Yes, Jesus Loved Him

“…a gift from Jesus.” The words and thought made me cringe and seethe. Clay, unlike me, claimed relationship with mentioned deity. I wasn’t in complete disagreement with all his views about his Lord as Clay called Jesus. Not exactly an atheist, I aligned more with the agnostic view. I simply took issue with Clay’s reliance on his perception of Jesus.

“So Brother Clay, you’re bringing Jesus into it. You say this new ailment, this malady, is a gift from the almighty. And you believe it is a just and reasonable gift. Gift hunh, seems more like a curse. So yes, Jesus surely loves you. Loves you so much he puts a curse on you and you call it a gift.”

Clay was surprisingly calm and non reactive or so I thought. I mistook his silence. He was actually loading verbal ammo. Palms together and resting on Clay’s belly, fingers on both his hands kissed their respective partners repeatedly. Eyes squinting slightly, his chest rose slowly with a long inhale.

“Ain’t It, I could argue this subject with ya as I have before but not today. Nope, go ahead and mock my beliefs, my Jesus, but time will tell and you’ll see, yah, see I was right about it being both gift and justice. So yah, you said it, Jesus loves me. Just cause you reject that love, don’t go begrudgin’ me mine. Besides, you owe me. And one more thing, stop your cussin’ so much. Jesus hears ya know.”

I wanted to stomp the gas pedal of my mouth and let words fly but dammit all, he played the card. Not only that, how would my “begrudgin” him show my love and respect? Would my love hold up in a grudge match with what Jesus offered? I shut my engine off and surrendered the race. I loosed a cleansing breath and relaxed.

A pea sized crumble of a cookie sat on the table beckoning to would be snackers. Three black ants heard the call and were on their way to it in single file. The one in second passed the leader and got to it first. It tugged at the crumb and got it to move. 

The lead ant grabbed him and pulled him from it while the third ant took over. Each ant took a turn at snagging the cookie crumble away while the others kept that ant from it. After several minutes the spectacle ended in a deadly ménage trios. Clay and I came to a bystander’s agreement and shook our heads. Clay gave commentary.

“Yah, there we go. We both seen people do this eh Ain’t It? One is about to escape captivity of some sort but others pulls ‘em back in.”

“Yep Clay, just like the old saying about misery wanting company. Others take a person’s success as threat. If they can’t be happy then no one will.”

Clay, trying to bring some levity into the moment, arranged the ant corpses side by side in a row and rose from his chair.

“Hey Ain’t It, these are Nishnob ants. Doesn’t matter they died like they done, gotta honor the life Gitcheh Manido, Great Creator, gave ‘em.”

So there was my brother, my friend, dancing around me and the table. With robe flapping around wildly and florescent orange toenails on one foot, Clay sang his heart out on an honor song. He made me laugh so hard I about peed.

Copyright © 2015 Migizi M. New Song. All Rights Reserved.