Part 1: The Answer

Years ago when I’d just begun drifting into the deep end of the spirituallity pool, I was having an email exchange with my soon-to-be teacher. I was describing my experiences of Jesus to him and he eventually asked if I was sure this was Jesus, as this didn’t sound like the Christ he had always heard about. And even though he himself hadn’t had many Experiences with Christianity, it wasn’t an odd thing to question. I was talking about the answers to prayers that played out more like puns than anything beatific, and even included some endearing stories about houseflies. But most notably to him, I was feeling encouraged to pursue learning from one of the least standard-Christian teachers Jesus could have pointed me towards (in short, a polytheistic Pagan I met through a fetish website).

I had been comfortable in the belief that this Divine Presence was Jesus for as long as I could remember. It came from a lifetime of those types of reasons that are so small as to not be very noteworthy, but build up on each other layer after layer, year after year until you just Know, even if you can’t talk about one reason separate from all the others. Still, his question caused doubt to begin seeping in. Because, well, I had never directly asked for a name. Had I just assumed I’d gotten it right from the beginning because that’s who I had expected to be there?

I wrote my future teacher about how to even ask, and he suggested I try a walking divination. He explained the process by saying that I should ask a question of the Universe, then go for a walk. The first thing to catch my attention (emphasis on “catch”) would be my answer. Less like desperately looking for a sign and more like making the best of both the randomness of the world and my wandering mind.

So that afternoon, I set out to Ask. I got dressed in comfortable walking attire. The usual trifecta of phone-wallet-keys were shoved into pockets and I made sure I went to the bathroom beforehand. My schedule for the day was as clear as the summer sky outside. During it all I let the question run through my mind, careful to not obsess or hold onto it too tightly. “Was this being I followed actually Jesus?” The trot down the stairs to the front hall was done on autopilot, not wanting to break my focus. I took a deep breath, encouraged my mind into a passive, receptive state, and opened the door. As I stepped out I had to adjust my stride to miss a small paper left on the welcome mat. I picked it up and tossed it onto the mail-sorting table just inside, then carried on with my goal.

I had gone at least two blocks before I realized that I had completely ignored the first thing that had caught my attention. With a sigh I went back the way I came. I found the small, single-fold pamphlet where I had left it on top of junk mail and coupons for local restaurants. It was some Jehovah’s Witnesses literature that featured three paintings of Jesus – one of the Christ Child in the manger, one of the Crucifixion, and one of him as the Ascended King. Below it asked, “Who is Jesus to you?” On the inside it spoke of how Jesus could be many different things to many different people, more than they could ever hope to list there. I took it back upstairs to my room, tossed my keys onto my bed, and sat down to send an email. Even though it would still be some months before I met anyone else who had experienced this particular face of his, I had gotten my answer. I wrote that, yeah, I really did think it was Jesus. He was just a little different to me.

Part 2: Altars and Lighthouses

After some pivotal time volunteering at the local Vedantic Hindu Center, the idea of altars had become something of interest. It wasn’t long before I asked Jesus if he wanted one of his own. On the way to church that Sunday, I found a box of items someone had left on the curb. It contained a pair of off-white wooden candle holders, a few mirror-coasters, a small decorative glass cup, a clear glass dish in the shape of a heart (featuring an olive-branch-wielding dove), and a clear glass votive candle holder, also in the shape of a heart. I took this as a “yes” and carefully shoved everything into my bag before hurrying off to catch my train. That afternoon I cleared off the top of my dresser and arranged the items in a (hopefully) tasteful fashion. And so it began.

Since then my altar to him has grown notably. If an item there wasn’t found or gifted, then it was bought from a discount bin or thrift store. Keeping a space like this may seem like a purely devotional or spiritual act, but it’s been through continual experiences with his ever-shifting altar that I’ve been able to figure out my relationship with him. Then in turn I was able to learn about him not just as he relates to me and my experiences, but rather who he is as just him. It was also how he made sure any stories I might tell of my journey with him would go from an endearing spiritual vignette to inescapably weird.

The first time I noticed something odd about dealing with his altar was when I tried to get imagery of him for it. A small icon I bought of him traveled with me while I was homeless for a while before it inexplicably vanished… as did the second and third. Heck, even the figure of Jesus I had inherited from my great-aunt ended up smashed in a box in my parents’ basement during this time and thrown out. When I had a place to set up a more permanent altar again, I tried once more with a statuette (though how and why I had this one is a story unto itself). But after some time on his altar it became clear that while it was nice and all, it should go sit with my Christian-themed altars rather than the altar I kept for him next to my bed. I was gifted another statuette some months later, and the same thing happened — sat by the bed, then gentle scooted to the Christian section. When I finally asked why, the reason seemed to be that “those are Christ”. I didn’t understand the odd line being drawn, but I respected it, and these statuettes survived among angels and saints.

I kept dwelling on the point, though, because I have an obsessive streak. At this point I was developing a love for devotional art and image-centric altar creation… both things he encouraged but didn’t want me to do for him. In fact, there were a lot of devotional things that I wanted to do for him that never seemed to work out, and on the rare occasion they did it felt like I was being tolerated until I got it out of my system. What inspired a deep connection elsewhere in my spiritual practice never took hold here.

Finally the dots started connecting in my head between this and the issues he had with sacred imagery of him. It was like he was doubling down on that point about Christ. As I began to more fully understand that this was a pervasive, fundamental difference (even if I didn’t understand what or why), I finally found an image.

It showed up when I was walking through a local comic and novelties store I had frequented as a kid. I was chewing on the topic of his imagery like a cow with a particularly stubborn bit of cud as I nosed about the clearance section. And there, on a shelf in all its marked-down glory, was Dashboard Jesus. (“Enlightenment on a Spring!”) With a laugh, I bought him. It wasn’t long after that a friend told me she had found a Buddy Jesus figurine laying forgotten in someone’s drawer. She glued his arm back on and mailed him my way so he could take his place by my bed as well.

I began letting go of more and more of the trappings I had wanted to bring with me from the Church. I slowly stopped trying out the new and novel forms of devotion on him that I had been experiencing with the deities in my life. It became less about worship and more about exploration, about an active (and often chaotic) type of following. As this took shape, what I had been learning from polytheists in my life started filling in the gaps. The idea of a deity having many very distinct aspects was a common belief. Some in the past have been so distinct that a sacrifice in a temple to one wouldn’t count if it was meant to be done in the temple of another, even if they were both faces of the same god. And this seemed to apply in some way to the idea of Christ and Jesus as well. Not to mean that he’s ever entirely without divinity, but instead that I should focus solely on the face that he has decided to turn to me.

A few years later I was wandering through a thrift store and saw a framed photo of a lighthouse. When I picked it up, I somehow knew two things simultaneously – that this was his lighthouse and that I was ridiculous for thinking this was his lighthouse. It was just a 3×5 an unknown person had snapped somewhere on the coast of New England, then put into a simple wooden frame. But I couldn’t shake the feeling, so I bought the photo and returned with it. As I was going to hang it up by his altar, I noticed that on the back was scribbled a location, “Chatham, MA”. I did a quick search on the internet and found its story.

The Chatham Light was once part of a pair of lighthouses called the Twin Lights. The northern “twin” was moved to Nauset, MA where it replaced the Beacon, the one remainder of a set of small lighthouses called the Three Sisters (all of whom now sit in a nearby field). The “twin” who remained continued to hold down that section of the coast. It was nearly three decades later that the solo Chatham Light became the scene of a marine rescue notable enough to inspire the book-turned-film The Finest Hours. The now-Nauset Light is known by anyone who’s ever looked at a bag of Cape Cod potato chips.

Again there was this theme of separation, but not only that. It had become about a set of two lights that used to work together as a unit, until one left. So I guess I can say that the Jesus I follow is the one who was left behind. It’s like instead of being Christ who put up with the experience of being human, he’s the human who had to put up with the experience of being Christ. A person I love not because he’s a vessel or the Messiah, but because he’s him. And this is not an argument against any tradition or the Church. It’s an attempt, albeit a rather clumsy one, at trying to underline how much of his humanity is hidden by that blinding light. His sacred work is an inescapable part of him, and I would never attempt to dismiss that, but he made it clear that it’s an aspect far closer to earth who holds my heart. A shining face I have to be careful not to lose sight of behind that other radiance. It’s not that he’s never a King or Sacrifice or Christ… he’s just a little different to me.