“Jesus,” I asked him frankly, “what’s life after death?”
Jesus scratched his beard. “Well, why don’t you fetch a couple more of those cold ones and we discuss this outside?”
“Good idea.” I hurried to the fridge and grabbed a six-pack of the green cans. Jesus was already at the door, all jolly with a foldable parasol underneath his armpit. We crossed the road and sat on the tall grass in the park.
“You see,” he said, gurgling his lot, “life is like a box of nails.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. When you buy one, you get what—fifty, sixty nails a box?”
“I guess.”
“Right,” he said.
“What’s the point, Lord?”
“I’m not sure,” said Jesus, “dots only connect lines, or was it the other way around? Tell me something”—he paused as two girls jogged by—“does it really matter what’s after death?”
“Well, it would make this life easier.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know,” I faltered, “maybe by not being afraid of death, or maybe by adding a sense of significance.”
“You feel insignificant?”
I nodded and looked down to my Nike’s. Jesus was wearing sandals, of course.
“Let me tell you a story about significance. It’s about an old chap, Noah, and a wooden ark,” he began.
“Jesus, I heard that one already.”
“Oh.” He finished his Heineken and popped-open another one, quickly sucking the foam that spewed. “What about the story of the temple of Solomon?” He asked, wiping beer off his beard.
“You mean the cedar story, the wood transport from Lebanon.”
“Have I told that one as well?”
“My Lord, don’t you know any stories rather than ones about carpentry or woodwork?”
Jesus pouted and wagged his arms in indignation.
“I’m just frustrated having you here with me and not getting any answers.”
A tiny chirping bird skipped next to Jesus.
“Maybe cause you’re asking the wrong questions…” he said while following the bird’s flight up to the trees and beyond.
“Okay.” I straightened up. “What’s God like?”
“That’s easy. Godlike.” He giggled.
“You see. You’re just making fun of me.”
“Take it easy, man, life is not a quest for meaning. Why don’t you ask what comes before life instead of after death?”
I considered this as a dog and his man swooshed across from us.
Jesus burped and aaahhhed. “Take this man. His dog leads him. He has no control.”
“Yes, so?”
“So, so, so…have you ever heard of Pinocchio?”
I smirked.
Jesus went on, “Exactly. Existence before life. But when he was still all woods and screws, was he not a fairly cheerful lad?”
“Don’t know, I thought his dream was to become a real boy.”
“Right, but the story stops exactly when that happens, just when the real hardship begins. There is only one truth about that story.”
“That is?”
“That wood is the sine qua non of life.”
We both paused to comprehend the meaning of what he had just said.
“And vice versa,” he added.
We laughed. The afternoon breezed away in a meaningful consumption of fine Heineken and shoddy ideology, and when it turned too chilly to stay outside, we went back to my flat, sat down with a bag of paprika potato chips and opened a discounted bottle of Merlot, and just before he left, Jesus, beaming affectionately, asked if I mind that he kept the cork. “I’m building a cork canoe,” he explained as he closed the entrance door gently behind him.