1829

"Jesus", says Kenny, beamng, "I am so blessed to have passed these last twenty-five years with you. Of how, living here with you has exposed all the lies that I once believed about you. And now my friends here can also be so blessed." "You are highly favoured, Kenny", says our Lord, and your presence here is a huge blessing. Would you be so kind as to see to the arrangements for dinner? I shall be present soon to assist you. "Can I help", says Sarah, rising up from her seat. "Kenny, my blessed mother and father and I have everything taken care of. I want all of you to stay here together and visit and talk together. I am sure you will have much to say to one another, and I also expect that some questions are going to arise, such as can be addressed during dinner...."

1827

"I have seen you before.  I think," says Sarah. "Many many times, you have seen me, my child."  and now it doesn't seem quite so absurd that someone who looks like a sixteen year old boy should address a woman nearly forty as his child. "I have always had trouble imagining me being close to a mature man with a beard.  Because I am a woman and because I am attracted to women.  But as I see you now, my Lord, that makes much more sense of what I felt and could see with the eyes of my heart whenever I felt your presence near me.  But now the person I see you to be is much more compatible with my sense of the Jesus I was...feeling?" "When I rose from the dead, it was only the marks, the wounds of my crucifixion that I still carried in my body.  I did not rise again to continue looking the way I did before I died, but to show forth my true form.  but since my true form was too glorious for the human flesh and eye to behold, I show to you myself in the very human form most like my resurrected self..  So, whom you see here before you, is not a teenage boy, but the essence of the beauty and purity that I was resurrected into... "Who are you really?" says Erik. "You still don't believe", says Jesus, rather than asking it. "I am an atheist.  You still haven't shown any evidence that you really are Jesus Christ." "It isn't evidence you need, dear Erik, not so much as a change of heart.  Dear Erik, you were born and raised in a country of atheists.  Sweden.  But I must also remind you of that time when you were just twelve in Humlegarden Park.  You were seated, very self-absorbed, on a bench waiting for your mother to join you.  But it wasn't your mother that joined you.  Remember?  Erik.  Look at me please when I am talking to you." And now Erik is totally in the grip of Stubborn Swede, a syndrome that I coined thanks to having Greta for a wife and him for a brother-in-law. "Erik.  Who sat next to you on that bench?" He still refuses to look up at Jesus, but remains all coiled up in his snail shell  of stubborn denial.  Jesus rises from his chair and approaches Erik, he is first standing over him, and then our Lord kneels down and looks up in my brother-in-law's face. "Erik.  Who sat down next to you." "I don't remember." "Erik, please stop trying to lie to me.  I see everything.  And I will tell you who sat down on that bench next to you when you were twelve years old, and I will tell you all of our conversation."  Jesus is now holding my brother in-law's hands, both of them in his.  "I sat down next to you on the bench, and I said, Hello Erik.  And you looked at me and said, How do you know my name?  Remember?" Erik doesn't reply, but finally is looking into the green eyes of the youthful risen Christ. "I said that both your mothers would be arriving late, by about twenty minutes.  Your mother's name was Karin.  She died, October 2001 from metastasized breast cancer.  Amanda, her widow lives alone now in the same apartment in Stockholm.  She is retired now and has become an energetic community activist for the rights of nonwhite immigrants.  She is responding well to my tutoring.  I asked you if you knew who I Am, and you said no.  So, I replied that when you were thirty-two we would meet again face to face, in  another country, and then you would know me." Erik now stares fixedly at the green eyes of the Risen Christ, and stammers,  "Now I know you.  Jesus.  now I know you." Jesus fixes his eyes on him, and Erik simply cannot look away. Then Jesus bends over and kisses the top of his head. Erik is suddenly weeping. "Lord it is you. You are not a fantasy. In Sweden we are all taught to be atheists, that you are just a fairy story. But Lord", he sputters between his tears and sobs. "Lord, it is you. It is you! I never knew. I was never taught." And Eric suddenly drops to the floor on his knees before Jesus, who lifts him up under the arms and places him back in his chair. "It is one of Satan's most pernicious tricks to spread lies about me, whether through the Enlightenment blindness or ecclesiastical blindness. The first negates me altogether through scientific materialism. The second negated me all the more insidiously, destroying and murdering those who truly love me in the name of the many lies they have come to believe and promulgate about me."

1826

His hands are no longer bleeding. in fact, there is not even a single drop of blood anywhere. Jesus is lifting with both hands Sarah to her feet. "Jesus. it's you ", she whispers. "Jesus, it's really you. So young, such a beautiful lovely boy you are, but it's you. It's you." Then looking at his hands, which she has just released, and the floor between them, she says, "What happened to all the blood?" "It is all flowing in all of your veins here, Sarah. Each and every one of you." "What happened?" "We are all here together. Sit down, please, my daughter." And given that Jesus looks no older than sixteen, it does seem hilarious that he is calling a woman more than twice his age, in fact, old enough to be his own mother, his daughter.

1825

"What happened to your hands", she says, shocked and saddened. "Who did that to you." "All of you here", the Lord answers tenderly, "And so many others." "You can't just let yourself bleed like this. You could get a bad infection. I know first aid, here ", she says reaching for his wrist, " if someone has a rag handy and a first aid kit I could staunch the bleeding." And the blood is dripping onto the floor in front of her. "Lan", says Jesus to the angel, "Be so kind please as to lift my shirt for me." Not removing her hand from Lindstrom, Lan reaches with her free hand and lifts up the left side of Jesus' white shirt, to reveal a fresh looking wound, made by a Roman spear. "Sarah, my daughter, my chosen servant, and my very stubborn girl", says Jesus, "be so kind please as to place your hand on the wound in my side." The next thing that happens, is Sarah, prostrated on the floor before the young Jesus, trembling, and repeating and stammering over and over again, "My lord and my God, my lord and my God..."

1824

Lindstrom appears completely catatonic. "He cannot answer right now", says Lan, gently caressing his shoulder. "Hi, I'm Sarah, and you would be..." "Lan is one of my servitors and she is guiding our friend through a very delicate moment right now", says Jesus. "Where are your parents", she says. "We are both right here", says Mary. "are you his grandparents?" Francois says, "It's alright Sarah. We are actually guests of our Lord and his Holy Family" "This is just all so bizarre." "Sarah", says Jesus playfully, "if you but knew how greatly you honour me by your presence here in our home. "He gets up, and approaches her with the nimble grace of a modern dancer, raising up both his hands, which are bleeding again...

1823

"And I'm the Queen of Romania. Where did you pick up this kid anyway." "We happen to be in this kid's home right now", says Carl. "Where are we and how did I get here." "Welcome to our home, Sarah", says the mother of our Lord. "Yes, welcome", echos Joseph. "Will you not take a seat and join us." She takes a vacant chair next to Lindstrom. Turning to him she says, "Hi, I'm Sarah."

1822

"Where the hell am I?" says a shocked and indignant voice that must belong to Sarah, and here she is, standing in our midst in the oval space at the centre of our arrangement of chairs. She is wearing a faded maroon sweatshirt and her signature black jeans. "Welcome aboard", says Carl laughing. Her face is her classic alchemy of shock and indignaton. "I was just opening the front door to Carol's townhouse and this is where I step into?" "Could do worse", says Jesus, smiling. "Welcome, Sarah." She turns her large brown and querulous eyes on our host and says, "How do you know my name? Who are you, anyway?" "I believe we met first in New Westminster when that unfortunate man meant to ram his truck into Christopher's car while you were in it." "I've never seen you anywhere." "Sarah", says Francois portentously, "I would like to introduce you to our Lord, Jesus Christ."

1821

I have created so much harm and damage", says Lindstrom, barely controlling his emotions. "How can I possibly atone for any of this." "I am your atonement", says Jesus. "Your stepfather Caspar, however unwittingly, helped bring forth my work of atonement. I suffered and died for you Sven Lindstrom, and for each one in this room as for each person who has ever lived, lives and ever shall live. But Sven, right now, we are going to focus on my atonement for you." "Sven", says Stella. "Please listen carefully. This is what our lord said to me years ago when we met in the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona."

1820

"Lan", says Francois, looking up at her from his chair. "Are you indeed an angel?" "I am a servant of the Most High", comes her dulcet reply, not removing her hand from Lindstrom's shoulder. There is light radiating from her. "Sven", says Kenny. "We have to talk." "It will have to wait till tomorrow", says Jesus, and the light radiating from the Son of God right now is clearly being absorbed and reflected by Lan, as the moon reflects back the light of the sun. "Jesus", says Ken, "I would like to spend some time alone with Christopher. We have much catching up to do." "After dinner", replies our Lord. "I accept my punishment as just", whimpers Lindstrom "Lan is my most faithful servitor here. She is no punishment nor threat of punishment. You will be glad to have her with you. And later, in your roon, I will join you and sit in vigil with you as you sleep, as we did before", says Jesus.

1819

"You pushed him off the bridge", I say to Sven, impaling him with my glare. "And I forgive you, Sven", says Kenny, suddenly approaching Lindstrom. "I am not worthy", he whispers remorsefully, "I cannot even forgive myself." "It will take time", says Jesus. "You will both be here together for some years, and I will also be present. It is all going to work out." Kenny is trying to embrace Sven Lindstrom, who resists by pushing him forcefully away, so that he is staggering as he backs away, trying not to fall on the floor. "Sven", says Jesus sternly, "If that happens again you will be put in isolation. Lan." The angelic being in purple and white quietly slides into the room and places herself at Lindstrom's side, placing her right hand on his left shoulder.. "Stay with him please until he is up in his room tonight. Then I shall come and take over."

1817

I am completely gosmacked and paralysed in my chair. And also deeply deeply offended that here we thought all these long years, twenty-six years that Kenny was dead and now here he is, alive, older, but unmistakeably Kenny. "Well", he says snarkily, "Are you just going to sit there like a cabbage patch doll, or are you going to get up and give me a hug?" "Better that you come over here and hug him", says Jesus laughing. "Isn't that right, Chrisopher?" And so Kenny swishes over to where I am seated next to Jesus, and swoops down to engulf me in one of his famous megahugs.

1818

"You're supposed to be dead", say I, submitting once again to one of his prolonged and suffocating embraces, rather like being loved by an affectionate python. "So what do you plan on doing about that", says he, gently releasing me. "I dunno. Kill you again." "Oh Chris, you are too funny." He is still leaning over me, just from behind. "Jesus did say that it would take you some getting used to." "Have you been here all this time?" "All this time, hon', all this time." "What really happened?" "Our friend here, Sven Lindstrom will explain it all for you."

1816

My first question. Who is that standing at the doorway, now saucily leaning on one of the sides with his arms folded, in vintage Kenny fashion. his hair is shorter, mostly grey, thin on top. he has gained a bit of weight, not much, but displays just a little bit of a paunch. But the voice. The voice is unmistakeably Kenny's. "So, Christopher. Aren't you glad to see me", he says laughing. "Harriet and I were just having a chat about you this morning. "And now I know it could only be Kenny, for only he would talk about his feminine alter self in the third person like that, and only he would know that her name is Harriet.

1815

"Kenny is alive", says Jesus. "what do you mean Kenny is alive. For months after he died he was appearing to me in dreams and visions and I was helping him get out of a horrible place. He even showed me where he had stored his journal." "Kenny was in a coma when he was brought here", says Mary. "For a few months", adds Joseph. "He washed up on the island here", says Jesus. "Almost dead and was brought here and has been with us ever since." "You mean to say he is here. In this house?" "I am indeed, Christopher", says an old and familiar voice and now I see him standing at the doorway, smiling at me!

1814

"Kenny", says Lawrence. "What about Kenny", say I, suddenly a bit irritated, and small wonder, because I have yet to forgive Sven for all the trouble he has caused us. "Kenny did not die when he fell from the Lion's Gate Bridge." "I pushed him", says Sven. And now I am too overwhelmed by horror and sadness to even react. And hate, because right now, I truly and absolutely hate this Lindstrom, this murderer. "You fucking murderer", I hear myself snarling, and am just springing up from my chair to pounce on Lindstrom when I feel two very strong hands restraining and placing me back on my seat. Jesus, for a teenage boy, is incredibly strong it seems and then I am reminded that he is not just any teenager...

1813

"There could be no other place for us", says Stella, "Not after all that has happened. Oh, Jesus, is this really true then, we really can stay here with you. Always?" "I never make promises that I do not intend to keep, Isabella. Here, you can all grow into your redemption and healing and live eternally safe from the realm of the shadows. Isabella, even when you were prostituting yourself in Europe, your heart still remained faithful to me, and I knew that in time you would turn completely to me. And Sven, you are particularly fragile, but here you will find strength and healing. As shall you, Caspar. You three are particularly beloved to me and my holy parents." "Why would that be?" says Caspar. "Particularly you, Caspar, and because I have rescued all three of you from the jaws of the evil one. You three are to me a great and wondrous prize, and you will all be cherished by me..."

1756

1812

"I remember you now! i remember you now!" Lindstrom is almost shouting, a rapt smile on his face while he is pointing at Jesus. "You were with me throughout. Every minute of every day. You would not leave me alone. You knew. You knew..." "I knew how fragile and in need of constant presence you were, Sven. Just as you are now, much and greatly in need of me. Well, here I am." "You are giving me another chance?" "From now on, you three are going to be living here with us. Permanently. You, Isabella and Caspar. Do I have your consent, all three of you?"

1811

Sven Lindstrom is looking up at everyone, eyes almost like two shining sapphires. "I was here once, wasn't I?" "Well, I did just remind you", says Mary. "Humlegarden!" he exclaims. "That's where you both found me. You and the old man." "We do both happen to have names, you know, young man", chides Mary affectionately. "I happen to be the Mother of Our Lord here, and Joseph also happens to be my most noble spouse." "And you had a passport and clothing for me to bring along, or, wait, I think I had time to pack everything I needed at home, but you did provide me with a passport, and after that we were at the airport. It is slowly coming back to me." "You swallowed the water", said Jesus "Which is what made you forget and for a while botched completely your usefulness in my service..."

1810

"Could somebody explain all this to me, please", Says a clearly perplexed Francois. "After dinner, if you wish", says Jesus, "I will give you a tour of the grounds and show you where the fountain used to be. Suffice it to say, the Millionth Council, the angelic heirachy that governs your planet, had this place built at the turn of the century. They designated it a place of rest, refuge, safety, and education and learning, but some of their mortal coplanners had some rather barmy ideas about spirituality, and with the Councils's blessing, they installed this fountain with a basin that would spout a particularly potent form of water that would induce amnesia on whomsoever drank of it. That was useful up to a point, but then, increasingly, were being brought to us those who had no need of forgetting and much need of repentance, cleansing of soul, and renewal of life and spirit in my service, and it is impossible to encounter real repentance and real healing in such a state of induced forgetfulness...

1809

"It wasn't my intention to swallow the water when you baptised me, Jesus", says Sven. "My darling twin sibling", mutters Stella, "The legendary bumbler. It actually still amazes me, Sven, that our father would even think of using you in his service." "Says the immutable authority of the oldest profession", snaps her brother. "I am retired", she gloats. "That was when I had the pool drained and the bat sculpture destroyed", says Jesus.

1808

"And you, Sven, were also enslaved by Kenny." "Sven pauses. His eyes closed. "I was obsessed with Kenny." "You were in love with Kenny." Sven doesn't answer. He remains silent, head bowed and eys closed, his two large hands closed into huge scary fists on his lap. "Your father was furious. Desiring, lusting, hungering to devour others as though they are food, that was perfectly acceptable. But to love. That is a language the dark side simply cannot comprehend", says Jesus wistfully. "They have no vocabulary for love, no concept of love. Love is their enemy, and to your evil father you had already slipped off to the other side." "And that", says our Lord's mother, is when we came to get you, and to bring you here, Sven...."

1807

"Greta was one of my best students. She was my best student" says Sven, perplexed. "How could she do such a thing". And now his head is bowed in grief. "I wish I could say my sister wasn't capable of anything so monstrous", says Erik. "But even though she is my sister, apart from all the noise she makes about climate change and global warming and environmental destruction, she is harder than stone. I agree. She has no conscience." "What I can't understand", say I, "is why she wanted me. She knew I was a fag from the getgo." "Greta was under orders, through me, to get to Kenny whom he badly wanted to enlist in his service." "The correct word here", says Jesus, "is enslave."

1806

"It was never revealed who was driving that car that killed Elvira and Alicia", says Sven tersely. "Greta played a role in this ", says Jesus. "My sister", says Erik. "My wife" say I. "The dark lord's servant", says Jesus. "She was driving the car", says Jesus. "She had only just gone over to the side of the darkness, and had fallen under their thrall. She had and has no conscience." "But we never became lovers", says Sven. "It was forbidden by my father..." "Whom through Greta had revitalized his claim and pulled you back into his service..."

1805

Fortunately for everyone, Sven, you were raised by Caspar. The love and care that he showed you completely confused the wiring in your brain and soul that had been placed there by your father the dark lord, because it was impossible for you to follow through competently on his orders to commit evil. Even when you were stationed in England in order to sabotage the efforts of the enigma machine, instead of following through on your orders you fell in love and got into a steamy and prolonged love affair with none other than Alan Turing, the famous and homosexusl decoder of the Enigma, and he was not about to tell you one blessed thing. The Allies won the war and your father called you in for your punishment, which resulted in you being expelled from his presence in exile. You resettled in Sweden and soon launched your career as a university professor of anthropology. Much later, still impossibly youthful, you married, and became a father....

1804

"But then came that horrible dreadful war. That most destructive and hideous outbreak of global hostiliies ever seen on the earth, when the cancer of human wickedness reached its apogee, and the evil one found out where you were and sent his emissaries to fetch you back to Europe. Even in neutral Sweden they had work for you to do to sabotage the allies and facilitate what appeared to be for a while a likely victory for Hitler and his forces of evil. I would also like to emphasize here my complete and utter disapproval of war and warfare, even so called legitimate defensive warfare, for those that take up the sword, by the sword shall perish. It was only for my love for the innocents being slaughtered that I allowed victory for the Allies, but truth be told, even had the Germans won, their victory would have been pyrrhic and shortlived, and other forces would have come into play to completely overthrow them and the evil they were perpetrating....

1803

"Sven", says Jesus, directing on him his tender and fiery gaze, "Even though you above everyone here has rebelled against me and have done the utmost to make my work difficult for me, I knew you and began calling you into my service from the very day when Caspar led your mother to her seduction and to conceive both you and your twin in her womb. Even when you left Sweden in 1930 to live under a different name in San Francisco where you began your university studies. Very effetively you lived under your father's radar, since I was veiling you from his eye, and you were so craving freedom and deliverance from his presence, control and evil tutelage. And I took care during that time, to keep you apart, and to prevent him from controlling or influencing you...

1802

"That fountain was never my idea, nor this mansion. But my mother had been networking extensively with the Millionth Council, who are under her authority, and they had agreed without consulting me first that this place would be of great service to our work. And they were partly right. In recent years, when this place was bequeathed to me, I agreed to let them retain their oversight, because even though they are under my divine authority, I will have no slaves, and the Millionth Council, which is a vast angelic hierarchy within a far vaster hierarchy of my servants, is very capable of making their own decisions. With my guidance of course, but I simply could not be persuaded that a fountain of forgetfulness inducing amnesia to all that drunk from it, and with that nasty little demon representative of the very powers I have crushed under my heel, it simply had to go....

1801

"And I should also add, my lord", says Stella, that being under Caspar's tutelage helped my twin and I to both grow towards you. Isn't that right, Sven, and you could particularly speak with some authority here because you were directly brought up by Caspar. "Sven?" Stella's sibling has remained notably silent, and now appears almost comatose, except that his eyes are open. Wide open. "Sven, ny child", says Jesus. "It is time to awake." He is blinking, as though having just been roused from a deep slumber. "My beloved child", says Jesus tenderly. "Is there anything you wish to say." "I was dreaming", he mumbles in a monotone. "Of when you immersed me in the fountain. And I swallowed the water." "I have had the fountain drained, and that hideous bat spout destroyed", says Jesus....

1800

"I it was that assigned you to the care and nurturing of Sven, and to your contact with Stella, because already a strange tenderness was beginning to grow in your heart, and that tendernous made you into a caring and compassionate stepfather, qualities that are an absolute offense to the dark one, and then, after your time of step-parenting was finished, I put you under another sleep, knowing that once you were awoken and summoned by your master that that would be the time to snatch his prey from him. And now, dear Caspar, I have already enlisted you into my service..."