Memories: Gethsemane Underground

Written By: F. John Surells

His spirit still walks amongst the olive trees here. His body is gone, but his challenge to join him and his father lives on.
W used to hide whiskey bottles by the river. Sometimes when he and T argued about how best to live out their remaining days on Earth, he’d sneak down there and imbibe.
My thoughts herein may be confused and random, but at least they’re authentic. And today I think I’ve finally learned what Joseph Same meant when he said “I can feel the cold bitter winds of Eden blowing from out its eastern gate.”
And today, like him, I’ve also been expelled from a biblical garden. The angel of literature appeared here this day and said “In honor of the celebration of his birth, we’re going to ask that for three minutes now only those mortals who’ve never sinned would remain in the garden. Would all those who’ve, during their lifetimes been tainted by Lucifer’s devices, please exit the garden now, and return again, if such is their wish, after those three minutes have expired.” The garden then became completely emptied of humans.
And upon exiting the garden, I and the others who’d left with me heard a prophet postulating on a pedestal. His words were: “Unleash the corporate and corporeal bodies. Let the freedom bird fly uninhibited through liberty’s skyline.”
“I’ve got a feeling that this time the movers who control the chess board aren’t playing games anymore. What’s that pounding sound behind us? Whose flag waves before us? Oh, it’s a cloth of words: ‘Save the republic! It belongs in-house, not out-landerish.’”
And then it seemed that some sort of fog lifted from my recognition. And then I realized that in regard to actual deeds performed or accomplished, one’s physical location may not always be as important as one’s mental state. And I understood then that sometimes we might gladly book passage on a magic carpet ride, simply to once more see a smile on the face of someone known to possess keys to the kingdom.
X ran off the road late one evening as he was driving home. His windshield had fogged up, and he turned the steering wheel too quickly. His car needed to be pulled from the ditch with the aid of a farm vehicle, and FJ was extremely angry.
No one, I’m thinking, can reach backward or forward on the clock hands and change what has been, or alter what will be. Yet, we’ve learned that there are mind riders who, within their own comprehensions, have come to believe realities of deeds which sometimes weren’t, aren’t, and/or someday won’t be in actual correspondence with what verifiably was, is, or may still be. Nevertheless, no one can stop the mind riders. Their scopes of possibilities of fact are limited only by their own possibilities of imagination.
And on one of their transports of focus, I’ve today ridden back to a famous garden. And I’ve been allowed entrance. But then I’ve been asked to leave, apparently for a remembrance of next month’s great holiday. And so, I’m standing here on the outside now. And I’m very fearful now. And yet, though I never asked to, or had any desire to journey here, today perhaps I’ll meet the man who actually is one part of a trinity which, I believe masters all of time; and that means not only the way in which it passes, but also all that it’s ever wrought, or will yet grant.
And there’s supposedly a convention (or gathering) of “the people of the underground” occurring here today. And the “goings on” of those people at that gathering will, I guess, constitute the majority of “underground memories” I’m to disclose in this piece. And, as is often the case with matters of concern to our city and its enigmatic population, our mayor, Ralph Hawk, has once again decided to make certain aspects or memories from this rendezvous known to the public at large.
Thus, as I said, I’m standing outside the gate. And now, suddenly, in violation of what we’d normally consider a normal passage of time, night has fallen. And just inside the gate now, I can see that his friends, whom the Master brought with him to pray tonight, have fallen asleep. And I guess they’re sleeping in an innocence of unknowing, or perhaps in an innocence of an inability to know.
No, they don’t know how their friend prays in wretchedness now. And they don’t know what lies ahead for him. Nor do they know what, in a few hundred years, will befall the empire that rules them now. They can’t comprehend that foreigners from outside a domain can destroy that domain simply through infusion, without ever acting militarily.
But the Master approaches now. He sees his friends asleep, and with words that awaken them he says “Your spirit is willing, but your flesh is weak. Couldn’t you have watched with me here for one hour?”
And then seeing me standing outside the gate he said “John, I know my father has sent you here from your existence two thousand years hence. I hope you know that symbolically you and all God’s children were with my disciples and I earlier this evening as we consummated one last supper together. Go back now to pages of memories that occurred much closer to your allotted time on this planet. Relive now some glimpses of the future, or the past, depending upon your interpretation of my father’s book of eternity.”
And then suddenly the Master and his disciples were gone from my sight, as were all others whom I’d previously seen both inside and outside the gate; and I found myself riding (apparently in someone else’s stead) once again in that car on those icy roads. M loses control, slides off the pavement, enters the ditch, and hits an electrical pole. Much of the front of the car is severely dented inward, but FS tries to comfort M. And he tells another passenger from the car, whose identity is meaningless today, to walk away and summon FJ, who in anger then drives along with the unknown person to the scene of the accident. And as soon as FJ opens his car door upon reaching the sight, he’s stopped from unleashing the tirade he’d expected to pronounce. FS immediately confronts him, tells him to keep his mouth shut, and do what is necessary to extract the car from the ditch and the pole.
W was standing by a bridge which permitted the crossing of a small river. And W was angry that day. And he was drunk. And he was complaining to FS that although he had plenty of money, he couldn’t do anything with his life anymore. “I’ve got money to burn” he said. “But what good does it do me? All I can do is sit in that house all day long. T won’t let me do anything. And it looks like all she’s living for now is her expectation of her and my deaths.”
And W took a ten dollar bill from his wallet then and lit it on fire. But FS grabbed it out of W’s hand, and before it would have become worthless, put its fire out; and, with the blessing of W, gave it then to an unidentified person who also happened to be there at the time.
In preparation to attend a convention of so-called undergrounders, wouldn’t one’s greatest goal be to at least attempt to learn and understand the mindset of such people? I thought so. And in my endeavor to do so, I was very strangely aided. As I looked about at the people entering the garden that day, I actually recognized an elderly gentleman from our city! It seemed obvious to me that this chance meeting must have been orchestrated by some otherworldly force. Nonetheless, I called out to the man “Hey, I recognize you as being from my city! Why are you here, waiting to enter Gethsemane?”
“I’ve lived my entire life in our city” he said. “I was born and raised there, on the south side. And I graduated from elementary and secondary schools there; and then worked there for forty some years in the factory owned by Mr. Havess. And nowadays, of course we know what’s become of our city. While many still work for a living at the factory, there’s now a whole new bunch of people in our town – artistic types – or whatever they call themselves. And the funniest thing about it is that their leader, a guy named Hawk, actually works full time at the factory, even though he’s now been elected mayor of our city as well.”
“Oh yes, I know Ralph very well thank you” I replied. “But what’s our greatest problem as you see it?”
“To me, our greatest problem is a national rather than a local one” he said. “I’m getting so sick and tired of the constant criticism people such as myself are receiving from this nation’s liberal politicians and media. People like myself worked many years to support ourselves in this nation, and now that we have a chance to perhaps enjoy our elder years, all we hear about is that during our lifetimes we didn’t care enough about lazy people who didn’t want to work. And now we’re also being chastised because we’re trying to stop people from entering our nation illegally.”
“And some of the things you see on television, or hear in the news nowadays are just plain shameful – like what happened in those Supreme Court hearings recently. And now we have people who publically encourage Americans to commit acts of violence against government officials.” But then suddenly my discourse with this gentleman ended, and I found myself seated in a church pew, attending an evening Maundy Thursday worship service. And the officiant was speaking about the Lord’s anguish at Gethsemane, when suddenly a significant noise was heard by the congregation. FS, who had a drinking problem, had been more or less forced to attend church that evening, even though he’d been drinking during the day. (He always drank on the five weekdays, but on the two weekend days he wouldn’t touch a drop)
“My wife made me go to church that night” he’d later say. “I was alright for about the first half of the service, but then my head started to swirl, and I knew I had to get up and leave. On my way out, I fell down in the aisle between the two sections of church pews, and my fall made a large noise. But FJ then came to my aid, and helped me get out of the church. And boy was he mad at me! He said I’d embarrassed our family, which I guess I’d done. But RS shouldn’t have forced me to go to church that evening in the first place.”