible with new insight. We lived and learned. In this day and age with computers and television, so much knowledge is already known. But back then, we had to discover knowledge; seek it out or stumble over it. This verse here is one that Cain must have understood as a truism, and it led him in strange directions. Here, take a look.”

Lester read,
“
‘Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone?” He looked up at Al with a confused look on his face. “I don’t get it.
’
”

“You just said that ‘appetite’ was a strange word for me to choose. But Cain devoured life, and he was constantly hungering for more. He begged the Lord to spare his life after he killed Abel, begged God to protect his life from anyone that might want to take it. And God put a mark on Cain to protect him. Not God’s mark, but Cain’s. But Cain was not satisfied. The fact that the Ancient of Days, the Creator of all that is, the power that created the heavens and set the planets in their courses, had promised to protect him and avenge him in the event that he suffered an untimely death was not good enough for my brother. He wanted more. Life with no guarantees, life that could be taken at another’s whim, was not acceptable to him.

Cain was the proverbial clay jar accusing the potter of shoddy workmanship, the prodigal son that wanted his inheritance now and then wanted to be left alone to do his own thing. He begged God to give him what He had given to the angels, what God himself had: immortality. But when God refused, Cain turned bitter and reasoned in his heart that since immortality existed, he would find it on his own and claim it for himself and thus be beholden to no one.

“Cain asked for life and felt as if he had been given a stone instead. Bread in the Bible represents physical life, the bread of life. When the devil tempted Jesus in the wilderness he challenged the Messiah to turn ‘these stones into bread,’ but Jesus said, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone…’

“Cain knew nothing of this future confrontation and could not connect the dots. He did not see that true life, beyond this physical one, is not to be determined by something physical that you eat. He had heard the stories about the tree of life from our parents and longed for its fruit; for the fruit that our parents snubbed. But Cain didn’t know how to get it. He felt that at some point God and the angels must have eaten of this fruit, only now to be hoarding it for themselves.

“Cain blinded himself to the understanding that God does not need any
thing
to perform His will. He is not doing magic tricks with a wand. He is not performing illusions with smoke and mirrors. He is not practicing sorcery with gestures and incantations. If God says it, it is. His Word enforces the power of His will.

“But Cain only wanted the bread of life or the fruit from the tree of life. Cain knew he could not find the garden. Cain therefore, incorrectly assumed that our heavenly Father, since He had denied us access to the tree of life, must have replaced the fruit with the stone. Remember me mentioning the philosopher’s stone earlier?”

Lester nodded.

“Cain spent his entire life searching for it.”

“What is it?” asked Lester.

“Most people think it is a stone or a substance that can turn base metals, like lead, into gold. Alchemists down through the centuries have conducted thousands of experiments, trying to discover it; for the one who unravels its mysteries will be wealthy beyond imagination. And of course, wealth equals power and presumably the means to search for life-lengthening opportunities.

“But for Cain it was not turning lead into gold that intrigued him. It was changing corruptible flesh into incorruptible spirit. Cain deceived himself into thinking that with the stone he could transcend this mortality and put on immortality like a mantle, draping it over his shoulders, like a garment of glory.

“Our parents talked to us some about those first days that they spent in the garden before they knew that nakedness had other options. They never thought of themselves as wearing nothing. They were clothed with righteousness. Glorious, magnificent outfits of wonder fit only for those who have never sinned.

“Cain wanted to wear raiment of righteousness. He wanted to appear righteous to those who knew him. He just did not want to define righteousness by anyone’s definition but his own. And if he had to be unrighteous, if circumstances called upon him to kill again, he wanted to be able to forgive himself. To Cain, giving thanks to the Creator occasionally was one thing, but having to wait on Him to reveal His will was unbearable.

“I don’t even know if Cain was fully aware of what he was doing, but he began to replace God in every aspect of his life. He never said, God, I don’t want you, but by his actions he demonstrated that for day to day life, God was not a necessary component. His sons and their sons adopted this independence, this arrogance, and the city of Enoch thrived on it.

“There was bitterness and grief and strife. There was violence and anger and hatred. Men worked together under Cain’s command and despised one another. Words were created for the things men did, like stealing and lying. Other words and gestures were fashioned to show disdain for one another. Problems were resolved with bloody fistfights while jeering crowds of people looked on and did nothing. There was no law except for the law of Cain and Cain’s law was ‘survival of the wickedest.’ This was the city that I found myself in when I went to pay a visit to my beloved sister, Kesitah.”

“She was probably glad to see you,” Lester interrupted. For a while now, Al seemed to be lost in his own memories, not so much telling Lester a story as reminiscing aloud to himself.

“Indeed she was,” sighed Al.

“So what happened?”

“Lester, you should read it. It would be better that way.”

“Because it’s easier than talking about?”

“Because it’s easier than talking about,” Al quietly confirmed.

They both sat there for a minute, Al staring at the chipped Formica tabletop but seeing in his mind a city thousands of years old. Lester focused on an invisible spot three feet in front of him, imagining a world that was completely foreign to him yet oddly familiar. The insensitive hustle of people worried more about their appointments, errands, and schedules than about each other. The similarities of random violence, selfish interests, personal space, home wreckers, and stolen property creating a segregation between two peoples, not divided by age, race, gender, language, or country of origin, but by ideology, ethics, and scruples.

Lester thought of his own country and the invisible but tangible division of political lines; republican verses democrat, liberal verses conservative, left verses right. Noteworthy that if a random group of people today were suddenly transported through time to that distant, misty past, they could easily find themselves feeling right at home in the city of Enoch. As if reading his mind, Al spoke.

“‘As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.’”

“Huh?” Lester was shaken out of his reverie.

“‘For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark.’ That was where it started. Right there in Cain’s city. I stood by and watched it happen. Just like I did when Abel was killed.”

“Al, you can’t really…”

“Maybe if I had done something. Maybe if I had countered Cain’s corruption with the wonderful truth and splendor that God had revealed to me. Maybe I could have made a difference, slowed down my family’s descent into decadence and depravity. Maybe God would not have needed to use the flood as a last resort. Maybe…”

“Al?” said Lester. The hushed halcyon quality of Lester’s voice stopped Al mid-diatribe. Al looked up.

“Al, I don’t know if there is anything that I can say that might make a difference. I’m nothing really but an ignorant child compared to you. I know the things you’ve seen have given you a greater wisdom and understanding of mankind and of God than I can ever comprehend, even if I lived a dozen lifetimes. I have no right to give you any advice, no qualifications, you know? I have no resources at my disposal to untangle antiquity, no balm to soothe your anguish, no light to disperse the shadows. But if I might be honest with you, as your friend, I really don’t think you would have made a difference.

“Things are the way they are. I’m sure you did everything you could, everything you felt was right to do at the time, but you can’t let it eat at you now. Sooner or later, everybody learns from their mistakes, and that’s a good thing. When we let those mistakes scare the hell out of us, let memories keep us awake at night, we begin to decay from the inside out. Hindsight might be a learning tool, but it’s also the temptation of the siren calling us to look in the wrong direction so that we wreck ourselves on our own self-destructive impulses.”

Al smiled, a quirky little knowing smile and said, “You know what, Lester? You’re all right.”

“I try.” Lester grinned back. “So, where does that leave us?”

“I think about right here,” said Al, handing Lester another notebook. “I’m going to catch a quick nap, if you don’t mind.”

Even the short time that Al had spent reminiscing about the past seemed to have drained him. Or maybe it was thinking about the Lightmen dogging his steps. Or maybe it was something else, some heavy piece of history that Al had yet to share.

“Okay,” Lester said with some concern in his voice. “Want me to wake you when I’m done?”

“Don’t bother,” said Al, “I’ll set my internal clock. Oh, and Lester?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t tear out any pages, all right?”

“Cute.”