From GODBOTHERING pg. 121

A LOOK

When we sat down to dinner I had no inkling.

I took up my usual place among the twelve, fairly far down the table, not quite at the end. The boss was speaking as usual, and if the truth be told, I was listening with only half an ear. The food was particularly good that evening, and I must confess that I've always been partial to a good meal, and my attention was more on my food than him.

Not that I was bored with what he was saying, it's just that after a few years there are bound to be repetitions, so I sat there enjoying my meal, filtering out the obligatory ethical material, keeping my ear cocked for hard information whenever it would choose to come. So it's hardly surprising that when it did in fact come, it came as a surprise.

In fact I had my mouth full when I realized that everybody's attention was riveted on the boss. Everyone had stopped stock still, and I had my mouth full of bread and I didn't dare chew it up, which was highly embarrassing. It was only after the others began talking among each other again that I became aware that our boss had announced his own death.

And then, after a moment, when everybody began to talk among themselves again I began to chew the food in my mouth as surreptitiously as I could, and, as I swallowed it with some relief at not having been discovered, I felt his eyes upon me. I looked up, and he was looking straight into my eyes for the first time.

Maybe I should explain that his behaviour was highly austere with me, that he would kiss others and pat them on the shoulder, but that I don't remember him ever having touched me. In fact, I went through a whole period resenting this and wondering why, before I simply accepted it without trying to understand. Similarly, he never looked me straight in the eye; he would only communicate with me through ostensibly talking to someone else, and I would overhear his words and realize that they were destined for me. He communicated to me thus for many years without anybody else ever realizing that something was being passed to me through them.

After all, I was probably the most obscure individual in the lot of us. Others came from more prominent families, others were charged with tasks, others were engaged in training activities, and I was simply left alone. And this too was something I took a long time to accept, for I was somebody who had always been enormously ambitious. I wanted love, I wanted admiration, I wanted fame, and if these were not to be available, I wanted at least to be feared. But in this too I had been disappointed by our boss, and I had come to accept my own obscurity and lack of status in our little unit, and this simply because, like the others, I knew that he knew best and that my only choice was to follow him blind, with blind faith, and to love this man as much as I could even if what love I could muster was only a pale parody of the ocean of love he had for us. Because we were to him as he was to the source, and he was our necessary relay, since if we had been connected directly to the source, we would have been blown into madness.

So that when he looked into my eyes for the first time and talked of his imminent betrayal, I knew at once with absolute certainty what I was to do. You see, it was a question of polarity, the 'yes' and the 'no' that are both inherent to the human condition. His job was to incarnate the 'yes', the possibility, and he needed a man whom he could trust absolutely to incarnate the 'no', the denial.

And as he looked into my eyes and spoke of betrayal, I realized that this man was to be me and that I had no choice in the matter. The sacrifice of my body wasn't so important, that didn't really worry me, what was harder to sacrifice was my hard-earned reputation for holiness. With a start I realized how my erstwhile ambition, envy, desire for prominence and relative obscurity in the group were going to be used, and furthermore even satisfied, for there would hardly be a single man walking the earth who would not one day know my name. As the technical perfection of the situation appeared to my mind's eye, I gave thanks once again to the Almighty for not only enabling me to serve, but for giving me the joy of finding out what it was that I had been born to do.

After a few more minutes, I slipped away unnoticed from the table in order to begin my mission of infamy, and thus make known to all, within the space of a single night, the function of I, Judas the scholar, son of Iscariot, obedient pupil of my teacher Jesus Christ and servant of God.

Easter 1982