Stop me if you’ve heard this one before:
A man is caught in a flood. At first the water’s up to his ankles. A car drives by and the driver says, “Get in, I’m driving up into the mountains.”
The man says, “No, I’ll pray and God will take care of me.”
Soon the water is up to his hips. A man in a boat comes by, says, “Get in.”
The man in the water says, “No, I’ll pray and God will take care of me.”
Soon the man is sitting on the roof of his house and the water is still rising. A helicopter comes by and the pilot lowers a ladder. “Get in, I’ll fly you out of here.”
The man hollers back, “No thanks. I’ll pray and God will take care of me.”
The man drowns and goes to heaven. He meets God and says, “What happened? I prayed and you still let me drown.”
God says, “Hey, I sent you a car, a boat, and a helicopter. What more am I suppose to do?”
Sounds of the city. Manhattan is never silent. Most places fall silent 3 to 5AM, not Manhattan. The city seems to sigh only once a week, early Sunday morning, from 4:45 to 5, maybe 5:15AM. It is then you hear it catch its breath, relax, wipe its brow and shake off its sweat, sit back and inventory itself before the next week’s business begins.
There are always the sounds of subways, elevated trains, cars, trucks, busses, bridges cracking with the cold, exploding with the heat, swaying with the strains of tons of travel over them.
And people. There are sounds of people, ten-thousands of them, everywhere all the time and without exception. Buildings pulse with the life within them, elevators climb up and down like hearts pumping in some sixty story life form.
A west-blowing breeze dampens us with a 4:52AM, Sunday morning slickness. It rises like a dragon’s mane on the mists coming in from the East River as we walk down Peter Cooper Road. The sunrise is glorious. The city almost smells sweet and clean, smells I’ve never noticed before.
A Federal Express truck stops in front of us. “You Ben Matthews?” the driver asks me.
“Yes.”
“Sign this, please?”
“What is it?”
“I just deliver ’em, friend.”
I want to ask, “You guys normally deliver this early? On a Sunday, no less?”
It’s a letter from the Indiana Church of the Triple Saviors. “We’re being asked to go to Indiana to teach them how to pray.”
Jenreel frowns. “Pray?”
“Yes, to a god or gods, maybe. You know, to ask for something from some being greater than yourself.”
Cetaf look from Jenreel to the letter to me. “We can’t teach what we don’t know how to do.”
Jenreel joins Cetaf’s perusal of the letter. “The truest way to discover your own ignorance is to teach it to others.”
Frog Lips joins our inspection. “Only those who don’t realize their own ignorance attempt to teach what they themselves don’t know.”
“They’ve offered to pay. Pay for the trip, pay for our lodging, even says they’ll put something in our pockets.” What I really want to know is when did they learn to read? But I don’t ask because the answer will be obvious and I’ll feel like an idiot for asking.
Jenreel taps his robe. “We don’t have any pockets.”
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