(I hope,
@Wragg forgives my naughty self-wrought epilogue)
(but of course, the theological implications of this story are immense, which inspired me)
The same day, in the afternoon.
Heaven, the boardroom.
Crisis meeting.
Are present : God the Father (aka ‘Big Dad’, ‘GDF’) and the Holy Spirit.
God the Father : “Admit it! Our salvation plan is screwed up!”
Holy Spirit : “I reckon, it is!”
God the Father : “Whatever you reckon, why could it go wrong!? What happened!? How could that idiot JC get himself acquitted!?”
Holy Spirit : “Don’t know, boss! You are the one here who is the Almighty!”
God the Father : “Hang on, Spirit! Don’t call me ‘Almighty’ or ‘boss’, after things got fucked up! We are one Holy Trinity here, and our decisions are taken as a collegial council! As was our ‘salvation plan’, that now lays in shambles! Just tell me!? What do you suggest we do now?”
Holy Spirit : “Have patience, wait for another year, Big Dad! Let JC do another disturbing stunt, just before Passover, and then we have another opportunity! Little chance they will spare a recidivist! What’s a year in the vastness of infinity, after all!?”
God the Father : “Forget it! You know well, that JC has celebrated his acquittal by a night long of sex with Mary Magdalen!”
Holy Spirit : “Oh, yes, I even got surprised what a little pervert he is! Not to mention her!”
God the Father : “Right! Mary Magdalen does not know yet, but I know, and hence, you know too, that JC has hit the bull’s eye, and that she is pregnant now! The next Passover, our JC will be a caring father and husband, who will have started a successful crucifixion wood and equipment business! That they will have many more children and live long and happy together, even surviving the emperor Nero!”
Holy Spirit : “That butcher of Christian martyrs?”
God the Father : “He will have no single Christian martyr to butcher, and he will be remembered as one of the greatest and finest monarchs in history!”
Holy Spirit : “Oh shit! Maybe, while DC is playing dear hubby, down there, we could consult Saint-Peter!”
God the Father : “Don’t be ridiculous, Spirit! There is not yet a Saint-Peter, and in the given circumstances, there will never be a Saint Peter around here!”
Holy Spirit : “The Council of Angels, then!?”
God the Father : “In good times, I shall inform them, but since they always come up with drastic solutions, like a flood, or seven plagues, or eradicating cities, and afterwards I am stuck with the rebuilding and reconciliation!? No! No advice from them, Spirit! I will explain them all, but first, I need some answers on a few enigmatic facts in that story!”
Holy Spirit : “What is bothering you!?”
God the Father : “Don’t you see!? That Ruth woman!”
Holy Spirit : “What’s about her?”
God the Father : “The coincidence! At the end, Ruth turns out to be the ghost of a woman that got once crucified! Now listen! Coincidentally, the same Ruth was also the wife of Alice’s employer! Was that employer married to a ghost? And what about that crucifixion of her? What do we know about it? And doesn’t that employer wonder where his wife is now!?”
Holy Spirit : “That wife Ruth is still at home, alive and kicking! Her husband has noticed nothing special!”
God the Father : “But no, she is…”
Holy Spirit : “Alice’s ghost is with Alice an Nathan somewhere in… call it heaven too!”
God the Father : “Are they here!? Get them here immediately! I want an explanation from that Ruth woman!”
Holy Spirit : “Impossible…”
God the Father : “Nothing is impossible for me, the Almighty! Check if they have already booked at the registration desk! I want that Ruth here and now!”
Holy Spirit : “That heaven where they are, Big Dad, … is not our heaven…”
God the Father : “What do you mean, Spirit!? There is only one heaven in the universe, and that’s ours!”
Holy Spirit : “Well, you know,… it’s a bit more complicated than that!”
God the Father : “But Ruth’s crucifixion! What do we know about that!?”
Holy Spirit : “Hmm. Little! The Romans are a bit sloppy with their crucifixion administration.”
God the Father : “But there are not that much women that get crucified?”
Holy Spirit : “I found only one confirmed case in Jerusalem, the last years. Some woman called Barbaria, a daughter of a man named Ben-Mor. She was condemned to crucifixion for having dropped a few roof tiles from a building on a centurion’s head. Although she claimed to be innocent, and stated that the loose tiles were a result from bad work by a mason named Tree – strange name for a Judean, so no judge believed her! But Barbaria didn’t look like Ruth. But maybe, her spirit has taken Ruth’s shape, to get Alice comforted by someone she allegedly knew!”
God the Father : “But still! There is a direct line from the Ruth, wife of the employer, and the Ruth that attended Alice’s crucifixion. All the time Alice was alive, Ruth was not in her home, but at Alice’s cross! But now Ruth is back home and also in heaven! Explain that, Spirit!?”
Holy Spirit : “Ever heard of ‘Schrödinger’s Cat’!?”
God the Father : “Whose cat? What has a cat to do with it!?”
Holy Spirit : “Schrödinger’s Cat! Bell’s Theorem! Everett’s many-worlds interpretation!”
God the Father : “Does tell me anything! Stuff to be invented yet, I presume!?”
Holy Spirit : “The two-split experiment!?”
God the Father : “Oh! Yes! Now I remember! Oooh! You know, I hate that smart-guy attitude you sometimes display, Spirit!”
Holy Spirit : “I am called ‘Spirit’, ‘Holy Spirit’, to be exactly, for a good reason!”
God the Father : “All that particles and waves crap! Who ever invented that!?”
Holy Spirit : “The Almighty Creator of the Universe, aka Big Dad! You!”
God the Father : “All right! All right! I had to start with something, the morning of that first day! I needed some improvisation to get things working! I thought it would be of no further significance. But let’s go back to our current issue. Because, besides that Ruth coincidence, there is another disturbing element! That legionnaire that trespassed into Alice’s home, with the intention to rape her!”
Holy Spirit : “What about him!?”
God the Father : “Coincidentally, she had a knife, coincidentally, she had the reflex to stab him, and coincidentally all this happened just before Passover, just before our salvation plan would reach its dramatic apogee, the event we had all planned it for. Alice killed that legionnaire just in time to upset the otherwise so reasonably judging Pilate and to ruin JC’s trial and planned conviction. Coincidentally it all happened in the house of a woman whose employer’s wife turned out to be a ghost who would accompany her to a heaven that is not under my authority! That intrusion by that legionnaire, that killing, that ghost! It seems to have been planned meticulously, to sabotage our plan!”
Holy Spirit : “The devil did that, of course!”
God the Father : “No, Spirit! That’s not the devil’s modus operandi! The devil does not work so meticulous and sophisticated, that no one - but me of course – will notice the coincidences! There is no smell of Sulphur in this case, but a smell of incense!”
Holy Spirit : “Incense!? What do you mean, Big Dad?”
God the Father : “Spirit! I believe we have a mole in our organization!”
Holy Spirit : “Big Dad! That’s ridiculous! If even you becomes a conspiracy thinker, then the world is doomed, for sure!”
God the Father : “No, no! I am convinced that explains it all!
Holy Spirit : “But who!?”
God the Father : “Maybe it’s you!”
Holy Spirit : “Me, Big Dad!? Beg your pardon!?”
God the Father : “Yes, you, Spirit! I sometimes wonder what spiritual nonsense you whisper into people’s ears, behind my back!”
Holy Spirit : “Why don’t you suspect JC to have arranged it all!? The outcome is very convenient for him! Lovely wife, beautiful kids, a wealthy business and a guaranteed return for his soul in heaven! Much more agreeable than suffering a crucifixion!”
God the Father : “You have a point! We’ll wait until he is back, but then we shall investigate the matter in depth! Keep me informed if you learn something about it!”
Holy Spirit : “All right!”
God the Father : “Good! I count on it! Time for my daily golf now! Too bad you are a dove and unable to swing a club! You miss all the fun of it! Bye!”
GDF leaves the boardroom.
Holy Spirit (annoyed) : “Collegial council! Collegial council! Always as long as he gets the last word! I hope someday, he will see the futility of becoming a world religion, and stop pressing on it, by Jupiter!”
