cheap kanken backpacks<\/a><\/p>\nBelow me a family creeps in, cowed by the darkness and the lighted screen, and finds their seats: Three children sit between their parents. They pass a bucket of popcorn among them. After a few ads for coming attractions, a cartoon comes on, a Bible story told in singing animation: the price we pay for seeking moral uplift at the multiplex. A group of vegetables, complete with eyes and ears, faces and\u2014presumably\u2014souls, reenact the story of Lazarus. A cucumber evangelist\u2014unidentified, but most certainly John, who is called the apostle Jesus loved\u2014relates the Savior\u2019s journey to the house of Mary and Martha, both stalks of broccoli, to find that their brother Lazarus has recently died. At the tomb, Jesus (shown only as a portentous shadow at the foot of the screen), commands the stone to be rolled away. We are transported to the inside of the tomb where light floods the interior as the stone is withdrawn and the Shadow falls across the open door. We hear His voice bid the dead arise and see a crown of cauliflower, laid peacefully on a slab of rock, stir beneath what appear to be a waxed paper shroud. Outside the tomb, the crowd watches first in dread, then amazement as the ruffled, white head inches toward the opening, and Lazarus, blinking, emerges unspoiled into the light. I unzip my jacket and expose the collar that marks me, as much as it can in the dark, for what I am.<\/p>\n
And what are we to make of this? What are we to do, marvel as much at the vibrant and tasteless retelling as the miracle itself? How are we to regard the Shadow at whose hands\u2014if It has hands\u2014the miracle has been enacted? What are we to feel for this cruciferous family, reunited and happy in the end? And the crowd of onlookers\u2014a whole produce department of greens and legumes\u2014will they, animate creatures all, ever reconsider what they\u2019ve witnessed, and who or what has not been saved? Why Lazarus, they fail to ask, and why not someone else? For whom is this particular miracle meant?<\/p>\n
Of course they won\u2019t. A miracle simply occurs\u2014there is no further question. But why? Will no one ask what the leper felt as he returned to his home to find his children frightened strangers, his wife mistrustful and grudging in her embrace? Or what exactly the blind man saw as his parents aged and died in his restored sight? Or how Lazarus felt on the 10th anniversary of the miraculous day after his long sleep in the tomb?<\/p>\n
On that question, the Gospel of John is silent; Lazarus is never mentioned again. As the sun set and the long line of astonished onlookers thinned and drifted off, convinced and unsettled, did he lie down and, for a moment, wish for the cool dark from which he\u2019d come, for the oblivion he hadn\u2019t asked to be awakened from? Did he wonder what, exactly, he\u2019d been spared\u2014and to what purpose? So that he could serve, unvolunteering, as the sign of another\u2019s promise? To live out this odd twilight life the target of stares and whispers? To spend the rest of his days in numb disbelief, dreading again his approaching end? What sort of blessing, what sort of salvation, was this? And what is Nick doing now, I wonder, as the cartoon\u2019s credits end and the feature, made in this odd afterlife of his, begins? I cross my legs and consider the darkness: With all eyes forward, I am all but invisible and no more interesting, unrecognized, than anyone else here who has come to watch the movie and not search the audience for a face they might have seen on television. I am as alone and untroubled as cauliflower in the tomb.<\/p>\n
In the classroom he was restless, his fingers drumming out figures of notes, his desktop an imagined piano, his eyes studiously vacant, as if he knew I noticed and would assume him lost in thought, mentally rehearsing a particularly vexing piece. As if he assumed I\u2019d admire his application, his dedicated skill. I did. Nick was a worker, a practicer. Not an original mind, no\u2014I knew this after a week of class: He listened attentively when others spoke, then rehearsed their thoughts in his own balanced prose. His gift is a sort of mimicry, a talent for restatement; and what he writes, he writes beautifully. But still he says nothing new. He has his quirks (for a while all praiseworthy things are \u2018quite lovely\u2019\u2014a phrase I underline in red and urge him to avoid), but he\u2019s a talented student, and if he affects nonchalance in his judgments, if his words sometimes stray into pomposity (quite lovely?\u2014from a 17-year-old?), then the sin is easily forgiven: What a teacher praises\u2014what a teacher can come to love, if he is not careful\u2014is the rapt attention of a good student.<\/p>\n
The Bishop had hinted as much\u2014and a good deal more. \u201cAnd this was a student in your classes?\u201d I shrug. It isn\u2019t a question. \u201cAnd that was all?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hit it off. I got to know him, and his family.\u201d My hands are open, palms up, in my lap. The afternoon sun is bright on the blinds behind him at his enormous desk.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had common interests, mostly music, and he excelled in class.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that would explain your visit to the hospital?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot entirely.\u201d I stiffen at his tone, sit up, and level my eyes on his. \u201cThere\u2019s also a matter of pastoral care\u2014a student of mine, after all.\u201d<\/p>\n
He leans forward, pressing the point. \u201cOne you had gotten to know quite well.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looks down. \u201cAnd his family. Of course.\u201d<\/p>\n
Our friendship begins when I recognize a melody he\u2019s whistling at the start of class, less for his own pleasure than to be heard taking pleasure in it, and look up from the roster. \u201cWho\u2019s whistling Liszt?\u201d The class goes silent, off guard, and he raises his hand, caught in an instant of perfect confession. We talk for a moment, before I have to return to taking attendance, about recordings and performers, and after class I quiz him further. His preferences are odd for his age, the landmark recordings of a generation ago. Mention of newer players draws a blank. That night I pull down a recent performance of the second Liszt concerto and burn him a copy. When he comes in the next day, he\u2019s done the same for me with his own recording.<\/p>\n
Of course the movie gets the dynamics more or less exactly wrong. The child on the screen is dogged and noble, talentless but determined to rise above his failings. His teacher, a man\u2014a priest\u2014decidedly unlike me, a photogenic firebrand against my clumsy middle age\u2014sees this hidden potential. A bond grows over remedial studies after school. They struggle together, battle the material, and inevitably the boy not only masters his work, but writes an essay, which, in its insight and daring, wins him a scholarship\u2014though not before the necessary complication requiring the miracle arises.<\/p>\n
Nick was not insightful or daring. He was a skillful redactor of what he learned. I watched him work hard and read thoroughly, and I also watched him work to please me, which is always the first task of a good student. I was flattered when he glossed my comments in his papers; gratified, as we started a slide lecture in my Art History class, to see him set up the projectors before I could ask; and finally entertained at the comments his friends repeated, angling for some favor of their own\u2014I was his favorite, I was the one he respected. And if I grew to forgive him his occasional solipsism, if I passed over the error that I might have noted in one of his less-talented classmates\u2014and if a common interest seals the bond as we traded discs weekly and discussed music in my classroom over lunch\u2014then it is in just such currency that the debts of affection between teacher and student are paid.<\/p>\n
He loved Rachmaninoff and Chopin, the grand and sentimental pieces teenagers always do, and prided himself on his taste. He gave the impression that what he admired somehow made him smarter, as if an inclination for the classics is the mark of sophistication. I didn\u2019t correct that, but when I could, I brought in pieces that I knew would challenge him, and if I hit the mark, I was glad: I am a teacher, after all, and he was a child.<\/p>\n
But he was not my child, and when the talk turned to family (I was curious, I\u2019ll admit: Who nurtured his interests? Who first played that Liszt concerto for him? Who preceded me?), his conversation cools. I have met his mother, a pert and careful woman, young to have a child in high school, but already in a second marriage: \u201cShe\u2019s just a Midwestern cheerleader,\u201d he says with a shrug. And his stepfather?<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s an ass.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy do you say that?\u201d<\/p>\n
He looks away. \u201cHe just is.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone hates his father at your age\u2014I did.\u201d The disc player on the table beneath the chalkboard falls silent. The disc within hisses to a halt. The piece has ended.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s an ass. That\u2019s all. It\u2019s private.\u201d He stands up to leave as the bell rings. I am his teacher, after all\u2014and only that. And he is a child.<\/p>\n
The Bishop shifts in his seat and drums his plump fingers on the surface of his desk. \u201cI\u2019ve had a chance to review the file,\u201d he says casually, tapping a manila folder as if he expects me to recognize it. He sits forward and smiles, resting his elbows on the desk as if sharing a confidence. \u201cI won\u2019t be recommending further action.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFurther action?\u201d I stare back blankly across the expanse of his desk. \u201cI don\u2019t understand. This is what you wanted to tell me?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, no\u2014of course not.\u201d And he is suddenly all business, drawing himself up and brushing off the blotter as if sighting a crumb. \u201cThere\u2019s the question of how we should respond.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRespond to what?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, there hasn\u2019t been a complaint\u2014not exactly.\u201d He opens the file and leafs through the top few pages before lifting out a form. Light from the window behind him glows through it, lighting it in reverse. \u201cThis is the police report.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe police report? How did you\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s public record.\u201d He looks at me sternly for a moment, then the conspiratorial smile reappears. \u201cMiracle cures. Any doctor can tell you stories, maybe a few of them\u2014things he\u2019s heard of, even seen. And with the Church still investigating.\u201d Another shrug. \u201cCooperation is easy in some things.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA police report of the cure?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, goodness no\u2014the cure?\u201d He chuckles to himself, then, \u201cOf the domestic disturbance, as they call it.\u201d He lays the paper flat and points to the phrase as if citing a verse, \u201cThe argument between the mother and stepfather.\u201d He frowns and looks up. \u201cYou\u2019re certainly aware of that?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, it seems that a certain comment has arisen. About your place on the staff, your work, and your relationship with the boy.\u201d He looks up, brightly. \u201cI understand. I taught for a while myself. A particular fondness, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, yes, but as a student. A student in class\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd whose treatment in a hospital you were aware of.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOnly after prayers were requested. On the announcements.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut also before that, I believe.\u201d His eyes are down, he is arranging a sheaf of papers before him in a grid: a game or a puzzle he appears absorbed in working out. \u201cThe relationship, I mean.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe parents requested his schoolwork\u2014the mother called me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere,\u201d he says, dropping a last page into place. \u201cShe called you. And you took that as an invitation to visit\u2014of course. Due diligence as teacher and pastor. Entirely plausible.\u201d<\/p>\n
The diagnosis, when it came, was less a surprise than a possibility I had consciously put out of mind. For a week he had found it hard to type, and the imagined improvisations no longer occupied his fingers on the desktop. He complained of headaches, and a looseness in his handwriting crept into his papers. He was absent on a Friday, and three days later his mother called the school with the news. A biopsy would be performed that afternoon. Prayers were requested.<\/p>\n
The whole anxious episode is omitted from the film. Our hero learns of his student\u2019s illness and unthinkingly, selflessly rushes to the ward, arriving before the child is out of the anesthetic. But I sat in the parking lot where a few days later the faithful would come to stand with signs and prayers of their own, and I debated what right I had to be there, what right to intrude. I was not family, and this was not an occasion for a casual call, no matter how I would later make it seem to the Bishop. Even the Gospel story has Jesus hear the suggestion that for Lazarus nothing more could be done. But still he caused the stone to be rolled away, and still I got out of the car and crossed the lot to the hospital. Miracles are worked, after all, and worked as much for those whose lives are affected as for the crowd of witnesses inevitably gathered to certify that something\u2014something improbable, something that should not have been accomplished\u2014has taken place in their sight.<\/p>\n
And that was not quite how it happened. In the film, in the minds of those around me in the theater, a young man in a black and Roman collar, clean-cut and desperately hopeful, extends his hand toward the boy in the hospital bed. He raises his other hand to God and offers a prayer intimated in whispered voice-over. In the film\u2014in fantasy\u2014the child is angelically asleep, but Nick was awake when I arrived, and smiled as I said hello. He turned his head to show me the scar. His mother, watching from the corner, smiled palely, dark circles under her eyes. I placed my hand on his head impulsively and gently brushed the stitches with the side of my thumb. \u201cDoes it hurt?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJust a slight headache\u2014just like they said.\u201d His scalp is warm beneath my palm, and for a moment I am acutely conscious of how much I care for him\u2014how I would lift him up and hold him if I could. But he is too old for that: He\u2019s 17\u2014another fact the believers in the parking lot and in the seats around me have gotten wrong; they see a winsome cherub, not the unshaven adolescent in a rumpled hospital bed, his body giving off the tang of unwashed flesh in the still heat of his room.<\/p>\n
His mother sighs and smiles again, and is about to speak when I look down sharply. I had felt a crumbling sensation under my thumb, as if a thin crust of blood had dried along the edges of the incision and is now flaking away. But this is more: The stitches themselves break apart, spilling down the side of his head and trailing past his ear. I jerk my hand away, afraid I might have hurt him, horrified at the thought. \u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d he asks, suddenly alert. His mother starts up and stares. She sees what I see: The bristles of the sutures are scattered on his neck and shoulder, below a wound that looks half-erased, a sketch of an injury left incomplete, with the skin whole and unbroken where it had once been sewn.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is it?\u201d he asks, sitting up, and I place my hand back on his head and push him gently down, my thumb retracing the path it had swept along the bristling surface of the scar. His mother and I gape unthinking as the last of the ugly line crumbles and falls away, the stitches dropping across his cheek as his hand comes up to feel them. She gasps and takes an incredulous step back from the bed before looking wildly toward the hallway and lurching from the room, a hand across her mouth as a sob escapes her. I take my hand away: Only a slight red line remains of where the incision had been. \u201cWhat?\u201d he demands. But I can\u2019t speak. His mother is shouting in the hallway. \u201cIs it all right?\u201d he asks. My stomach buckles, and I step back into the bathroom behind me. Doubled over, head swimming, I hear the nurses rush into the room where their patient now shows no evidence of their care. The miracle is complete.<\/p>\n
But the film shows something different. The priest, alone with the boy in the bed, kneels and extends his hand in thrilled assurance toward the sleeping child, his prayer no less fervent for his confidence in what will happen next. His hand makes contact, squarely covering the dark line in the skin with his palm, and a sort of electric pulse passes between them as the light around the bed shifts subtly and music wells up. The camera stays on the tense and ministrative hand until the swell of sound peaks and it relaxes and pulls away: His scar is gone, the healthy flesh restored. The boy\u2019s eyelids flutter as he wakes and turns his face upward, into the light. Around me in the darkness, a few of the faithful break into weak applause. A cell phone lights up in the rows below, creating a halo around its user\u2019s head before it is snapped shut.<\/p>\n
Of course there was no music. There was no glow or odor of sanctity in the room\u2014if anything, the heat from the closed window and the crush of bodies brewed the sour reek of vomit and, before Nick was bundled onto a gurney and rushed from the room, the place had the usual human scent commingling about us, all sickness and confusion as the hurried nurses quelled raised voices, made a few hushed and urgent intercom calls and then, as his mother and I watched from the hallway, wheeled him away to certify the substance of things hoped for.<\/p>\n
I leaned forward and placed both hands flat on the Bishop\u2019s desk. \u201cIf I\u2019ve been accused of something, I believe I have the right to\u2014\u201d
\n\u201cThere\u2019s been no real complaint. None whatsoever.\u201d He gathers up the papers one by one and taps their edges flush. \u201cNot about you, at least. But the atmosphere among the students, the parents at the school\u2014you understand?\u201d It isn\u2019t a question.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a job, don\u2019t I?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll cover for you, there. The term is ending after the coming week. Certainly you can leave plans, a final exam. That can be taken care of?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen where are you sending me? What\u2019s going on?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHealing is what\u2019s going on, that\u2019s all: a time to recoup, to meditate on a fortunate event. At a distance.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnother parish school\u2014you\u2019ll have work to do, real work with new students. Just as you\u2019ve done so well in the past. But a different setting. At least for the time being.\u201d
\nI
\nn the diagnostics waiting room, his mother holds my hand and weeps, her face buried in a tissue she clutches to her nose. She rocks in her seat as the bay window before us shows her son\u2019s body, shrouded in a blanket, his head at the center of the machine that rotates around him and maps the site of the surgery, the machine that will confirm my worst fears: There is no longer any scar\u2014that much we know\u2014and every trace of the surgery is also gone. The growth that had revealed itself to the same instruments the afternoon before is now missing from the readings, a dark knot in his brain has been untied without evidence, and only the clear, untroubled map of God\u2019s creation is manifest on the screen before the frowning technicians.<\/p>\n
That night, my picture appears on television, and I have to take the phone off its hook. After a dozen calls\u2014from the formerly hopeless and the newly curious\u2014I\u2019d sat down for a moment, considering whether someone might not have heard the story, might not have seen the doctors interviewed, might not have heard the word miracle flaunted as if it were not a term of personal judgment\u2014someone who, absorbed in their own sorrows, might be in genuine need. Then the phone begins to ring again, and I count 25 long pulls at the bell before it stops. I take the receiver from its cradle and wait for the dial tone to cut off.<\/p>\n
Two days later he is home from the hospital, his discharge as much for his sake as to discourage the throng of well-wishers who have come to glean their share of the story. They have massed at the edge of the hospital grounds, clutching rosaries and placards attesting to their faith. They have prayed and stared up, unsure exactly which window lit the scene they replay in their minds: A man in a black and Roman collar, clean-cut and hopeful, places his hand on the head of a boy in the bed beside him. They have found out the back entrances, hidden themselves in closets and posed as patients or staff. The night before he is discharged, a police officer is posted at either end of the corridor, as if the boy had somehow become dangerous. One confused and resourceful young woman, finding his room, knelt beside him for a few moments as he slept, staring raptly at his face in the half-light before she is apprehended and escorted out of the building. That night she appears on the evening news, recounting her story: an incurable illness, vaguely described, which is already\u2014she is sure of it\u2014cured. First Nick\u2019s picture, then mine, taken from a recent yearbook, is flashed on the screen behind the sound of her voice. \u201cGod is here with us,\u201d she intones. \u201cI could feel Him.\u201d<\/p>\n
A similar scene plays out at school: Students slow their steps as they pass my room, staring in bemusement. Sharp whispers before the bell each hour settle into rapt distraction. My students are uncomfortably quiet, both alert and distracted. No hands go up when I ask a question or prompt a response. Each hour is measured out and endless. Conversation falters over lunch. A fellow teacher in the room across the hall, an older woman who has never stopped mourning a child lost to leukemia a decade before, waylays me at the end of the day. \u201cIs it true?\u201d she asks, her eyes tense and despairing. Why could a miracle not have happened for her? she must wonder. Why Nick and not her child? When I visit him a day later I find a group on the street outside his house, and the word goes out as I climb the steps: The wonder-worker has arrived.<\/p>\n
The visit is difficult. I sit stiffly in a chair opposite him; he is stretched out on the couch under an afghan. His stepfather, a tongue-tied, rough-edged man, frets between us, uneasy with a priest in the house, as if he fears he might give inadvertent offense less to me than to God Himself. Nick is dull and tired, still on the pain medications his doctors prescribe and irritable from all of the attention. Mine is not the only phone off the hook these days. \u201cThey get all excited if I look out a window,\u201d he says, waving loosely at the street. And for my part I am ill at ease as well: What is there to say? News of the doctors\u2019 reports, news that no verifiable cause can be found for the missing lesion\u2014a spot incontrovertibly documented on celluloid\u2014has been confirmed in the local papers, witnessed on the evening news. After a few minutes of polite conversation, I rise to leave, and as the door shuts behind me, I hunch my shoulders and look down, ducking into the car and driving off in the direction opposite the shouts from the corner.<\/p>\n
On screen the story also ends abruptly, but before I would have called it done. After a scene of thanksgiving, after an embrace that clumsily includes the priest, the boy, his mother, and a doctor (once doubtful, now brought to the threshold of belief, we are somehow assured), the miracle worker throws his coat over his shoulder and boards an elevator. He descends to the lobby in silence, accompanied by medical staff and a girl in a wheelchair, and watches the girl ushered out by her parents through wide glass doors. Then he follows, the street gradually filling with light until he is no more than a thinning silhouette, a shadow in the white confusion of the day. The screen fades to white and music rises as credits roll upward. So it ends.<\/p>\n
But nothing really ends, of course. Mornings I am greeted uncomfortably or\u2014which is worse\u2014too warmly, though the all-consuming topic is never broached, and soon I am alone in the teachers\u2019 lounge, alone at the mailboxes in the office. Attendance declines in my classes as students stay away or their parents have them transferred, and I stop taking attendance. The woman across the hall hurries to class and shuts her door, refusing to meet my gaze. I am surprised in the school parking lot, interviewed and prodded, and stutteringly made to explain that I had no explicit desire for a cure, and no comment on the outcome\u2014and I am asked why not? As if a miracle had to have been my intent; as if I must have meant somehow to consciously manipulate the mechanics of grace.<\/p>\n
And soon we are all back in the news. His mother and stepfather have had an argument, and the watchers outside the house, alert to every noise and nuance of light and shadow on the drawn curtains, call the police. Their miracle, they imagine, is in danger. On the evening broadcast Nick and his mother are shown being escorted from the house, their eyes averted, his mother holding a handkerchief to her face. The next day school is alive with rumors, and I learn that they have taken refuge in a local motel. I have no doubt about what has happened: A marriage already sinking has been asked to carry the weight of an act I did not ask to perform, of the blessings we\u2019ve all received unbidden. How much grace, I wonder, should anyone have to bear? The credits over, the screen ahead fades slowly to black, and I get up, zipping my jacket up to my chin, hunching my shoulders and looking down as I find the exit.<\/p>\n
A few days later Nick stops by school, returning a disc I had loaned him. His face looks puffy and flushed against the collar of his white shirt, but he tells me only good news: The brain scans still show nothing, his doctor has taken him off his medication, and his handwriting is improving. \u201cHere,\u201d he says, handing me a small envelope.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s this?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJust a card,\u201d he says, and shrugs. \u201cIt took me an hour and a half to write.\u201d<\/p>\n
I turn it over, rub my thumb across my name on the envelope as I did when I brushed the stitches away. But my name, in his odd, attenuated handwriting, remains.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry, Nick. I didn\u2019t mean to\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
He bristles: This is not the scene he\u2019d decided on. \u201cThat\u2019s all right. That\u2019s private. Never mind.\u201d Private? Of course. In the end, I\u2019m his teacher. \u201cLook, I\u2019m going to spend the summer with my dad. I\u2019ll see you when I\u2019m back.\u201d That\u2019s a lie, and we both know it, but we say goodbye, and I watch him walk down the hallway, his white shirt catching the glare of the sunlight through the windows above the rows of lockers, before he turns and disappears down the stairs.<\/p>\n
The Bishop looks up from the file. \u201cMaybe in the fall all of this will have blown over. Then we can talk again.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI asked for none of this,\u201d I say pleadingly. \u201cI didn\u2019t do anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course not. Miracle cures! Not every unknown is the agency of the divine.\u201d He turns in his chair, looks out the window behind him. Trees are coming into leaf on the grounds below. \u201cBut something did occur\u2014a miracle, if we read the papers. And a miracle is upsetting\u2014by its nature, upsetting\u2014and that upset requires an opportunity to heal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Outside the theater I am blinded in the midday light and stumble into a boy who\u2019s placed himself squarely in the path of the exiting audience. His head is shaved and he wears a starched white shirt, and for a moment my heart stops before my vision clears, and he pushes a pamphlet into my hands. \u201cDo you believe in Jesus?\u201d he asks me.<\/p>\n
I squint back at him. \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you believe in Jesus?\u201d he asks again. He smiles, and the effect is to wipe Nick more firmly from my mind, brush his face away and replace it with this new one in just the way I once erased a scar from an inch of incised flesh. No music, no holy, hopeful glow, only the murmurs of the crowd that parts around us and fans out into the parking lot and the hard light of a summer afternoon, the light that must have made Lazarus blink back sharp tears as he awakened and, pulling the shroud away, stared uncomprehending at the crowd coming into focus before him.<\/p>\n
I hand the pamphlet back. I know everything it could possibly say, and what it doesn\u2019t say as well. \u201cOf course,\u201d I tell him as I shoulder past and find my car, relieved again to be unrecognized.<\/p>\n
Who was the apostle Jesus loved? It wasn\u2019t John. It was Lazarus, whom he sent ahead into death only to call him back again; Lazarus who made the journey first. And what did that love provide? A lifetime of doubt and discomfort. That is the miracle.<\/p>\n
For more information on The Lorian Hemingway Competition go to www.shortstorycompetition.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s safer in the dark, and when the lights go down I\u2019m glad. The screen ahead wakes up in startled white, and, as a soft drink commercial plays, someone in the booth adjusts the camera: The image jerks to center, then settles into focus. A couple stumbles their way into seats and pulls off their … <\/p>\n
Read more “\u201cLazarus\u201d: The Expanded Version”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4276,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4255\/revisions\/4276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onhee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}