Sue Monk Kidd has written a fiction (note: fiction) story on Jesus’ supposed wife, Ana.  As Sue says, “I thought if Jesus’ wife ever existed, she’d be the most silenced  woman in Western history.”  Baloney!

If Jesus’ wife ever existed, we’d have no Jesus.  He’d have deferred to her so much, to keep her self-image intact, that his followers would have been lost, allowed to go their merry, fateful ways.  After all, she’d be number one on his to-do list.  You want to keep your dependents happy.  We’re all precious in the sight of God, and Christian tradition teaches that Christ, in a mysterious way, was God.

I want to commend Sue on her four-year effort.  Such utilization of the imagination does not come easy.  Hopefully it will give us a new insight into the Mystery that was Jesus.

The lesson of this fairy tale is often lost – that the less appreciated among us are often the most valuable.  Who would have thought that my little brother, who only played amateur league basketball in high school, would someday play as  first string center for Boston College at Madison Square Garden?  He was later sidelined by a retina problem.  Did that stop him?  No, he went on to become the first Ph.D. in our family.

There was some providence in there.  I had wanted to go to Boston College, and that’s how seeds are sown.  He was in the right place at the right time.  Say no more about providence; the Lord had things sewed up for higher education.

We don’t believe there is a wonderful ending waiting for us; we don’t see it because of life’s problems.  But my youngest brother never blinked.  He just went ahead with full confidence, and though life threw him some curve balls later in times at bat, the history stands.

They taught us to turn to the Lord.  I’m writing about the nuns of my elementary education.  Let’s see what the universal judge did when a petition was laid at his feet.  My little brother, Rudy, was bullied in elementary school.  My mother decided to take matters into her own hands and requested to see the nun in charge of the class, to let her speak to the oppressing boy.

The nun demurred, not wanting to let the boy confront an adult, but finally my mother prevailed.  She spoke to the lad about what he was doing, and then pulled out a bag of candy bars (Swiss chocolate?) and thrust them into his hands.  The stomach is close to the heart, and similar actions had succeeded with my mother on our train trip through occupied France to Lisbon.

The little bully didn’t realize what good fortune had befallen him, because in later years Rudy grew up to be a 6’8” mountain (he had been taught to forgive by the same nun) and was recruited by the Boston College basketball coach to be his first string center to control the key to the opposing court.  Talk about the ways of the Lord.

They are two unlikely partners, one from a family of ten Italian children in the Bronx, the other from the gardens of the watch manufacturer Alfred Kurth in Switzerland. The first fought in World War II, the second was just born eight years too late to have fought in it, though he was present in part of it. They became partners as teachers in the Levittown school district.

Does fate have anything to do with it? If you believe in fate, you are close to the mark, but you’ve missed the bullseye. For some reason the maker of this universe arranges things, in what we call providence, so that opposites come together, the better to understand the limits of human experience, human feelings. The veteran above had to round up rioting refugees with a fixed bayonet, and the second, as a school teacher, had to face a student who wanted to make racial mayhem out of his class. With different backgrounds they won, they showed an example of what God makes of mere humans.

And now they find common ground, as in their old age they bond with what is surely the reward of old age–brotherhood. You want to know what brotherhood is? Find these two men, both of them still in the octogenerian-nonogenarian category, and see how they get along.

I believe prayers are answered, one way or the other. In grammar school I developed a crush on a particular girl in my class, and I prayed that she’d like me. Well, my prayer was answered and I think I won her affection. We went to the same high school, and came prom time, I asked her to go with me. She turned me down, two years in a row.

I thought my prayer had been answered, back in grammar school. What was this? As an adult, I saw the Lord had been watching out for her too, not just me. And for me, it was a wise outcome, too. We pray, “Thy kingdom come,” and that includes all of us. It was a wise outcome for my fervent prayer.

We just don’t see it all. We have finite consciousness, and are limited in our knowledge. Even a wiser mentor makes sure we don’t always get our way.