HEAVY METAL MIRACLES

CHAPTER 16

ARIEL

BEHOLD, NOW IS THE ACCEPTED TIME; BEHOLD, NOW IS THE DAY OF SALVATION (2 Corinthians 6:2)

            It was the day after I accused Eli of impregnating me, and he suggested marriage. Band practice had ended ten minutes ago. I had just returned from the restroom after an emotional breakdown as the last song they played concluded. My mental turmoil was both positive and negative.

            The song was an acoustic cover by the band Pearl Jam. They said it was called something like ‘Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town.’ Why the long, strange title, I didn’t know. But the song moved me in an unexpected way. Whether my interpretation of the lyrics were correct or not, I don’t know. But it spoke to me of former young lovers reacquainted many years later.

            Eli and Arlo played acoustic guitars, while Ethan displayed his deep rich voice. Amy, the band’s drummer, sat next to me with her daughter on her lap. The song made me think about Eli reentering my life after a two decade absence. But then the last refrain that my son sang soft and melodious several times went ‘Hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away.’

            This part made me think of the passing of my second husband half a year earlier. That’s when I lost it. But it was not only grief, but guilt. How had I moved on so quickly? Was it Eli back in my life? Was it the fact that during both of my marriages, I loved, but wasn’t in love with both of my husbands? What was the defining line? What was it about Eli that bound my heart to him so much stronger than the two men I was actually married to?

             Ethan, Amy, Penny, and Arlo were sitting around a card table, probably in deep discussion about this coming Saturday. The four were going to be baptized, and Penny and Arlo were to be married afterward.

            On the other side of the large room, Eli gave our little five year old granddaughter Crissy a lesson on her small acoustic guitar. Her little tongue stuck out from between her lips as she concentrated, following Eli’s instructions. He was so patient with her and eyed her adorningly as she strummed.

            She spotted me watching her and said, “Look, Gammy.”

            “I see, Sweety.”

            “Do you think I’m good?”

            “I think you’re wonderful!”

            Eli looked at me with a twinkle in his eye, and I felt that heart flutter that no other guy had ever given me. Was it because he always seemed so elusive? I was even more drawn to this forty year old version of Eli than the seventeen year old version.

            Whereas the teenager was cocky, cool, turning girl’s heads with his macho strut and long flowing mane of dark hair, the current Eli was distinguished, like an aging movie star. He was gentle, relaxed, and surprisingly humble.

            Another thing that had changed about him was his world view. When we would talk into the night as teenagers, he would express teenage angst and atheism. I would counter with God’s love. In particular the fact that God became one of us in the person of Jesus Christ.

            Fast forward two decades and Eli was not only is expressing love for God but parroting, what I then perceived, as legalism via the influence of his old, dear friend, Arlo Aldo. Who would have thought that the former bass player from ‘The Sons of Molech’, who looked like a professional wrestler, would also be able to sway my sister?

            Penny was smart, rational, and had graduated at the top of every phase in her academic career. She was a doctor and a successful, gifted veterinarian surgeon. But now she was joining what I had viewed at the time as a Saturday cult. Why a cult? Well, the majority can’t be wrong, right? I mean, ninety plus percent of Christians view Sunday as the sabbath, don’t they?

            The foursome being baptized in a few days stood and held hands. Arlo was about to lead them in prayer, and he invited Eli and me to join. Eli accepted, but I initially made no reply. Eli joined them, and the chain of arms and hands accumulated one more link.

            I tried to gather my granddaughter onto my upper legs as sort of a human security blanket. But as I tried to gather the little energy bundle onto my lap, she squirmed away and petitioned, “Can I pray too?”

            “Of course you can, Sweet Pea!” Arlo said delightedly.

            Feeling left out, I gave in. “Can I pray too?”

            “Of course,” Arlo replied happily.

            “Aren’t you gonna call me, Sweet Pea?”

            Arlo grinned. “I’ll leave that to Eli.”

            I blushed and glanced at Eli. Everyone in the circle knew I was with child. They also knew the embryo was created in sin. Yet Arlo asked for a blessing upon my unborn child and me. Then he followed by asking the same for Amy and Penny, who also were pregnant. As he  finished the prayer, he asked God to be with all those getting baptized, and to be with anyone who might be on the fence. I thought this was directed at Eli, and I felt a flash of annoyance at Arlo for what seemed like presumptuous zeal.

            After the prayer ended, Eli and I lingered in the parking lot, and it wasn’t long before we found ourselves alone. He leaned against his truck and pulled me into a reverse hug. As we admired the night sky, bright with being only two days past a full moon, I expressed my irritation with Arlo. But typical of cool and calm Eli, he simply shrugged, and an easy smile played on his lips. “My old pal is just worried about my soul.”

            “And you’re not?”

            “Sure I am. One of the Bible verses I have memorized is Philippians 2:12. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”

            “It doesn’t seem like you fear and tremble over much.”

            “If you only knew,” he chuckled. “It’s easy to keep it together when you’re not alone. But you don’t realize how many nightmares I have had and still have over my association with occultists. The guilt over all the impressionable minds our band influenced.”

            “Is that why you’re not getting baptized with the rest of them?”

            “That and you.”

            I stepped out of his embrace, spun and looked at him. “Me? You mean because of…”

            “Fornicating,” he finished.

            My jaw clenched and my eyes narrowed. “Well just so you know, Mister, we’re done fornicating. You putting a bun in my oven was the rebuke I needed for giving in to sin.”

            “Hey, you opened the oven door, and your warmth drew me in.”

            “Well, this oven door is staying shut from now on.”

            “So marry me and lets start a bakery.”

            “This is the last loaf of bread coming out of this oven.”

            “I agree that we don’t need any more loaves of bread, but we can still bake, though.”

            I crossed my arms and kept a steady gaze on him. I didn’t want him to know just how close I was to accepting his offer of marriage. Plus, I really did want to turn my oven on again, metaphorically speaking.

            I shifted the subject away from loaves of bread and how they are made. “So these nightmares you speak of. Did they happen to Arlo too?”

            “Some, but when he became a Christian, they subsided. More than the rest of us in the band, Arlo was the most uncomfortable with the satanic imagery and the dark lyrics. But, like me, he justified it by telling himself it was just an act and that we were similar to Alice Cooper. Which I suppose we were similar. But it became harder to deny that Izzy, our singer and writer of lyrics, was in fact a satanist who was obsessed with Aleister Crowley.

            “Couple that with the fact that both Izzy and our drummer Kyle were spiraling downward in their drug and alcohol addictions. I had my own problems that way, but I still functioned. Then when they both died, it was a wakeup call for me to get sober as well. Once sober, I was impressed with how Arlo changed his life.”

            “Was Arlo steeped in addiction as well?” I asked.

            “No. Oh, he partied plenty throughout the years, but he was never a daily drinker. And never did drugs, other than an occasional joint.”

            “So it was Arlo’s conversion that led you to become a seeker as well?”

            “That and something he said that you had said when we were kids.”

            This took me by surprise. “Something I said?”

            “Yeah, you probably don’t remember. I was talking about the meaninglessness of life…”

            “You did that a lot,” I interrupted.

            He chuckled. “Yeah, but this time you said, if life had no meaning, we wouldn’t know that it had no meaning. That stuck with me. In the aftermath of Kyle and Izzy’s deaths, Arlo and I were talking. Although I was impressed by Arlo quitting the band and changing his life, I wasn’t convinced enough to do the same. I was half drunk and told Arlo that life was meaningless. When he replied with the same exact words as yours, I sobered. Literally, I went into rehab the next day, and Arlo gave me a copy of the book he got quote from.”

            “C.S. Lewis’s  book ‘Mere Christianity,’” I told him.

            “That’s it,” he replied happily.

            “So reading that made you became an Arloite?” I said, trying to sound lighthearted rather than cynical.

            “An Arloite?” he laughed. “No, it didn’t. I still couldn’t get past one doctrine, and you might recall what that was. You and I went round and round over this topic more than anything else.”

            “Hellfire,” I replied immediately. It had always been a bit of a stumbling block for me as well. I always thought that by faith we would learn in heaven how a loving God could torment even the most wicked with no end.

            “Precisely,” Eli returned. “After Arlo began studying material from ‘Amazing Facts’ ministry. (Amazing Facts is a real ministry. You can google them or find them on YouTube.) The first Bible study I did with him was on the subject of hell. Hellfire is more like an event rather than a place.”

            “As much as I hate to, I beg to differ. The book of Matthew, chapter 25 clearly says that the wicked go to everlasting punishment.”

            “Correct, punishment, not punishing. Romans 6:23 tells us that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. I think you’d agree that the wicked don’t inherit eternal life, so how could they be alive in hell forever and ever? Also, the book of Jude, verse 7 refers to Sodom and Gomorrah suffering eternal fire. But let me ask you. Are Sodom and Gomorrah still burning today?”

            “Well, no, of course not.”

            Eli retrieved a Bible from his truck. He pulled a piece of paper from it, and unfolding it read. “This is the main note I took on the subject. Does the word hell as used in the Bible always refer to a place of burning? No. The word hell is used 54 times in the KJV Bible, and in only 12 cases does it refer to a place of burning. It is translated from several different words with various meanings. 31 times from Sheol, which means the grave. 10 times from Hades, which also means the grave. 12 times from Gehenna, which means the place of burning. 1 time from Tartarus, which means a place of darkness.”

            “Look at you, Mr. Bible scholar,” I said, dumbfounded, yet truly impressed. I also felt guilty for participating in intimacy without the commitment of marriage.

            “I’ll read one more note I took on the subject,” he said and then grinned. “Then I’ll stop boring you with my Biblical acumen.”

            “I’m not bored.”

            “Then why does your face look like you’ve been driving hours down a long desert highway?”

            “Because I’m stunned to be getting a Bible lesson from Eli Endor.”

            “Alderson,” he corrected with a slight edge to his voice. “Endor was a stage name, never ever my real name.”

            “Sorry,” I said, making my eyes wide and innocent.

            “Just setting the record straight, Sweet Pea Senior.”

            I giggled. “Okay, finish your lesson.”

            “Here’s a list of scriptures that indicate the wicked are destroyed, not tormented forever and ever in hell. Romans 6:23, the wicked suffer death. Job 21:30, they suffer doom, in other words, destruction. Psalm 37:20, they will perish. Malachi 4:1, will burn up. Psalm 37:28, will be destroyed. Psalm 37:20, will vanish away. Psalm 37:9, will be cut off. Psalm 62:3, will be slain. Psalm 145:20, God will destroy them. Psalm 21:9, fire will devour them.”

            He looked at me. “One more thing. Ezekiel 33:11 says that God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. And Isaiah 28:21 says that the destroying of the wicked is a strange act for God.”

            My head was spinning when I went to bed that night. It is said God works in mysterious ways, and I never realized that more than that night. Eli had always moved me carnally. Even when I spotted him in a rock and roll magazine. Even as I despised him on those glossy pages, I thought of him as sexy, ridiculous goth get up and all. But since he had reentered my life the previous autumn, he had been moving me more spiritually than carnally. For the most part.

            The Spirit moving the people I loved to get baptized this weekend was like a personal, mini day of Pentecost for me from Acts chapter 2. Only instead of three thousand people being added to the church, four were being added to Cotton Creek Cove Fellowship. I was convinced I needed to make it five. With a phone call to Eli, possibly six.

            In my excitement of feeling spiritually drawn away from the present world, I didn’t consider the time. It was very early in the morning when I heard the alarm in Eli’s voice. “Ariel, what’s wrong!”

            “Nothing’s wrong, Eli,” I said and then cringed. “It’s late, isn’t it?”

            “Or early,” he replied mildly. “Depends on your perspective. So what’s up?”

            He was hard guy to rattle, I have never known a more laid back, go with flow person in my life.

            “You know when we parted ways last night, you decided you that you might just get baptized.”

            “Yeah,” he replied, and I’m pretty sure he yawned.

            “Will you get baptized if I do too, you know this…” I referred to Saturday this way for the first time. “Sabbath?”

            “Really?” he answered, and I could tell he perked up. “Sure, I mean, yeah, yes.”

            I giggled. “One more thing. Do you think Penny and Arlo would object to making it a double wedding? I mean, I know Penny wouldn’t, what about Arlo?”

            I think I heard him sitting up in bed. “No, I don’t think he’d object at all. As a matter fact, when we ask, he’ll probably pick you up, spin you around and yell ‘Yee Ha!’”

            I laughed and then felt happy tears on my cheeks. “Good.”

            “Good,” he repeated, and I could visualize his sexy smile when he said, “Well I ain’t getting back to sleep tonight, but sleepless will have never been more worth it!”