EDITORS NOTES: - Weebly



Ana Markovic

By David Murdoch

Dedicated to the Archdiocese of Kingston

I: Ana Markovic

They found her in a city park, just camped out underneath a tree near a street-corner. She was passed out. It was several hours before sunrise in the morning, when a pedestrian walking by saw her and recognized the homeless woman who was always somewhere in that area. She could usually be found somewhere in this area with a toque in her palms in supplication for whatever scraps of change the bystanders were willing to throw away for her. The pedestrian came up to her as she lay motionless, checked her pulse and then called 911. At least that is the story that was given to the doctor at the hospital.

Very little was known about her. She seemed to have an accent, which probably meant she was a foreigner. She wore a crucifix on her neck, but it was unknown if she belonged to any congregation. People had seen her pop into churches on occasion, but not regularly, and not regularly at any particular one. No one knew where she came from, what she did, what she liked or disliked, or even her very name. She was just a meaningless human being who fit the panorama of day-to-day life in that area. People were always too polite to try to say anything beyond a hello, if they said anything at all, or give her some change, if they even gave change. She was homeless and for most people that meant you do not even make eye contact.

When she began to regain consciousness the doctor was summoned. She blinked her sore eyes and took notice of a short brown-skinned man wearing a white coat with a clipboard in his hands. “Hello, how are you feeling?” he asked.

She blinked again, as she began to understand where she was and what was going on. “I feel like death,” she answered, “I mean, I feel really sick.”

The doctor wrote notes on his board, and continued, “You’ve had too much to drink… I think you must know that part. It was life-threatening when you came in but that’s passed now, so you don’t need be worried about that, although I hope that I may be able to keep you in bed here for at least a little bit of time until you’re feeling better and so that we can keep a watch in case anything happens.”

The nurse tapped the doctor and said something out of the patient’s hearing then turned to the patient and asked, “Do you have a health card?” The woman in bed slowly shook her head. The nurse continued, “Ok, we’re going to need to know some personal information about you, first could you tell me your name?”

The woman replied in her accented voice, “Annie.”

The nurse interjected, “First name and last name please, and if you have any middle names those too please.”

Annie blinked again and said slowly, “Ana Dragana Markovic.”

“Is that your maiden name?” the nurse asked.

“No...Djurkic was my father’s name,” she said.

The nurse then asked for the spelling, and Annie gave it. “And where were you born Ms. Markovic?” the nurse asked.

“Yugoslavia,”

“Birth date?”

“April 10, 1977,”

“And when did you come to Canada Ms. Markovic?”

“July 21 2000,”

“Ok we will need that for our records, also do you have any relatives, friends or family, anyone we could contact?”

“I have relatives and family, but no, no one you may contact,”

“Ok, thank you Ms. Markovic,” the nurse finished.

This was how it had always been for Annie. The whole of her existence was like this. Almost every person she ever talked to, she only did so in short polite exchanges, either hello or in this case some professional inquiry of details. None of it ever had anything to do with her as a real person it had been simply a matter of procedure, formality or record-keeping. Rarely had anything deeper than this ever developed between her and any other human being under the sun. It is quite sad, but she had come to cope with it. As much as she wanted people to give her change, in her heart the charity she really needed was that which came from a friend. A greater kindness would have been the offer of a smile rather than a coin in her outstretched hand, but that simply never occurred.

The hospital staff worked through the difficulties involved with Annie’s lack of ID. She apparently had citizenship, and therefore was eligible for OHIP. The staff mostly left her alone except for the occasional periodic visits during the day. The bystander who had phoned for the ambulance had not known her either. He had simply worried, quite rightfully, on behalf of a fellow human being whose welfare no one was apparently aware of or concerned with other than God.

The life of Ana Dragana Markovic is a sad story. She had grown up at the end of the communist era, and witnessed the dismemberment of her country during her teens. Not long after she was married, war broke out in her native Kosovo. Her husband’s house was burned, and the young couple came to Canada as refugees. She had one child, a boy named Luka born in Toronto. Being uprooted from her homeland, the memory of the war, and the forced change of habitat had had an unfortunate effect on Annie.

She found herself very unhappy and therefore felt the need to make it better. She should have known better than to take up alcohol as a means to make things better. It did not do this of course; gasoline, while wet, is not the most effective means of dousing a fire. At first it seemed to take her mind off the world, but then the spiral began to deepen once the true monster of addiction began to sink its fangs into its unfortunate victim.

Her husband tried to stay faithful, but eventually he simply could not tolerate it any longer. In an argument he demanded that she seek some professional help. He claimed little Luka did not deserve to be exposed to this kind of behaviour at his tender age. She told him that she could quit at any time, and that he was exaggerating things. He insisted again, pointing to a black eye on Luka’s face, something she could not recollect having done, but which caused her heart to sink into a dark place that came to bind her soul to the depths of despair. She didn’t understand how she could have done it, but yet it was true, and that fact greatly haunted her. She exaggerated how bad she was in her own mind and compared herself to a child molester or a kidnapper. After this experience she began to think of herself as a monster and she would not depart from this thought for a very long time. She ran away. She didn’t make any plans to runaway, but she simply got some of her belongings, walked away and did not come back. A wiser person may have made some plan to go somewhere safe or to secretly find a job in another place before the source of income was severed. She wasn’t a wiser person though, and she simply left the house without any plan at all. When the first night came for her to sleep, she had no idea what to do, as she had never slept on the streets before. She considered going back, but she was kept by the thought of her being a monster, which was still powerful in her head and only became stronger over time. She found a comfortable place in a city park, far enough away from the area where she lived such no one would immediately think to find her there and took rest.

She didn’t know if her husband was looking for her or not. She assumed that he would be, and this caused her only to think of herself as a monster even more when she considered how terrible she was being to him by leaving him like that. It was not logical how she tortured herself; for she considered herself to be a monster who couldn’t stay around her child and that she was also a monster for abandoning her family. Instead of thinking rationally however, she instead chose to answer this problem by drugging herself with alcohol that she purchased with whatever money she had left. This in turn only caused her life to get worse, and she came to see herself as a monster even more because of it. She spiralled downward without limit into an abyss of despair and would not return from it until it had consumed her.

Her husband tried to follow her, but gave up when it proved unsuccessful, got a divorce and re-married. He really didn’t want to loose her, but he couldn’t raise a child on his own and he also felt he needed a wife for the purpose of looking after him. He moved elsewhere in Canada when an important job opportunity arose for him. She knew nothing of any of this, except when one day she decided to walk through the area where they lived. She did it during the day when he wouldn’t see her. She saw a new car in the driveway with an Irish flag on its rear end, and she made the logical assumption that he no longer lived there.

It only got worse. Her husband really did love her, and Luka wanted his mommy back. His dad only did his best to re-assure him that it was not his fault that his mom was going through something that was simply beyond their power to control.

Annie thought about what she had done, and her despair only deepened, and therefore her drinking became worse. But she could no longer afford the alcohol, and not possessing skills or a trade of her own, became part of the panorama of Toronto’s street people.

How did this happen to her? In just a decade she had gone from a normal or at least contented Serbian woman, to having lost everything. Her house, her homeland, her family, her child, her livelihood, her soul…

She was certainly no Job. She had done this herself it was her fault and she knew it.

That was when the loneliness began. She had never before spent such long periods of time without significant conversation or contact with another person. She tried to take advantage of the city’s welfare services where available, or at least where she was aware of them to be available. It was in her interaction with others like herself at those places that she was given the English nickname ‘Annie’.

Her interaction with others lessened and that gave her more time to rethink the misery of her existence and the despair gnawing at her soul.

“This is all my fault,” she kept repeating to herself. She would swear at herself and call herself names, putting herself down for who she was and what she had done. Her despair gave fruit to hatred as she could not stand the thought of herself. What a miserable and detestable creature she thought herself to be! She reasoned that other people were not as bad as she. They would be much better in a situation such as this they would not have made the same poor choices. She was just a terrible and horrible person. The more she thought this, the more she believed it and the sadder she became.

Toronto is a very polite city. This has advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are that Toronto is not like, New York for instance, in the sense that people need not fear being potentially run over by the taxi at every downtown street corner nor do they have to put up with too much of the kinds of such shenanigans as a stranger’s one fingered salute in a traffic jam. The disadvantages are that the city can have a spirit which suffocates the soul. The infamous ‘Toronto stare’ employed by most of its denizens typically involves no form of any eye-contact with any other person, except accidentally. There is a spirit of general detachment of human beings from each other. Torontonians act as if they do not really matter to each other so it is difficult if not impossible to share any degree of meaning with strangers who are politely treated with silence.

The city has a multicultural atmosphere that comprises peoples and nations from across the globe resulting in much life, both commercial and cultural, within the city. What is lacking is the matter or the meaning. It is like living in a house of mirrors; wherever one looks there can be found a reflection of every aspect of our world but none of it possesses any depth. It confuses the brain by presenting only images of things lacking in any real substance. The world is brought together in one city, but it is not a family really. It is rather simply, fellow world citizens politely respecting each other’s space.

This can take a toll psychologically, especially for those who are deprived of much social interaction such as Annie. Companionship is for many (if not most or even all) people a necessity in order for them to continue in their day-to-day existence. Being a need, its deprivation can therefore be considered a kind of starvation. It is the soul and the mind, not the body, which is undergoing this starvation. That is perhaps the cruellest aspect of it.

The fact that Annie was not simply experiencing this, but experiencing it within her own depths of despair only made matters worse. People in similar situations have committed suicide. She had had thoughts about this, but she was not inclined to follow them. The reason may strike us as somewhat bizarre, but truth be told, human beings are often bizarre.

It had to do with the crucifix that she kept with her. Although she had little doubt that she was far from living up to the name of a true disciple, and she had never really been a religious person other than being baptized, attending Divine liturgy in her younger years and experiencing the influence of members of her family. She somehow, for some reason, clung on to some hope that there was something there that she could not let go of. Her morality and sense of right and wrong obviously still had Christian elements in her refusal to suicide and other judgments she was making in her life. She simply clung to this hope. It is perhaps even further made strange by the fact that she didn’t actually believe in God. Hence, what could have been there to hold on to? She disbelieved in God, but she still felt like He was there though. Her atheism was peculiar because while she rejected belief in God, she quieted her conscience by assuming that that was what He wanted her to do or by thinking that it was His own fault that He hadn’t proven His existence to her. Human beings do not always need to make sense. Sometimes she did believe in God though. She even entered church on a few occasions.

She wandered to different parts of the city, usually not too far apart from one another. She had certainly not finished with her alcoholism, but was not in a financial position to indulge in it the way she may have wished. She still got drunk, but not when she wanted or how she wanted. She simply did so whenever she had scrounged enough in order to afford it, which did not always coincide at the lowest points of her despair. The utility of alcohol to reduce unhappiness therefore tends to be lost even more.

As time went on the despair simply cooled and hardened in her heart. It was still there and it was still awful. The difference was that it was no longer new, and none of her ugly thoughts came as a surprise any longer.

Sometimes she would sing to herself, songs of her own making or simply tunes that she had heard somewhere that she liked.

She had always hated herself. It was one of those facts of her existence. In her dreams she would remember Luka, her husband, her house and family back home in Serbia. Then she would wake up and weep. Remembering was so painful. ‘How did she do this to herself?’ was what she kept asking without ever receiving an answer. She sometimes thought she needed to find her family again, set everything straight, but the demons in her mind put the spirit of despair and cowardice within her again, and then she would torture herself even more.

She did not believe she really mattered, not to others, and certainly not to herself. She did not have hope. When she considered the pain, she would try to think about something else or perhaps about the possibility of finding another drink. She did not really believe it could end. She hated herself so much, and it was all her fault. It was the never-ending redundant fact of her existence.

No one really ever knew anything about her. All of the facts and truths would never have been known, or even really considered by any of the bystanders who passed her day after day.

She had of course been to the hospital at several points in her life, but she had never been there for this sort of reason before. That is to say, she had never been picked up off the street like this.

She had been on the streets for more than four years by this point. She could have left at anytime, and gone in search of her husband, but she chose not to. There were no chains holding her in place. She was the warden of her own prison and the instrument of her own torture. It is not easy to understand why.

She cared not for herself, and neither did anyone else except God, although she was not aware of Him and did not see Him. Her life was occupied with the incessant boredom and pointlessness of begging for change on street corners from people who did not really notice she existed. It was filled with misery and unending despair. She was constantly occupied with thoughts of her own worthlessness and hatred for herself relieved only by bouts of alcoholism bought with the change she should have been using for other purposes.

People would think to themselves, ‘why don’t you get a job like the rest of us and earn your living?’ And they were right more than they knew, because she could have left at any time and was not occupying her time with anything the least bit productive. She knew it as well, and she used this as an excuse to hate herself even more deeply. If she thought about doing better she became discouraged. Sometimes she thought to herself that even if she did go back and try to make everything better again, that she would only mess up terribly once more. Why bother?

There was no hope for her and she knew it. She believed that she deserved what had happened to her, but that was no reason to change her behaviour as she saw it. She had caused harm to everyone who cared about her and left them for good in order to destroy her own life in a poverty of alcoholic despair, but she did not believe that she needed to change. Human beings often make little sense.

She hated everyone, and was too proud to change. She was too proud to change even though she also thought herself to be incomparable to everyone and to be a miserable creature worthy of all the pain it was suffering. She was still not about to change. She did not matter to anyone, not even to herself. Nothing could change her mind as she plodded her way into destruction. She was the fool who paid no heed to reality as she stepped off the cliff to her doom.

She especially hated Jesus. He was this perfect being who was sitting up there in the clouds (so she thought) judging her and only making her despair worse. She denied He existed, (although sometimes she believed in Him), and most especially she also hated herself. She was not going to change either. It was only endless destruction that got worse as time went on. Why should she change? She hated her life but it was her life to hate.

II – Mick

The nurse seated Annie upright to give her some food. The doctor, named Rahul Mukherjee, wanted to put her on some good nutrition and thought she was up to the task.

Clear memories began to come back to her. That was very strange, clear memories usually do not come back after that sort of thing. She could remember drinking out of a glass bottle of some sort, singing her songs and tunes as the memories and guilt passed out of her consciousness, and she could even clearly remember passing out. That was very strange to remember well, most people would never remember that at all.

“Nurse, why can I clearly remember passing out?” Annie asked while eating.

The nurse raised her eyebrow and said, “I’ve never heard of that. Are you sure you’re not just imagining it?”

“Pretty sure, well, I… I dunno.”

The nurse nodded, “You’re probably simply thinking that you remember it. If you really do remember it though, then you may consider yourself special.” The nurse smiled.

But then something else passed into Annie’s memory. She could actually remember, or that is to say she started having memories of things which happened after she passed out. And this was no small thing she was recalling either.

She saw herself sitting on a street bench around noon. A man sat down next to her. He was of medium stature, with dark hair, a small moustache and a friendly smile. He looked very noble in complexion, like a member of the royal family; he was in fact the noblest creature ever made. He smiled and waved at her. “Hello Annie!” he said.

“Who are you and what do you want?” she answered frightened that he knew her name.

“You can call me Mick if you like and I wanted to talk with you before it’s too late,” he responded.

“What… what do you mean ‘too late’, what’s going on?” she asked.

“Well, my dearest Annie, in case you haven’t noticed you are currently in an alcohol-induced sleep and are not far from death in fact! I would give it three and a half hours before your pulse stops. This is a dream, I’ve slowed time here, and I wanted to talk with you before you… well you understand don’t you… before it’s the end for you.”

Annie blinked and squinted as these memories came back to her in the hospital while she sipped on some orange juice.

“Then are you just a figment of my imagination then?” she asked.

“No, actually, I’m not. You don’t recognize me. I’m a very famous person in fact, and you’ve seen pictures of me before although you wouldn’t have recognized me by them,” he replied.

“No, no, I’m crazy, and my imagination is trying to convince me I’m talking to another person…. Tell me Imagination, what’s it like being an imagination?” she asks.

“I’m not your imagination,” he replied again.

“But that’s exactly what my imagination would say! So is it fun to be my imagination, does it have its kicks or do you find it tedious?” she asked.

“I’m not your imagination, Ana Markovic. I’m a different person from you and I am in your dream because I need to talk to you and give you a very important message,” he said.

Annie finished her meal. The nurse walked in after checking the patient next door and asked her how she felt after eating. Her attention was drawn back into the physical world and she forgot about her interior thoughts for a moment. “Still sick, but not so bad… I think I want to sleep. I’ve… I’ve got a lot in my head… not sure if I can explain.”

“Annie, are you listening to me? This is really important. I told you, you are going to die in a few hours and I have not yet given you my message,” Mick said.

“Prove to me you are not my imagination, if you are who you say you are,” she said, “I’m not convinced that I’m not crazy.”

All of a sudden the two then found themselves back in the church Annie used to go to when she was little. Annie then recognized her family, dressed in their Sunday best clothes, walking in to take their place. There was a little six-year old girl jumping up and down, causing her mother to restrain her, who looked very familiar to Annie. “That’s me!” Annie said, “How does my imagination know what I looked like from the outside?”

“That is my point, I am not your imagination Annie. You are looking at this picture from a perspective you could not have had,” Mick said.

Annie paused and reflected. “Ok, maybe you are not my imagination, maybe you are… I don’t know who you could be. This is really quite strange, quite bizarre… impossible in fact,” Annie said as she considered the evidence.

“Then… who are you, Mr. Famous Person who somehow knew me as a child? And why are in you my head? I don’t understand any of this,” she said.

“I told you, call me Mick. And you have seen my picture before, although it does not look very much like me,” he said and turned her attention upwards to a fresco on the church wall depicting the seven archangels of eastern orthodoxy. There was Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Selaphiel, Jegudiel and Barachiel. Mick pointed at the first angel, “That is supposed to me.”

Annie opens her mouth in disbelief. “You’re… you’re St Archangel Michael? No you can’t be that’s not possible. I don’t believe in God, you don’t exist… why are you here?”

Mick nodded, “Yes, I expected that response. Well believe me or not, I still have a message to deliver, and I tell you that it is a more astonishing and profound message than what you just heard.”

In a still clear voice marked with seriousness he pronounced his words. “Annie. You matter.”

Annie squinted her eyes, trying to figure out what he was saying. This did not seem like such a noteworthy message at all. She was still trying to grapple with things like there really was a God after all. There must be something more to what he was saying, some secret meaning she was not quite grasping. It seemed to her so meaningless what he said.

“Annie, I know you, I know you better than you know yourself, and I have kept an eye on you throughout your troubles. What I tell you is important, please do not disregard it, it is important for your sake. I will repeat it. Annie, you matter,” he said again.

“Wait. Hold on,” she said, as she started speaking and still not paying much attention to his words, “So if you are telling the truth, and there really is a God. How come…”

Mick interrupted her, “You can save those sorts of questions for another opportunity. At the moment there is something more important that needs to be dealt with. Annie, for a third time I say to you, you matter!”

“You do not matter to other people, you do not matter to the bystanders who pass you, you do not matter to your homeland that has forgotten about you, you do not matter to the alcohol you drink, and you do not even matter to yourself. But I tell you Annie, you matter to God. And that is the message I have come here to tell you. It is not His will that you should perish like this in an alcoholic binge of your own making, and He sent me. Yes God the most High sent me to deliver this very message to you Annie. Please listen to it.” Mick finished.

Annie squints, “So I matter… wup-tee-doo, that sounds great… Was that it?”

“Yes that is it, Annie,” he responded.

“So… I don’t understand. What happens next, do you fly away now, and I wake up from my binge?” she asked.

“No, Annie. I can’t do that because I still haven’t successfully gotten my message across to you. And I need to keep here until you actually receive it or you will die in your sins and perish. I have spoken my message but you still have not heard it. When you really hear it, I will fly off, and leave you be. Whether you die in your binge or not, is not up to me, it is up to you.”

Annie appeared to have gone back to sleep, but she was only resting her eyes as these memories came back to her. The nurse came by occasionally to check up on her.

“I hate myself,” she said, but she was unsure why she had said that.

“Yes I know Annie. That is the point,” Mick responded.

“I… I deserve what happened to me. I did this all myself, and the harm I have caused to others, my family, my little boy… why should I not hate myself? Am I not a monster? Why do you want to do something for me?” she asked.

“You are a great sinner. I know, I have seen many. Annie you are a monster, little Luka is forever scarred by what his mother did. You were given a husband who truly loved you, and a child to care for, and you exchanged both for a life of alcoholism and despair. You are a coward, you are a drunkard, you are a liar, you are arrogant, and your very soul rests in a state of hatred and malignity. The murderers who burned your house and shot your neighbours, the adulterers in this city that you hate, any sinner you can name, I tell you the truth, you are worse than them. But Annie, you still have not gotten it,” he said.

Annie gulped as she absorbed the depth of her guilt. She had a much easier time believing what he was saying now than the part about her mattering or that God exists. This was in part because there was nothing he was telling her which she had not already thought. Having another person accuse her was different though. It made it all the bleaker, and she hated her existence even more.

“Do you see me with an angelic sword to strike you down Annie? Do you see me coming to you with wrath in my eyes to deliver punishment upon you? Annie you already know the punishment for your deeds. You live within it! Unless you repent beforehand, you will also die in a few hours and carry on with this existence of yours into the afterlife. What will be different there, is that you will no longer have any alcohol to make it milder,” he said.

“I don’t understand what you mean,” she said.

“I am not here to destroy you Annie. I am here to help you. And I am warning you now because this is your very last chance to turn around and make things right before it is all over. If you do not listen to what I am telling you, you will die in your sins and that will be it,” he said.

She still did not fully comprehend what he was getting at. It had been a long while since she had been a full-time believer and the ideas of sin, repentance, Heaven or Hell were not things that normally occupied her mind. She knew what they were, but they did not immediately click to her in the way he was describing.

“Turn around and make things right? What do you mean ‘die in your sins’, I don’t understand you. I’m sorry it’s been a long time since I’ve been an active church-goer,” she said.

“What I mean,” he continued, “is that you have lived a very destructive sinful life these past few years and you well know what I am speaking of. You confess yourself how deep your guilt is, and it torments you everyday. I’m telling you that there is a way out of this madness of yours but you need to believe in what I’m telling to you or else you will remain in this madness after you die. You will go to a place in which this madness will simply continue forever, and ever, and ever, and it will be very evil there, with no form of goodness present. But I promise if you accept my message, you do not have to be in that place.”

Annie wasn’t cluing in.

“What do you mean by ‘this place’? What are you talking about? I don’t understand what you’re saying,” she said.

“You know what I am talking about, but you are not recognizing what I am speaking about. In a few hours unless you repent, you are going to the fires that were prepared for the devil and his angels, because you have committed great sins and you refuse to change your behaviour. It is a place of eternal torment, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth, and the smoke from the furnace of that place goes up forever and ever,” he said.

Annie finally clued in. It should not have taken her that long, but she was still trying to get over the whole ‘there is a God’, and ‘the Archangel Michael is right here’ sort of thing.

“You mean I’m going to go to hell?” she asked with a hint of fear.

Mick nodded.

Some amount of anguish came over Annie as she saw him nod. She could not accept this. It was too hard to accept. First she had found out there is a God, and if that was not enough she had found out Archangel Michael had come to her, and if that was not enough, she had then found out that she had lived a sinful life and was soon to enter damnation. For most people that would be a bit much for ten minutes, although even if it had been unravelled over months, she would still have had the stumbling block of the whole part about her going to hell.

“But…no this can’t be happening. Where’s my drink? I need to stop thinking about this, I don’t like thinking about this,” she cried.

“You are about to die from alcohol poisoning, and you are in an unconscious state at the moment. If I let you stop thinking now, you will be lost,” he said.

Annie began to become very angry, “Fuck you! I don’t care if you are who you say you are. I’m not going to hell, I’m going to get another drink and I’m going to stop thinking about this,” she retorted.

Mick ignored her insult. The walls of the church melted away, and the two found themselves looking upon a vision of what appeared to be hell. Vast multitudes of souls, like the sands of the sea, were bound in the nether regions, each one with the names of their sins written on their chains as they receive punishment according to what they had done. Mick took Annie’s hand and showed her a vision of herself - a woman with very long and heavy chains because her sins were very great indeed, cursing herself every minute of the day as all she knew was despair. She was not sorry for what she had done, none of them were. If they had been sorry, they would have been forgiven and would not have arrived there. They believed no truth and they had no good works, only pain and misery. They were the eternal dead. Their sin never ends so their destruction and punishment never ends.

Annie peered at herself and saw an incredibly tortured woman, one who was far more tortured than the living Annie. She had only hatred and despair in her soul, there was nothing good left. Only evil remained in her. She uttered curses, moaned, wept, and wailed as her never-ending torture went by each minute.

Mick spoke, “This is not the only form of punishment this woman endures in this place. Although endurance is a poor descriptor for the nature of what occurs here, as that would suggest that people are able to cope with it, but they are not able to do so. If they could it would not be so bad. It is pain they cannot handle, but they nevertheless suffer it and it never ends because those who are punished by it have refused to ever repent of their behaviour.”

Demons came floating through the air and began tormenting her while she was chained up. They tossed scorpions on her skin as they forced her to look at images that caused her torment.

The Annie who was only a visitor, could not see what the images were.

Mick spoke, “She is being tormented by the memory of everything she has done and refused to be forgiven for. It did not have to be like this, but she insisted. An angel came at the hour of her death to deliver her, but she did not listen to him, and would not hearken to the possibility of her being saved from her predicament. There are vast multitudes of persons in this place and they all have one thing in common, not one of them turns to God and asks to be cleansed from the evil they never cease to commit. They will not recognize that they are important to Him, but have turned their back on Him and so He has turned His back on them. He has abandoned them to their own selves for their own eternal destruction. They are outside His care here, and always shall be. They cannot ever leave because they refuse to repent. They are all likewise damned and accursed, and this one woman is counted among them. Like them she refuses to recognize the God who loved her so much that He offered her an alternative to this torment and to be saved, but she refused.”

Mick continued, “Annie this is you. This is what is going to happen to you once this night is finished if you refuse to change.”

Annie trembled at the sight of what she was seeing, “No, I don’t accept that. That’s not going to happen to me.”

“That is good, that is a start,” Mick calmly replied, “So then why are you trying to end up here?”

Annie became very short-tempered again after this question.

“What do you mean, I’m trying to… I’m not trying to go to hell. You’re trying to put me in hell! I don’t accept this… where’s my drink? This is too much,” she said.

“Annie that is a lie. I am not trying to put you in hell, God does not want anyone to go to hell,” Mick responded.

“But I don’t want to go to hell, so it must be you. Assuming you exist, that is,” she said.

“It is not God’s will that anyone should go to hell. But great multitudes of people do not want God’s will and refuse to have Him rule over them. Therefore they are permitted not to have God’s will and therefore they come to this place, which is not God’s will for them and where His will is absent. There is no life here,” Mick said.

Annie became confused, “Hold on, say that again, I didn’t quite get it.”

“God wants you to go to Heaven Annie, to sit at His table. That is what He wants and that is what His will is for you. He is not trying to send you away from Him, you are doing that. He gives you options, choice, the free will to do His will and come to inherit life with Him. But you say I want another drink, I hate myself, I chose to wallow in my own despair, and when the angel comes at the moment of your death giving you one last chance, you curse him to his face. I believe my question still stands. Why are you trying to end up here?” he said in a voice that required respect.

Annie took a deep breath and held her thoughts for a moment, “But I don’t want to end up here.”

Mick responded, “Yes, and that is a good start. Although that has not changed the fact that you are indeed trying to get here, whether you want to or not, you are still walking towards the gates of this place to find your eternal home. Annie, again, why are you doing this?”

Annie tried to think. This had been so much in such a small amount of time. Somehow she was getting through it by some power she did not understand. She looked at Mick, and then tried to ponder what he was saying. “Why am I trying to go here?” she whispered to herself. After some thought she produced an answer. “I don’t think I am trying to go here. I just want another drink and to stop thinking about this.”

“But that is exactly it Annie. Do you not understand? I am referring to the error of your own life and the destruction that it brings. You refuse to change your ways and therefore you shall ever have destruction. God the creator of this universe, who sent His Son as humanity’s Redeemer and into whose kingdom you were baptized so many years ago, sent me, the Archangel, to tell you one very simple message of infinite importance. Annie, you matter,” Mick said.

“You have not much longer to live, and I tell you that unless you repent you are going to exist in this destructive state when you enter the afterlife as well. You do not matter to yourself, I know this, and you do not matter to anyone or anything but you matter to God, and He is not about to sit back and you destroy yourself like this. You hate yourself but God loves you. You are the one that is wrong about whether you should be loved or hated,” Mick finished.

III- Arguments over the soul

At this moment some visitors arrived. Contrary to whatever else Annie thought about herself, she was never actually alone in all her moments of loneliness, although she would not have consciously known the difference.

There were a number of demons who had come to take possession of her mind and heart beginning right from the time when she first started her depression and drinking. Figurative demons of course were there, but there were also literal demons that really were holding influence over her throughout this dark period of her life.

Three of them came to Annie and Mick in the dream. They lived in Annie’s mind, teaching her to curse herself and then turn to drink whenever she could. She cooperated with them unwittingly, as do many people in similar situations.

It might come as a shock to many if they learned how much of their own evil actions and thoughts originated at the suggestion of demons or evil spirits. It would equally surprise many to learn just how many people in this world are unwittingly enslaved to the fallen angels in some form or another. Certainly not just homeless beggars like Annie, but politicians and great men can be equally under the same influence. Not that they usually recognize it for what it is.

Very often it comes in the form of some subtle but unexplained need or fear like people who check their horoscopes every day and find them coming true or people who think they need to perform a particular form of behaviour or a particular action lest something bad happen to them. A common method is simply sexuality - that a person who wants something or needs something will induce a sexual thought or feeling because of a barely conscious consideration that doing so will influence the outcome.

Fear is the primary agent of control. We become scared that something bad will happen unless we do something we would not otherwise do, even though there is no sensible or rational reason for doing so.

People can be the unwitting victims of demons: suicide bombers who ‘hear the voice of God’ telling them to kill people; the woman who finds her cat possesses a true personality; the politician who hears ‘God’ telling him to launch invasions and cause destruction; the person who holds an irrational belief in rationality or an unreasonable faith in reason (without faith that is) as though it would provide for the future; or even the simple, but unfortunately common case of the masturbator who pretends to have sex with a mental image of another person they interact with (thinking that they are alone and they are only imagining the presence of someone else). These people can be the unwitting victims of demons. The demons have power over this world by such influence as well as other means and they are many. Exorcists could speak much more on this subject.

For Annie’s case, however, the demons had free reign over her to a degree that she did not recognize. The three demons took charge of three aspects of her torment. The first demon would start reminding her about her past and everything she had done, influencing her memory so that she saw her past in the worst possible light. The second demon would then whisper to her to despise herself, telling her that she was a worthless and meaningless creature. While the third demon would then place the suggestion into her mind that she should take alcohol and would then just stop thinking about it. It typically followed this pattern, and had gone on like this for years.

Now in her final hours of her life, Annie was standing next to the Archangel, and was meeting her tormentors face to face before she died and joined their kingdom forever.

“Hail thou, Michael. Prince of the Pathetic Host!” said the second of the demons, who was the strongest of the three, “What have you to do with our dear little Annie here? I do not believe she belongs to you and your number.”

Mick was very noble in his character. He was not impressed by their insults, nor did he pay any regard to their arrogance. “Cursed Spirits bound to destruction,” he said, “Depart from here and let her be. She is not yet without any hope and she does not need your evil.”

One of the weaker demons whispered something to the stronger. They were bickering over what to do. The prince was here, and at a moment’s notice he could summon the entire angelic host and put them to flight. They exchanged bitter words, and the opinion of the stronger demon prevailed. They chose to stay and risk it.

“Annie,” said the strongest demon. This voice sounded very familiar to her, she couldn’t explain it, “Why do you listen to this witness? He makes no sense does he? He tells you that you matter but then says you are going to burn in hell! What a wretched liar! If he thought you mattered how could he tell you that you would burn in hell? Listen to reason Annie.”

Annie listened to what he said.

It is really one of the most tragic flaws of humanity. We reject a person who speaks the truth to us because it is true and we do not want it, but we will readily believe a person who speaks lies. In the gospel Jesus spoke the same. He came to speak the truth that they found to be against how they lived and they refused to believe, but the Lord said “if another comes in his own name” and tells them lies they would believe him. It is little wonder this world is what it is.

Mick turned aside to Annie, “Annie, whatever you do, do not listen to what he tells you. He is a liar and he serves the Prince of Liars. He is the voice who tells you to hate yourself and teaches you to despair.”

And all of a sudden Hell grew cold, and they found themselves back on the streets of Toronto. But it looked different, like they are peering into another plane. Annie saw herself once more with a toque in her hand, and a man dropping a few quarters into it. “Thanks,” she said as the man walked by.

Then she saw the three demons seated next to her, one on her right and two on her left. Each one spoke to her in turn, which came out as Annie’s own introspective thoughts. The strong one, in the vision, put his arm on her shoulder and said into her ear in an all-too familiar voice, “Annie you really are pathetic are you not? That man is an important person, probably has a wife and kids, and you are not even worthy of being given a full dollar. Hate yourself Annie.”

Annie in the vision, was sitting on the street alone with herself, as she always was, and thought, “I am really pathetic. That man is important, he probably has a family. And I can’t even get more than these two quarters. I am terrible.”

Annie stood in awe as she looked at herself from this perspective, as any person would. Like a slideshow, the dreaming Annie then saw herself in any variety of places and situations with the same dynamic. She watched as she did what the demons told her to do, training her in the arts of self-destruction.

After some number of examples she then found herself looking at herself having the argument that preceded her running from home. And she saw the three demons standing by her, “Ana you can quit at any time, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” the demons said, and she repeated it to Peter. “You need to run away now, leave all this behind you and it will just go away, we promise,” the demons said, and she had obeyed.

At seeing this, Annie was filled with frustration and anger. She turned to the demons and tried to lunge herself at them in rage, but Mick prudently stopped her, “You would not win that fight. Furthermore they will be punished when the time comes. Do not worry about that, their day is coming. Only, do not believe what they tell you for they are your tormentors and they are liars.”

The demons, seeing their efforts come to no avail, changed tactics. “You know what Mickie?” said one of the weaker ones who had tempted her to take alcohol, “What is she worth really? What is any human being worth? They are such pitiful creatures when you come to consider it. Not even able to go a day without taking liquids, they work like the animals, doing whatever their biology instructs. They are all meaningless bits of flesh. They are born one day and die soon after. Why not just forget about her? I mean Mickie, Michael, you great angel - Ana Markovic? All this over worthless Ana Markovic? Of all the humans on this planet, you would intervene on behalf of drunk-off-her-ass, worthless Ana Markovic? Personally I lose respect for you when you do this… not that I possessed any, but you know what I mean.”

Mick counter-pointed, “As deeply as the loss I feel from such honest souls as yourselves ‘losing respect for me’, I would disagree. You know there are many humans who do good…”

The demons started laughing but the alcohol tempter interrupted, “But not Ana Markovic. Could you even name one good thing, just, one thing that she does right?”

Michael paused and replied, “She said thanks to the person who gave her the quarters.”

“Ok that’s one thing, sure,” he said, “But really, if you tolled up her life soon to be over, she is certainly not the best of the peas in the pod is she? Faithless, despairing creature who exchanges her loved ones for her alcoholism and refusal to accept help. She is proud, unwilling to change, a liar…you great Prince, really, Ana Markovic. I mean, c’mon, why not leave her to her well-deserved fate? Of all the humans you could intervene for, Ana Markovic, c’mon!”

The demon that had yet to speak then put forward his own case. “In China I saw a woman who lied to her husband and had an affair with another man for two years. She told her husband how much she loved him every day, that he was the only person in her life who could ever fulfill her, all the while ditching him to sleep with a younger man. The husband was fooled and the wife knew it. After a while she simply grew too bored with him and decided to leave him altogether but not before she took a significant portion of his possessions with her. The husband followed her and tried to charge her with theft in court. The wife presented a fabricated case that showed the possessions to be her own possessions, and with her lover’s help successfully framed her husband before the court as having broken Chinese law. The husband was locked up, and the two lovers inherited the stolen property. I tell you, what can we say about human beings? Do you notice what they do, how they act? How did Jesus get it into his mind to save these creatures?”

The other weaker demon gave a supporting case. “In Brazil an hour ago, there was a group of children, four boys and one girl. The boys were making fun of the girl because she was a girl. They called her names and told her things in order to hurt her feelings. And they succeeded! ‘Well done lads’, I said. There were tears running down the girl’s face and she despised the way God had made her. The boys just kept going until she finally ran away and was given her scars. Now tell me, why should anyone care a whiff about human beings when they act like this and do these things? Why Jesus wanted to save them, shall remain a mystery to all of us.”

The stronger one put forward his own example. “Those things are nothing to what I can tell you. Do you know what happened this morning in Chad? I saw a military officer with a squad of soldiers come upon a group of children. They put the kids on drugs and sent the children to march over a minefield to clear a path for the army to walk through. The kids could barely understand up from down as they were meandering through the minefield and their flesh was being blown to cinders. The commander watched with binoculars and took notes on the position of the mines. He did not care about the children he had turned in to cannon fodder. Some of the kids were not killed by the mines and lay on the field yelping in pain as the carrion birds and insects began to pick at the corpses around them. The soldiers and the whole unit just stood there and tried to ignore it. I was laughing like a jackal at the kids and found myself deeply impressed by these soldiers. I tell you, human beings are really something. Why Jesus wanted to save them, perhaps we shall never know!”

Then Mick, as usual remaining unperturbed, gave his own example. “Yesterday, in the Ukraine, I saw a mother staying up all night until the morning to look after her sick daughter. The mother is single and has to work two jobs in order to support her children. She goes to church every day and brings her kids with her. She makes sacrifices on their behalf because she loves them, and considers them so important that she puts herself through such menial torture in order to provide for their needs. She makes her prayers every morning and every night. She loves God with all her heart, all her mind, all her soul, and all her strength, and her neighbours as herself. In a few words - she is a saint. Human beings really matter to God and they can indeed be quite holy when they respond to His call. They are of such importance that God sent His only Son so that they might have life!”

At this point Annie, who had come under the demon’s influence once again, interjected, “You know what? The demons are right, we are pathetic creatures. All of us, every last one of us. Some perfect Son of God came to save us, but why? I sometimes think Jesus died on the cross so that He could prove to us how much better He is than us. He is nailed up there on the wood saying, ‘Look at me, I tried to save you and you killed me. Look at how perfect and holy I am and how miserable and terrible you are. Worship me or go to hell!’ ”

The demons clapped their hands in agreement. The stronger one pointed and said, “That a girl Annie! Jesus was an arrogant bastard. Let Him hang on that cross!”

Mick interrupted, “Annie do not say this. That was not what it was like at all. Believe it or not people actually taunted Jesus when He was bleeding to death. Furthermore, Annie, Jesus loves you. He loves you when you hate yourself. I said it before, and I will repeat that on this point you are quite wrong.”

This time one of the demons and not Mick changed the dream, and the scenery changed once more. They found themselves in a village somewhere in Yugoslavia. A group of soldiers in grey uniforms were walking between the houses with machine-guns. It appeared to be the Second World War and a unit of SS occupying Yugoslavia were conducting operations. The demon pointed out a pile of dead bodies in a pit just behind them and narrated, “There was an attack that killed a German officer and the partisan was found to be an inhabitant of this village. So, the next day the army came and shot every tenth person in the village.” He looked to see the reactions. Michael as usual was not impressed, but Annie who knew such stories from her grandparents took more interest.

Annie could remember the war in Kosovo. There had been long running tensions between the ethnic Albanians and the Serbs in the province for years, especially in the 90s when the country was breaking up and the Albanian majority started calling very loudly for the independence of the province. People she had grown up with all her life became each other’s enemies in what felt like a brief moment as rival political leaders of different factions made their calls and accusations. Conspiracy theories were everywhere, and unfortunately had much support from the authorities.

At first the fighting was mostly confined to rural areas and small villages, and did not have too much impact on where Annie was. Annie hated the military, as well as politics. She had to live with it though. She thought the world would be made such a better place if they just got rid of all the politics, but that was not going to change anytime soon. Some of her relatives had sharp opinions about the ethnic Albanian Muslims. She hated all of it. It was just stupid to her. These people had grown up with each other their whole lives and then a politician tells them they are enemies and they follow suit. The world was absurd.

Much of the western world far removed from the conflict, came to watch on their television screens, the atrocities that the Serbian military and paramilitary units were committing against the people in the province. Then Bill Clinton and the NATO alliance swept in for the rescue with three months of air strikes that bombed Milosevic into accepting an agreement on the province. Milosevic broadcasted propaganda about western conspiracies to dismember Serbia. During that time of bombing, the Serbian military heightened its campaign and began a complete emptying of the province of all ethnic Albanians who streamed by the hundreds of thousands on the roads to foreign countries as their homes and property were often destroyed behind them. Ana could not believe it when it was happening; she had always got along with her Albanian friends. The world was simply absurd.

When the NATO forces entered and the Albanians returned en masse, there were scattered but frequent reports of violence and intimidation being conducted against the ethnic Serbs who inhabited the province. There were some shootings in her neighbourhood and her next door neighbours were found dead lying in the street. Then came that fateful day when a group of men with handguns had come to Ana and Peter’s house and ordered them to leave Kosovo. After Peter handed over their life savings, the men took the two of them outside and set fire to the house. Peter and Ana complied with the order and went to live with relatives in Serbia proper. Then they applied for refugee status and came to Canada.

Annie thought it was all stupid how the world worked. Could they not just see how absurd this whole exercise was, and how little it all accomplished?

When she was younger her grandparents had told her stories about an experience that was much worse than this one when Yugoslavia had been incorporated into the Nazi empire. She had difficulty imaging how it could have been worse than what she had experienced, but she knew it had to be true. When she saw the piles of dead bodies for herself in the demon’s vision, she knew that her grandparents had not been just telling stories.

“Is this not the true character of human beings?” the demon continued. “Are they not all just like these soldiers - filthy, animal-like, unmerciful and cruel? Even in much of history when such events do not happen, is it not this behaviour which is their natural state that is being suppressed and always ready to be just let out? Is this not their true image? They say please and thank you, and do the occasional charitable work, but their footsteps are only marked with death and destruction. They are born into this world, follow their bodily desires, build civilizations, pass laws, and do everything they do on the sheer and simple principle of doing what ‘I want to do’. They do not care about each other, why should anyone care for them? They place their hope in the next pay-cheque, in the next television program, in the next orgasm, in the next meaningless sensation to appease their animal happiness before their flesh meets the dust it deserves. They are all worthless. They matter as much as the animals or the plants. They are disgusting vile creatures who are bound to destroy themselves by their own insane paths. Let them all die in their sins I say, Jesus was an arrogant fool to desire to save them.”

Mick simply stood, silent.

The demon changed the scene again and this time they found themselves amidst the bustle of rush hour at the corner of Bay and College in downtown Toronto. No one could see them, of course, just as in the other visions, and they simply strolled by countless numbers of Toronto’s denizens going to and fro about their daily business.

The demon simply put his finger up in to the air and randomly chose a man with a briefcase walking past them and said, “I would like you to meet Anthony Mitchell, an employee with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, father of two boys, husband of one wife and pursuing really nothing in this life but his own personal satisfaction. I believe I may use him as an archetype for what I say next.”

They walked alongside Anthony as he walked over to a retail outlet to buy some coffee before he started his day.

“Do you know why Anthony gets up in the morning or the purpose for which he lives his life? Let’s first ask those who know him to see what they would say.”

First they visited his wife who was dropping their two boys off at the daycare before she headed over to her workplace. She told the boys as she was about to leave them in the hands of the supervisor, “Now be good both of you, your father and I are both working very hard in order to raise you, and you need to help out too by doing what they tell you here, ok.”

Another demon spoke, “They are both working very hard in order to raise those boys. There is truth to this as their children cost them some amount of money and they do genuinely care for them, but is it really accurate to state that they are living their lives as this kind of action of selfless love Ms. Mitchell describes?”

The other demon said, “Excellent question my friend, Mickie you probably have something to say about that matter… tell us what would you say?”

Mick spoke, “You already know the answer. Even those who are evil know how to give good gifts to their children, and even sinners love those who love them.”

The demon said, “You mean…[pretending to be shocked]… You mean that simply showing the same basic rules of good will to others that every person in existence has does not actually make a person good? Were you aware of this fact my friends?”

The other demons pretended to be surprised and in disbelief for a few brief moments, and then they returned to their real selves.

The demon who started this episode then said, “If you asked Anthony’s co-workers they might say he is a hard-working industrious person who never shows up late to work and seems committed to managing his duties responsibly. All of which are likewise true, but that’s simply an external image really... I mean we have not really touched on what Anthony really feels and thinks in his day-to-day life. Let us listen to what Anthony thinks as he goes about his office.”

The elevator door opened and Anthony walked into the elevator carrying his coffee and briefcase. There were two other people who entered with him. He was worried about a meeting he had to have with his boss later in the day and was very anxious. He took a sip on his coffee, and then distracted himself by thinking about the sexual nature of the female employee who was standing in front of him. Anthony often indulged in sexual thoughts and would sometimes even masturbate when he felt really down. There was nothing wrong with it he thought, all of his friends probably did it too and it wasn’t like the person he was fantasizing about would ever know about it.

He left the elevator and walked to his office area. He saw a co-worker he really hated, and greeted him with a smile and said, “Hey Andy how are you doing?” They exchanged a brief conversation and then he continued to his office area. He began the day by checking his phone messages and e-mail. He went about his work, took lunch at 11:30 and met his boss at 13:00. After the meeting his anxieties were relieved, as the meeting was very successful, and he thought to himself that he was one of the smartest employees in the workplace, silently adoring himself and building his ego as he returned to his area.

Anthony spends much of his daily activity simply around his work and when he returns home he eats dinner prepared by his wife, and then watches television for a few hours. He takes whatever small pleasure he can for himself in his leisure time, although he often thinks he does not have enough of it. He sometimes has arguments with his wife about what shows to watch during the evenings and sets a poor example for his two boys who do likewise.

The demon said, “What is it that is missing from this picture?”

Annie realized he was asking her and said, “What do you mean, missing?”

The demon said, “It is ok if you do not recognize it, I would not expect much differently from most humans. It is a global phenomenon in fact, basically encompassing the entire nature of this world and dooming it to its own destruction.”

Another demon said, “Do you know what the purpose to any of this is? All of this labour, all of this civilization and all the toil that is being conducted here? All of human history, ever since that fateful day when Eve listened to some terribly bad advice from the Great Deceiver himself, has occurred… For what reason? Why does Anthony get up in the morning and go to bed at night, what reason is missing from everything he does? I’ll give you a hint, Anthony does not talk much to his Father.”

Annie said, “I’m afraid that does not help me.”

The demon said, “I was not referring to his biological father who is deceased, but to the One who created his soul. Anthony, disrespectful offspring that he is, just does not seem to find any time to talk to his dear aged Parent, or to know Him, or to do anything whatsoever in his life for Him.”

Annie said, “You mean God?”

The demon said, “Of course I do. And you know what? Anthony is not alone. There are vast numbers of people in this world who, disrespectful creations that they are, could really not care less about the existence of this God they never or rarely talk to and who occupies no important place in their lives. Instead they have money, they have work and they have pastimes seeking to fulfill their animal needs. Well…you know - the important things in eternity.”

The other demon interjected, “Anthony cares more about watching his favourite television show than he does about His Creator. What an excellent sense of values human beings hold! I could not be in greater agreement!”

Mick spoke, “What they are doing, what many of them are doing, is occupying the whole or majority of their energy for the things of this world and paying little or no regard to their eternal salvation. What is missing is Jesus. In this place He is simply forgotten, a personal preference among religious people who occupies little importance in their day-to-day affairs. They are concerned with time, with money, with prestige, with power, or with the things of this world. What is missing is Jesus, without Him everything here is simply meaningless and ephemeral.”

The demon said, “Yes! Thank you dear old Prince, they are indeed wretched worthless creatures and continue to be, in all of their pursuits.”

Mick said, “I never said they were worthless, they are still important to God no matter what they do.”

The demon breathed a heavy sigh and said, “Oh that old argument again…”

The other demons started cursing. This was evidently not the first time words had been exchanged concerning this matter.

The demon said, “Stupid, bitter, accursed doctrine this was! It does not matter how much they curse and sin, they still matter to Him… I simply can’t grasp it… I’m sorry, this is beyond even angelic comprehension.”

Mick simply stayed silent, he would wait his turn to present a rebuttal, but now he simply left them to their discourse and would not let them in any way see what he thought, much to their chagrin as they very much wished to be able to affect him in some way.

The demon said, “I mean just watch this, how can you have sympathy for them?”

Anthony’s wife came down and sat next to him, and she asked him to change the channel. He told her no, and then they started bickering.

Anthony said, “Frasier is only a re-run tonight, you don’t need to see it for the tenth time.”

His wife said, “I still want to watch it, and you had your turn last night, I should get my turn tonight.”

Anthony hypocritically said, “You are setting a poor example for the children.”

The demon said, “They fight each other over the most worthless and meaningless things. They could be praying, they could be accepting God into their lives and employing the righteousness that came from faith… but no, television channel, this is infinitely more important. They are animals… look at them, their bodies say go here and there, and then they obey. What an incredible doctrine it was to suggest they mattered…what does their immortal soul really mean to them when they could not care to keep it?”

Another demon said, “Quite right. And if they have no use for their souls, as they evidently do not, then why should we let them be left to waste, why not give them to someone who has better use of them.”

The third demon chimed in, “Like us.”

Mick was not impressed by this line of reasoning.

The first demon said, “I could have picked so many other Anthony’s for this point and we would only find the same trends.”

All of a sudden they found themselves back in the same rush hour scene where they had begun. And the first demon simply led them down the street naming one person after another and simply showing them for who they really were. That is, not the whitewashed images of ourselves we present in public, but the true nature of our own selves in our own hearts, and it was not a pretty picture. Annie was impressed by just how vast this sinfulness really was. Mick of course was learning nothing he did not already know.

The demon continued, “All this energy, all this time and effort. They need to work, they need to get food, they need to have sex, they need to do what this world tells them they need to do… they just do not need to talk to their poor old Creator or have any relationship with Him. Giving humans souls, is like giving caviar to swine. Few of them will ever appreciate what they were made as, just as a pig can never appreciate the rarity of sturgeon eggs. Such a waste of creation… What a miserable doctrine it was to suggest they were important.”

The second demon chimed in, “Important to whom I wonder?”

The third said, “Important to God according the prince, but indeed what difference does that make?”

The second said, “Indeed, I mean - if God’s existence means this little to them, then by what standard could their importance, deriving only from God’s existence, mean as well?”

The third said, “None, absolutely nothing. Without God they are only meaningless animals. Do they matter? According to God they matter. But if He does not matter than what use is that anyhow? Surely there is wisdom in our words.”

The first said, “All civilization is just a meaningless exercise in futility. They will never accomplish anything everlasting on their own, it will all come to an end someday and most of them will join us. Pitiable day that will be, and we will never forgive the God who decreed it, but we have little other choice in the matter.”

Mick simply stayed silent. This was not the first time they had had this argument. He waited his turn.

They traveled through time and the demon just picked at random, people from all ages, showing them for what they really were. Their number was enormous. Then he returned to the corner of Bay and College.

The demon then continued, “So as we can see then, humans are simply animals who are born one day and die another, who are concerned almost wholly with appeasing their own lusts, desires and other meaningless pursuits. They pursue these meaningless pursuits to the extent that they cause all sorts of violence and harm to each other, and wreak destruction upon themselves by their own foolishness. Some may commit virtuous deeds, the saints perhaps, but really they are little better at heart. Are not most of them like our dear little Annie here? Destructive beings that inflict harm upon each other and themselves for no true cause? Is that not who they are, is that not their truest image? They know better than this, but they do not do it! Every person walking down these streets, if they willed it, could praise God and we could have an entire world filled with faith. There would no longer be war, poverty, or even this lack of compassion they have for one another in their day-to-day lives. We have it from the voice of the Prince himself, ‘Everything here is simply meaningless and ephemeral.’ Seeing that this is the character of human beings, I will submit my thesis and here is my proof that humanity is a meaningless race of lustful greedy apes that truly do not matter in any way, shape or form.”

IV- Mick’s rebuttal

At this point during Annie’s recollection the nurse came back in to take Annie’s blood pressure and take a general check on how she was doing. She called the doctor and showed him the patient. Dr. Mukherjee looked Annie over and said to the nurse, “I like what I’m seeing.” And then turned to Annie saying, “Ms. Markovic… can I call you Ana?...” (she nods) “Ana, I do not think we will need to hold you too long as you look like you are making excellent progress towards full recovery. So… don’t be worried.” He left again to visit the patient next door who had just undergone stomach surgery.

“Do you need anything in the meantime?” the nurse politely asked.

“Ummm…” for a moment Annie thought she would ask for some alcohol, but then regained her reason and said, “Maybe some water or something, thank you.”

For some reason she did not make any reference to these memories passing through her. Her lack of social contact had effectively shut down her capacity to express her inner thoughts or engage in extensive conversation. They were skills, which like muscles, can lose their strength when they are not used. She also thought the nurse might consider her crazy.

She pondered over what had been said in her dream, which she was by this point thinking to be more real and not simply her imagination. She pondered what it was that the guests in her mind were talking about, with regard to the nature of the meaninglessness of human society and human affairs. She pondered how everyone was not doing what they should have been doing, and were pursuing the things of this world without any regard to the things of the next world. Annie knew that could not be true. She thought about her mother or her mother’s mother, who had both been religious people, although by and large in her limited experience she had to agree that most people were not like that.

Her recollection of the dream continued:

Mick heard the demon’s case and with the eloquence of a prince began to pronounce his argument:

[Psalm 30:9] What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the Pit? Will the dust praise thee? Will it tell of thy faithfulness?

“Do you believe that sin has any power over God? Do you think it can force Him to act or not act against what He would otherwise will? Do you think it is so strong that it can force even His mind to change? The answer is no.”

“Can a mother forget what issued from her womb? And yet God has greater care for His creation than even the most devoted of mothers. How much less could God forget what He made? God cares for humanity even when they fail to care for Him, He offers His love even to those who curse Him. God is great, God is truly great, and there are no limits to His mercy.”

“It is true there is much that occurs in this world that should not be what it is. In fact, most of what occurs in this world should not be what it is. Although I believe you are still quite mistaken in your conclusion, that because humans are sinful they are therefore meaningless and do not matter. Perhaps from the perspective of you arrogant demons, or even from the perspective of much of humanity itself, human beings are without meaning. But not from God’s perspective.”

“From God’s perspective humanity matters. Annie, as a human being created in the image of the Creator, truly does matter. There is nothing she could ever do that could ever make her meaningless, absolutely nothing. There is nothing that she could ever do that could change God’s desire to make her one of His own and to love her. There is no power on the Earth beneath or in Heaven above, that is capable of doing that. And that is the point, and it is my message that I was sent here tonight to deliver. My message is true and always shall be, for every person on this planet in fact,” Mick continued.

“Humanity matters more to God than it does to humanity. To God, Annie is a person of infinite importance, like every human. And I am not about to let you devils take her soul from Him by your deception, torments and lies when she matters so much to Him!” he finished.

The demon changed the scene again and they found themselves standing on a stone pavement of what appeared to be a Roman city. The buildings were on fire, and there were bits and pieces of bodies littering the streets as the scavenging animals took bites. The demon took them inside what appeared to be a church. All of the artwork and precious items had been looted, and on the altar there had been fixed a pagan idol.

The demon pointed at the idol with a grin and said, “Notice any resemblance? They use to call me Tir in their language.”

He said, “You are standing in a Celtic church amidst the invasion and conquest of Britain by the Saxon tribes some centuries ago. My friends do you remember anything about that old country now that I speak of it?”

The second demon said, “Such a saintly place, with enduring witness to the true God who was worshipped here for some centuries. But then of course they began to be corrupted, and like Israel before them, God punished them for their iniquity by sending foes to destroy them.”

The third demon said, “Such saints… with their worship and praise that endured for so long…I mean they mattered so much to him that He sent these murderers to kill them all, take their country and put up altars to Satan where Christ was once worshipped.”

The second demon said, “But…that doesn’t sound like something a kind and loving God would do? How do we explain this?”

The strongest of the three demons revealed a Bible in his hands and began quoting passages:

Behold the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it...I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity and I will cause the arrogance of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the ruthless. [Isaiah 13:9-11]

Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to deliver them on the day of the LORD'S wrath all the earth will be devoured in the fire of His jealousy, for He will make a complete end, indeed a terrifying one, of all the inhabitants of the earth. [Zephaniah 1:18]

And I saw an angel standing in the sun and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God that ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all [men, both] free and bond, both small and great. [Revelations 19:17-18]

“Excuse me, but do you notice the destruction that this God promises to wreak on His creation? If a powerful man or dictator killed multitudes of people who displeased him they would call him a madman, or a psychopath. If God wipes out multitudes of humans who displease Him they call Him ‘truly just’. If these people mattered to Him then why does He annihilate them with plagues, floods and punishment? The Prince says that humanity matters to God, but in what way? If God curses them because they do not give Him fruit then they only matter conditionally, do they not? I say that God cares about human beings to the extent that a green grocer cares about his produce. Is this not the manner that Jesus spoke? That the tree was only good if it produced good fruit? These people matter to Him, not unconditionally, but only so far as they prove profitable to Him in the way a grocer’s product matters only so far as he can sell it. This is His ‘love’ for humanity,” the demon argued.

Mick continued and rose again in the debate. “That is a lie. God loves his creation more than a greengrocer cares about his produce. His love is unconditional, offered to every person, even to you demons who have rejected His offer irrevocably, but this is only known to those who abide in it by loving His Son.”

“The tree that does not produce good fruit still matters to God. But because it refuses to make good fruit it is only fit for destruction… Annie you are one such tree, and you are fit for destruction, but I tell you again, you matter to God. It does not have to be like this,” he said.

“He lies Annie,” the demon said, “You only matter to God so far as you will praise Him. He does not care for your existence. Why would He? He is God and you are but a pinch of dust!”

“That is also a lie,” Mick continued, “Annie you do not praise God, and yet you matter to Him still!”

Annie spoke, “I still do not see this God to whom you refer Mick. He is too far removed from me, I just cannot accept it. It is beyond me to think that… after everything I’ve gone through, I just can’t do it, I’m sorry…”

Mick changed the scene this time, and they saw into another plane. They gazed down at the street scene below, but this time they saw amidst the people multitudes of good spirits who were protecting and praying on behalf of the people unwittingly passing them by.

“Look… Look! Do you see how much humanity matters to God? He sends angels to minister to every one of them and take care of their existence in this exile so they may someday have eternal life with Him?” Mick said.

Mick changed the scene again to another time, and now they saw a white-haired man raising his staff to the sea as it parted in two with a vast column of refugees behind him.

“Look… do you not see how much humanity matters to God? He delivers them from their persecutors and saves them from evil?” Mick said.

Mick changed the scene again, and this time they simply saw a farmer’s field. He spoke. “Who made the sun shine? Who created the heavens and the earth? Who is the originator of all of the things humans need to sustain themselves? Who provides for their every need? Who gave them waterfalls and coral reefs? Who made this field grow? Who will let it produce food to sustain humanity? Who looks after the needs of human beings every moment of their existence since the days of Adam? Who can compare with God?”

Mick changed the scene one last time, and this time they saw three men who had been nailed to crosses somewhere in some backwater part of the Roman Empire. Mick spoke, “God sent His own Son to die for men who hated Him, so they might repent and have life with Him. How can you say that humanity does not matter to God when He sacrifices even this much for them? How?”

“All the kings of the Earth, all the great men, philosophers, poets, astronomers, scientists, and every great person, every important person… of all of those persons to whom humanity traces its progress, not one of them has done as much as this for humanity. There is no one who can measure up to what God has done for all creation, no, not one. Could He not have created a perverted universe, and worked evil within it? Indeed He could, but He will not because He loves all of us,” he continued.

“Humanity, all humanity is of dire importance to God. Humans look at the crimes of their past and come up with all sorts of hopeless solutions of their own making to stop the crimes from being committed again. As well-intentioned as that is and as necessary as it is for humans to acknowledge the rights of their own existence in the civil realm, the only way human rights shall ever have a guarantee, is with the One who never breaks His promises and never goes back on His word. It is only by returning to Him that humanity shall ever know the true meaning of a virtuous and just society in which the rights of man are safeguarded in perfection for eternity,” he continued.

“If His will was done on this Earth there would never be a child that went hungry, no, not even one. There would not be a single war, no one would ever be lacking in necessities, there would be no poverty and there would be none of these things to which humanity with its own muddled wisdom attempts its own solutions. No, not even one of those things would exist,” he continued.

“And furthermore, if His will was done here. Annie would not know the evils she knows. Little Luka would know his mother, and his mother would love him, and she would no longer touch alcohol. She would come someday to live in eternity with God and His saints, forgetting all past transgression, and letting her and her son live forever in peace. I tell you, that is the nature of God’s will. That is what He desires here,” he finished.

V- Annie’s Descent

Annie came to Canada in 2000. She was already pregnant and gave birth in January. The first sight of her son delighted her and changed her in a very deep way. She took him up in her arms and called him Luka after her father. She did not know how to be a mother, but she figured out the basics with her husband’s help and some lengthy phone-calls with her mom. The happiness and joy that entered her life with her son though was also the beginning of the clouds and the storm. She began to find herself very unhappy after her first year away from her home in Yugoslavia. Her English was improving but it was not the fact that she was adjusting to her new surroundings that caused it, although it did contribute in a small way.

She definitely missed Yugoslavia, as well as all the people she used to know and with whom she now had minimal communication. For many people though, that would still certainly not be enough to actually cause the slide that Annie slipped down. Some people are not ready for having children either and that can cause psychological issues as well, but Annie’s motherhood was a joyful one and she took up her challenges with some happiness.

The loss of her homeland probably was one of the biggest contributors to Annie’s slide, although the memory of the war did not help either. She heard all sorts of ugly rumours from back home that the Muslims had defaced some of the holy sites, that NATO had used depleted uranium in its bombing, or even that there would be another war. The attacks in New York by Muslim terrorists and the changing world events were also somewhat unhelpful. Even then though, many people experienced that and they did not turn to what Annie turned to.

Was Annie simply a weak person - one who was more susceptible to these sorts of pressures? There were no other identifiable reasons than those and yet many people in similar circumstances do not slide into what Annie slid into. Could she not have held on and taken it with hope?

Well, at first it had not seemed like anything - just a drink every so often to make her feel better. And then another, and then another… and then her husband began to notice. Luka was only two at the time. He was at the age when toddlers may begin to demonstrate the kind of wild behaviour that often drives parents completely insane. The last thing that was needed at this point was a negligent mother who was drugging away her troubles with drink.

She was convinced that there was nothing wrong with her. She knew her need to drink was getting stronger but she nevertheless believed she could quit at any time. She had free will after all, and besides, no one was mentioning anything so there must not be anything to be concerned with.

At that point of course her husband did mention it to her. He came home from work and said, “Ana I’ve been noticing something this past little while that I’m really worried about. Have you been drinking?” he had asked.

Annie thinking she was doing nothing wrong said, “Yes I’ve been drinking, but it’s not bad, I don’t have a problem or anything. I just like to drink and it helps me.”

Her husband had said, “Ana, are you sure you do not have a problem? I mean like, I can smell you and you smell like alcohol. That is not normal for the casual drinker. That is more like my uncle Darko who really does have a problem with drinking. You remember Darko, he smells like alcohol when you meet him and you know he has problems.”

The devil was beginning his grand entrance into Annie’s life. First there came the addiction, the fear, or the hook if you will, and then came the lies. Once the victim begins to lie they’ve bit right into the tackle and are no longer able to swim away. Usually they only need to start lying about little things, those insignificant mistruths and deceptions, in order to make things better for themselves, and with that they become dishonest. Then they become dependent on lies in order to continue with themselves. And then the destruction of their lives with their souls really gets under way.

“Oh I smell? Oh that was just an accident I had earlier when I was putting them away and dropped one, I hadn’t noticed. Thank you for pointing it out,” she would say.

Her husband had not believed her, but he decided not to go any further. He thought that maybe she would get better and turn around. He was an optimist and he always could retain hope in a bad situation that somehow it would turn around. Often it did and he was vindicated but not this time.

He continued with the charade for a little while and then he found the bruise on Luka’s forehead, and that was it for him.

He had not expected her to run away, he hoped she would get help and then come back. They would hire a nanny in the meantime to take care of Luka. He certainly did not want a divorce. He really loved his wife and was willing to stick by her. When she did go missing he called the police and then went out searching. Annie did not want to be found, and was able to stay out of touch. She told lies to people. It made things easier for her, and most people did not catch on when you did not know them very well.

Peter could not figure out what to do. He gave up after recognizing there was nothing he could do. He wept. He really did love her. He did not think Luka was old enough to have too much memory, but he was wrong, unfortunately. He called her parents back home and her aged father offered to come to Toronto to look for Annie himself, but Peter advised him that it would probably be useless. Her mother asked the priest to ask the congregation to pray on her daughter’s behalf.

Annie entered a new world where no one cared about her any longer. She no longer mattered to others in this place, and she had detached herself from everyone who did care. She could have come back at any moment but she chose not to. She thought about what she had done and did not want to think about it, and the drinking became worse. Her money ran out very quickly though and the drinking could not be kept up. She did not have her own bank account.

She wept and moaned, and tried not to think about her worries, but they kept coming back, accusing her. She knew how terrible she was and she did not deny it, although she was also not concerned with making herself any better either. She did not matter, as far as she was concerned. The looks of bystanders toward her told her all that she really needed to think about herself.

No one ever really knew anything about Ana Markovic. Residents would pass her by everyday and simply think of her as part of the general panorama like the bench or the street lamp, although those things were desirable to keep around while she was not.

Many people who suffer greatly or who have suffered greatly find their suffering hurts their capacity to recognize God. For instance, at one extreme there are some holocaust survivors to whom the experience in the camps convinced them there could be no God. For how could a loving God allow this to happen?

Others may have feelings of intense bitterness towards the prospect that He exists because hardships exist as well. They lose something dear to them and they do not understand how God could be there for them.

All the time people ask these kinds of questions. How can a loving God allow the existence of evil? Why is there hell? Why does he allow suffering?

Believe it or not there are churches and priests who receive harassment on exactly this topic. People have a problem with the existence of God, the existence of evil, why bad things happen to good people or good things to bad people, or with the existence of like things. They call the church angrily demanding an answer or explanation from the people who work there. This is no lie, it really truly happens more often than one may think.

The atheist thinker of the Scottish enlightenment David Hume posited his famous problem of evil that if God was all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good, how could there be evil? If He was all-powerful could He not stop it? If He was all-knowing was He not aware of all of it? And if He was all-good then why did He not stop this evil which He knew existed? Evil exists, therefore God could not exist because He would not allow it to exist.

Some people take this case to argue that God could not logically exist. It is in fact a very classic atheist argument.

No one ever argues that evil could not logically exist. Therefore, is there not something of deep meaning in that realization?

Why does one need to believe that there is evil? Why does one not read that problem and say ‘aha! - because there is a God who is all good, all knowing and all powerful there must not really be such a thing as evil! It is just something we made up ourselves, and is imaginary and entirely unproven!’

Why do those who use this problem hold faith in the belief in evil but throw away the belief in God? Is that not illogical? Can that be rationalized?

Not even the Enlightenment had the power to remove our fallen nature. One interpretation is chosen and the other is never even thought about, not because it is based on reason but because we are sinners and we are not inclined to follow the truth. It is seemingly easier to throw away belief in God than to throw away belief in evil, although there is no reason or truth to the preference. Thus you see there is a God and we are responsible for the problem of evil.

Annie’s atheism had roots in her childhood. She had given up on God before all this had happened. She did not fall into the same class as those people who reject God based on suffering, although she had suffered and she had rejected God. Her suffering would have made it more difficult to believe if she had chosen to come back. Sometimes in rare moments she did believe and in those moments she felt like she needed there to be a God.

Those were times when she needed to think that there was still something more out there. Most of the time, however, she simply concluded that He was not there and she never really thought much about it. He was absent from her as far as she was concerned. In her peculiar atheism she still felt like He existed in her heart, but she didn’t want to believe in Him, and therefore she would not think about Him and He was absent from her; it was what God wanted her to do, she thought. God favoured atheists in her mind, and she thought religion was a big hoax that God put on the earth to test people if they could think rationally and realize that there was no reason for believing in Him.

It was hell. In her suffering she did not know a way out other than to drug herself and make it worse. And even her ability to do that was diminished by the shortage of cash.

The winters were especially bad. She did not like being outside in winter. Fortunately the welfare services offered shelter, although they were not exactly luxurious. She would watch the chipmunks take their ground items and bits of food in the autumn and wonder why she could not be a chipmunk. They got to sleep on a full belly for months while humans had to keep going in the freezing weather. It was simply unfair.

It was all her fault and she knew it. That fact kept coming back to her and would not quit. Its sheer redundancy and repetition in no way reduced the pain. She could also have left at any time too - just contacted someone and let them know what had happened to her but she did not do that either. The fact that she could leave made her depression even worse. Then it was even more her fault, but she just continued in the dark and meaningless existence she had made for herself.

Sometimes there would be moments when she would just say to herself, “Why do you not do something to make this better, how stupid are you?” She would then take the opportunity to put herself down even further and quickly became discouraged at remedying her situation.

No one ever really knew anything about Ana Markovic. It was all darkness for her. She never thought there was anything else out there left for her. As her descent progressed everything that had seemed strange before became more of a normality. If she reached out she found nothing there to take her hand, she considered this and wept, and it only became worse. There was no respite.

The demons turned to Annie and the stronger one said, “Annie I have one question for you to consider: This God, who the Prince praises with such zeal and to Whom is attributed such goodness…Annie if you mattered to Him, why did He let this happen to you? Why did He not intervene before all this damage was done? If He truly was all-good, all-knowing and all-powerful, should He not have stopped this from happening? If He really loved you, why has He waited this long to let this happen? God shares in your suffering but He does not know what it is like to be a sinner, He does not know what it is like to be punished or sent to hell. Annie, God is a monster. He does not truly love you and cares not for humanity. They are destroyed in fires by the millions and His answer is as you so correctly put it, ‘Believe that I am better than you or perish’. God only cares about His own glory and humans are worthwhile to Him only if they believe in His greatness. Let Him hang on that cross, do not give in to the demands of this monster Annie.”

At this point Annie spoke up. “Whether or not I see that Mick tells the truth, what I do see is that you demons are no good. You love death and hate good. You take pleasure in ruining the innocent. Even though I cannot accept what Mick says, I tell you that I shall never accept what you say, you are worse than me! I did not know that was possible but I see it and I know it. I am tired of listening to you, and I want you to leave me alone for good. I am sick of your torments.”

The demons scowled and gnashed their teeth as she pronounced this. They sought to hurt her, but Mick intervened. They took their chances a bit too far this time and tried to strike at him. Like a flash of lightning he struck them down and they fled in three directions. They would find other victims for the time being. As far as they were concerned Annie did not have much longer anyways and they were growing bored with this soon-to-be corpse.

VI – Good and Bad Religion

The nurse came back to check up once more. Annie asked a peculiar question, “Nurse, do you think that we have souls? Or do you think that we are just bodies?”

The nurse looked at her surprised, “I’m not a religious person, I only believe in what we can prove. So the answer to your question is no, I don’t believe we have souls.”

Annie wanted to tell her about her dream and the memories that were coming back to her. If you had asked Annie a week before if she thought she had a soul, she would have denied it, although sometimes she would have said yes. But today, after remembering the things she had remembered, she felt like she wanted to scream out and tell the nurse how wrong she was.

“Nurse… I’m remembering this dream I had. And I saw Archangel Michael in it and there were these demons too, and they were real. It wasn’t my imagination. They were really in my dream, and also…” Annie said, but was then interrupted.

“Now did you happen to dream this while you were under the influence of alcohol?” the nurse poignantly asked.

Annie continued, “Well… yes, but, nurse you have to believe me. I mean it really was real! I know it was. They were really there, and they took me to these different places and they were arguing and saying things like…” Annie was interrupted again.

“I’m sure it must have seemed real, but unfortunately that is the nature of the brain under influences foreign to the body. Don’t worry it’s quite normal. The sensation or experience of God has been proven to be the result of stimulation among some people of an area in the right temporal lobe of the brain. It’s genetic in fact. There have even been studies on these so-called “mystical experiences” conducted on people who believe in God, showing that they will respond to artificial stimulation of that area and believe they were experiencing God and will even act on those stimulations. There have been some worrisome findings as well, some test subjects in these experiments have said that if they believed the stimulation (that is the “God experience”) told them to kill they would do it. Someday, hopefully we will be able to isolate the gene that causes religious people to believe in God and understand it better,” the nurse said, “But if you wish to believe in the experience, then maybe that’s what’s best for you. Who am I to judge? Just as long as you are good and tolerant to other people, I think that’s what counts.”

Annie became very frustrated. “No… it’s not some imagined experience. I really know it happened, why don’t you believe me? It’s not some mental illness or something! I mean they were there, and they knew things about me, things I didn’t know about me and they told me I was going to die and that I…Nurse he told me that I mattered!”

The nurse simply smiled and gave Annie a look of compassion. “Who am I to judge? My son likes to believe in Santa Claus and that didn’t hurt anything either. Now, I need to go check on the patient next door, but I will come back later. Did you need anything that I could get for you?”

Annie was extremely frustrated but she gave up. She simply waved off the nurse, and the nurse then left.

This was a new sensation for Annie. She had never been very religious, and she would never have imagined herself in a position where she was trying to communicate to a non-believer how wrong they were. This was definitely new for her. She was uneasy with it at first.

Annie had not been raised in an especially religious setting. She had been baptized into the Serbian Orthodox church by her parents as an infant and had attended Divine Liturgy for all her time back home. She especially remembered the chanting and the pretty pictures that were in the church. She barely remembered anything the priest had actually said with regard to teaching and instruction, only that he had had a big fluffy beard and a funny hat, and that he had chanted a lot.

Her parents had once taken her to see one of the very old monasteries that made Kosovo so important to Serbs and she could remember that experience as well as the seriousness that her mother had had in regard to it. She also remembered the Muslims she had grown up with, and how devoted they could be in their religion.

What is the keystone that separates the arch of good and bad religion?

In today’s world there is much discourse on exactly this subject. If your religion tells you that you need to fly planes into skyscrapers then this is generally recognized to be a form of bad religion on the one end of the spectrum, while if your religion tells you to give your life in service to the poor uncared for persons in Calcutta it is generally recognized to be a form of good religion at the other end of the spectrum. There is a wide body of literature and discourse on the subject of what makes good or bad religion and one may suspect that the direction the world appears to be headed will only cause increased interest in this subject.

It was the seriousness of piety which turned Annie off from religion.

Does God want us to be scared of Him? The answer is no, because perfect love gives without fear, and you cannot love God if you are doing something that makes you fearful of punishment. God wants us to love Him, so He could not want us to be afraid of Him. Then what can be said of a religion that induces people to feel afraid or even supports spreading terror on God’s behalf? Is that not a form of bad religion, one which is not according to the will of Providence?

Annie’s objection to the seriousness of religion when she was a child was not simply because it scared her. There was something that was just not right about it. It was as if they wore blinders that made them stop being human and separated from who they were once piety entered the picture. Piety forced a person to put faith in front of their feelings, and that just seemed unnatural to her.

Many people find it creepy when they see what may be called piety or godliness. Many people find such things offensive as well.

Is it a problem if the religion is serious? Only if it is serious in the absence of love. If the religion is not supposed to induce fear, but reverence and not make people afraid but respectful, if it tells them what they do not want to hear so that they may be forced to think about it and become concerned with it so that they may repent and believe, then we have the right formula of seriousness. One may even rightly wonder what other topic deserves more seriousness?

How much does religion have to do with God? This may be a perplexing question to ask, although it is an important one and bears much truth. Religion asserts it has everything to do with God, but how much does it actually have to do with Him? How much of it does He associate with Himself?

If people depart from God it could never be God’s fault, but only that of human beings. But if a person departs from religion, without mention of God, does the blame lie solely on the one who has departed from it, or is there also something that may be said of those who make the religion what it is?

When religion forgets that God’s very image can be seen in a human being and abuses them, then at that point it has departed from God and is working against Him.

God did not tell us to worship, praise and thank Him simply for His sake. We need to do these things for our own sake more than we need to do them for His. Our worship, praise and thanksgiving of Him are His gifts to us. Now does it not then follow, that if the whole of our religion was meant more as a gift to us than it was as one for Him, then there is something important about the human being that it was intended for?

God wants us to empty ourselves before Him, but He would not be pleased for us to stop mattering on account of Him.

Annie’s faith as a child had often been troubled by the seriousness she saw in piety. When she was a child she was childish, acted like a child and thought like a child. Whenever people had become really serious in those sorts of situations, it had not seemed right to her. She had not liked it when people became really serious in their religion. That was what had turned her off when she was younger, although it had not stopped her from practicing it.

The idea that there really was something serious about this whole God thing had never really clicked with her. She had never recognized an importance to what she did other than social precepts and norms that required her to practice it. The monastery was not so important because it was holy ground, but because her mother had not let her make jokes about it.

Peter, unlike her mother, was not very religious and would go to church maybe once or twice in a year. Annie had kept going for her mother’s sake but when she left Serbia and came to Canada, the difference of distance and communication away from parental or peer surveillance effectively opened the opportunity to loosen up.

As her drinking had begun to progress so had her religion stopped, and eventually it had been cut short altogether and she had committed apostasy - not that it had mattered to her or anyone she knew in Canada by that point.

When she had been homeless, her religion had mattered even less to her. Sometimes she believed there was a God and even meandered into different churches, but those were rare moments. In Toronto she also had some encounters with a plurality of religious traditions that she had never encountered, and can be found in few other places in the world.

This had actually made it more difficult for her to believe in God. In those times when she had believed, she still could not quite figure it out and had quickly fallen back into her atheism. They all respected each other, but they could not have all been right. Was God schizophrenic? Did he reveal Himself to religion as one person and then to another religion as a different person? It made no sense. How could there be a God when He was so many different contradictory persons at once? If some were wrong and others were right then why did they not act like it? Surely if the believers thought that each other’s religion was wrong and those of other beliefs were following lies then they would have informed each other of this would they not?

People tell their friends that they are wrong all the time as a form of loving correction. Employers often fault employees on failing to perform their duties, and policemen will fault citizens on breaking laws. What on earth could have been so difficult about correcting people if they were following the wrong religion then? They could not have been telling the truth. No, there was no God.

VII – In the Image of God

Annie’s recollection of her dream continued:

Mick turned to Annie after the demons departed, “They are gone. They will come back again but not tonight. They will find other victims for the time being. Now Annie, you still have not accepted my message so I must still remain.”

Annie said, “Alright, you can stay. At least you keep the demons away. Thank you by the way.”

Mick smiled, “You are welcome, now I have a lesson to teach you this time.”

They found themselves on a hot grassland with the sun high in the air and gazelles jumping through the fields. A man was there. He was dark-skinned, with a scruffy beard of black hair on his face, and he was singing verses of a song in a language that is unknown on this earth. Annie could have mistaken him by appearance, for a member of the Somali community in Toronto except for the fact that he was completely naked.

“Annie, meet Adam,” Mick said, “He can’t see us, but we can see him.”

Annie opened her mouth in disbelief, “So there really was an Adam then?”

Mick said, “Yes, and this is him. Now do you know what makes Adam different from all the other creatures in the garden?”

Annie said, “You mean he is a human?”

Mick said, “Yes, but why are humans different from every creature. Why is it that humans are special in a way that other animals are not? Why is it that the demons are wrong when they say that the humans are just meaningless apes? What is different about them?”

Annie said, “They are smart, they are intelligent?”

Mick said, “Not true. There are other animals that have intelligence, elephants have a brain that is larger than humans, and dolphins are self-aware. Besides that, a person could build a machine that is capable of doing many things that a human brain could not.”

“They make tools, they have technology?”

“Not true. Chimpanzees make and use tools, great apes use tools.”

“They have civilization?”

“Look at your feet Annie” (there was an anthill next to her) “Is that not a civilization? It is an organized colony with castes, territory and social structure.”

“Humans have emotion? They smile and frown?”

“Many creatures possess emotion and use gestures to display how they are feeling.”

“Humans do evil and good. They possess free will. They know what love is.”

Mick said, “Humans are made in the image of God. Unlike all creatures upon this earth, humanity is the only kind made in God’s own image and likeness. That is why they are special. You could make a machine, a ‘cyborg’ which possessed many of the traits and abilities that a human being possessed, with enough technology and it could even surpass humanity’s weak flesh in many ways, but you could never create another creature in God’s image.”

Adam finished his song. He stood upright looking to the horizon, he picked up a stone and threw it far into the distance. A distant echo was heard of its landing. After a few minutes another human appeared in the distance running towards him. She was female with long hair and smaller build. She came to him and they embraced each other. She was also naked.

Annie said, “Let me guess, this is Eve?”

Mick said, “Correct. She is also special for the same reason that Adam is. Both are made in the image of God. You could strip away everything that humanity has, everything that they think makes them great. You could even make them eat grass like the animals and remove their arts, intelligence and glory from them, and you would still be left with a creature that was above every other because it possesses the image of God.”

Annie said, “Hey you know, now that we’re here, I was wondering…What would happen if I tried to stop them from eating from the Tree? Where is the Tree by the way? I think I need to go visit it.”

Mick said, “I am not going to let you change the past Annie. It was God’s will that they should have the choice to disobey Him, and I cannot remove that.”

Annie said, “Aw c’mon. Imagine how much easier that would make everything!”

Mick kept going in his lesson, “Every human being possesses this image. It does not matter who - the small and the great, the wicked and the righteous are made equally in this way.”

Annie’s ancestors started playing a game of tag with each other. Adam tagged his wife and began running off as she trailed behind.

Mick continued, “But there was a fall, and this image became tainted with sin. Just as humans need a pure heart to see God, they also cannot see His image when they fall into sin.”

The two re-entered the scene again, except this time they were clothed and they looked less happy than before. Two children were with them, one on Eve’s back and the elder walking besides them. The walking child started crying for thirst in the heat, and Eve yelled at him.

Mick continued, “They retained the image, but could no longer see it clearly. They had chosen to depart from God’s will for them, and bore the consequence. The image while never leaving them became part of a perverted vessel. The child who just cried will murder the other on Eve’s backside, out of envy. But do you not understand though? For it is not simply Abel who was slain, but the very image of God that this violence was done against. Man departed from his Maker, to be reconciled one day but not yet, and this departure grew over time. They built cities, mined metals and forged weapons and coats of mail, and they waged war. Their women concerned themselves with beautifying their flesh and adorning themselves with makeup and jewels. The stronger ones among them asserted themselves as kings, high priests and noble men. They wrote laws, invented their own rights and wrongs according to what they thought they needed. They forgot the God who made them, and they made idols. Man grafted gods of his own making in his own sinful image and likeness and turned to serve them.”

The scenery changed as Mick continued his lesson, this time they were standing atop a Meso-American pyramid towering in the skyline of a city with a great throng of people gathered about the pyramid while a man dressed in eagle feathers and jaguar skins held the heart of a sacrificial victim up to the sun as the crowd cheered. Then came the next victim…

Annie could barely stand to look at it. She had seen some ugly things in her own lifetime, but the vision of a man held onto a stone alter with his beating heart being cut out of him was too much.

Annie said, “That’s disgusting! How can they do that? Why are they doing that?”

Mick answered, “They believe that if they stop sacrificing human hearts to the Sun-God, then the sun will stop rising. They also need to similarly appease the Rain-God, the War-God and the other gods. The victims are chosen from the city’s enemies, criminals, the lower-classes, and sometimes from its own citizens when available or necessary. God never told them to do this. They invented their own gods and their own truths. They could not see His true image. His image was inside themselves, but they could not see it, because their hearts were impure, and they were perverting themselves by their own actions.”

Annie said, “I don’t see this image that you refer to either. I could understand if you told me that humans are special because they were smart, but I still don’t know what you’re talking about with that other stuff.”

Mick continued, “I know that Annie. But if you receive my message you will see it.”

Annie said, “Wait. Hold on. What does this have to do with your message? Why does it make us matter, that we possess this “image” that you are talking about?”

Mick answered, “Because God did not forget about His creation even though they forgot about Him! The violence which humans do against each other, they do against God’s very image. These men cutting the hearts out of their victims are perverting creation to a purpose it was never meant for. They are not simply killing the flesh but they are doing violence against God, because it is His image which their victims possess and to which this violence is directed. God has sent punishments upon humanity throughout all of history for what they had done to Him through their own doings. But He never forgot about them, and He had a plan to bring them back.”

The scenery changed once more, and this time they saw a young woman holding a child in swaddling clothes in a manger with a man sitting nearby. Annie did not need an explanation for this scene, she could already have guessed what was about to be shown from what Mick had said. Although the manger did not quite look how she expected it to look. It was smelly and dark inside, with only torchlight coming in through the window. Nativity scenes always lit everything up and the holy family did not look like such poor wretched beggars as they did here. She was being given a dose of realism.

There are many details that were missed in later understanding that remain unknown to us. As far as we know, perhaps Jesus was born on December the twelfth.

Annie and Mick stood outside gazing through the window. Annie found she was exceptionally curious and wanted to go in, but Mick stopped her. He then took out a Bible and read a passage, “And a virgin shall conceive a son and they shall name him Emmanuel (which means ‘God is with us’) [Matthew 1:23].”

Mick began, “Now Annie do you understand what the difference is between what you see here and the idols mounted on the temple which you saw before?”

Annie answered, “Well… no one’s cutting out someone’s still beating heart here for one thing.”

Mick answered, “Yes, that’s true and certainly preferable. Although there’s a deeper meaning that needs to be grasped. Those gods who were made with men’s hands were different from this. Those gods were imaginary and this one is real. Although that is still not the deeper meaning I mean to express. Annie, every person possesses God’s image, everyone - whoever you can name, they have it. They did not understand in their wilful ignorance and idolatrous lies. God is not far from humanity. He is above them but He is not beyond them. He is ‘Emmanuel’ (God is with us), and in all of the struggles, sufferings and violence that occurs in this world with the total blindness that humanity developed to its Creator whom they could never see, God has been right here with them the whole time. He can never forget His own.”

VIII - Emmanuel

Annie answered, “I don’t get it. Where was Jesus when I was sulking on the streets in my own misery? I can’t remember seeing Him, I didn’t believe He even existed.”

Mick interjected, “But sometimes you were a true believer.”

Annie answered, “Well yeah, sometimes I did. Sometimes I just wanted there to be a Jesus, like I wanted there to be a God. I told myself that I was being stupid as usual, but that I needed there to be a God, I can’t explain. I still don’t remember having met Jesus though.”

At this moment as they peered through the window, Annie felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned around and saw Jesus standing there. She did not recognize Him by appearance. The icons and pictures that have been made depicting him are somewhat inaccurate. He smiled with such warmth that her heart melted, and Mick said, “Annie, meet the Saviour of the world.”

Again, she could barely speak. Although she was beginning to get used to these astonishing new facts that seemed to keep appearing by the minute. Her first reaction was thinking about all the awful things that she had done, and all the times that she had cursed this very friendly person standing directly in front of her. Then she blurted out her usual question. “So you are real then?” she said.

The Lord humorously answered, “Real? No, no I’m a robot. Actually I’m just a metaphorical idea, in fact. I’m also fiction based on some characters in Greek plays and pagan cult heroes. That is what they say if I am not mistaken.”

The two of them both laughed, as Jesus smiled.

“Annie, I do not judge you, nor do I condemn you. I do not approve of what you’ve done with your life, and I want to bring you back. Annie, I love you, listen to what Mick tells you. You really do matter to me.”

Annie stood awestruck as she looked at God, who had come down to chat with her one-on-one as though He was just one of them. This was a respect that most of the bystanders who passed her on the street had never given her. God is different.

The Lord said, “Annie I love you, and it hurts Me to see you living in this state you. It is not My Father’s will that you should enter into damnation. Come to Me and I will heal you, you need to accept this message the Father is trying to give to you and you will be saved.”

Annie said, “Mick is trying to convince me that I matter but I am not convinced. If I mattered then why do all these bad things happen to me?”

The Lord said, “I am the Son of God, and I was nailed to a cross, surely bad things can indeed happen to people who matter.”

Annie paused and reflected on the truth in what He had said.

The Lord said, “I will not have you destroying yourself like this. You do indeed matter Annie, God Himself has said it and it is true. Listen to Him.”

Annie replied, “But I can never do anything right! I am always doing something wrong and hurting others, and myself. I am a wretched being, I cannot matter.”

“What you say is true. Nevertheless, you still matter.”

“Jesus, how are you here? I have so many things I want to ask you.”

“We do not have much time for those sorts of questions, if you accept God’s message that He is trying to deliver to you tonight, you will have time in the future for those sorts of questions when you may one day inherit eternal life, but for the moment there is something more important to attend to.”

“I know you are trying to convince me that I matter and I’m telling you it will not work.”

“Why is it so difficult to accept this?”

“I just can’t. It’s just beyond me. It’s like there’s a one-hundred foot wall and you are telling me to climb it or else I will lose my life, and it is too much. No, I cannot matter.”

“If it were too difficult to climb you would not have been asked to climb it and we would not be here. It is not beyond your capacity to climb that wall, and you need to climb it.”

“I won’t do it. I do not matter. No!”

“Annie look at me. Do you not recognize that I love you? If so, then why are you doing this to me, and hurting yourself when I love you so much?”

“I… I… I do not matter.”

“God has said that you matter to Him. Is His word not true?”

“Why do we need to mention God here? I mean I only realized He really existed just a short while ago when I met Mick. I’m sure God is fine with me thinking that I do not matter.”

The Lord said, “If that were true He would not have sent us here tonight to tell you otherwise. No, it is very important to God that you understand that you do matter, Annie.”

“Well in that case I do understand that I matter. There, problem solved. Do I wake up and walk away now?”

“But you don’t really accept this and therefore you are still heading to destruction.”

“What do you mean? I said it, didn’t I? ‘I matter’, there we go.”

“Matter in what way? Matter to who?”

“I matter enough that I am allowed to leave now and wake up unscathed.”

The Lord said, “You matter to God Annie, and you still have not accepted this.”

Annie ground her teeth at his piercing and all-too-true logic, “Ok, maybe not.”

“You cannot leave until you recognize that you matter to God, and until you see that you will not be able to escape the destruction that is coming upon you by your own ill-will.”

Annie said, “Because He isn’t there for me! Because He is up there in the clouds in Paradise and I am down here on the earth suffering. Why should I say that I matter to Him?…So He can feel better perhaps? I don’t feel disposed to do that kind of charity in this wretched condition. No, I do not matter, I do not matter, and I DO NOT MATTER! - Not to Him - Not to anyone.”

The Lord said, “And that is the problem. That is the problem with all of them out there like yourself. They refuse to acknowledge who God is and what they mean to Him. Repent and believe Annie. It is not too much to ask. Come back to God, He wants to forgive you and He wants to restore you, but you have to believe Him. Look, you matter to Him.”

“No Jesus, I do not matter. You are too difficult to accept and I do not accept you.”

“Why will you not accept me? What reason do you have?”

“It’s too hard, and I will not change. That is my reason.”

“That hurts my feelings Annie it really does.”

“Well… I can’t help that.”

“Yes you could. You could repent and change your ways but you have decided to be unfair to me and refuse to even accept me.”

“You want me to say that I matter to God, and I cannot do it. What have I to lose?”

“To remind you again, you are soon to burn in the eternal fires.”

Annie paused and remembered, “Right… ok… so I do have much to lose then.”

“So you will accept me, believe that you matter and then turn around?”

“No, I will not do that… You know what? Why do you tell me that I matter and that will save me, when so many people think they matter and then burn in hell?”

“They are condemned ultimately because of their refusal to believe, as are you. And they do not really believe or really accept that they truly matter to God, only to themselves or sometimes to others, nor do they turn their hearts toward Him in recognition of this love of His. They distrust Him, they are afraid of Him, they will not believe in Him, and the same is also true of you.”

Annie crossed her arms and said, “I do not really matter.”

The Lord said, “Yes you do. And furthermore you have been broken and need healing. You have gone astray and need to be found again. If you did not matter these things would not be true, but they are, and so you do matter.”

“You can still heal me without me having to know that I matter.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Why not? I thought you were a powerful person? Is that too much for you?”

“The greatest wound that you need healed, is this one that we are speaking of and all of your sickness derives from this one problem. You refuse to accept that you matter, and so therefore you continue in this incredible destruction of yourself, and will continue in it forever as it is your will unless you repent and accept this one message that God has tried to communicate to you tonight.”

“This is not good enough to get me to accept it, I need more than just ‘I love you’ and ‘you matter’.”

Jesus said, “Ask and you shall receive.”

A dove landed on her shoulder, and a crowd of people began gathering around her.

There was St. Mary, St. Mary Magdalene, St Joseph, St Martha, St Paul, St Thomas, St John and it kept going - all these people Annie had heard about in her youth but had since ceased to believe in their existence. They were real, as real as you or I, with personalities, quirks, character traits and identity. All of the angels and saints joined after them.

Annie met a fair number of them. She was surprised by many things among the ones she had known about. She did not know that St Paul possessed musical talent or that St Augustine was dark-skinned.

They each opened themselves up to Annie. She had never met so many people who wanted to be her friend at once. She forgot about her loneliness and for a moment felt really happy.

This was simply unreal. After years of barely any social interaction, and most people knowing nothing about her, she found a whole crowd of people who both wanted to interact with her and seemed to know everything about her. Not just any people either; people who were completely holy and perfect, all of whom talked to Annie without a hint of arrogance or making her feel like she was left out.

They gathered in one place and sat down on a hillside with Annie, Mick and the Lord stood in front of them. Mick continued his lesson.

“Every person that you just met, as honoured as they are Annie, believe me when I say that they nevertheless began like you. They were sinners, some greater than others, who were freed from their past by the sacrifice that was made for them. They became part of the body of Christ.”

“The Lord has a body which includes many members. The rich and the poor, men and women, people of different races, nationalities and ethnicities. They are all one. Each part serves a function, and when one part is damaged or suffers the whole body feels it likewise. Every person counts.”

“God did not wish them or the rest of humanity to perish in the departure they had made from Him so many years ago and which is only increasing as time continued. He did not wish them to be like those Meso-Americans we saw before this, ignorant of Him, living in sin and following the paths of destruction.”

“Do you know how much it cost to free them from that and make them like these saints? No, you don’t, and you will not have to find out either. You would not be able to bear it. I can tell you that it cost the life of His only Son, freely given to sinners like you, to free them from the evil that they do and bring to them back. They matter that much to God.”

Annie spoke, “Ummm….professor, I have a question. What does this have to do with what you were talking about with that whole Emmanuel ‘image of God’ thing?”

Mick answered, “Well…. student, the answer is fairly simple. Although it is quite deep and most of human history has failed to take account of it.”

Mick walked to Jesus, “Now consider Jesus, He is God, He is the Son of God, the Word made flesh, and all things were created through Him. What do you notice about Him which many may find strange? The audience is also welcome to chime in on this lesson if they would like to help.”

St Athanasius raised his hand, “It is because he is entirely human despite the fact that He is also God. He is both human and God at the same time.”

Mick nodded, “Yes, thank you, that is correct. You see Jesus Christ is both human and divine. He is fully man, like any other man, but He is also God. Now for my next point - can anyone tell me why this is significant? What does it mean?”

Jesus put up his own hand, “Most learned Michael, could it be because that God came down to share in human sufferings, He thereby proved to them that He was with them in their experience upon the earth, and by His sacrifice on their behalf, He showed the greatest mercy that could ever be known in that God sacrificed Himself to pay the ransom for their sins?”

Mick nodded, “Yes, thank you Lord, for that is the correct response. God in His wisdom had formed a plan of how to bring humanity back to Him after their departure so many years ago. As I keep saying, humanity in their impure heart could no longer see God. They were blinded to Him. Because they were blinded to Him, they could also not see His own image which they themselves each possessed. When they harmed each other, they harmed God because it is His image that their violence and evil-doings are directed against. They did not understand that God was right there with them throughout all of history and they were blind to His presence and conducted such violence against Him in their perverted sinfulness. So, He sent Jesus as a revelation to all mankind, that God Himself was going to put Himself into their hands and they would kill Him. They would see their sin for what it was, that their wrong-doings were not simply against other creatures but against God and always had been, because His image is upon every person. And they would, at least some of them, come to repent and believe in Him, Jesus, who is ‘God with us’ and always has been and always will be.”

Annie said, “Ok, I think I’m beginning to understand what you’re talking about. So when the men with guns came to my neighbourhood in 1999 and shot my neighbours and burned my house, they were not simply doing this against my neighbour and my house, but also against God? Is that right?”

The audience clapped in approval, Mick, relieved that his message was beginning to be absorbed, nodded in earnest approval, “Yes you’ve got it Annie! Even though your neighbours and you were sinners like those men who did those things, by doing such violence they were conducting it not simply against other people but against God’s very image, which is both in you and your neighbours. Now there is another ramification of this teaching that you have yet to grasp.”

Annie scratched her head, “What could that be? If it’s that this is not simply isolated but that all violence in the world is the same, then I’ve already figured that part…”

Mick said, “You haven’t quite figured it out fully, Annie.”

Annie said, “Is it that I myself also commit such violence against others? I’ve already figured out that one too.”

Mick said, “Yes you have, but that wasn’t what I was so concerned with. Annie you have the image of God upon yourself.”

Annie scratched her head, “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“Annie I was not referring to violence which others were conducting against you, I was referring to the violence that you conduct against yourself. When you hate yourself like this, when you despise and torture yourself, when you destroy your own life as you have done, you have not simply done this against yourself Annie, you did it to God. It is His image in you that your self-inflicted violence has been directed against.”

Annie looked around in worried frustration, the crowd returned her gaze with silence, and Jesus had an intent expression on His face. He wanted to heal her but she needed to cooperate.

“No!” she said.

“Yes!” Mick responded.

“Why is this happening to me? It’s not fair that I’m being judged like this, haven’t I already suffered enough?” she said.

Mick started again, “You have not simply despised yourself. You have despised God. You have not simply destroyed yourself. You have destroyed Him. What you have done is evil, and unless you repent, you are going to be left in that evil.”

Jesus spoke, “Annie it is really important that you listen. As much as you wish to avoid dying in your sins and going to Hell, you should know that it is nothing compared to how much I wish for you to avoid dying in your sins and going to Hell. But you have to believe what we are telling you. Annie, you matter, you really do. The Saints, the Angels, St Michael, even the Lord himself has come to you Ana Dragana Markovic. Annie, you matter, you really do.”

IX – Existential Love

People used to care about Ana Markovic. Many people had in fact once cared about her. That was in her past life which now seemed like a distant memory. In her childhood her best friend had been a girl named Zamira. She had had lots of other friends as well. She had played games with Zamira often and the two got along like sisters until they had had a fight when they were ten and never spoke to each other again.

Annie could not actually remember what the fight was about, although she remembered Zamira.

Annie had been an only child, although she had a number of relatives who were living all over the old Yugoslavia. When the country broke up, most of those who had been in the new states moved to Serbia. A few of her cousins had taken up arms and one was killed. Her paternal grandparents had died before she was born or while she was still a child. Her maternal grandparents had both lived long enough for her to remember quite well, although they had both died before Annie moved to Canada. They had told her lots of stories about her parents as well as what life was like before she was born. It had opened her imagination to some degree. Her grandmother’s smile had been very warm, and it had a quality to it which Annie could never find anywhere else.

Annie had never associated God with love. Her grandmother had taught her to do this once but had she never associated God with love. They were two different things. God was God, and love was love. God loved us, He supposedly did at least, and love was very powerful, almost God-like, but in her mind they had always remained separate. They were often irreconcilable as well.

When her grandmother smiled, it had always made Annie happy. The only other time in her life that she had ever felt this kind of warmth was when she had Luka as an infant, or when Peter had married her. This was what Annie knew to be love in her own experience.

Love is not a feeling in its true form it is something which is much deeper than feelings. It is a powerful thing which is always good and cannot lead one astray, and cannot die, otherwise it is not really love but simply a feeling. Everyone knows something about what love is. Some people understand more than others about it. It is an uncreated thing, and therefore a mystery’ one which binds life together and holds this universe in place. When it is hurt and damaged, the world becomes corrupted.

Many people do not really associate God with love. It is not a strange thing in this world either, that there are many who see it this way. God requires duty and faithful obedience, regardless of one’s own feelings. He always knows what is best and you may be assured whatever your feelings are, that if they are against Him, then those feelings must not be correct. What proves problematic for many believers, is when God instructs against what we feel be to right or in favour of what we feel to be wrong.

The story of Abraham, Isaac and the attempted human sacrifice, is an ideal example. God instructs Abraham to sacrifice his son as an offering to Himself. How did Abraham deal with this request? He obeyed and faithfully attempted to carry it out but God stopped Him, and when the test was finished Abraham’s faith proved itself to be golden - so great that he would give his son as sacrifice for God if it was asked.

What must Abraham have been thinking when this was happening? Did he really expect God to demand the sacrifice of his son, or did he know all along that God would not really require it? Did Abraham really think that God wanted his son to be burned as an offering and remained faithful to Him regardless?

The story is an example of a seeming difference between God and love between what we are required to do as apart from what we know to be right. We are called to put feelings behind us and simply be faithful no matter what. This is not a lesson that Annie or indeed many, if not most people in this world, have come to learn. God asks us to do what we would not otherwise do. We need to do what we would not ordinarily will ourselves to do but most of us never accept this form of liberation. And it is properly called liberation contrary to those who would malign it, when a person is able to break free of their own selves and what they would will, and do the will of their Creator. It is only when we become freed from ourselves that we ever know the meaning of true freedom.

Some people feel that God could not be loving because Hell exists, for example. What if at the last judgment we discover that a ram is given in place of the sacrifice, and that He only told us that there should be eternal damnation for most of us, just as He had commanded Abraham to kill Isaac as though that were His will? We are required to have faith regardless of what is there. That is the point.

We must always put feelings behind us and belief in front of us.

Annie knew what love was, not in its entirety of course (only God knows that), but she had some experience of it, as do all human beings to greater or lesser degrees. When Luka was born she had experienced great joy and love when she took him. The only things that had ever compared with it, were her smiling grandmother and marrying Peter and even then, those things had not been as great as this. She had looked into her son’s eyes and saw what she thought to be the most important thing she had ever known. She certainly did not associate this most important of all things with God, however.

During the course of her discussion in dreamland – with Jesus, Mick and the others, Annie kept insisting that she could not go to hell. She would not accept it no matter what. ‘How could she have blasphemed against what she held to be an abstract idea?’ she wondered.

The Lord Jesus asked her, “What was there in your child’s face that had such depth of meaning?”

Annie answered in her dream, “I looked at him and I felt the greatest warmth I ever knew in my whole life. It was just the most beautiful thing in the world to me. And I then I threw it away. I didn’t think about what was there, all I knew was that was the most important thing of all and then I lost it.”

Why indeed do people who experience love as it truly is, think there is something meaningful to it? It is of great meaning as aforementioned. It is the very thing that ties the universe together when the universe is working properly. There is something worthy of notation in this fact and the utterly existential experience which every last human being knows to be love.

Mick had followed this comment, “Why is it that when you looked into your son’s face you attached such great meaning to the experience you had? Why did you not equally attach as much experience in the sensation you felt when vomiting during your pregnancy, or to the delight you felt as a child when you ate a chocolate bar?”

Annie was perplexed by this questioning, “Because those things… they just weren’t. I mean its like eating a chocolate bar versus holding your son. One is worth much more than the other.”

Mick then said, “But what was there to hold such importance? What did you know then which was so important? What was it which was there?”

We could broaden this question a bit further. What indeed is it which human beings see in love which is so important to them? Even those who would not use the word love, would still nevertheless deem some importance in such things as friendships, affection or the sacrifices we make for each other. Objective, rationally and logically speaking - What was there though?

Annie replied, “Love.”

Mick answered her, “And why is love important?”

Annie was truly perplexed by this. She could not give an answer.

Annie then said, “You are the ones with all the wisdom. You could tell me.”

Mick answered, “God is love, love is important because love is the substance of God. What you saw in your child’s face was an experience of the Divine. That is why it was so important. Every human being knows that love exists and they have all experienced it to one degree or another. They have also all, likewise experienced the Divine to one degree or another.”

Annie had never associated love with God. They had always been apart from each other in her mind. God was an abstract idea that she had occasionally believed in and love was something she knew, but had lost by her ill deeds and her departure from her former life. Her own despair she recognized, had kept her from being in the presence of love but God was more often simply an idea. If He was a person, He was a person she deeply hated. He was up there on that cross, wagging His finger at her misfortune and reminding her of what lay in store at the end of this wretched life of hers, although she had always refused to believe she could go to hell.

Annie then said, “So, I experienced God in my child’s face?”

Mick said, “Yes, you did. Although you did not possess an idea of God, you nevertheless experienced something of God without recognizing Him. You then departed from that love which you knew, to wallow in your own despair and live a life of alcoholism, only to end at this place awaiting your destruction. Thus you see, as we have told you, you lived a life of sin, turning your back on God, and have ended at your own destruction.”

The nurse returned with Dr. Mukherjee and Annie’s recollection of the dream was interrupted once again. They checked her again and Dr Mukherjee seemed quite happy. “Ana, I really like what I’m seeing. I don’t think we are going to have to hold you for too long. It is in a few words, ‘a miraculous recovery’, if I can use that phrase. I’m sure if we looked hard enough and I had more time we could find an explanation for it. In any event, I do not believe we need to hold you any longer. You should be free to go as far as medicine is concerned. The nurse still might need something from you with regard to the hospital records, but I am done. Take care and God Bless.”

“Thank you doctor,” Annie responded.

There followed some agonizing bureaucratic difficulties. The nurse did not like the idea of releasing a street person who just nearly intoxicated herself to death, back to where she had been.

“Ms Markovic, may I ask you some questions relating to your welfare?” the nurse asked.

“No, it is not your business,” Annie responded.

“Well, Ms Markovic,” the nurse added, an assertive tone to her voice, “I think it is my business because frankly you nearly died and for the interests of your own safety, as well as for the healthcare system, I do not think it would be very responsible of me if I did not inquire.”

Annie’s frustration was beginning again. She was starting to strongly dislike this nurse, “I told you it’s not your business, I will be fine.”

The nurse rolled her eyes in disbelief.

“When was your last medical check-up Ms Markovic. Do you see a doctor at least once a year?” she asked.

Annie was starting to have thoughts of doing something she would regret, she wanted to swear at the nurse but tried to hold her temper.

“I told you it’s not your business, leave me alone. Can I leave now?” she said.

“You may leave anytime you like. You’re free to go, I just wanted to…” the nurse spoke and was interrupted as Annie turned around and started walking away.

The nurse yelled as she was leaving, “Your blood had 0.6% alcohol concentration! Most people die with that much, you will not be so lucky the next time Ms. Markovic!”

Annie started swearing as other patients and staff persons started to pay attention to the scene which ended just as soon as it had started.

X – Secular Humanism

Canadian society receives much praise on an international level. The Irish rock star Bono is on record as having said that “The world needs more Canada.” Nelson Mandela has an honorary Canadian citizenship. Canada has a very good reputation in the world as a peaceful country that operates as a force for good in the world order with aid, human rights concerns, global justice, peacekeeping, etc. It is often favourably contrasted with the globally-criticized republic to the south, even by many citizens of that nation.

Canada has a superb human rights reputation, with the greatest infractions appearing small in comparison with other nations. Canada mistreated its aboriginals during its history, by forcing them into residential schools where there existed sexual abuse and a neglectful attitude that led to a high student death rate as a result of Tuberculosis and malnutrition, by the seizing of native lands in ways by cleverly re-interpreting treaties, and by other misdemeanours. As ugly as it is though, it still does not hold much in comparison with the remainder of the Americas. Unlike the United States of America, governments in Canada did not send troops to depopulate entire regions of aboriginal tribes in order to create living space for the movement of white settlers. Unlike in Latin America, aboriginals were never made into a slave race to work the silver mines.

Canada has had nothing that could be correctly called a civil war. The greatest social upheavals of that sort were either small-scale rebellions lasting short periods with minimal destruction, or labour riots, or draft riots, or the agonizing but peaceful political conflicts that occur between people in Canada’s different regions.

Canada has been invaded on a few occasions, although not in recent history, and never to a degree or scale that would earn the details of these invasions more than a footnote in most world history books, if even that.

Canada is a multicultural society, setting a good example for many others struggling with the identity question, as it incorporates diverse minorities and does not suffer from much noticeable racism.

Canada’s multiculturalism is something Canadians are very proud of. Canadian society, while remaining largely white and English-speaking, goes to some length to incorporate people of all different backgrounds, ethnicities, nationalities and religions. There is very little open racism in Canada as well. It certainly exists although it is not a sentiment which is shared in any visible way by Canadians in general, and the most flagrant actions of open racism are usually confined to tiny fringe groups like the KKK, certain anti-Semitic Muslims, or the supporters of Ernst Zundel. They also receive far more publicity than is their true impact.

When Annie first came to Canada she was amazed to find the kind of diversity that existed here. The community of nations in the former Yugoslavia, although encompassing diverse elements, did not come close to comparing with the experience she had when she came to Toronto. For the first time in her life she encountered all sorts of cultures that she only knew about through media and never by first-hand contact. Chinese, East Asians, South Asians, Italians, Portuguese, Polish, Arabs, Persians, Africans, people from the Caribbean, Latin Americans and people from all parts of the world came together in one place in relative peace and respect for each other. Unlike where she came from, there did not appear to be any ethnic warfare in Canada despite the wide variety of cultures present.

She took English lessons, as are required with people of her status, as soon as possible once she arrived. She went to a classroom filled with adults with English as a second language, who were like herself all coming from other parts of the world. Many of them like herself, were refugees who would not have otherwise been able to gain access to the country with no knowledge of the language spoken. There were people employed there and people who volunteered there who knew each particular language spoken and would help tutor the individual students. Annie had a tutor named Selma who had emigrated from Bosnia just after communism ended but before the war really began.

The differences in ethnicity simply seemed to mean nothing. Despite their recent troubled history, there was no sign whatsoever or even mention, of the differences between Serbs and Muslims by the student and tutor here. Neither of them really seemed to care about that. It was likewise true of many groups in the city who were forced to live and work alongside each other, with their animosities and differences being simply left to other parts of the world.

At one point in the literacy lessons, as Ana was advancing and becoming a better speaker, Selma was trying to explain the way that single-syllable English words ending with an ‘e’, and holding an ‘a’ vowel, always were pronounced as ‘ey’, as in ‘obey’.

Selma said, “Make, take, lake, sake, rake, bake, blame, tame, same, lame, name, game, dame, fame, shame… do you see the repeated thing Ana?” she asked.

“Yes they hear same and look same. But I don’t know large of words,” Annie said.

“You mean you don’t know ‘many of the words’. We never say ‘large of words’ in English, instead say ‘many of the words’ or ‘lots of the words’,” Selma instructed.

“I don’t know many of the words,” Annie said.

“Which ones?” asked Selma.

“What is lake?” Annie asked.

“Jezero is called ‘lake’ in English - Like Lake Ontario, next to Toronto,” Selma instructed.

“Oh…OK. Umm… how it say Hvala in English?” Annie asked.

“You say ‘thank you’, and you are most welcome Ana,” said Selma.

“Thank you Selma,” she said.

“Now what are the other words you did not know?” asked Selma.

Annie took her finger and ran it across most of them. Selma told her what each of them was. Back home the country to which they had belonged was split into pieces and the ethnicities they each belonged to had engaged in genocidal war against each other for half a decade. Here there was not even the slightest hint of the sorts of things that their relatives or more especially the politicians back home may have said or acted in their own capacity.

It is a rare thing in this world, and can be found wherever one looks in Toronto when people of different and often conflicting backgrounds somehow place the outside world behind them, and work or socialize with each other as though history as well as politics had not really happened. Canadians are very proud of what they have achieved in the kind of well-ordered tolerant society found here. Much of the world struggles to find this kind of harmony, and yet many people here simply take it for granted.

Annie thought Canadians were very spoiled for what they had been given and counted herself lucky she had come here.

At the heart of Canada’s pride comes a deeply developed humanist tradition which highly prizes the equality, respect, tolerance, fairness and independent rationalism that is attuned to a society which diligently strives to equally accept people of all cultural and religious backgrounds. Along with this tradition, and associated with it, is a very strong tradition of democratic socialism (and by ‘democratic’ is should not be understood in the same sense that the USSR was ‘democratic’). To repeat, much of the world strives to achieve this kind of society and rarely achieves this kind of success. Even the more tolerant societies of Europe, often possess degrees of open racism among ordinary citizens, which is difficult to find here.

In short, it is a peaceful, well-ordered, and generally good society according to the standards by which societies are often measured.

But there is something lacking in the Canadian state. Canada has many blessings that other nations yearn for, but generally speaking, Canadians do not give thanks to God for these blessings and this land that they have come to inherit. There are certainly those who do, one should not generalize in that way but what is meant is that Canadian society is one of the most secular in the world. It is not secular in the same sense as France’s laicité in its brutal and rigorous separation of church and state, but in its own way, God is barely found anywhere in Canada outside of the church and the “O my God’ expressions commonly heard in western society. Canada has a very well-developed humanist tradition guided by social principles of equality, human rights and a social welfare state.

Canadian society is not hostile to religion or believers, granting full tolerance to all manner of beliefs and offering government support for religious programs. A majority of Canadians believe in God or in some kind of deity or deities.

But if you were familiar with the social paradigm as it exists in this country you might find this surprising. The education system, the universities, politics, the military, social institutions and simply relationships between people, all tolerate a belief in God and provide services in support, but none of them regard this belief with any importance.

Most Canadians believe that it is not necessary to believe in God in order to be moral. Church attendance is significantly lower than those who claim to be Christians.

The common paradigm throughout social life is always that the humanist principles of tolerance, justice, peace or human rights are the things which make Canada great. Generally speaking no one ever mentions God as being what makes Canada great. There are of course those who do though and they may be blessed for it.

Abortion is widely practiced and the country has some of the loosest restrictions on the practice, of any place in the world. Gay marriage has also been legalized, and this receives some significant degree of flack from the Vatican as well as from south of the border. It should be noted that many Catholics, who make up a 1/3 of the voting public, reject church teaching on many of these issues. Gay marriage was enacted under the government of a Catholic Prime Minister. Some protestant churches have conducted gay marriages.

It is ok if you wish to believe in God, but it is not ok if you do not accept practicing homosexuals for who they are. If your religious beliefs come into conflict with such values then there is a problem with those beliefs.

It is ok to believe in God, but you do not need to if you wish to be moral. It is not ok, however to be intolerant, which is immoral. One of the gravest of all sins in Canadian public life is to be intolerant. You do not need God, but if you like to believe in Him this is ok. Just do not be intolerant if others do not wish to believe in Him or wish to believe in a different God, or gods. You may believe in God, but do not have expectations that others should share your views. And you should avoid talking about God if others find it offensive. God is often an inappropriate subject for discussion in polite Canadian society.

Canadians have come to inherit one of the most peaceful, well-ordered, humane, wealthiest and most promising societies in human history. The only thing missing is the Truth.

On the day Annie left the hospital, there was a street procession going on in celebration of Filipino heritage that caused some intersections to be briefly blocked off. She found herself walking down the street as usual when all of a sudden she heard the drums and music from behind her as the floats and people in costume moved up the street she was on. She took no notice; she did not even bother looking. In fact as it moved by her, she barely noticed it was even there. Her own thoughts occupied her attention far too much for her to take much notice of the outside world.

Bystanders passed her going to and fro. Not a single one ever made eye contact of course. They simply politely respected one another’s space, giving no firm recognition that each other actually existed or had any true importance in any sense of the term.

As mentioned, her world was a lonely place, one which she tried to turn off by alcohol but she could not do that anymore. The nurse, that hated nurse, was still right about the fact that she was going to die if she kept this up. What was she going to do? She had no one to turn to, at least no one she had ever thought of turning to. She was all alone in the world. She wanted her mother.

She went back to the park where they had picked her up and found a grove of trees that protected her from anyone seeing her and then she started crying.

She wished the pain would be over, but it just kept on going. There was no hope for her, only pain.

No one had ever really known anything about Ana Markovic. She was just another street person that you may have seen any other day. She was just another insignificant bystander, who did not matter to us.

What was it that Mick had said about that whole image of God thing? What did he say about the special quality of human beings?

What was all that stuff he had said about human societies working for the ephemeral things?

Annie was a human being, she was made in the image of God, and she was special. But as Mick had said, few people would have recognized this fact when they saw her. They had other things to concern themselves with than this special being made in the image of God: their money, their careers, their likes and dislikes, their consumption, their friends and family and their own lives. It is not that none of those things were significant in themselves, certainly some of them were. But few people ever recognized that this person possessed something greater than all the money, all the careers and all the things consumed in present-day society. For unlike those things which were just bits of meaningless matter given great meaning, she was a meaningful person, possessing a soul and intellect, which was given no great meaning at all.

Her use of the welfare services in the city was regular, assuming she was aware of them. In those places she met other homeless people like herself, and experienced the few friendships that she did possess.

It was in those places that she would talk and complain with others like herself. One of her friends was a conspiracy theorist and he was not alone as such a person in that place. He would talk about some of the zaniest and most unbelievable thoughts about how they were all being controlled by machines, aliens or free masons and that their thoughts were being influenced by them. In a strange way it sort of reminded Annie of home. The conspiracy theories and lies that Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo made up about each other which they used to justify violence, was not dissimilar in concept to this, but this man was not ready to start shooting people, fortunately. She would often think that Canadians did not understand how lucky they were.

The Canadian social welfare state, despite its many shortcomings is still far superior to that which exists in most of the world. If she had been American, they would have required her to have either insurance or have paid a significant sum for the hospital care she just underwent.

She had never recognized there to be something missing in the manner in which it was conducted. The social welfare state takes care of many people in society who would be unable to take care of themselves. Most of the Canadian populace, despite complaints of its shortcomings, are very much in favour of the path that their country has taken in this regard.

What was missing was the proper motivation for such a state to exist. Canadians value a society which provides for the needs of the less fortunate, but they value it as a socialist or a “good” principle. They do not necessarily value it because they have any true love for the people that the state takes care of. Unfortunately, many of those who vote for the policies that protect the homeless, may themselves not actually have any true feeling, care or love for the people being protected. In fact, if they should see such people on the street, they may even avoid all eye contact.

If there is something to complain about then, it is problems in the system, or people who create problems in the system. Politicians promise to make budget changes, pass new laws, or somehow re-work the system. Few ever suggest that the problem is perhaps not the system, but ourselves, that it is perhaps not the organization of the budget or the system in place, but our own lack of compassion that allows such things as poverty or injustice to exist. We always hear we need to change or alter the system, but few ever suggest that we need to change or alter ourselves.

Behind this system and these principles lies a very deep and well-developed tradition of humanism in Canadian society. The idea of the rights and dignity of the human person, as well as the need for the state and civilization to conform to such principles, are well grounded here. There is much to admire in this tradition, as it has in part, truly produced one of the most peaceful and well-cared-for societies that has ever existed. It does not however make humanity more moral, nor does it free it from sin. Rather it tends to shy away from ideas that are religious in character (without necessarily being hostile to those who have such ideas which themselves partly make up this tradition), as providing the answer to the essential problem of human welfare. If there were no sin there would be no social evils. The world can only be made truly perfect then by freeing it from sin, and this cannot come through social welfare. Heaven is the only Utopia which is true, and it is only through Jesus, which secular humanist ideas shy from, that we will ever find that Utopia.

This dynamic has serious problems in a society that turns its back on God. It promises a fulfillment of human needs by means and thinking which are never necessarily religious in character. It does not require humans to repent and change their own hearts. It cannot ever really succeed or be fulfilled, very simply because the nature of the illness lies in the medicine itself.

Annie would never have thought in these terms though. She did not think that the Canadian public whose tax-dollars provided for her needs were genuinely concerned about her personally, but she also did not think this to be strange. It was simply the way in which the world worked. She never really cared about herself either.

Someone cared about her though. Her recollection of the dream continued.

XI- Final appeals

She stood before the Lord, the archangel and the whole company of heaven. Even the Holy Spirit was present in dove-form. The only One whom Annie could not yet entirely see was the Father Himself.

St Paul, St Mary Magdalene and St Augustine all approached Annie. They tried to reason with her about the Lord’s forgiveness for great sinners like herself, as they each had been. Annie would not listen to them.

St Augustine told her about the lustful, self-indulgent life he had led as a rhetorician before his conversion. He impressed her with how much he changed from who he was before, and he tried to convince Annie that she could do just as well.

St Paul told her about what the violence, torture and intimidation he and his brethren had done to Christians before he became one himself. He was forgiven for all of those of things, and so could she be forgiven for her sins.

St Mary Magdalene told her about the adulterous life she had held as a prostitute and how she had been a demoniac just like Annie. She had been freed from this, and so could Annie be if she simply listened to them.

Then a whole collection of lesser saints made their appearance before, saints who had likewise been great sinners in their lives on the earth, before coming to inherit God’s grace.

Annie would not listen.

Then they left her alone and departed from the area. Others followed one by one each making their plea and then departing as she obstinately did not hearken to them each time they appealed to her to listen.

And then after a while Annie took notice that they were all leaving. A bad feeling came into Annie as she blurted out, “Where are you going?” For the briefest of moments she had experienced what it was like to have a whole company of friends, like brothers and sisters, all of them together. For a brief wonderful moment she had forgotten all about her loneliness, but then that moment had passed as they all left this unrepentant sinner to the fate she deserved and insisted upon. They did not give up hope for her, but simply left her in order to impute that most important lesson to her - that there was no friendship, there was no light and there was no love in the place this soul was marching off to.

“Where are you going?” she stamped her feet, “Come back!”

But they were gone. All who remained were Mick, the Lord Jesus and Annie.

The Lord turned to her and held out his wounded palms for her to see, “Annie do you see these wounds? Do you know the pain I went through? The kind of suffering I was forced to endure? Annie, I did that for you. If I, who am He, died for you, do you not think you must matter?”

Then the scene changed and they recounted the familiar story of the sacrifice the Lord had made.

Jesus was in a simple white tunic riding down the streets of Jerusalem sitting on a donkey. Crowds of people came out to venerate Him. They were thrilled to see Him in the midst of them. They called out all sorts of nice things towards him as He continued on His way.

Then they saw Him overthrowing the tables in the temple as bystanders looked on and treated Him as though He were a lunatic or a dangerous fellow.

Then came the moment when they found themselves in a rocky outcropping with flowers and plants growing in it. Annie then saw the Lord on His hands and knees asking that the cup would pass from Him if possible, that He would not have to go through with this plan and that there would be some other way. A crowd of people then approached, He was betrayed and they apprehended Him.

They took Him to the authorities and there they told lies about Him and made accusations against Him. None of it was fair. It was perversion of justice from beginning to end. They made clamour, noise and accusations all about the Lamb as He stood ready to be slaughtered.

Annie had some idea what it should have looked like, which was not really that far from this, although the visual certainly made an impact that mere representations could not.

The remainder of the events followed, the trial before the governor had a much larger assembly of people than Annie had imagined. It reminded her of the meso-Americans she had seen earlier and what Mick had talked about. This was a ridiculous and horrific display of just how corrupted humanity really is. They would murder their own Creator who came to save them.

The physical torments were not pretty. The images found in churches do not give it much justice. These were the very worst of examples of such agonizing torture. You would not have to look hard to find some hint of it in the torments in today’s world, but you would be hard pressed to find so many enduring it for this reason. Annie would not have wanted to experience it herself.

And then it came. The nails went through and the body was held up, as the display lasted for hours.

The Lord turned to Annie and said, “God sent me to do that for you, do you not think you matter Annie?”

“No, I do not matter still.”

“But I died for you!”

“So that You may be glorified. Is that not what the Bible says?”

“So that I may be raised up and glorified. So that sinners may believe in Me and be saved!”

“But it was for Yourself that You really did that.”

“It most certainly was not! Do you know how badly I wanted to avoid going through with that? How much I would have preferred that the cup had passed from me? It was only with deep agony that I accepted this which the Father had willed for Me. I did not do it so that I might prove myself better, but that so you may have life and come to the Father!”

Annie stayed silent for a few moments.

The Lord spoke again, “If you reject this, there is nothing more that can be done for you. God sent Me to do this because He loves you. Do you not understand how important you are to Him?”

“I do not matter.”

“You matter to me!”

“I do not matter.”

“My blood was shed for you!”

“I do not mater.”

“You were created in God’s image and likeness, and He wants to share His kingdom with you!”

“I do not matter.”

“All of your concerns and weaknesses, all of this despair and this wrongdoing though they be bloody as scarlet, I tell you He would will them to be white as snow. Accept it, and believe. He loves you more than you could ever know!”

“I do not matter”

“This whole Earth that lives such a lie, as though human life was less important than consumption and as though God was not who He was. It will all pass away in a short manner of time, in a blink of an eye. And then humanity will see the One who created them in all His glory. He freely offers you to reign with Him on that day!”

“I do not matter.”

“Listen to the truth Annie. It is not beyond your power. I am not asking you to do more than you are able. God has sent us to you this night so that you might not suffer the eternal fires, and you can avoid them if you will simply believe.”

“I do not matter.”

“You do matter. You will always matter, it does not matter what you say, to Him - you matter, and that is what counts.”

“I do not matter.”

“You are hurting my feelings Annie. You are being disrespectful to Me when I intend to be kind to you. Believe what I say in My love for you, you matter.”

“I do not matter.”

“You are nailing Me to that cross when you refuse to believe what I tell you.”

“I do not matter.”

“It is of the utmost importance to God that you believe that you matter to Him.”

“I do not matter.”

“If you do not believe, you will be condemned and in a short period of time you will die and go to the eternal fires.”

“I do not matter.”

“God does not intend this for you. You need to believe Him. Forget everything and just believe. It is not impossible. Anyone is capable of doing it.”

“I do not matter.”

“I love you.”

“I do not matter.” Annie then spoke, “You know what? I don’t even understand what this message is that you are trying to deliver to me. You keep repeating to me that I matter, and I don’t understand why. Why do I need to know that I matter? What is the purpose of this? What does it have to do with this fate of hellfire that is being promised to me?”

The Lord spoke, “Truly I tell you, the whole of your problems and path of destruction that marks your step would not be so if you had recognized your own importance to God. The greatest enemy of Ana Markovic is neither alcohol, nor other people, nor even the demons that have enslaved her. My words are true. The greatest enemy of Ana Markovic is her own self. She is the oppressor and monster who has girded for battle to destroy her own soul in a fit of alcoholic despair. This monster fights against her own self. This monster must be overcome. She must be made to know that her own self is very important to God, that life matters, that her family and her child matter. And then this monster will be slain and Annie will be brought back.”

Annie spoke again, “With all due respect, why should I care? Caring just makes things hurt more - does it not? You know I heard someone once say that all suffering comes from caring and attachment. The less I care, the less it hurts. That is sound logic - is it not?”

Mick shook his head, and the Lord spoke, “Annie look at me. Do you not hurt? Do you not cry your eyes out when you think of your child and doesn’t the thought of your past haunt your every day? And then you drench these haunts with alcohol, freeze your heart and turn your back on these problems that your own behaviour has produced. Annie do you really wish to remain like this for ever?”

“I… I’m not going to remain like this forever!”

Mick then spoke, “And what did you plan to do then? In what do you place your hope to make things right?”

Annie searched her thoughts trying to figure out something, “I don’t know. I’ll figure it out when I wake up.”

Mick chimed in, “May I remind you Annie…”

The scene changed and they saw the park as it was, with a shadowy figure underneath a tree with a bottle in her hand, passed out and breathing slowly.

Annie did not want to look but she forced herself.

“Why do I have to die? Can’t you just fix me and send me on my way? Can’t we just forget about this silly business of me mattering?” she broke in.

The Lord Jesus answered, ‘”I could fix you and I could send you on your way, but the problem would still exist. A monster has sunk its teeth deep into this woman and it will only keep leading her on a path to perdition. If not here, then she will just die somewhere else, because this monster remains intact.”

“No, I promise, I swear it, I’ll be good. Now just fix me up and send me on my way, ok??” she pleaded.

The Lord Jesus answered, “Annie you’ve tried this enough times already. You cannot worm your way out of this. You will not find some magic loophole or easy fix to this. You need to believe these words. You will never find peace by the paths that you follow, never. The suffering will never end until you accept this.”

“What do I need to do in order to satisfy this then?” she asked.

“Believe what I tell you,” the Lord responded.

“But I told you I can’t believe it. It is beyond me. What I’ve gone through - the things I’ve seen and experienced. The hatred I have for myself. It is like asking the leopard to change his spots, it is not possible. I am who I am, and I will not change,” she said.

“Then you will die in your sins,” said Mick.

“But… that’s not fair! You know what, I don’t get this. Why do you need people to go to Hell? Why don’t you just let everyone go to heaven? If God has all the power in the world and is who they say He is, then why does He need to punish people? Could He not just change their hearts without hurting them? If all things are possible with Him, why do we have to go to Hell?” she asked.

Jesus answered, “Believe me Annie, the last thing God has ever wanted, was for His creation to be sent to eternal destruction. But the law is ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. If a person insists on murdering others and refuses to repent, should they not be sent to the place wherein murder exists and not to the place where it does not? If a person insists on committing sins and refuses to repent, should they not be sent to the place wherein sin exists and not to the place where it does not? The answer to your question is that He does need to punish people and He does not need to send them away to Hell. It is also true that people do not need to sin in the first place and then never repent. If they stopped doing those things, God in turn would have no need to do the things that He does. Mick said it before and I repeat, it is you, not I who have insisted that you tread your own path of destruction that ends in Hell. And to repeat, why are you doing this Annie?”

Annie gave up on her short excuse-answers for the moment and tried to formulate better responses as she said, “When I was little, my parents owned a cat we named Milos who always stayed indoors and who lived a long time until he got sick and died just before I got married and moved out. My neighbours owned a cat as well but their cat did not always stay indoors and often went outside, and she died much younger because she was run over by a truck. I thought to myself that although Milos lived longer, the outdoor cat had a better life because Milos never knew what it was like to do anything but just sleep, eat and stay in the house all-day, while the other cat knew a whole other world. I sometimes think, is this not the same as Christianity? The priests say do not do this, or do not do that and so many people do not know what it’s like to do those things. Is it not better to have lived how one would die as such, than to have never really lived at all by continuing in that lack of life?”

The Lord responded, “Death is not life and life is not death. Those who do not accept Me, have no life at all, but live in death. Those who follow Me need to take up their cross and endure My suffering. I tell you that is life, and it is the things of this world which are death. Annie, how do you say this then? You yourself know the kind of destruction that is brought on by the error of one’s own life, how then can you say this?”

Annie responded, “I… I suppose I can’t say that from my own experience. You have a point. But does morality not go against our own nature? We have wants and desires, likes and dislikes which are natural to us. But then we hear a voice of religious morality that instructs us that what we like is wrong and what we dislike is right. I sometimes think there is something wrong to this, like it forces us to be untrue to our own selves and that we go against who we are.”

One of the classic critiques of Christianity has always been that Christianity takes away something which is good about life, or that it hinders humanity’s or an individual’s true potential. The Italian renaissance writer Machiavelli claimed that the Christian religion had ruined Italy, because before Christianity Italy had been a proud and powerful empire that stretched across the known world. After Christianity it had become in his time, a land broken into warring states, continually overrun by conquering armies from foreign lands. Machiavelli accused the Christian religion of making Italy effeminate by corrupting the cruel but strong Roman virtue of power and by replacing it with the Christian virtue of love. In the Enlightenment there were many attacks on the Christian religion claiming that it was superstitious, backward, violent, cruel, intolerant, opposed to reason, and that it hurt man’s true fulfillment that came through reason by filling his mind with dogmas and belief in faith. Christian attitudes toward sex were likewise much criticized in this period and in our own time, as preventing people from enjoying that form of love for each other that Christian theology is seen as an enemy to.

Christ forces us to change ourselves and renounce much of the world as it exists, and He does force us to take up a cross in order to follow Him. But there is also nothing that He takes away which is not replaced by something even greater in time and with faith. As sad as it may be to lose all those temporal things of this world, imagine how much sadder it must be for those who will lose the eternal things of God’s kingdom.

Annie said that Christianity went against our very nature. She was not the first to have had this thought by any means. It is true, Christ tells us to do things, He tells us to do many things, which we would not otherwise have done if we simply followed what our bodies told us we wanted.

It was not her own idea, though. She got it from someone else. When she was a teenager in high school she had a teacher named Mr. Pejovic who was an Atheist and a communist and who held very strong opinions against religion which he would share with the students in his class once a year.

“Religion causes wars,” he would say, “The Pope declares crusades, and people rise in rebellions, kill others and wreak destruction all in the name of religion. Look at the Middle East these days. See how people are fighting each other because of their religious differences.”

Annie had not minded this discussion, as her religion was mostly the result of her mother’s influence and her mother was not here to watch her daughter’s lack of reaction. She thought that Mr. Pejovic went a little too far sometimes, because her mother who was religious did not seem like such a violent, angry or destructive person. In fact her mother had been as docile as a lamb.

“Religion tells people to do things in the name of religion which is against humanity’s own potential. It says believe this or you will go to Hell. What it tells us to believe has not been proven and it does not allow the person to think if it could be wrong. It simply says believe, do what we say or you will perish,” he had said.

A very wise student named Maja had raised her hand in the class and had asked Mr. Pejovic, “Was not the same also true of the old communist system, that it told people to believe things without any proof or logic, and we would get shot or imprisoned if we spoke out against it?”

Annie remembered that Mr. Pejovic had gulped and become very nervous when this question was asked. He had taken a moment to think and had answered, “But Marxism has been proven to be true and religion is just made up stuff, like fairytales and witch stories. The victory of the proletariat is inevitable. All of history points to this but religion does not even make sense.”

Maja had not been convinced by this answer and had raised her hand again, but Mr. Pejovic in true party fashion told her they would discuss her question later. Annie could not remember if ‘later’ had ever really come.

“Religion blasphemes against human beings. It tells us that things are wrong which are neither right nor wrong. It says you must believe without any proof or reason, and you must consciously disbelieve what is evident and real. It does not even make sense. How many religions are there? There are lots of them, and do they all teach about the same God?… No they do not. One says God is this person and another says God is that person, and some say that there are many gods or maybe even something else which is completely different. Anyone with reason can see that religion cannot be true because every system of belief only contradicts another and each religion makes up its own story on the dictates of whatever its founders has told them or is based other identifiable historical causes,” he said.

Mr. Pejovic made this same speech once every year when teaching evolution in class. He had been a biology teacher, and Annie had heard rumours beforehand that every year when he got to this lesson he always made the same speech about how religion is responsible for all the world’s problems. Annie could not actually remember very much about what he taught about the theory of evolution, only that he wrote something on the blackboard and taught for about five minutes before he began his hour long speech against all religions and then they were finished the lesson. The faculty had known about it but he nevertheless escaped discipline. They did not care enough to stop him, and most of them agreed with what he said anyways. During the days of Communism, much of the curriculum across the Eastern Bloc was interlaced with this kind of militant Atheism. When the system changed, the staff mostly stayed the same, but the curriculum became more liberal.

“Human beings are simply complicated apes,” Mr. Pejovic had said in one of the few points in his speech that seemed to be related to the topic of that lecture, “who have been produced by accidents and the unplanned nature of evolutionary history. But they are special apes, because their creative labour allows them to do things which other animals cannot do. As Karl Marx once said, ‘What distinguishes bees from humans is that while a bee makes its labour by instinct, the human being creatively imagines what he is to produce before he does so’.”

Mr. Pejovic continued, “But the higher classes invented religion back in Antiquity to keep their subjects under check. Telling them about a God or gods who will punish them if they do not do what they are told, and inventing all sorts of lies and myths to believe in would keep the lower classes in check. They said that these higher things were more important than man and they controlled religion with their priests, their popes, their imams, their witch doctors, shamans, brahmins and medicine men. They asked for sacrifices and labour on behalf of men, and they deceived them. They asked human beings to serve an abstract idea of a non-existent being, and they grew rich on the tithes that they paid. But humanity has broken free from their oppression and will some day triumph once and for all against this evil.”

Maja had raised her hand and tried to speak without being recognized, “But Mr. Pejovic, what does this all have to do with the theory of evolution?”

Mr. Pejovic who had not acknowledged Maja’s question then excused her from the class for interrupting the lecture. Maja had been very ticked but obeyed without saying a word. The voice of reason had thus left the room and Mr. Pejovic continued his lecture.

“Religion blasphemes against human beings and must be done away with,” he had continued, “Look at the human body for instance. The human body is naturally sexual, and is designed to have orgasms…in fact frequently. But religion says that this is immoral. It says that what biology says is normal, is wrong. There is no sense to that! An orgasm is a biological function and is neither right nor wrong for the person who has pleasure in it. But religion says that if you masturbate you commit sin, or if you have sex outside of marriage then you commit sin, or if you even think sexual thoughts then you commit sin. In a few words it says that human nature is naturally sinful, I read from the Bible itself (and he had brought a Bible with him that day for exactly this part of his speech):

[Romans 7: 14-25]For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.

I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.

Mr. Pejovic had continued, “Is this not ridiculous, that the flesh is evil according to religion? Is there not something dangerous in this form of thinking? I say that religion blasphemes against human nature and here is my proof - because religion itself says that our bodies are all bad and our flesh is entirely evil. Faulty, false, misguided thinking, this is! We should all be thankful that Socialism has liberated us from this kind of backward thinking.”

Maja had left the room, but she was not alone among those who wanted to question Mr. Pejovic. Another student named Ivan asked a question and Mr. Pejovic, not expecting another Maja-trap foolishly recognized it.

“But Mr. Pejovic isn’t there something wrong with doing whatever our bodies tell us to do? Like, should I be raping women just because my body says it wants to?”

Mr. Pejovic had answered, “No of course not. That would be immoral Ivan, you know better than that.”

Ivan had said, “But… but, Mr. Pejovic don’t I blaspheme against my nature then, by imposing this morality to stop me from what I would otherwise do?”

Mr. Pejovic had answered, “Well… that’s different. In that case you should not follow what your body says it wants because that’s wrong, but you see religion says that the body is all wrong. It says simply wanting to do that, or even thinking about it is immoral even though you are not hurting anyone. It says that when people take time to pleasure themselves, that they are doing something wrong even though they are not harming anyone and only doing something nice for themselves. I mean, these things are clearly not wrong, and they are part of our biology, but religion says no, its wrong, and you should be ashamed and serve this ‘God’ and pay tithes to His feudal masters and priests.”

Unfortunately Mr. Pejovic’s long rant had actually attracted many students who easily bought in to what he said at their impressionable age. Even Ivan had stroked his teenager beard and began to rethink what Mr. Pejovic had said as the truth. All Annie could remember was receiving the idea that religion is anti-human, because it says that human beings are wrong in what their biology tells them to do. She would have had sex outside of marriage if it had not been for her mother and her conscience telling her not to disobey her mother. She thought that maybe if her mother had had a teacher like Mr. Pejovic, then maybe she would have thought better than she did. Little did Annie know that Ms. Markovic had had many such experiences in her lifetime of trying to stay true to the faith within a Communist regime, and that she was certainly not convinced by the Atheist propaganda.

Then Mr. Pejovic had gone on to the climax of his rant, “Religion is the enemy of the human race! It is the instrument that confuses the masses to serve the upper class oppression. The value and dignity of the human being is only safeguarded when religion is done away with. Religion blasphemes against our very nature. It says that human beings are wrong and that abstract ideas are right. This is dangerous thinking, and we must move beyond it.”

Marxism made many false promises to humanity. It told us about a bright and glorious future that would come if we abandoned the things of the past and produced a Utopia through violent revolution and social upheaval. Scientific understanding of the human species was very important for all of it. Karl Marx admired Darwin’s work. That human beings descended from apes is a generally recognized scientific fact today. Even the Popes in the last century have personally come to re-interpret Genesis in order to make it compatible with evolution.

If man was simply a scientific being he would not truly matter. He would simply be an accident of history that has been arbitrarily given meaning and does not deserve it. Mick pointed this out when he asked what it was that made humanity special. If you remove God from the picture there would be nothing special about it. Why should human beings have such respect and importance…why not robots or dolphins?

The idea that human life without God should be respected, would simply be an arbitrary and meaningless argument. That there was something wrong with events like the holocaust, would simply be a matter of opinion primarily based on whether or not you yourself accepted this arbitrary secular definition that the human being has some intrinsic value. As an opinion, it is also therefore relative and debatable, unless of course there is a God who is true and objective who is offended with such atrocities. Then it would not simply be an opinion, or relative, or debatable.

But what Mr. Pejovic had said was true, for Christianity at least (not all religions in fact) teaches that the flesh is corrupted by lust, although it doesn’t say that the person is naturally evil. And if a human being is only this corrupted flesh then he would be right that religion teaches against human beings.

Annie as an impressionable teen took this lecture to heart, notwithstanding Maja’s brief resistance. But she took it and transformed it in her thoughts to make it fit whatever she did, and she did this in ways that Mr. Pejovic would not himself have approved of, although it was within the spirit of her interpretation. If she wanted to drink alcohol and religion told her not to, then religion was telling her that she was wrong because she is only her body, and religion says that what her body says is wrong.

But Mr. Pejovic was not right, because there is something more to humanity than flesh. Contrary to Mr. Pejovic’s biology lesson, human beings are more than simply animals with creativity.

The Lord responded to Annie, “A human being has a soul and is not an ape. The body perhaps is birthed and dies, but the soul which inhabits this body lives on for eternity. Being invincible it can never be made to cease to exist. What the body likes and dislikes is ephemeral and not real. The body of the creature tells the soul what it likes or dislikes, and tells the soul a lie that what it likes is good and what it dislikes is evil. God is true, and will not tell the soul the lies which its own body instructs. God tells us that what is good and evil is not what the corrupted body instructs. A human who follows His law and blasphemes the nature of the corrupted body that will only die in a matter of time, does not blaspheme the nature of the human self, who will be resurrected with an uncorrupted body, and to whom this law is suited.”

Annie responded, “But that’s not my experience. I want booze, perhaps it is simply my body’s own addiction, but I also see that I myself am the one who desires it.”

The Lord responded, “Your flesh instructs the inhabitant soul that it desires it. The soul when it is not with the Spirit of God, or aware of the Law, has only the flesh to instruct it on what is good and bad beyond what is written in the heart, and what the flesh says is often untrue. The flesh may say that having sex with every person one can, is good and abstinence is bad. The fallen nature tells lies and the soul believes the lies and follows them, pursuing the lusts that command it to kill, hate, envy or do that which it should not do. You want booze, because your flesh has told you the lie that booze is good, and you in your soul have believed it. It is not the nature of your soul that desires it, but that of the corrupted body which the soul inhabits and whose days are numbered.”

Mick interjected, “Annie do you not see this? Use your reason. You were birthed into the world and one of the first things you knew that told you the difference between good and bad was your senses. They did not tell you the truth, however. Therefore God has a law which reveals the truth. Why follow the senses?”

Annie responded, “I… I don’t think in those terms. All I know is I like booze, it tastes good and makes my worries go away. And I don’t like my worries because they hurt, so booze must be good. You talk about reason, is this not reason?”

Mick answered, “These things that your senses desire that your soul accepts to be good and follows are not good things even though your senses tell you that they are good. They are not good. I say, use your reason because your reason will tell you what your senses cannot. Your reason will demand to know why you must follow what the body dictates when you are able and should do otherwise, and you will have no true answer to give. What the body does, which the soul chooses to follow, is without reason.”

Annie responded, “Perhaps it has no reason, and perhaps you are right. I think I deserve what happens to me, but I also see no reason to change. I can’t change. That is too much for me. The pain is too deep and the scars too plentiful for me to think about a different way to exist. I just don’t believe it. You could tell me that pigs can fly and I will have an easier time believing that, than if you said I could change. It is just too much.”

The Lord responded, “How did you come to be where you were in the first place? Did that not require great change from one life to another? I tell you the truth. The change I propose is easier than the one which you have already accomplished.”

Annie responded, “I don’t need to change. And I don’t accept this thing you talk about of saving my soul from the monster I am. I hate my life, but it is my life to hate. What right do you have to it? You say you will not leave until I accept that I matter. I do not matter…I say it again - I do not matter! No one matters! We are all just aimless pieces being tossed in the barbaric arbitrariness of history. Like the demon said, we are born one day and die the next. We had no meaning when we entered and we will have no meaning when we leave. Some will go with you, and most of us will go somewhere else. But matter? No, we do not. It is simply the way things are.”

The Lord responded, “It is not your life to hate. You did not make it, then how could it be yours to hate?”

“Because it’s… it’s my life! What do you mean by this ‘I did not make it’? So then it belongs to me, I can do with it whatever I choose.”

“That is not true. Your life is your own, but it is a gift and not a license to destroy it. You may not do with it whatever you choose. I gave you free will but I do not approve of what you have done with it. This life which was gifted to you, you do not have the right to destroy. You did not make it, and you have no right to destroy it either. What you are choosing is without justification.”

“I don’t need to change. If I met another person like me, I would accept her. It is this code of morality which sends me to Hell which is the problem. That is what needs to change. Why do you not understand what I’m saying when I say that I’m not choosing to go to hell? I’m not choosing to go to hell. I don’t want to go to hell. I don’t want to destroy my life, but I will hate it.”

Mick responded, “I have wisdom to know what it is that you think you are suggesting but I keep repeating it to you. Why do you not understand what I say? You are choosing to go to hell. You are not saying I choose to go to hell, but you are saying I want to keep in my destructive ways of despair, addiction and sin, and I tell you that this, fully grown, produces death and that leads to Hell. When you remain in sin forever, and never repent, you will be punished forever, hence the existence of Hell.”

Annie answered, “I don’t need to change. Why should I? Why can’t you change this code of morality so that I don’t need to go to Hell? You say I go to Hell because I sin forever and never say I’m sorry. Could you not just change what sin is and therefore we don’t have to go to Hell? Wouldn’t that be much easier for all of us?”

Mick responded, “God is good and His will is good. You have not simply rejected a code of morality by disobeying His commandments but you have in fact rejected Him and with Him, that which is good. If you reject that which is good, it then follows that the only thing you have left is that which is not good, or evil.”

Annie answered, “But why can’t He change? Why do I have to change? If He is so powerful and merciful as they say He is then why can’t He change Himself and make what we do no longer outside His will so that we do not have to go to Hell? Would that not be the reasonable thing to do? You know that is what wise men do, they compromise and make changes so that a greater good can come. Why can’t God do that?”

Mick responded, “And why can’t you change Ana Markovic? Why does God have to change? If you have free will and a desire to avoid Hell as you say you do, then why can’t you change yourself and make what you do no longer outside His will so that you do not have to go to Hell? Would that not be the reasonable thing to do? That is what the saints all did, they changed their ways, repented and believed so that they could inherit eternal life. Why can’t you do that?”

Annie answered, “Now you are turning this around on me, and that’s not fair. I asked first! Why can’t God do that? Does He not want us to avoid going to Hell. Can’t He just say that no one goes to Hell anymore and it would be so? If God is all powerful then He can say that, but why does He not say it?”

Mick responded, “You want God to say that that which is not His will, is His will. You want Him to say that He approves of murder, theft, adultery and all such things in order that those who practice such things are not punished for them. Annie do you imagine murder, theft, adultery and all such things to be included in your idea of Paradise? Do you imagine that killing God and rejecting Him utterly is included in Paradise? If that is true, then God has already given you your Paradise, and we often call it Hell.”

Annie answered, “I don’t understand. Could you explain further?”

Mick responded, “God is all powerful and He can say that no one goes to Hell anymore, but what would that mean when considered? If people who refused to repent of murder entered Paradise there would be a Paradise filled with murderers. If people who rejected God entered Paradise there must be a Paradise that rejected God. Now I tell you the truth Annie. God already gives many people exactly that, which is where you are going, if you do not change.”

Annie thought this over and saw the logic in what he was saying. She became very frustrated by the fact that God is so wise and is able to answer perfectly any charge that is ever brought against Him. It made it very difficult to hold an argument with Him, or in this case with His messenger.

Annie raised her frustration and said, “This is not fair. Why does God always know better than me?”

Mick responded, “For all those who complain that God always knows better than they do and is always perfect in comparison, could you imagine the alternative? What if God did not know better than you and committed evils just as men does? Would that not be far more horrible than the truth?”

Annie was frustrated once more by the fact that there was an answer to that too, and she agreed that it made sense. If God was imperfect there would be no one capable of punishing Him and the universe would be a very horrible place to be in. If He was not all knowing they would have a very serious problem on their hands.

Annie raised another thought, “Surely with Him there is some other way, is there not? My mother used to tell me that ‘all things are possible with God’ and if that is true then is it not also possible that I do not need to change but He can do something different so that I don’t go to Hell?”

Mick responded, “If you sincerely believed and had trust in Him, such that you knew all things were possible with God, then I tell you the truth, you would not need another way because you would have already avoided hellfire. But you won’t believe and you reject following His ways. You will not have faith in Him, and continue to despise and destroy yourself.”

Annie was becoming very frustrated by these answers that always proved her to be wrong. She gave up trying to answer back to him, but she still did not comply with what was asked. She thought they could not move her - like she was a stone pillar that could not be knocked over because she willed herself to stay still. She was wrong. There was a weak spot in her obstinate defence that she was not considering. In fact there was more than one.

She believed that nothing they could say could change her mind, and despite her frustration with their very wise and always true answers, they still could not change her own free will from the destructive path it insisted on following.

The Lord God knows us better than we know ourselves, and where we think we are strong, He can easily overthrow us.

The Lord said, “Annie, a few moments ago you were rejoicing at the presence of so many people who became your friends in but a minute. Then they all departed from you because you would not listen to them. Do you not want to change so that you may have this? There are no friendly people in the place where all unrepentant sinners end.”

Annie was a little bit perturbed by this. As deep as was the loneliness that enveloped her soul, she still wanted friendship and this tempted her to break her pride and give in to what they said. The Lord could see the thoughts of her heart.

The Lord said, “Annie, I know how happy you were just now and how deeply you desire that. Believe me when I speak about how badly I want you to have it. But you must accept what I tell you and believe in what I say. I tell you that there are multitudes, countless multitudes of those who would all be your friends for no cost at all. Is that not worth change? I know you. I know how lonely you are and how much you wish to escape. Come to me, I will give you escape.”

Annie began to reconsider. Of all the things that had been said to her, this one really hit home. If Hell had simply consisted of bodily torment, it would have been bad but it would not have been so scary. The promise of never-ending loneliness in that place was considerably harder for her to stomach. Her pride and stubbornness were beginning to feel a worm chewing through them.

In her youth and childhood she had been very sociable. An extrovert in fact. But the recent years of loneliness were a corruption of her own nature. She needed friends. The homeless man who talked about the alien mind-control was one of the happiest parts of her existence.

She could not speak at first, but then she got over it and returned to herself, “I will make do. As hard as it is, I will make do. My life is my own to hate. I do not need to change. I do not matter. Caring makes things hurt more. No sweet Jesus. Perhaps you matter, but I do not. I will not be convinced.”

When Annie was in school in her younger years, she had had a teacher named Ms. Radulj who once asked the girls in the class what they thought about motherhood. Annie was only thirteen at the time, and she was going through puberty, as were most of the other girls. The boys had already been taken to another room where they were being asked the same question about fatherhood. Even when she was little she had thought she would be a mom someday. This environment of a class discussion had felt very awkward though.

Ideas that were impressed into her mind were such things as commitment, patience and the fact that none of the girls despite their biological capacity were ready to become mothers. Annie had really liked Ms. Radulj because she was always very kind and sensitive towards her students. That had made this setting somewhat easier for her. She was also comforted when she realized the rest of the girls felt just as awkward as she did about discussing this in front of each other.

During the Communist era sex education often focused more on health issues, although with the Iron Curtain breaking down, some aspects of western liberalism came into the curriculum.

They had talked about sex and what it meant to be with a boy as well. Annie was glad they had separated the sexes when they did this talk. She did not want to hear what the boys were saying when they were given that issue to talk about. She was nevertheless relieved when she found that lots of the girls did not want to speak up at this part, even though Ms. Radulj tried to encourage them that they were not going to be judged or anything like that. Annie heard the boys laughing in the other room and did not want to think about what they were saying. Ms Radulj closed the door.

Annie had had only one boyfriend before she met Peter. Her mother forbade her from having sex before marriage, and unfortunately it turned out that was the primary reason why the boy had dated Annie. Therefore, they broke up. It was for the better. Admittedly, it would have been much worse if it had continued with that founding principle in the relationship. When she met Peter she knew that he was different and that she could trust him better. They got married when she was only nineteen. Her parents were pleased with her choice, but his parents were a little more apprehensive about Ana Markovic.

Ms. Radulj told the girls a story about parents who had children and abused them in some way or caused harm to them by neglect. She tried to impress upon the girls the number of times women have gone into motherhood without planning and proper consideration. She introduced them to think about abstinence, birth control or abortion. She told them the story of one mother in the Soviet Union who became an alcoholic and ran away from her children, leaving them to fend for themselves. Annie thought hard to herself about how bad that was and she was thankful that that mother was never going to be her.

The Lord continued, “I have only one last appeal to make for you and then I will leave. You may die after that and your soul will continue in the death that it dwells in now, once it departs from the body. My last appeal is this:…”

The scene changed and Annie found herself standing in a child’s room. It had crayon pictures on the wall with Shrek wallpaper and toys on the floor. A child was on the bed with his face in his palms crying. It was Luka Markovic.

Annie tried to take hold of Luka, but couldn’t because she was not really there.

The Lord Jesus spoke, “Annie this is who you have done this all to. It’s not too late to fix things.”

Annie couldn’t take it. That deepest of all wounds was just re-opened, she wanted to leave, get some alcohol and drown out the memory again. She looked at Jesus and St Michael with tears in her eyes and the deepest pain in her heart she could ever know. She did what she had done before - she started running and did not turn back. The Lord never turned her away, nor did he leave. She ran out herself and He let her go.

XII – Companionship

Most people at some point in their adult lives in some way or another have the experience of utter helplessness. It can come in a variety of forms, and is usually humbling, although for many people the experience does not come relating to their own death and the fate of their eternal soul.

Breathing slowly with a glass bottle in her hand beneath a tree in a city park as her soul was undergoing its final judgment - no one knew anything about Ana Markovic. Like many homeless people, she was often seen to be dirty or a social pariah. Very few people exchanged words with her, and no one could have said they knew these things about her.

If they had understood her torments or what she had been through, perhaps they would have acted differently.

In the Gospel, a man asked Jesus “who is my neighbour” and Jesus told a story about a man who had been lying on a roadside needing help. Important people and officials passed the man by. They probably had important things to attend to. But a good Samaritan who saw the man took him up and took care of him.

Every day people passed by Annie and paid no heed. They had businesses to attend to, careers to be advanced, kids to pick up, shopping to get done, friends to visit, things to see, things to do. It was only a human being after all. The system would take care of her and if not, then it was her fault anyhow.

We watch the television and see things in the news that horrify us. We ask ourselves, “How could people do that to other people?” Experts and persons of wisdom teach us about ideologies, hateful modes of belief, or some other abstract concept that relegates evil to a phenomenon of the social sciences. As much as can be learned by that route, they always fall short in a critical aspect. If you understood why it was that this woman was dying under this tree, you would have also solved world hunger, global terrorism, religious tensions and whatever other issue you could name. They are all symptoms of the same disease and we who watch our television sets asking the questions are just as infected with this disease as the men who fly planes into buildings.

How is it that things became more important than people? How is it that ideologies, systems of thought, merchandise, consumption, whatever one can name, became more important than human beings?

It has been said that “it costs just a dollar a day to feed a starving child, but it costs 8.99 a minute to have someone talk dirty to you”. According to statistics, global pornography revenue is greater than total world aid (even by the official figures, without taking to account questions of ‘real aid’).

Is there some tragic flaw in the character of human beings that makes us like this? Why is it so difficult to take account of our own responsibilities and failures? Why do we so much prefer these meaningless things, to what we know is right?

It is little wonder the world is what it is.

When Annie first started taking the welfare services, one of her foremost concerns was that Peter would find her there. She did not know that he had sent the police looking for her, although she could have easily assumed so. She slipped by undetected somehow. No one ever really knew anything about Ana Markovic.

The welfare services were the only places in Annie’s world where she had interaction with others in a manner that was more suited to her person. She could get food and shelter but also importantly, it was there that she could get conversation and friendship. Not deep friendships, but simply familiarity with people she would see often.

She had met a young woman named Michelle who had been a sex trade worker and was addicted to drugs. They talked about their feelings and found much familiarity with each other. Michelle was also suffering from terrible depression and had no hope in the future. In a strange way that gave them something to talk about.

Michelle did not have the same extent of guilt complex that Annie possessed, although she was no angel either. In Michelle’s case, unlike Annie’s, she really had nowhere else she could go. Annie saw Michelle and came to appreciate even more, how miserable she really was. Most of these people were homeless, not by choice, but because of circumstance and conditions beyond their power to control. Michelle’s case was a common one for people coming to the street because of linkages to prostitution or the sex trade. Annie’s case of alcoholism was also common. Although, unlike Annie, many of them did not have someone who would have taken them in if they had wished to be taken in.

She had not let any of them who did talk to her, know that she could have in fact left them at any time and contacted Peter. They would have envied her and thought she was crazy for still being there. She told them lies and said that her husband had deserted her or that her husband was dead, or she that was never married or something. She knew how bad she was. She was the worst person there and she knew it.

Michelle had seen how depressed Annie was and tried to cheer her up but it was not much use. No one ever really knew anything about Ana Markovic - she was simply ‘Annie’ to them and they did not know where she came from or anything about her except that she had an accent and was always very unhappy. She had a few others who would talk to her more often too. Other than the conspiracy theorist, one was a man named Jacob and the other was a woman named Li.

She had listened to their stories, but was often reluctant to share her own. These people were the only part of her existence that was not included in her darkness. She listened to what they had to say and her conscience condemned her. That made the depression and the problems worse.

Jacob had lost his job and could not pay his rent, and was forced out onto the streets. He was an odd fellow. He said he actually liked being on the streets. He felt freer and less worried by the concerns of the world. He preferred homelessness to normal life. Some people thought he was strange and others thought he was wise. Annie simply knew she was not comparable with him.

Li had been a different category altogether for Annie. She was an immigrant like herself who had come to Canada with her parents from Hong Kong at a young age. She was in a different category from Annie because Li had been thrown out onto the streets by her own family. Li was a lesbian, and her conservative Chinese Cantonese parents had disowned her when they found her doing what was abominable. They had changed the locks and shut her off from the family for good, and she went onto the streets.

Annie hated homosexuals. She had never mentioned this to Li because she was too lonely to lose someone to talk to. Annie found she hated most people in fact, although she always kept that to herself. She had not always been like that though, as it was only in the past few years she had become so bitter.

XIII - Judgment

Annie was not dead yet; she still had time although she had chosen to depart from her companions. Her dream continued but without visitation from the others.

Now Annie found herself alone. She tried to free herself from the memory of what she had just seen but there was no drug that she could use to do so.

The scene had changed she was alone and sitting in a dark prison cell awaiting her trial, judgment and expected condemnation. The door opened and she walked out into an empty courtroom. She took her seat at the defendant’s bench. Then other doors opened and she walked in again, taking her seat at the judge’s bench, then she walked in and took her seats in the jury, the prosecution, the audience. Annie was every one in the courtroom.

Judge Annie banged her gavel at the judge’s bench and asked the defendant to stand, saying “Ana Dragana Markovic, you stand accused of the murder and destruction of the life of Ana Dragana Markovic, how do you plead?”

Annie the defence lawyer whispered to the Annie the defendant “Do not plead guilty. They will put you in Hell if you do so.”

Defendant Annie rose and said, “I plead not guilty.”

The Annie audience murmured as Judge Annie banged the gavel. She rose as the Annie prosecutor and said, “Your honour, I would like to call my witness. Would Ana Dragana Markovic please come to the stand.”

A hush followed as she came into the courtroom nearly dead and soon to die of alcohol poisoning and she was being rolled in on a wheelchair by another Ana behind her. She took the oath.

The Annie prosecutor spoke, “Now Annie, could you describe to me what your life was like prior to this decade?”

She said, “I was an extroverted happy girl living in Yugoslavia. I had a cat named Milos and two parents who loved me. I got married when I was nineteen to Peter Markovic who took me to live in his house.”

The Annie prosecutor then took out some pictures to show the courtroom what Annie had looked like in her childhood and teens. She had been a smiling girl without any hint of depression in her demeanour.

The Annies of the jury took notes and paused to reflect on the image presented.

The prosecutor continued, “Now Annie, how did that change?”

She answered detailing her recollection of the political events that had impacted her, “There were calls for Kosovo independence in the 90s as well as some terrorism and Milosevic sent the army to fight the Albanians. There were some atrocities by Serbs and NATO bombed the country. The Serbian military forced the Albanians to leave Kosovo, but then NATO defeated Serbia and they had to let the Albanians back in. Some Albanians took vengeance on Serbs in the province, and my neighbours were shot and my husband’s house was burned. We fled and applied for refugee status, and then we came to Canada.”

The Annie prosecutor continued, “What happened after that, Annie?”

She answered, “After that, my life got much worse. I became very depressed about everything so I started having the occasional drink, and then a little more. And then I sort of became an alcoholic. It got so bad that I fought with my husband and apparently I hurt my kid although I could not remember doing so.”

The prosecutor interrupted, “You have a child Annie?”

She answered, “Yes I do. His name is Luka and the memory of what I did to him affects me very deeply.”

The prosecutor said, “Ok, carry on. What happened after this? Did you make up your relationship and seek help?”

She answered, “Well… no. Actually then I ran away from home. I went onto the streets where I remain, wallowing in my own alcoholic despair most of the time. Recently I drank so much that I am about to die of alcohol poisoning.”

The prosecutors said, “Thank you Annie. Now Annie, do you recognize the person who did all of this to you in the court room today?”

“Yes I do,” she answered.

“Could you please point that person out for us?” the prosecutor asked.

The Annie witness pointed at the Annie defendant, and then there were murmurs in the audience as the jury looked on intently. Witness Annie shouted, “That one! Ana Markovic! She is the one who did all of this to me. It is her fault for everything that has happened. She could have sought help in any number of ways but she refused and proudly continued to make me despair and destroy myself.”

The judge banged her gavel as she tried to re-assert order in the courtroom.

The defence rose to cross-examine.

“Now Annie, could you tell me about that crucifix you wear?” she asked.

“I’ve worn this since I was a child. Even after I stopped going to church when my drinking started, I kept it,” she said.

The defence continued, “Why do you wear it Annie?”

“I just think I need to - like it’s something important that I can’t get rid of,” she said.

The defence lawyer turned to the jurywomen, “Even after getting rid of all of these things: her husband, her son, and everything in her old life, the one thing she had kept was the crucifix. I would state to the court that my client is in fact not without hope, and possesses it at some level, that in this life of despair she has not given up on that One Person who matters most. Although she did not consciously recognize Him, I say that actions speak louder than words and that she is not that bad a person after all.”

She sat down and the prosecutor rose to re-examine.

“Do you believe in God Annie?” she asked.

“Not until very recently,” she answered.

“And what happened very recently that caused you to change your mind?” she asked.

“Well, Archangel Michael, the saints and Jesus came to me in a dream, and I therefore concluded that there must be a God after all because they all exist and were really there,” she said.

“So you met them all and then you had a great relationship with them, yes?” she asked.

“Well actually… umm…no,” she answered.

“No? What do you mean ‘no’? Describe please,” she asked.

“Well we got along at first but then I sort of have had problems with them. They told me I needed to change my ways and I refused. And then I ran away from them and that was that,’ she said.

‘Thank you witness, you are excused,’ the prosecutor said.

The prosecution continued, ‘So we see that as important as the action of keeping the crucifix was for Annie, when she met the Lord face to face she refused to listen to Him and did not obey Him. She even cursed the angel to his face who came to tell her that she mattered. This Ana Markovic is a rotten tree, bearing no fruit and ready to be cast into the fires and burned. She cares for no one, not even herself. She is filled with hatred, malignity, and despair. She is guilty on the charge of having destroyed Annie’s life, and I believe that the jury should give her what she deserves.’

She sat down.

The defence lawyer waved her closing comments, the case was hopeless.

Annie, the lead juror stood up and delivered a guilty verdict. Then Annie who was being charged, pounded her chest and screamed, “This is not fair. None of it is fair! The witness is not credible. The jury is biased! No, I’m not going to Hell. No!” she stamped her feet.

The judge banged her gavel, and the guard restrains Annie. She started fighting and more guards came and beat her.

Thus the particular judgment concluded.

A sinner is always condemned by her own conscience; she did not really need an outsider’s opinion, because she condemns herself. God judges us by our own judgments. The rod with which we measure we shall be measured.

Jesus tells us that at the final judgment He will repay us according to our deeds and words. If we did not feed Him when He was hungry, clothe Him when He was naked, give Him drink when He was thirsty, or visit Him when He was in prison, He tells us He will send us to the fires prepared for the devil and his angels.

Harsh to be certain, although it is not unjust when one considers it. If we do not repent of causing harm to others, then why should God repent about causing harm to us?

If there is nothing to change and therefore nothing to be repented about not giving someone food when they are hungry, why should we complain about no food being given to us when we are hungry?

Ask and it shall be given to you.

He tells us not to murder and we disobey Him. We refuse to repent of it, and do not admit that there was anything wrong with what we did. God gives in to this and sends us to a place where we may be murdered since there was indeed nothing wrong with the action, for all eternity.

Maybe we have the wrong opinion on Hell. Perhaps it is like a form of flattery for the multitudes of perpetual unrepentant sinners. Perhaps God is flattering our evil behaviour through imitation, confessing that our ways are indeed superior to the ways He asked us to follow, which we wisely disobeyed. He is then imitating these evil ways of ours in admiration of them Himself, with us as the victims for eternity.

Perhaps this is being a bit sardonic towards that multitude among which many of us will number. But there is really nothing better that could be said here.

Annie was soon to join them and she was already waging a war against her own self as her conscience condemned her. An infinite eternity of this was soon to follow. She was just getting warmed up.

The best option is to confess our wrongdoing and be cleansed of it. The Lord is always very willing to forgive us.

XIV – Hell

The fathers of the church, religious thinkers past and present have often cited the harmony of creation as evidence for the existence of God.

Because everything, all the elements, all matter and energy, and all reality simply seems to work together, it is then seen to be reasonable that there must have been some intelligent force behind this.

This is generally rational thinking in the manner in which most people would conclude rational thinking to be.

On a smaller scale the existence of (for instance) a machine that had many parts of different making, all working together, would rationally suggest the existence of some intelligent author of the machine who made it function like that. No one ever suggests that the machine came into its own without an inventor or builder, as though it had occurred naturally.

There is perhaps a loophole in this argument that is never considered by the Christians who make it. Even though creation points by reason and logic as we think reason and logic to be, to the existence of a higher intelligence that created it, the existence of a God is still not necessarily assumed by this.

According to this logic, could the universe not have been created by Satan, for instance, who as a higher intelligence who could have organized all of its parts into the harmony as it exists? If all that is required is a singular higher intelligence, there is nothing in this traditional argument that discounts the existence of a higher intelligence who is not a loving God.

There are in fact persons, who are few but still exist, who believe that God does not exist and that there is only Satan governing the universe.

One would suspect that the idea of Satan designing the universe was not what certain evangelicals had in mind when they wanted this taught in schools. One may wonder though what the universe would really look like if Satan had authored it.

One should not be afraid of the Devil. Many people do not recognize his existence, but there are many people who have claimed to experience him personally. People have heard voices, felt presences, seen images in their minds, heard him speak and seen him act through others, been hurt in their own flesh or suffered possession. Do not doubt that he would kill us all if he had that permission. One need not be worried or afraid. As powerful as he is, if we are of the Kingdom then we are greater than he and he cannot prevail against the Truth. People say he is a joke and does not exist. To tell you the truth, he is as real a person as you or I, with personality, character traits and a life history since his own creation in distant antiquity. He is good at deception for two primary reasons: i) his own brightness and light, and ii) he is very subtle. Most people in this world have experienced Satan in one form or another whether ever having known it or (more likely) not. He is bright, brighter than the sun, telling us what we want to hear and giving us something false to hope for. A superb liar, who knows how to craft the lie to each particular victim, he is also very subtle and this is his mastery of the arts of deception, because his best trick is influencing people without them ever realizing it. Few will ever notice that he is there, but he is always bombarding society with thoughts, ideas, opinions and suggestions. Where these thoughts, ideas, opinions and suggestions came from, we do not really consider. They are just there and they come across civilization by the minute but only to a point, however, and never more than we are able to resist. Some may think he is simply fiction and others simply rationalize the experiences according to psychological or other rationalist explanations. One is certainly allowed to think this, but he will exist still. Some of the best advice, for those who know the truth of this matter, is to stay constant in prayer, and have no worries or fears about it. He is an insect - may St. Michael swat him!

Annie had experienced Satan in her life, but like most people who had this experience she was unaware of it when such experiences occurred. Like the demons who tormented her, Satan had a habit of popping by and checking up on dear little Annie to make sure she was not doing anything rash such as trying to fix up her life, or even more catastrophic, turning to God to heal her. He did not find it too difficult as she generally unwittingly cooperated very well. Most of his victims required more effort than this.

Sometimes he had some really difficult cases. And there were of course the significant number he could not get to do what he wanted. Although he could certainly tempt them, however unsuccessful his efforts proved to be. Vanity was a very common lie he told people, which most found easy to accept.

There is an old story of a barn that was owned by Satan that contained seeds he planted in people’s hearts to make them do evil. His favourite seed was the ‘seed of discouragement’ which he found could grow in any heart, causing people to become discouraged from doing what they should have done. He found it could grow in any heart except a heart that was thankful. There is much truth to that story.

The number of times that good works could have been done, had it not been for Satan’s discouragement of the person who should do the good work, would be truly amazing if recounted in detail. Vanity was very successful and could be employed against most people, but discouragement was likewise very useful and he found that any person who had been created could be discouraged when given the right pressure. Even a moral person who was not a servant of sin, could be moulded into thinking that they were somehow unworthy and that some good work they should do would prove a failure.

Annie had already known something of what it was like to be in a universe that felt like it was created by Satan. Everything in her life just went wrong. No one liked her, no one cared about her, and she was alone in her miserable despair without any hope but the next drink to veil her worries. Whenever she thought that perhaps she could somehow put her life back in order, the discouragement returned and her despair continued. Everything just worked wrong for her. Most of her life before coming to the streets was not like this. But now as a homeless pariah, she was treated like a bit of garbage by others and by herself, and everything just seemed to work wrong for her. Sun and stars, night and day, there was no light in this world, only darkness. It never ended, and it only got worse. She already knew something of what it was like to be tormented in Hell. Most people do in fact, in one form or another, although it is only but a tiny sampling of what is in store for most of us at the end of this life.

Have you ever imagined what it must be like to go to Hell? We are told that few will be chosen to inherit eternal life, so we must then conclude that most of us will in fact end up in eternal torments. Not that God wants it that way (He would much prefer that we all be saved), but because we stubbornly continue in our sins without repentance and refuse to really be converted to belief in His Son Hell is where we then go.

Most of us will go to Hell. Most of the people we can think of in our day-to-day life will likely end up in eternal torments. We cannot know who will and who will not, and it is not right nor is it our place to speculate on such things. But we can know that few will inherit eternal life, because the Lord Himself says this.

What must it be like in Hell? In scripture we learn only tidbits of what is in store for most of us. It talks about agonizing flames and furnaces, with gnashing of teeth and wailing. In the Hebrew Old Testament ‘Sheol’ is described as an empty place without works, truth, knowledge or anything good. Everything else which we know about this place has mostly come from imagination. We do not know for instance if the Devil rules Hell or if it is like a form of anarchy or some other kind of existence.

I imagine that the multitudes that inhabit that place must be inclined to think as though Satan were God. The will of a good deity is nowhere present in that place, and therefore perhaps they may think that the only god there must be an evil one, as though the universe really was created by Satan after all, and in every way ordered by him. That is to say, imagine a universe in which there was no God….only Satan…and everything that existed worked according to that horrible principle and will. At least that is one imaginative interpretation.

Traditional understanding has always been that the many of us who do find our way there should expect a lake or a sea of fire. This is the common vision of Hell, and the one which was described by Sr. Lucia from the apparition of the Virgin at Fatima. One may perhaps place such visions, however, in the same category as the ones in the Bible wherein there are visions of God (literally) sitting on a real throne made of jasper and such. These may be simply metaphors meant to deliver metaphorical meaning, as opposed to an actually existent throne or an actually existent lake of fire. It is difficult to know for sure; this narrative assumes the existence of such a lake but one may suppose that the many of us who do go, will have to find out when we get there.

If you believe in Jesus and obey His commandments, you should also be informed that it is in fact not necessary to go there. We can never know with certainty of our own salvation, and probability would dictate we are more likely to go to the fires, but it is a fact that if you are baptized and believe in your heart, then you will be saved. The logic must then follow that those who do so and endure in it will be few. Let us hope and pray we are counted among that few.

Peter Markovic was an accountant. When Annie moved in with him after getting married he had only just been certified and was beginning to work full-time. He was the family bread winner while Annie took the role of the domestic housewife. Their marriage was very strong for the first several years before Annie ran away. Peter’s parents did not like Annie very much, but they did not raise any objection to her entrance into the family. They simply did what they could to make her feel awkward and unwanted in that family. But they did not raise open complaint about their dearest son’s poor choice of a bride.

When Peter and Annie moved to Toronto, Peter’s workload increased, as did his pay, and Annie’s domestic labour became all the more important for Peter who would not have been able to handle things without her. He told her that he loved her, and tried to make her feel appreciated whenever he remembered to do so. She was really glad that she married Peter.

When Luka was born, Peter took her to the hospital and the delivery took an afternoon to complete. He was very proud and made phone calls to everyone he knew about what had happened. He took pictures and mailed them to their family back in Serbia.

The couple went back to Serbia twice, to visit and see home again, before Annie ran away. This was helpful to Annie psychologically, although Peter did not know that. He did not recognize his wife’s suffering in all his care for her. He remained a man and could neither see her heart nor fully understand her. He simply assumed that she was working out the change for the best, as all immigrants and refugees have to cope.

The devil had made an entry to Annie’s life and was heading it off to a shipwreck.

When Satan had just begun to enter Annie’s life, he found himself disappointed by her lack of a suicidal nature once she got onto the streets. She was not much use in ruining other lives once she entered the streets and she could just as easily destroy herself in despair in Hell as she could among the living, hence there was no longer much use in keeping her around for his own purposes.

He attempted to find ways to have Annie killed off, but her guardian angel interceded on her behalf. It proved too difficult, so Satan went to the next option.

Satan said to the Lord, “Give me the life of Ana Markovic so that her soul may be lost.”

The Lord replied, “Never will I do that. Her life is not yours and her soul still has hope.”

Satan said, “If you give me her life, I will give the earth a rest and never tempt another soul again.”

Still the Lord replied, “Even if what you said were true, I would never do that, her soul matters even more than that.”

We matter to God more than we could ever know.

But now Annie, who had not heeded what was said, or repented of her ways, was going to go to Hell after all.

A wise and considerate reader such as you may indeed think at this point - How is it that this story will keep going? How is it that she dies and goes to Hell, even though we know that she is alive the next day? That will be explained later, most attentive reader, but for the time being…

Her pulse stopped at about 2:14 am on Thursday April 3, 2008. No one ever really knew anything about Ana Markovic; just another homeless pariah on the streets of Toronto.

She had passed through judgement. Her own conscience and knowledge of her sin condemned her and she was carried off into a prison with an eternal sentence.

Countless multitudes had already gone before her to this place and were being added every minute.

The vision of this place she had received earlier from Mick was simply a small part and not an accurate portrayal in full.

She found herself in a city, not unlike Toronto, except it was different, and more evil than Toronto. As she walked down the street, the bystanders passed her by on either side, neither paying her any attention and unlike Toronto, not even respecting her space although that was a little sin.

She noticed that all the stores were only selling weapons, poisons and things of destruction.

There were religious buildings in the city. There were many temples and religious buildings of all sorts to give honour to God, but this God had nothing to do with Jesus. People who entered the temples would hear sermons of how much God hated them, and how little they mattered in His sight. The priests were all introverted and effeminate. No one made mention of the name of Jesus, other than as either a person to be scolded at or at best simply a metaphor who had never really existed. Every church in the city taught that Jesus was an invented figure had who never existed, and that the gospels should only serve as a means to know how worthless we are by comparison. Mosques were in the city and the imams taught their followers that God only wanted religious warfare and the degradation of all women. Sins could never be forgiven. People who went to confessional only had priests yell at them and malign them. Every religion held firm the principle that human beings must find something wrong and distasteful to judge about their neighbour.

Needless to say, most people in this place would curse God and very often did in fact.

Some people went around raping others on the streets, although they were unable to derive any bodily pleasure from what they did, simply falsely hoping that they might experience that pleasure of sexuality that had existed in life.

A demon followed Annie around drinking all types of spirits and alcohol right in front of her which drove her mad. The demon derived no actual pleasure from what he drank, but Annie wanted it and she could not have it.

Her loneliness grew deeper. No one, not a single person ever tried to talk to Annie in any way. Sometimes demons would go in front of her having long chats with each other while not acknowledging her existence.

There were outbreaks of disease in the city, and vaccination facilities would only infect every person who came to them with AIDS. If people went to hospitals the doctors administered pills that infected people with malaria. And the waiting time for some patients literally seemed like an eternity.

Sexuality existed only in forms that were unpleasant and which people derived no pleasure from, although people were also unable to control their urges or lusts for these things that were so horrible. They burned in their desires that drove them mad as they tried to satisfy things that were both disgusting to themselves and from which they could derive no actual pleasure.

Politicians existed who told lies and did nothing. Annie did not understand what was so different about this.

All administration was bureaucratic. No one ever seemed to be able to get anything done.

None of the streets were kept in good order; every one of them had pot holes every few feet that were never repaired. Traffic accidents occurred frequently, although the victims were unable to die, being dead already.

Everyone spoke lies, and as such no one ever really knew the true nature of reality. Many people in fact stopped realizing that they were in Hell, and thought this dystopia to be simply the true nature of reality.

There was never good weather. It was always either far too hot or far too cold. The rain was always acidic and there was far too much of it. The air quality was always smoggy and suffocated those who breathed it.

All the animals and plants were dangerous to be consumed, and worked against human beings. There were swarms of mosquitoes and black flies that could not die as they endlessly bit; there were hornets that never ceased to sting.

There were wars, seemingly never ending wars all across the place. The massive population could never seem to stop fighting each other as they wreaked havoc and destruction across all existence with weapons that could never actually kill.

And there was a lake of fire although Annie had not yet found it. It was more endless and vast than the Pacific Ocean and claimed countless numbers of souls who simply burned in anguish in its eternal destruction. Souls would enter and leave it, the destruction and pain that was experienced in the lake was not really better or worse than that which occurred everywhere else. It was simply a different type of punishment.

She found all kinds of people there! Multitudes and multitudes of them from every time, nation, culture, language and religion, all gathered together into one great eternal burning mixture.

Many of them had not expected that they were going to end up in Hell. Some number of them thought they were going to go to Heaven, but when their own unrepented sins caught up with them, the truth came through and they saw themselves for who they were.

Some of them, were like Annie only worse, because they still nevertheless refused to believe that they could end up here. They had been such good people in life they would erroneously think, and would curse the God who did not grant them entrance into Heaven.

Nobody was friendly, for even the demons fought with each other often and attempted to torment each other.

No kindness existed in that place. Anything that looked like virtue was simply another deception employed for one reason or another.

Many of them wanted to leave that place. Actually all of them wanted to leave that place. But none of them were willing to confess their wrong doing and be forgiven. They hated the God who had judged them to be worthy of this place and cursed Him all day and all night and they were not changing their minds about Him.

There were many atheists in Hell too. Despite the supernatural events surrounding them, some of them still nevertheless refused to acknowledge God’s existence. Some number of them did change their minds when they came to that place, and recognized He existed, but only to be hated.

Despite their hatred for God, they were also terrified of God. Many of them believed false things about God due to the incredible volume of lies and false information that was readily present in that place. As aforementioned there was a religion taught in Hell that was a corruption of everything that had existed upon the earth.

They looked up, and saw the image of the Beast and they called this “God”. Satan was God in that place. Blasphemy against this “God” included such crimes as seeking to be forgiven, having love, or simply holding out hope that things could get better.

The demons were the oldest inhabitants of that place. They had been thrown into the nether regions and readied for their eternal destruction ever since the fall from heaven and the rebellion against their former Father. They could not be deceived into believing the cult of Satan like the rest of the humans, but they readily taught it to all that were present.

And they were countless - without number.

Nothing ever worked the way it was supposed to, but only in a corrupted fashion that caused pain, misery and destruction.

In a few words - it was as though the universe was run by Satan.

There was only misery; everything that existed was only an evil corruption of its true form. There was no good, no pleasure, nothing to be desired, only pain and endless suffering wherever she went.

And worst of all for Annie, no matter where she went a demon would go with her reminding her of her child and taunting her with the booze she could not wash away the memory with. Her despair was forever - it could not be quenched. It never ended, minute by minute, day by day eternity passed before her.

She gnashed her teeth and wailed.

XV – A light in the darkness

Annie recollecting her dream, was confused by how this should happen. If she had died and gone to Hell then why was she here?

Her memories had not yet completed, coming in piece by piece and leaving her unable to understand the nature of reality.

She meandered around for a bit, visiting her usual sitting spots and receiving no attention; which caused her loneliness. She did not touch alcohol; she was really afraid of what was going to happen if she repeated what she had done.

In her dream it felt like a thousand years had passed in Hell, but she got out of hospital the day after her binge and not much time had passed since then. After a little while something simply snapped inside her she could not stay where she was. She collected her coins, got up and started walking.

She felt like she was being led to do something but she could not understand what it was or what was happening. Like an imperative that was in her mind but without a conscious goal, it was simply a need to start moving.

She walked until she came to St. Michael’s Cathedral on Church Street, and walked inside. She had been to any non-orthodox churches in Toronto before on her sometimes visits in those times during which she believed in God. The difference did not really matter to her nor did she understand why they were all different. Why did Jesus want her to worship Him in one church but was angry when she worshipped Him in others?

She paused and reflected on how she came to be here, and she thought about Mick in her dream and the fact that this church was named after him. There were images of St Michael in the church and she agreed that they looked nothing like him. The Mick she remembered was a noble and sensitive prince, while these images somehow just missed the mark. Not that that mattered anyhow.

She felt a presence in the church, a familiar one which she could not describe. She did not notice it consciously but she had met him before.

When Mick spoke with Annie, at one point he showed her a vision of herself in church during one of those few times she believed in God during her days in darkness. It was not at St Mike’s to which she had never been before, but at a smaller church of the United Church of Canada not too far away. It was not at a service she had decided to go to, but rather it was late at night and there was an interfaith meeting of sorts. A Hindu yogi had been invited by the minister to perform a meditation session in the church for free for anyone who was willing to participate. Annie had seen an advertisement for it taped to a nearby street-light pole along with other posters. This is a common mode of street advertisement for this sort of thing, and Annie in one of her few moments of belief in God, decided for the first time in her life to attend a service outside the Christian faith.

She saw herself walk into a spacious meeting room with aluminium chairs all decked out in adjacent rows, with a number of people from diverse backgrounds, as well as parts of the church’s largely British descended Canadian congregation, taking their seats. Annie was hoping she would not be called upon for anything special so she sat at the back. The yogi was standing at the front with a stringed instrument and a large jar of muddy water.

The first person to speak was the church’s pastor who was a married woman in her early 40s, “I would like to welcome everyone who has come out tonight for this very special event in our community. For those of you who attended before, you know that this is the second event in the series our church is hosting on the spirituality of world religions. Last week’s event with Imam Mohammed was very successful, and so should it also be this week with Yogi Kuval Majhi (she gestures toward him while saying his name and he nods his head in recognition). We would like to thank you for joining us tonight and for participating in our series here. Now before you begin, I would also like to mention that we will be having refreshments in the room across the hallway once you’ve finished, and that if anyone needs to go to the washroom it is located down the hallway, first door on the left next to the entrance. Now could we please have a round of applause to welcome our guest who has generously come to join us tonight,” (applause follows but Annie simply sits there and does nothing).

As she watched this dream, Annie said to Mick, “Why are you showing me this? What does this have to do with your message?”

Mick replied, “First I would like to ask you the question, why did you come here?”

Annie answered him, “Well, as you say, sometimes I believed in God and I saw the advertisement for this meeting and decided to join it.”

Mick said, “Yes, you believed in God briefly, and it is good that you did even briefly, but you are not going to come to find God here.”

Annie answered him, “Well… I was opening myself to other possibilities than what my mother had told me about God. Is there anything wrong with that?”

Mick said, “You say that God was far away from you, and you were wrong. As you know now, He is always near even for those who cannot recognize Him. But this is not the correct path to Him. There is no salvation through what is about to follow.”

Yogi Kuval began to speak, “Good evening everyone, I am happy that you were willing to come to this meditation. Now to start I would like everyone to try to close their eyes for a moment and just try to think or focus on their breathing only.” (Most of the room followed suit, and it all turned silent.) “Now just let all those worries and cares in your lives leave you, just focus only on your breathing.” (A few minutes of silence followed.) “Now you may open your eyes again (everyone did). In day to day life our souls are busied and bothered by all the things in this world that call our attention away from what is really important. Our souls need food, they are starving and we need food for our souls just as we need food for our bodies, and that is the purpose of meditation. I believe it was Guru Jesus who said ‘that the life is more than food’, and it is very true, because we also need to remember that we are not just bodies, but have souls that will be born again.”

“Now I would like to teach you some powerful words for meditation that we will say many times and then we will sing it, and I will play along with my sitar. Now repeat after me: “Hari-bol, Nitai-gaur” (everyone did). Now say after me “Nitai-gaur, Hari-bol” (again everyone did.). He then told them some other things and they repeated them. He did not explain their meaning or translate them, but only told them they were powerful words that were very helpful in meditation. He then picked up his sitar and played, and asked them to focus on the words.

After a little while he stopped, and then he began a sermon, “God is the life-force that gives breath to all things. He is in the trees, He is in the mountains, He is in the smoke, He is in the fish, He is in the people, He is … help me along, where is God?”

(Some people started giving answers, “He is in the whales,” “He is in the cosmos,” “He is in my car,” and it keeps going).

Yogi Kuval continued, “Yes very good, thank you. So you see God is in everything, it is very difficult to get away from Him if you tried to run away, in fact He is just very difficult to miss really (some people chuckled). Now God is very difficult to miss, and He is everywhere and in everyone, but why is that we then say that we cannot find Him?”

A black-skinned man with a Jamaican accent answered, “Because we do bad! We sin. And God looks away.”

Annie said, “What do you mean you cannot find God here, they are talking about God and that man said something that was a lot like what you said before.”

Mick said, “There is truth to be respected here. There are parts of what Yogi Kuval is saying about God that I could repeat myself as His messenger. Except it is a lie of the one I am bound to fight, to claim that this is the route to God.”

A member of the church’s congregation then answered, “Because we have not come to believe in His Son and we can only come to the Father through the Son.”

The Yogi took notice and with an endearing smile, he addressed the Christian with the courage to raise his beliefs in this setting, “Now, when Guru Jesus said those words that “you can only come to God through me” and other likewise sayings of his, he was not referring to everyone, everywhere. Rather he only meant those sayings for that particular time and place, because he was the only wise guru who was there to teach them about God at that time and therefore they had to listen to him as you say in order to come to God. Most Christians have been misled into a misinterpretation of what Guru Jesus was really saying, thinking it meant all people and all times. But since his time and before his time, and in many other parts of the world there have been many other gurus who have likewise taught about God and may also be followed to find peace with God. Do not be misled, Guru Jesus was a great Guru, one of the greatest if not the greatest even, but he is not the only one, and Christians are thankfully beginning to see this more and more these days. That line was taken out of context.”

The Christian who spoke up did not want to cause a scene and therefore he just sat quietly at this answer he did not agree with. When an opportune moment arose he simply left, and Yogi Kuval paid no attention as he continued his sermon.

The Yogi continued his sermon, “Now, God is everywhere and in everyone, but why do we then say that we cannot find him? Someone said that is because we sin, we do bad things and God cannot be found there. We are all caught in a great cycle of death and re-birth. We keep sinning, we keep playing in the mud and making ourselves filthy with it. It is a distraction from God. We cannot find God in the mud because the mud is dirty and God is not dirty, but we are always in the mud so then we say that we cannot find God. There are all kinds of distractions in this world by the things that are of this world that are always bothering our minds. So, to find God, then what must we do?”

After a short pause, someone gave the obvious answer: “Meditation?”

The Yogi continued, “Yes, thank you. One way is that we leave the world and we come to meditate and in the silence of our own thoughts we are able come closer to the essence of God in our own consciousness. It is not only through Guru Jesus as many of his misguided disciples have claimed, although he can be very helpful along the path to the great truth that is God, but we may also become silent and meditate, and then we shall become enlightened in ourselves. Now I am going to show you something I once saw a Buddhist monk do, which I am going to adopt and adapt here because I think it is a very helpful exercise for what we are about to try.”

He took the jar of muddy water and began shaking it, and it became very clouded with the dirt on the inside.

The Yogi continued, “Now I want you all to look at this jar, yes. You see how it is all clouded with dust and you cannot see clearly into it? Now that is our lives, is it not? It is one great mass of muddy confusion that just keeps going on and on, and we can never clearly see the truth in the midst of it because it is so confused and muddy. Now I want you all to simply stare at the jar and as before, focus on your breathing. You will see more clearly as the sediment untangles itself and falls to the bottom, making the water clear, just as when we relax and meditate, as you will be doing at the same time. Your mind and soul will become clear and you will come closer in your own being to the great truth that is God.”

As she watched this Annie then said to Mick, “I don’t understand then, what are you trying to say? How does this relate to your message?”

Mick said, “It is part of the answer to the questions in your own heart about why it is you could never see God. God is not found through this, contrary to what the Yogi says. He has never known God and he is telling a lie. This is deception. It has certain truths within it but it is misleading people by telling them they do not need to look in the right place to find God, and that He is found where He cannot be found.”

Annie then said, “I can’t find God in silence? My mother always needed to stay silent or talk very softly when she wanted to be alone with God.”

Mick said, “But being silent and thinking is not enough in itself. You need to find Jesus and then you will find the Father, but the Yogi tells them that God can be found through other paths. That is a lie. There is much truth in what is said here, but it is not the way to salvation. Many people, including this man, worship idols and give worship to the enemy instead of God. There is only One God, and He sent His Son, and it is only through His Son that one can find the Father. When one refuses to believe in the Son, he refuses to believe in God as well.”

In the dialogue conducted between the religions in the past few decades, there has been an unfortunate and unintended side-effect of religious relativism which has entered the public sphere that has often justified itself within the atmosphere of the dialogue.

In the multicultural haven of Toronto it is much easier to see what lies down this road for the rest of the world. If all the world’s religions teach the same good morals and tolerance toward each other, do we really truly need to keep around this Son of God and His intolerant claim to being the only One? Why not cut Him out and make things easier for us? And there are many Christians who, sometimes unwittingly, will do exactly that. We take the word ‘Jesus’ out of public prayers in order not to offend those who do not believe in Jesus and we restrict ourselves to the non-offensive word ‘God’. We are too polite to mention that troublesome name of ‘Jesus’, as though He is the only route to salvation. We avoid making references that could suggest we want non-Christians to join the faith, in order to avoid offending them.

Other religions may be criticized for being intolerant, or poorly adapted to western liberal democracy, but they will never be criticized for blaspheming Christ or denying that Jesus is who He is. If a person denies the holocaust they are horrible and should be punished, but if they deny that God was murdered on the cross it is their own belief and ought to be respected.

Belief in God is important to the collection of religions in the world, but this Son of God character produces too many problems in our increasingly enlightened and tolerant world, and we should avoid putting Him out there in such a way lest others be offended. The world is preparing for the coming Antichrist.

There were many other times in the dream that Mick taught Annie on these points.

For Annie’s purposes, this portion of the dream was simply a minor lesson that Mick wished to instruct her upon.

Mick simply concluded to her by saying, “But rest assured, if you accept my message and survive I will come to you as a spirit and lead you to the right place.”

How had she gotten here? She had been in hell, but what happened? What fortunate circumstance had occurred to bring her back?

In the story of the rich man and Lazarus, in the gospel of Luke, the rich man goes to Hell and Lazarus goes to Abraham’s bosom. Abraham tells the rich man who says he is in anguish and wants relief, that none can pass from Heaven to Hell or from Hell to Heaven. The gates of the holy Jerusalem are shut and the wicked are left out, as the bridegroom feasts with His church.

Why is it that none can pass from Hell to Heaven or from Heaven to hell? If a man went to Heaven and then decided while he was there that he would start breaking the rules, cursing God and committing idolatry in the holy city, would the person stay there? Would he not go to Hell?

If a man went to Hell and then decided to repent of all his sins, and beg for mercy and grace from above, and praised God while he was in Hell. Would God keep him there? Does the Lord profit from our destruction?

Perhaps the reason none can pass, is not that they are not allowed to so speak, but because their own state does not permit them to. Only the righteous can enter Heaven and only the wicked can be in Hell. If the righteous decided they were no longer going to be righteous, they could therefore no longer enter or be in heaven, because only the righteous can be there. If the wicked decided that they should stop being wicked, they would no longer be in Hell, because only the wicked can be in Hell. Thus the “impenetrable barrier” is perhaps not something which is impossible to overcome, but simply never will be overcome. If a wicked person would repent, God would have given them an opportunity before they entered the final punishment. Likewise if a person was going to betray him, God would not have welcomed him into His Kingdom before this, it would stand to reason. The separation into Heaven and Hell is therefore done in God’s perfect knowledge of who, by their own free choice, will stay faithful forever and who will not believe forever.

Annie was in Hell, and it seemed like eternity was passing her by. It was painful, and it only seemed to keep getting worse. She did find the lake of fire after all, which she was plunged into at one point, although this was not the only punishment in Hell. She also found the chains she had seen earlier and she had been bound to them, although that was also not the only punishment. The number of things that she experienced far surpassed what she knew in this world. She had tasted something of what Hell was like most certainly in her life on Earth, as do all people really, but that experience fell far short of what she knew now.

Annie sat in the back of the cathedral, pondering and thinking things over. She did not yet have an explanation for why she was here. After a few minutes she got up and starting walking around, thinking she might go outside again, but there was a crack of thunder and all of a sudden there was a heavy downpour that began as she approached the lobby. The rain was cold and too wet; she decided to stay indoors. A powerful Someone wanted her to stay put.

She went back to her seat and found herself with nothing to do but just ponder and wait for the remainder of the memories to return, assuming that they would, which she had no doubts about. It seemed like so much time had passed in Hell - like a whole millennium had gone by and yet on earth very little time seemed to have passed. She started whispering under her breath.

“I know you can hear me… I know you are there… what do you want me to do now?” she said. There was no answer.

“How did I get out of that place, why am I here, what should I be doing?” she asked, and again there is no answer.

She simply put her head in her palms as she held on to fleeting reality and was unable to understand anything that was happening. Blindly walking forward with no eyes to see where she was going, she had had little faith before, but she was beginning to be gifted with some. It was a strange thing to her, and she did not understand it at first. This idea that you could be led to doing something without understanding what you were supposed to be doing, but simply trusting, was mostly new to her. She had had some limited experience with it as a child, but that had quickly passed and she had little to no memory of it.

“What do you want from me? Are you going to send me back to Hell if I disobey? What do you want me to do now?” she said as she took her hair in her fingers and started twisting it.

There were no answers given to her for any of her questions - at least not yet. She gave up talking and simply found herself at a dead point where the only thing she could do was simply stay in place without trying to rationalize or understand what was going on. She had nothing that she could possibly trust or hope in other than Him. Not one thing could she know to be true or false in what had occurred.

She thought to herself, “What if perhaps I’m still in Hell but this is just a trick of my mind, and they are trying to convince me I am no longer there?” She quickly discarded this when she remembered the kinds of torments she experienced and how much better this place was than where she just had been.

In the place where she had just come from there was never-ending torment. Most people have tasted at least something of what that is like in their own lives, but no one has ever experienced the full thing until they get there.

She sat there in the pew with her hair in her hands as she crouched down not looking up and she felt someone sat down next to her. She looked up and there was an eight-year old Korean girl looking at this very sad homeless person. They exchanged eye contact for a brief moment and then the girl ran off again. For a moment Annie completely forgot about what was going on and simply stared at the girl as she ran off to find her older brother who had brought her. Annie felt completely different. Happy children have a mysterious power to work such wonders.

‘What was I thinking about?’ She wondered to herself because she had forgotten. Then it came back, she had been in Hell and was now somehow here. But after the child left she felt completely different about it.

Her frustration had left her and she simply stayed still and nothing happened. Then a middle-aged couple in early retirement sat down in the pew in front of her and went down on the kneelers for a few minutes before they got up and rested on the seat.

The wife whispered to her husband, “Do you know what time it is?”

He said, “I’m sorry honey, I left my watch in the car, I think we’re a little bit early though.”

She whispered back, “I hope we’re not too early, I don’t like having to wait. Did Alice say she was going to join us today or was that tomorrow I’m thinking of?”

He said, “I… I wasn’t aware she was coming.”

She whispered, “Oh that’s right, I forgot we never told you. Alice said she wanted to join us for mass one time, and I told her that we always come at this time to this pew, and she said she was going to be here today, or maybe she said tomorrow… I can’t remember.”

He said, “Well that sounds nice of her, I hope she comes today. We are a little bit early. She might still be coming.”

His wife whispered, “That’s true. You’re right.”

He said, “I don’t think they’ve even started confessions yet, we must be somewhat early.”

She whispered, “That’s a good point too, I don’t like waiting.”

After a few moments of silence he then said, “Don’t you love the architecture in this place?”

She said, “I know. It’s beautiful, Alice hasn’t seen it, and she’s into this sort of thing. One of her hobbies is architecture, if we asked her she could probably tell us what type it is, or the style and period. I took her to the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre last month and she just couldn’t stop talking about everything in there. Early 20th century Toronto is one of her favourites.”

He said, “Well that’s an interesting tidbit on Alice, which I didn’t know. What does Alice do for a living again, I’ve forgotten.”

She whispered, “She’s a teller, she works for TD.”

He said, “Oh that’s right I completely forgot. You told me that before. What’s she up to these days, anything new?”

She whispered, “Oh, she just finally finished reading the Da Vinci Code and I think she is going to choose a new book, I’ve suggested that if she liked that she might also try Holy Blood, Holy Grail and see how it compares.”

He said, “I haven’t gotten around to reading that yet. Everyone’s been talking about it though, and the movie has come out too hasn’t it?”

She whispered, “Yep, I didn’t really like the movie though, I thought it was pretty mediocre, but I know some people who liked it.”

He said, “You know what? I don’t understand what it was that the bishops were so worried about, I mean so many Catholics have read that book and seen the movie and none of them are actually re-thinking Catholicism from what I’ve seen.”

She whispered, “No, that’s definitely true, it was certainly a false alarm. They tend to get easily ruffled about those things.”

He said, “That’s true, although I know Fr. Del Monte was not terribly concerned about it when it came out.”

She whispered, “Yes I remember that…I just had a thought, I wonder if the rain is slowing anything down, maybe that’s why she’s not here yet.”

He said, “Is Alice coming by car or TTC?”

She whispered, “Uhh…you know, I’m not sure. She has a car but you’re right, she might be taking TTC, that’s often faster downtown. But actually, what am I thinking? Her bank isn’t far from here. She’s walking…she’ll get soaked!”

He said, “Don’t you think the stained glass is beautiful in this place, it probably looks even better when the sun is shining outside. This place is filled with art.”

She whispered, “You’re right - it’s gorgeous. I would bring Luigi here. He loves art but I don’t think I could convince him to enter this place.”

He said, “Your hairdresser - why couldn’t he co…oh, of course, that’s right, I keep forgetting about your friends.”

She whispered, “Maybe he would come on a tour, but he would get very uncomfortable if I just brought him in I think. He brought his boyfriend to the salon the other day, and they say they are going to get married on the 13th of next month. He was telling me the other day about how people are really nasty toward his marriage plans.”

He said, “That’s very unfortunate. He seems like a good person. I can’t understand why people can’t just be more accepting of people’s differences.”

She whispered, “I know, poor Luigi. He’s been through so much as well. You know I’m beginning to think that maybe Alice is supposed to come tomorrow. Actually I can sort of remember her saying something about her lunch break being switched around today, and that it wouldn’t coincide with coming here.”

He said, “Well, then tomorrow we shall see her. I like the atmosphere of this place, it’s majestic almost. You know what I mean.”

She whispered, “Yep. I think Alice would definitely love it. You know if you like atmosphere, I got a new CD of spiritual nature music the other day. It gives a really nice feeling of atmosphere when you play it.”

He said, “That sounds like something we might try later.”

She whispered, “Oh…do you know what happened recently that I was just reminded of?”

He said, “No, what is it?”

She whispered, “There was this guy standing on a pedestal he had set up outside the Skydome yelling at people to believe in Jesus or they were all going to go Hell.”

He said, “Yep, those people do find their way around sometimes. Was it after a game had ended or was he just there in normal hours?”

She whispered, “Actually, I think the game was soon to start because everyone was flocking towards it, if I remember right. I just can’t take those people. I mean, in our day and age that kind of narrow-minded intolerance and such ignorance of the world, especially when you consider the kind of society we live in and how many people of different backgrounds must have been offended when he was saying that!”

He said, “Most certainly so, and the church doesn’t teach that non-Christians can’t go to Heaven anymore either, so at least we Catholics know better than that.”

She whispered, “I know. I was reading on the internet recently that they say there are similarities between Jesus and Krishna, the god of the Hindu religion. How about that!”

He said, “I mean it’s easier when you’re a Catholic because you have more graces but to say that you need to believe in Jesus or else you will go to Hell is fundamentalist and extreme.”

She whispered, “You know, it’s not worth getting riled up over. Let those people run their course and they’ll be corrected or confused in time, that’s what my mother used to say.”

He said, “I really like the mass when it’s done in cathedral churches like this one. It’s such a beautiful and ornate ceremony, even during the daily mass there is a certain noble quality to it that makes you want to keep coming back each time to get that feeling.”

She whispered, “I know what you mean. Alice has never been to a cathedral church for a mass before. I told her that St Mike’s is really close to her work and that she should try it out some time. When she comes tomorrow it’ll be great.”

He said, “I heard the other day that the Pope has said that communion should be denied to politicians who support abortion rights.”

She whispered, “Oh, they’ve been saying that for years.”

He said, “Really? I just heard about it the other day.”

She whispered, “Oh, they’ve always been threatening that politicians who support abortion will be denied communion. I’m not sure if it has ever really happened though. I think they exaggerate the abortion issue. It’s not like there aren’t other important issues out there.”

He said, “Oh, I agree. I sometimes think that the Pope and the rest of we Catholics should stop trying to impose our religious view that life begins at conception on everyone else. It’s very arrogant of us to think that we are in a position to dictate our beliefs to others in the rest of the country.”

She whispered, “I agree…You know what? I think this place could use some better lighting, it seems so dark in here sometimes and it’s such a beautiful building.”

He said, “I think I know what you mean. It makes it seem more sombre, although that might help some people who want that kind of atmosphere for prayer.”

She whispered, “I wish I had more time to pray, but you know I’ve always got so much to do in the day and I always keep finding myself have trouble just squeezing in even a few minutes.”

He said, “Me too. Priests always talk about how we should be praying more often, but I just don’t think they really understand in their cloistered life what it’s like to be pressed for time. We can forgive them though.”

She whispered, “I think it would just be irresponsible if we let something like prayer get in the way of social or work commitments. I have doubts though that this atmosphere helps people pray. People need quiet, but I don’t know if you really need darkness and sombreness.”

He said, “Well, I don’t know. Maybe some people like it, but I understand what you mean.”

She whispered, “You know what I also don’t like about this place…those homeless people who sit outside the cathedral all the time. I wish they would do their thing at some other location where they wouldn’t give me such pains in my conscience.”

He said, “I know, it’s very selfish of them to be doing that and expecting all of us to take notice.”

She whispered, “Can’t they just get a job? I’m sure the Canadian military would take them for one thing. They’re just being lazy and expecting everyone to provide stuff for them. When they sit out there, they’re trying to take advantage of Christian consciences.”

He said, “I think we must have been much earlier than we thought, because confessions still haven’t started yet.”

She whispered, “You’re probably right, unless of course for some reason they cancelled them today.”

He said, “Or more likely the priest is just late.”

She whispered, “That one too, that’s strongly possible. Have you been to confession lately?”

He said, “I haven’t gone for the past three years. How about you?”

She whispered, “Oh I can’t remember the last time I went. It was a while ago to be sure. I think as long as I don’t commit any sins I’ll be fine.”

He said, “That’s true. Some people go more often but we don’t really have to. I mean it’s not like we’re at risk of going to Hell or anything!”

She whispered, “Oh, goodness no!”

Annie was lazily listening to them and then the memories started returning, as she recalled the roaring waves of lava in that endless sea, cresting and falling as she wailed in utter agony. There were people from all cultures, nations, tongues and creeds in that place. The number of Christians who could be found there was quite astonishing. Jesus really did tell His followers about the number of those who would call themselves His disciples who were not, and who would say to Him ‘Lord, Lord’ and not do the things that He told them. Those who worked on His behalf, performed service, and yet never in truth knew Him.

They were countless and without number. Christians of all denominations and beliefs found themselves apart from God for eternity.

The wailing and cries went up forever; there was no hope for the multitudes of wicked in that place.

At some point though, something strange happened. It was in fact without precedent in the entire history of the place. There were rumours it had happened before, although Hell was filled with many liars and many lies. You could never trust anything you ever heard in that place.

Annie’s soul was burning in the lake of fire with waves of lava cooking her indestructible body which was still capable of feeling pain, as vast multitudes of Hell’s denizens likewise floated in the fire. The demon who kept showing Annie pictures of her child, was still there taunting Annie with the pictures as it burned her memory that could not find relief in any alcohol. She had seen many people she knew in life while she was there, although they never talked to her; ensuring that she remained lonely. Then it happened; that thing without precedent that was not supposed to happen.

She gazed at the picture of her son as the tears never ceased to go down from her eyes and after what seemed like a millennium something snapped in her. She looked at the picture and her damned soul found not only despair but at the demon’s inducement she found hatred for her little boy. And then it snapped. It had never happened before, nor was it supposed to happen.

“I refuse to believe this,” she said, “I will not accept that this is true. No, I will not. I was born and had a childhood, and got married, and had a child. I do not care if I deserve this, I will not believe it.” She was struggling for the words as the demon, surprised at her unusual outburst, called others over to see what she was going to say.

“I am Ana Dragana Markovic…I think…and I am a person. And I deserve this, but I do not care. There is something…” she was really struggling, she wanted to express something but she could not get the rights words. The demons cocked their eyes as many pulled over and started laughing at this sudden outburst.

“I am a person, and I had a kid, and then I lost everything and died and went to Hell. And that is true, but I will not care. I am a person…I…person…there was something…I…I… I MATTER!” the demons were laughing; they did not understand what she had just done.

“I deserve everything that is happening to me, and I do not care, because I still matter! Even in this place where God is not present but to be cursed, and we revere Satan as God, I still matter to the True God! Yes, I matter!” the demons ceased their laughing as some of them looked perplexed, others worried. They did not understand what was going on. This had never happened before.

“I matter to God no matter what happens and no matter how badly I do, and how angry He becomes to me, I still matter to Him. Even in this accursed place, where He has abandoned me to eternal torments, I matter! I matter! I matter! There is nothing that can be hid from His eyes, He sees me even here and knows what I say. Yes He does. I matter and He says so!” She continued as another wave of lava crested and fell as her body burned in anguish, as she mouthed out her words.

The demons had never before heard such blasphemy in this place. Did she not know that God hated her and cared not for her as the religious teachers in Hell taught? they wondered. How was she saying this blasphemy? They were afraid of what she was saying and they could not grasp how she said it. This accursed being who burned in the fires of her own despair day and night, was saying these things. But how?

“No I will not believe it! Even though I burn here day and night, I still matter to Him! Nothing can change that. All eternity can come and pass and I will matter to Him even still!”

The demons grabbed hold of Annie. They could not fathom how she said such a thing. Perhaps if they tortured her she would be put back into her place. But they could not take her, for at that very moment a tsunami tidal wave came crashing through the burning sea and plunged the demons into the deep as it carried Annie up on a crest at a high speed as she started moving across the lake, multitudes and multitudes passing her by in burning anguish.

She flew up into the air as the wave hit a wall where two angels took hold of her and carried her out of that place. She really did matter. She mattered more than she could ever fathom.

At 2:14 am a squirrel with an acorn in its mouth jumped down from the tree and hit the body of Ana Markovic on the chest. Like a CPR press, that was just enough and in a spectacular fluke her heart began pumping once more. The squirrel scurried off fast the moment it realized that what it had landed on was a human.

At 2:17 am a neighbourhood man who was going home after a very late closing of his business, was walking near the park and noticed the woman and saw the bottle in her hand. He knew nothing about Ana Markovic but an alarm bell went off in his head when he noticed her. “Probably nothing to be worried about, but just to be on the safe side,” he thought to himself as he went over and felt her weak pulse. Then his heart started racing as he took out his cell phone and dialled emergency.

At 2:37 am an ambulance arrived and the paramedics checked her and jetted her off to the emergency room.

They did not think she was going to make it, but by evening the next day Dr. Mukherjee made a record of what he called a ‘miraculous recovery’. He had hardly seen anything like it. He would have liked to study what happened but the hospital was too busy for that sort of thing.

Annie was sitting in the back of the cathedral as these last elements of her memories returned to her. She pondered to herself whether this was just a dream or if it had really happened. She reasoned that her alcoholic mind could not possibly have made all of these things up. A week ago if you had asked her, she would have said that she did not believe. Now things were different.

During Annie’s time on the streets she had gathered a great deal of unresolved guilt that never ceased to torment her. She knew it was all her fault, but she refused to be forgiven. She preferred to let it torment her and destroy her life. Sometimes she would think that she could be forgiven, just as sometimes she believed in God, although those times were few and passing. There was no plan to deal with the guilt, only to try to stop thinking about it or to drug herself once more.

Psychologists and sociologists have talked about the great importance of guilt in human behaviour, personal health and social well-being. One of the fathers of modern sociology Émile Durkheim who studied trends in Germany discovered that Roman Catholics had significantly lower suicide rates than Protestants did and put forward the theory that he believed this was because the Catholics had a mandatory confessional which made them less likely to wish to kill themselves while Protestants did not. In the twentieth century, the dean of the US psychiatric establishment Karl Menninger is on record as having claimed that if he could “convince the patients in psychiatric hospitals that their sins were forgiven, 75% of them could walk out the next day.” It would appear that most of mental illness has its origins in unresolved guilt.

Annie would sometimes talk to herself on the streets. She would say to herself, “Look at how stupid and terrible you are. This is all your fault and you know it. You can leave at any time and you just keep going. What a miserable worthless creature you are.”

People passing her by who heard these things pretended not to hear anything. Many of them did not pay any attention anyways. If they could hear her they simply concluded she had problems, and more importantly that those problems were at a distance and not their own. Annie would sometimes curse herself too. She would swear at herself in Serbian; she had not really learned how to swear very well in English, although she had improved over time. Most people had no idea what she was saying nor did they care to know.

Sometimes she did think that she could be forgiven. Those were usually the same times she believed there was a God who could forgive her. She did not know what she should do but she thought to herself that God must have a plan for all of this because she certainly did not. Then of course she would stop believing in God once more. It was a strange phenomenon to believe and disbelieve again, and again. It generally made it more difficult to believe when she considered that God was only real when she felt like it.

She hated God. She hated Jesus, she hated holiness and goodness. The demons did what they could to support and cause this seed to grow in her heart. She blamed God for her guilt, and refused to believe He existed. It is a strange concept although nevertheless one which is true for many atheists that they are somehow angry with this non-existent Being whom they nevertheless find so offensive despite His imaginary nature.

Her condition on the streets made it harder for her to think kindly of the idea of a perfect Being in Heaven. If He had so much power, then why was she still there? Is it even possible for a person to love God when they hate their own self?

We experience guilt and we see Him to be perfect. We deserve to die and He deserves to be praised. It seems and feels insane and yet it also happens to be true. Job asked “But how can a man be just before God? If one wished to contend with Him, one could not answer Him once in a thousand times.” [Job 9:2-3] We cannot compare with God. Glory and honour belong to Him and not to us. Those who possess glory either do it temporarily or it is His glory that is in them and not their own.

The guilt was incessant and drove Annie insane. Like a red hot iron being driven through her mind, the thoughts of everything she did were oppressive and painful. She thought about what everyone must have thought of her and the kind of monster that she was, and she only found hatred in her heart as a response. She would drug herself with alcohol as a means to get rid of her guilt. This would eventually cause her death and destruction in hellfire.

The priest walked down the corridor of the Cathedral as Annie was sitting there. She looked at him with a strange but quite strong hope in her heart, that maybe he might do something like take notice of her and stop to chat. He did no such thing, and paid no attention as he kept walking, entered the confessional and shut the door. A small line of people then got up and assembled in front of it.

For some reason, just as she had been compelled to come here, she found herself getting up and joining the line. When she had done penance when she was younger, she remembered always having butterflies in her stomach beforehand. This time, however, she simply felt empty. She could remember experiencing a thousand years in Hell and the prospect of talking to a priest in a confessional no longer held much fear in comparison.

She entered the confessional and knelt, the priest was in a bright little room with both eyes closed as they began.

Annie said, “I have been a long time away from being part of the church and I can no longer really remember how to do this Father.” She did not mention that she had been raised orthodox. She did not think it mattered and did not want to complicate anything.

The priest leaned over and said in a soft voice, “Ok, the Lord always welcomes the return of his lost sheep with much mercy and rejoicing. May I ask how long you’ve been gone?”

She said, “A very long time father, it feels like a thousand years actually, my last penance was in the 90’s.”

The priest then said, “Ok, I will not ask you to name all of your sins, God knows your sins and you cannot tell Him anything He does not know, but if you could just perhaps say whichever areas of sinfulness or dominant sins you find most necessary to confess.”

She then said, “I did something really terrible, I left my family and my little boy, and destroyed my own life by alcoholism and despair. I hated myself. I deserved it, but I was never sorry for it either. God tried to reach me where I was and I cursed Him.”

The priest swallowed and moved in his seat as he listened, “There is no sin that is beyond God’s mercy to forgive, for those who ask it. As far as we may go from Him, He is always there ready to take us back when we repent. Is there anything else that you think necessary to confess, or does that cover it?”

“I think… there’s lots of other stuff, but that’s the biggest part of it,” she said.

He asked her to make an act of contrition, teaching her one to say, and absolved her. For her penance she was required to pray for her family and everyone else she harmed.

The priest also told her that he would pray for her. She thanked him and walked away.

She sat back in the pews, reflecting on everything that had happened. After a little while the mass started, and she tried to participate but she did not really know how, and there were significant differences in the Roman mass she was unfamiliar with. Annie took communion though.

It is often said by priests that the Eucharist, which is the flesh of Jesus in the form of an edible bread wafer made of whey flour, possesses an eternal mystery that we will never fully comprehend.

To non-believers it is simply a piece of bread, although in truth, if you look at it you have seen God Himself. It is such a seemingly mundane object and yet it is more important than the universe itself. It is given and consumed every day all across the globe, and somehow the world just keeps going as though nothing were happening. Many people are unaware of its existence, while many more will simply not believe that it is what it is.

Truth be told, people have left this world, with the taking of the Eucharist as their one wish before finally going to sleep. St Joan of Arc wished to take the sacrament before they burned her and they would not let her at first because she dressed in men’s clothes. When we take it we are supposed to remember Jesus; in fact we need to remember Him. It was the last thing He said to His disciples all gathered together before He departed from them to die.

When Annie took it she knew that there was someone there. When she was younger she had often questioned it, not in front of her mother of course, but she had wondered how it could be what they say it was and secretly disbelieved. This time, after meeting the Man Himself she knew that her mother was telling the truth after all.

After she consumed it, she felt really different. It was like she had just stepped off a roller-coaster and was recovering her balance. Things became clearer, less worrisome and altogether brighter the moment she took it. She noticed the change, as she was walking back to her pew. It was not hid from her conscious mind that something profound had just taken place.

She found a joy in her heart that she had not experienced for ages. It was a subtle joy, but she could tell it was there.

This was the sort of joy that needed to be spread, one which could not be contained without infecting others with its virus. She did not think this at the time, although that is the nature of this type of joy when given its proper respect and following. What she rather thought was that things were going to get better, and she wondered how it was that she was going to continue after this. She knew she had to meet up with Peter and also her parents and relatives back home. Her mother had not given up hope, but her father often wavered and became very sad. He was much like his daughter in that way, unfortunately.

Would Luka forgive her? Did he even remember what happened? All of these things came to her thoughts, but for some reason they did not poison her as they would have before. Something important had changed for the better there was hope here and it was not going to be lost anytime soon. St Paul tells us that we need to put away the old self and become a new creature in Christ - not that she knew that verse, but it was beginning to come true for her.

She sat there in the back of the Cathedral, simply pondering everything that was happening and everything that had happened. She looked at the statue of Mick, and smiled. In silence she thanked God for what had happened.

XVI – Love

After a little while she got up and walked out. The world felt different to Ana Markovic; it was lighter, less dark and cold. She knew what she had to do. She had dreaded it before but she knew it was necessary. There was nothing else she could do.

She walked around until she could locate a phone booth with a telephone book inside it and checked to find an entry for Peter Markovic. He had already moved away from the GTA and she did not know it. She found two entries which she called but they turned out to be different people with either the same name or the same initial. Then she needed more change.

She was afraid as she considered the prospect that she might not be able to locate him. One part of her felt relieved in considering that prospect, as she really did dread that moment, but in her heart she felt troubled that maybe he and Luka were now lost forever. It served her right one may have thought; she had done the same to them. That did not stop her though, from trying to find them and she did feel like she had been forgiven for it as well.

She went back to the welfare services in the city and tried to get help through that channel in order to locate her family. She explained her situation, and a staff member offered to look him up on Canada 411. He was able to locate four more entries: two in Quebec, one in BC and another in Windsor. She thought to herself that she really hoped he had not gone back to Serbia, or worse that he had gone to some other country. They let her use the phone free of charge to call them to see. No one had ever really known anything about Ana Markovic. The people who recognized her were amazed to find out this sort of thing about her and they pulled in around her to give her sympathy. This had never happened to her before. Ana Markovic never really mattered to anyone, but somehow things were changing for the better.

Her first call was to the man in Windsor; she did not need to call the other three. This was the moment that she dreaded but she was ready for it. A woman who spoke like a Canadian answered the phone, “Hello,” she said.

Annie, unsuccessfully hiding her Serbian accent said, “Hello is Peter Markovic there?”

The woman was not suspicious and answered, “No, he is still at work, may I ask who is calling?” she said.

Annie responded, “Before I say that, I am trying to locate specific Peter Markovic, and I am looking for him by phonebook. Does this Peter Markovic have a son named Luka?” she asked.

The woman replied, “Yep, you got the right one. Would you like me to get him to call you back when he comes home then?”

Annie had already fully recognized the prospect of Peter re-marrying long before any of this occurred. It did not surprise her that he had, nevertheless it was very awkward to be in this situation. She was glad his new wife showed no signs of suspicion towards her.

She was alone in the room when calling.

“Umm…. This is not my phone so calling me back here would not be useful. Could you tell me when he will be home so that I can call again?” she said, cleverly trying to avoid mentioning who she was. She had no plan of how this would all work out, assuming it could. She was simply going forward and hoping for the best.

His new wife failed to take immediate suspicion of this Serbian woman without a phone of her own. She of course knew that Peter had been married before, hence the existence of Luka, although he had not tried to talk much about Ana. Luka remembered her imperfectly but enough that he really missed her, and talked more than Peter about her. But not everything he said was true, and he tended to make up stories that had not actually occurred, which his step-mother came to appreciate in time.

“He’ll be back around six tonight for dinner, so if you call maybe around sevenish or after, as long as it is not too late. Are you a relative by any chance? You have one of those Eastern European accents or maybe I’m just hearing things,” she said.

“Uh… yes, well, sort of. We use to know each other very well in fact. Thank you for time. Goodbye,” she said and hung up.

She wondered if his new wife would think it over and catch on to who she was, although she tried to dismiss the thought. Even if she did, she had to keep going forward anyhow. It was only 2’o clock so she had some time to kill before calling back. She told the staff member who had let her use the phone that she had found him and asked if she could come back to make another call. His shift would finish before that occurred but he recorded the phone number and gave her a note with his signature that would give her permission when she returned. She thanked him. No one before had ever really known anything about Ana Markovic. It had been a long time since something like this had happened.

She meandered around the city for a bit. The way this place was, just sickened her soul. She could not stand it any longer. Every person politely avoided any eye contact or acknowledgment that each other really existed. She lifted up her head trying to stare every person that passed her by right in the face, and put a smile on her face to show she was not some weirdo, even though she was, by the standards of many people. Some people caught her gaze and quickly looked away - a fundamental unwritten rule had just been broken. One man, a brown-skinned man noticed her and looked away but turned around and looked back at her, and then they continued making eye contact for at least thirty seconds as they then kept walking on their way. She was not alone after all.

After some time, in which she sat down and did her usual begging, she came back to the welfare services and made the phone-call. This time it was Peter who answered.

A familiar voice said, “Hello”. This was the moment she had been dreading but she found the courage to say, “Hello Peter. It’s Ana.”

A moment’s silence followed. Peter was a very good man, and she knew he would not hang up. He said, “Where are you? Are you ok?” Her husband had always been a much better person than she. She did not understand why she had done what she had.

Tears came to Annie’s eyes, “Yes, I’m ok Peter. I am homeless in Toronto, but I’m ok I think. A lot of things have happened. I almost died recently, but I’m ok now.”

“That’s not good Ana, are you in the hospital?” he asked.

“No, they let me out, and I am all better. Peter, you need to believe me. I had this dream while I was dying and I met Archangel Michael, and the saints, and Jesus was there too! And they told me all these things about me mattering but I didn’t listen to them and then I was burning in Hell with the lake of fire and everything for a thousand years it felt like, but then I told the demons that I mattered, and then there was this tsunami lava wave and I left Hell, and woke up in a hospital!” she said.

A moment of silence followed, “Are you still drinking Ana?” he asked.

“Not anymore!” she said.

The strange thing about love is that it is utterly unconquerable. True love is unconquerable that is. God is love, and God is unconquerable and cannot pass away no matter how blinded we become to Him. Therefore love, which is His very substance, is likewise unconquerable and can never pass away no matter how blinded to its existence we become.

Creation was an act of love. God created everything in perfect love and it was all ordered harmoniously until beings in His creation sinned against Him and hijacked creation for a purpose it was not meant for.

He did not make that which exists because He wanted to love it and for it to serve Him, although that was His will as well. He created everything that exists because He loved it and therefore He had to make it exist.

God loved Ana Markovic so much that He created her and made her exist. If He had not loved her He would not have made her and she would not have existed.

Corruption is present in creation, and has been for a very long time. The act of love which revealed God’s glory is one which has been mutated into an aberration of its true form. The ultimate aberration and corruption is the existence of Hell. It was not God’s will that anything He loved so much should face such destruction. Everything He created was pleasing to Him.

People read in the history books about how entire groups of people were annihilated in a blink of an eye during the 20th century. People are horrified by visions of Auschwitz, and the kind of evil which humans commit against each other. There is a corruption of creation present. God did not intend such things should have ever existed in this world that He loved enough to have created.

What most people fail to recognize is that our only hope to not repeat these evils, to stop the kind of evils which we commit against each other, lies solely and entirely with God. Whether it is the obscure and neglected homeless woman on the street, the fetus to be aborted in the mother’s womb or the man blown up by a bomb in some war, the only hope humanity has to be freed from these evils is by a return to God who never intended any of these things to exist and has the power to free us from them if we simply have faith and are willing to cooperate with His will.

We matter to God - all persons do whether they be ugly, stupid, arrogant, annoying, murderous or even Satanic. Every last one of them matters to God who loved them so much that He both created them and sent His only begotten Son to die for them so that they might not be lost.

What idiocy we possess in this world! With all of our supposed wisdom, sciences and understanding, we fail to grasp that the answer to all of the evils that exist has always been offered to us if we simply have faith to believe and cooperate.

We can send people to the moon but we cannot figure how to solve the problems on the earth. We can map the genome and catalogue the building blocks of life, and yet we fail to understand what life is all about to begin with.

Most of us will refuse to believe in the truth. We will continue with our lies and God will accept our will and leave us to suffer in that will, apart from Him for eternity. It never has to be that way we are the ones who have made it so.

We are the authors of our own destruction. We have no one to blame but ourselves for all the evils in our world that never cease to grow.

Did we not see that there was something more important to that woman begging for change at the street corner, than every last bit of money and material that exists under the sun? Could we not tell that there was an image of something on that woman that had far greater depth than everything else we’ve ever seen?

Why can’t we get it?

God is love, and He always triumphs in the end. The question for us is whether or not we shall be part of that victory.

The lamb invites us to His table but we need to respond to His call and prepare ourselves to be worthy to come to it. Salvation is free. We do not really consider this fact with the importance that it deserves. I need to pay money for everything in this world and earn my keep. I need to earn all of my life in order to continue to live, but if I want to go to Heaven I am not the One asked to pay for it. I do not think anyone could beat that deal.

He calls you to that table too you matter to Him, you really do.

When Annie was growing up she was very fond of her grandmother who had a very warm smile and would often tell Annie stories about what life was like in Yugoslavia in times long before she was born. She also told Annie stories that Annie thought were true at the time but as she later recollected when she was older, she recognized that her grandmother was in fact telling fables.

The fables always had the same sorts of themes to them. It was all either black or white, with the same message always coming through in the end that goodness is rewarded and evil is punished. Annie, like many children, unwittingly took the fables to be real and felt some inducement to be a good person lest she be turned into stone or something. That did not last very long before she began to wise up about the whole thing.

Her grandmother was her mother’s mother though, and like her mother had a very strong faith and devotion to religion.

One time when Annie was small she asked her grandmother, “Grandma, yesterday Zamira told me about death and that people die when they got older. Why do people have to die grandma?”

Annie was not expecting the answer she got.

Her grandmother said, “Because a long time ago you’re grandparents’ grandparents’ grandparents’…and keep going back for a very long time…grandparents, decided to disobey God and therefore we all have to die because of their poor choice.”

Annie then said, “But Grandma, why do I have to die, and why do you have to die because of what they chose? That’s not fair!”

Her grandmother was not expecting the reply she got. She stroked her chin and thought for a moment.

After a minute of thinking her grandmother then said, “I don’t know why you, my beloved Ana, or I have to die because of what they did. But I do know that it must be fair because God said so. I do not know why it is fair, but I still know that it must be fair.”

Annie was still young and the thought that her grandmother did not know something was a bit of a shock for her. She had to know the answer - she was Grandma after all! It was part of her job description one would think.

Annie went back the following day and reported her findings to her friend, Zamira. Zamira informed Annie that her parents in fact knew everything, and that she could not be sure about other people’s parents or grandparents, thus perhaps explaining Annie’s report of her grandmother. Zamira told Annie she would ask her parents and they would tell her the answer.

The day after that, Zamira was quite shocked and appalled when she reported to Annie that in fact her parents also did not know everything. They apparently had both been victims of the same hoax. Zamira told Annie that her parents had said that people did not die because of what Adam and Eve did, but they also could not answer the question of why people died. In a similar fashion to Annie’s grandma they had then said only that God said so in the Quran and so they also could not say they knew why, but that she should not question it and simply be obedient.

Annie and Zamira exchanged their findings and were perplexed by the nature of this hoax that had been brought upon them.

When Annie returned to her grandmother again, she asked her, “Grandma why don’t you know everything? Zamira says her parents don’t know everything, and I thought you did too.”

Her grandmother smiled with some apparent humour that Annie was even more perplexed by. She said, “I never told you I knew everything. I may know much more than my beloved granddaughter but that’s not everything.”

Annie asked, “Then how much is everything?”

Her grandmother replied, “Everything is much more than what I know. I know only a little bit of everything, and there is much more of everything which I do not know. God knows everything, but the rest of us are not as wise as He.”

Annie accepted this answer for what it was. She accepted it and moved on, as she had to.

Annie then asked, “What little bit of everything do you know then grandma?”

Her grandma answered, “Oh, lots of things that are accumulated over a person’s life. All sorts of knowledge and wisdom of different things you get when you are my age, unless you get sick in your head and lose it. I can tell you about your mother, I can tell you about World War II. I can tell you about Tito. I can tell you about flowers and plants. I can tell you about how to sew. I can tell you about raising a family. I can tell you all sorts of things beyond that too.”

Annie then asked, “What is the best thing you could tell me?”

Her grandma answered, “The best thing I could tell you my beloved Ana Dragana, is one of the greatest bits of everything that you could ever hear.”

Annie then spoke, “Tell me! Tell me! Tell me please!”

Her grandma smiled and said, “You are not going to understand what I tell you now, but you remember it and I tell you that someday you will understand it. What you and I have right now my beloved Ana Dragana is something which is more valuable than anything in the world.”

Annie was perplexed, her grandma was right that she wouldn’t understand it. She thought that grandma must have had a really big diamond in her pocket or something.

Her grandma continued, “It is so valuable, I could not explain much it is worth because it is so valuable. It is worth more than all the money in Yugoslavia - no, it is worth more than all the money in the world. All the gold in the world does not compare with it in fact. Not any diamond, or ruby, or emerald, is as brilliant and priceless as this.”

There went Annie’s first theory, her second theory was that she had a diamond in her pocket but that it was a magic diamond, and therefore better than all other diamonds.

Her grandma kept going, “People can go to the ends of the earth and they cannot find it. They look under every bush and tree, and will not see it. And yet they all know about it, but they have often forgotten what it is.”

Now Annie was truly perplexed she just kept listening and absorbing what was said without understanding it. Maybe it was an invisible magic diamond, she thought, and that’s why they could not see it anywhere?

Her grandma continued, “All the great artists in the world cannot capture it, and the great writers cannot accurately convey it. It is the nature of God Himself, it is His very being and essence. Everyone needs it and knows they desire it, but they throw it away for other pursuits and ambitions. It cannot be known by the senses, nor can it be absorbed by the body, but it is more necessary than bread or water. It is stronger than the ocean and brighter than the sun. People acquire vast fortunes and good lives, and yet they have nothing because they do not possess it. They work great accomplishments and incredible achievements, and without it, nothing real has occurred.”

Annie was perplexed.

Her grandma continued, “What I am referring to is love.”

That caught Annie by surprise - so much for the invisible magic diamond theory.

Her grandma continued, “Love, my dear Ana Dragana, is that thing in everything which I know about which is more important than everything else. Love is God, God is love, that is what He is made out of. That is what love is made up of. That is who He is. People are born into this world and look for meaning to their existence and they come up with things that only pass away in a matter of time. Love never changes and it never fails. God is love, and love cannot pass away. It will always be here for us no matter what. It will always be here for you Ana Dragana, even if you should forget about it and go after other things. Have faith in God, He is love and will always be there for us no matter what. We are not always there for Him and He knows that, but rest assured He will always be there for us. I know this is a lot for a youngster and you are not going to understand everything now, but someday you will. Someday you will grow up and change from the beloved innocent child I know you to be and you will know the evil in the world, and then you will be forgetful about what we have now. But it will always be there for you if you simply reach for it. Call on the Lord’s name and He will always answer you in His own way. It doesn’t matter how far you go, He will always be there to run back to when you need it. I cannot express how deep and true this is Ana. It is the key to the universe itself. Believe in Him who is love, and you will have eternal life. If you reject Him who is love, you will be without love and there is only pain and suffering and emptiness left then. God loves us and He wants us to share that love with each other. But we say we do not have time for it, or we cannot do it because there are so many things in this world that are more important to us. My dear beloved Ana Dragana, I know this is not going to make sense to you now, but some day it will. I know it will. When it comes to everything, the best thing of the little I know of everything is this - love. That is the whole thing in a nutshell. No matter where you look. No matter what you do. You will never find another thing better than that. And the only way to live it and keep it, is with Jesus who is God, who is made out of love. That is what I know, and now you have heard it too.”

Annie was hoping for the invisible magic diamond, but this was good too and she did understand more than her grandma expected, although it certainly did not sink in in any way other than a distant memory to be recalled only on occasion. She should have listened more intently, and her grandma was right in her predictions in a far more serious way than she would have anticipated.

“Grandma, do you have any other stories?” Annie had asked.

Her grandma smiled and said, “I’ve got lots more, how about I tell you the time when…”

The conversation on the phone continued.

“You gave up drinking…that’s good Ana, that’s really good,” Peter said, “Ana, while you have been gone some things have happened to me as well. I got re-married two years ago. Her name is Stephanie and she gets along very well with Luka… Ana, Luka can remember his mother, I know it’s hard to believe but he does. There is something there that is just missing and I cannot explain it.”

Annie started crying. Peter could hear her and gently waited a minute before he started again.

“Ana, I am going to ask you something. If you are homeless as you say you are, then I want you to come here to Windsor and stay in our house as a guest until you…Well, you know…Until we can find something for you to do other than sitting around the streets all day with no one to talk with and nothing to do. In the meantime maybe Luka and his mother can have some time with each other. Would you like to do that Ana?” he asked.

“Yes, so much so, Peter, thank you!” she said.

“Peter, that dream I had was not simply the result of some alcoholic binge. Jesus and Archangel Michael took me to your house in the dream and I saw Luka and then I ran away again just like the first time. I know I sound crazy but it really happened. Peter there really is a God, I did not know it, but now I do. And He sent Mick there to tell me…” she was interrupted.

Peter was trying to digest what she was saying with some scepticism but he kept listening, and then he interrupted her, “Mick, who is Mick?”

Annie continued, “Oh that was what Michael told me to call him. He says you can refer to him as Mick. Where was I?”

“Umm… God sent Mick to tell you something,” he said.

“Oh yes, God sent Mick to tell me that I mattered to Him,” she said.

Peter paused and reflected, and said “So there really is a God after all then…Wait, was it just you or does everyone matter to Him then?”

Annie paused and said, “Everyone matters to Him, but Mick only came to say that to me in my dream. Do you think this means anything for the rest of the world Peter?”

“Sounds like it means something important, I can give it a shot but I’m not an expert. Maybe you should talk to your mother about it. ‘We matter to Him?’ It seems such a simple thing to say, but I think one could reason that if He sent all these people for that whole dream just to tell you that, there must be something important about it. Maybe the rest of us will figure it out as times goes by,” he said.

Ana could hear some noises in the background on Peter’s side of the phone, and she realized that Luka was home. Her heart froze. This was it. The whole thing would be complete if she could just put this last piece into the puzzle.

“Ana, I have a very special person who I am going to put on the phone. I think you will recognize him although he’s much bigger than when you last saw him,” Peter finished and handed the phone to Luka.

“Luka, my little Luka, do you remember me?” she asked.

“Mommie!” he yelled.

Annie smiled and deep in her heart something came out, “Luka it is very important that you know how much I love you.”

All Glory to God

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download