Wondrous — Chapter 3: Incarnation, part 1
(An experiment in writing in installments)
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NOTE to subscribers: this chapter is longer than the previous ones, so I’m splitting it into two parts to keep each post to a reasonable size. Part 2 follows next week.
Previous chapters:
Chapter 1: Eliza, in which we meet Eliza and share her vision-impression of Christ handing her a newborn. The introduction also contains background for the overall story.
Chapter 2: Threshold, in which Eliza, somewhat distracted at work, takes the afternoon off, visualizes her future as a mother, and, feeling that she is about to conceive, senses a soul with her.
Chapter 3: Incarnation, part 1
Standing before the bookstore’s window, Eliza hears glimmers of song in her mind, the same passages that had accompanied the presence that she and Adel perceived in their meditations. The tingle in her palm vanishes—or rather disburses—becoming echoes of distinct sounds that impress upon her awareness as words, but not words in a language she recognizes.
Eliza closes her eyes to concentrate on these murmurings, hearing the strange words repeat in her own mental tones. Then, a flush deep within her abdomen draws her attention. A vortex of sorts has formed, a dynamo of vital essence—swirling, swelling, gathering strength and intensity until all at once it erupts in a great radiance like the shockwave of a supernova, yet in no way destructive or painful. Eliza thrills with the sensation and with the recognition that the splendid, overlapping frequencies and modulations of this effulgence harmonize, to an exacting precision, with those of the soul that’s been infusing the space around her.
She recalls the impression of Christ handing her an infant, her arms and heart aglow as she accepts this gift of grace, this true expression of God’s will. Holding herself in open surrender to that will, she reaches out in a silent call: Come, dear one. Come into the body that awaits you.
Eliza waits for a few moments, then calls a second time. She waits a few moments more, imagining herself an open chalice, a ready receptacle. She calls again, then again, and then once more. But there’s no shift, no movement of the spirit to condense itself into its minute host.
Confused, Eliza walks a few paces and sits on the edge of a planter box. The radiance spreading from within her remains present and clear, as does this resonating soul-sphere, the combined beauty of which draws tears from the corners of her eyes. Come, dear one, come! She once more visualizes herself open and receptive and inviting. She raises her palms and stills her thoughts and emotions as best she can. Oh, do come!
But the sparkling liveliness remains in stasis, as if waiting, waiting…waiting patiently for—
Her heart jumps a little, like skipping a beat but more as if responding to a friendly nudge. What do you think, O Lord? she prays. Before she even completes the thought, her heart throbs with insight.
Eliza snaps open her eyes. “Of course,” she voices aloud, with a certainty that has yet to articulate itself in verbal form. Nor does it need to; the intuition is wholly sufficient.
She stands, determined, and the invisible presence rises with her, acknowledging her plan of action. She steps toward the entrance of the bookshop and the soul-sphere follows, ever-centered on that spark of vitality within her. That’s something, surely.
As she enters the store, the myriad colors of the books fairly dance before Eliza’s eyes, as if the pictures and words of each volume have come to life in a grand pageant of thoughts and ideas and imagery and feeling. Three thousand voices all at once, some resting content in quiet wisdom, some sharing their enthusiasms, many others shouting their self-assured pretense. Some humbly offering themselves into a greater reality, some unsure of anything beyond the realms of the material world, many others clamoring for validation of their pridefully asserted “truths.”
Eliza picks up one hardbound new release and marvels. She might have well just picked up a loaf of bread. No, bread has more life-energy from what she can tell. This book is more like a box of pedestrian store-brand macaroni and probably about as interesting as those salads that come in a prepackaged tub.
Movement catches her eyes. A few tables over, a middle-aged woman, finely attired and decorated with not a few ornaments, peruses the display of Romance novels. As the woman reads a passage from one, she flushes. Her stance softens and her hips sway an inch to either side, then forward and back. She licks her lips and leaves them parted to accommodate the quickened breath heaving in her bosom. Closing the book, she turns and moves toward the front counter, where her gaze falls upon an attractive sales clerk, a local college student from the looks of him.
Eliza backs away and circles around other tables, maintaining her distance from the lady of arousal. At the opposite wall of shelves, she hurries along past a table of contemporary novels, a genre that she’s enjoyed in the past. Today, however, many of these seem to extend invisible tendrils that invite Eliza’s heart into a mire of commiseration. Turning aside as if from a cesspool, she bumps into a table of thrillers, whose edgy intensity is equally palpable.
She tucks into an aisle between shelves of biographies and history. As she scans the titles, they altogether form a kind of static, the signal of one offset by the noise of another. Such is the mixed nature of humankind. Oh, but there—a section of biographies of saints and mystics. The Little Flowers of Saint Francis. Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle, Gandhi’s The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Laubach’s Letters by a Modern Mystic. She extends a hand to these and the static assumes a more harmonizing chorus toward which the soul-sphere seems to twitch for a moment.
The bejeweled woman concludes her business at the counter and heads outside. Eliza wonders whether she secured a tryst with the young man, but quickly dismisses the thought: she doesn’t want to know. Nor does she need to linger: there’s far too much confusion and opinion and scrambled ideas here to allow the soul that is yet swirling around her to settle into material manifestation.
With deliberate steps, listening all the while, Eliza walks a short distance and enters the Peaceful Pastimes Tea Shop. So aptly named—for no restlessness invades the space, and as she enters the soul-sphere twitches again, a slight contraction.
The clerk greets her with a nod and resumes packaging some loose leaves for a professional-looking man in khakis and a well-cut Van Heusen button-down. Eliza sniffs a few of her favorite herbals—she’ll probably need a fresh supply for the coming months that will surely see a few strange nights and listless mornings. She pauses with an orange blossom tea, puzzled by its uncharacteristically weak scent. Huh. Perhaps it’s an old batch, or the fragrance is better carried on the vapors of steam. Still, it’s never failed her in the past.
She directs a thought so the soul hovering around her. What do you think? Was that a shrug? Or a smile? Either way, she detects no further shift.
As the clerk prepares a satchel of the tea, Eliza concludes that although Peaceful Pastimes lives up to its name with its wholly Zen-like environment, it yet lacks the intimacy of devotion, of an ardor for God that this soul most certainly bears in its being just as Eliza bears in her own. Peace is but one piece of the puzzle. Much more is needed.
Next to the tea shop is a Naomi’s, a boutique clothier whose stylistic philosophy, admirable enough through the display window, has never given Eliza a reason for patronage. Today, however, as part of her mission, it’s worth a visit.
“Welcome, miss,” says Naomi. “Is there anything I can help you with today?” She scans Eliza head to toe and pulls a slinky dress from a nearby wall rack. Bounding across the floor, her flowing top waving above her billowing pantaloons, she holds the crimson velvet upon Eliza’s frontside, beaming with satisfaction. “Perhaps something for your next cocktail party?”
“Ah, no, not really,” replies Eliza with a cheerful chuckle, not wanting to squash Naomi’s zestiness. Passing a hand over the fabric, she says, “It is lovely, but I’m not much of a party-goer. I…I’ve never been in your store and just thought to browse a bit, to see if…if anything tickles my fancy.”
Huh, that’s a courteous lie, isn’t it? she chides herself. For in this moment, the vibrant array of dresses and blouses and pants, together with luscious variety of folds and darts and tucks, strikes her with a curious dichotomy, reflected in a kind of anxious shrug within the soul-sphere. She can see herself in a few of the outfits before her; they would drape beautifully upon her form (at least until I swell up!) and offer a visual compliment to those she might met. A respected teacher had once thanked her in that way for the care she’d taken to dress nicely for an event. But a temptation to vanity simultaneously assaults her sensibilities. “Look at me,” it whispers. “Look at what I can afford. Envy the elegance with which I am graced.” These phrases ring familiar in Eliza’s heart, as if she’s been down that road many times, perhaps in other lives, perhaps in dreams.
She pauses to examine a white skirt, a standout among the other garments in the store. As the pleats run across her hands, Eliza sees herself in a variety of simple robes, monastic habits, even, clothing meant to set aside considerations of style and even function for basic simplicity. These images resound with familiarity, a friendliness, even—like partners that facilitate rather than distract from higher aspirations. And the soul-sphere seems to relax with this thought, as if it’s just relieved an itch.
Eliza makes her way to the door. “Thank you,” she calls out to Naomi, who is consulting with another customer.
“I hope to see you again,” the other replies.
Once she’s outside and walks a few paces, Eliza shakes her head. “Probably not likely.” Already the clothing seems distant, remote, an energy that while tangible within the store has already diffused into mist.
A few doors down, Eliza steps into an art gallery. Nodding to the attendant who glances at her briefly before returning to his phone, she has to keep herself from chortling aloud as a rising mirth from the soul-sphere floods her awareness. Unlike the scrambled smorgasbord of the bookshop, the gallery almost announces itself as a veritable temple of pretense, best represented, perhaps, by the large canvas upon which the “artist” created a grid of light blue lines reminiscent of graph paper and entitled it “Revolutionary Fugue of Diana No. 12.” She also suppresses amusement at the crayon scrawlings upon butcher paper that supposedly depict scenes from Virgil’s Aeneid. To each his own, she figures with a twist of her lips. Perhaps, sometimes, there is yet wisdom in the ridiculous.
A number of other pieces, though, she admires for their quality of execution—the artists certainly boast skill in their respective crafts. But for all that, the works suffer for want of beauty and meaning, lacking any underlying principle or ideal beyond experimenting with a new technique or medium.
Around a back corner, she happens upon a painting that, like the pleated white skirt, seems incongruous amongst its peers. It depicts nothing more than a simple alpine scene with glowing autumnal trees and a few evergreens. And yet despite their mass, the mountains almost float, lifting with them whatever weights her own heart bears. In that lightness, too, the soul-sphere sparkles for an instant, like the glimmer of moonbeams reflecting off a rippling lake. An unremarkable subject with a remarkable effect.
“That’s a lovely piece, isn’t it?” says a voice to her left. Eliza turns to greet a rather unassuming woman of about her age except for a pair of shining eyes.
“Yes,” Eliza replies, “I was just marveling at its clarity of expression. There’s nothing particularly sophisticated about it, but its message is unmistakable.”
“Mmm,” nods the woman, who gazes at the canvas for a time, though Eliza senses that perhaps she steals an occasional glance at Eliza as well.
Eliza leans forward to examine the artist’s signature: Jyotish.
“The Sanskrit name for sunlight or ‘inner light,’” says the woman.
“Pardon?”
“The artist—that’s what ‘Jyotish’ means.”
“Wholly appropriate for his—or her—work, it seems,” says Eliza.
“That it is,” says the other. “Well….” She gives Eliza a little wave as she turns to leave. “I must be going. Enjoy!”
Eliza waves back as, too, the soul around her seems to do also. A recognition? Perhaps not of the person but of her spirit.
Chapter notes and comment prompts:
In this chapter I’ve visualized conception not as a singular, sudden event, but as an extended process because the incarnating soul, in this case, is very particular about the circumstances under which it comes into its nascent body. What are your feelings about this drawn-out account?
What is your response/reaction to the various people that Eliza encounters in this chapter? Are they given enough life and detail, or not enough?
As with Chapters 1 and 2, most of the story is Eliza’s inner perception and thought process with only an occasional thought that’s clearly verbalized (and italicized). How does this work for you, or not?
(I’ll repeat this last question in every chapter.) Based on this chapter (along with the title and the one hint about what the story is about), what questions do you have that you hope the story will answer in future installments?
Please also report any typos or passages that you find unclear or problematic.
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