The Galilean

The first thing that must be understood is that the world was very different, in those days. It was quite unlike anything you know, or remember. The song I sing for you today was made in those long ago times, in a place now forgotten by most of humanity.

Hear me now in your own world, and with me, journey back to a time more than two thousands of summers ago. The events I will sing for you, happened in a small fishing village by the shore of an ancient lake. I lived my first life there, on the southern shore of the lake that was called Gennesaret.

The earth that turns beneath the sun was a colder, harsher place then. Lust for power and gold had filled men’s hearts, leaving no room for brotherhood or caring. Cruelty and hate had taken the place of the love the Spirit Above gave us all, in the morning of the world.

Like all the land east of the Middle Sea, the town of Magdala was ruled by a single tribe of humans, a ruthless and greedy people who called themselves the Romani. The people whose home it was mostly called them other things, many of them not suitable to be used in the presence of the young.

That was understandable, for the Romani were a tribe of takers. They took not only gold and silver from the people of Magdala, but anything else of value that might be traded for them. Grain, livestock, wine, oil, nothing was safe. Sometimes their young daughters weren’t safe from the Romani, either.

By conquest and rule, they poured the wealth of the world into their own city of Roma, as the best way to pay for the opulent lifestyle of the few despots who actually held power in the city. It was also a quick and effective way to make themselves hated, and the folk who lived east of the Middle Sea, hated the Romani with a hot and fervent passion.

The men of Roma were accustomed to that, and cared very little for the feelings of those they ruled. They simply made doubly sure none them had the means to act on what they felt.

My human companion didn’t exactly hate them; by the time we met, her heart was too weary for that. What she felt was more of a simmering resentment of the way she depended upon them for her day to day existence.

No one likes being made to feel degraded. No one likes being counted as unworthy of association, by others of her kind. Sadly, my companion and dearest friend had felt that way for almost the whole of her adult life. I gave her what comfort I could, after the way of my kind, but most of her hurts were beyond my reach.

Not that the Romani looked at her any differently than they did anyone else not of their tribe; to them all foreigners and outsiders were objects to be used, and discarded.

Her own people were no kinder. They smiled slyly behind their hands and smirked when she went to draw water, or to buy food in the central agora. Sometimes they’d smirk after she’d passed, and count on their fingers the number of Romani legionaries who’d been seen going into her house the evening before. I believe the more pious of them would have killed my friend, if not for the fact that some of them were among those who visited her by night.

They never passed a chance to deepen the degradation she felt, or think of how she felt about her life. They never stopped to think what it was really like to be so alone in the world. The truth was, they cared no more for her than the Romani did for them.

My friend was called many things in those days, but her given name in the speech of that day was Miriam, or sometimes Mariam. Today she would simply be called “Mary.”

From the moment she first saw me, Mary has called me “Cucu,” which is actually a short form of “Cucurbita.” You would say “Pumpkin,” in your tongue.

It’s a word from the tongue of the Romani, which shows how far the invaders had gone in taking the place for their own. But in Aramaic or Hebrew, it would have made too long a name for someone such as me, so “Cucu” I became, and I wore the name gladly.

I’ve been called various forms of the word for pumpkin several times, in my many lives upon the earth. I suppose it’s because I rather resemble one, round and orange. It doesn’t matter; those who have named me thus have all been, like my Mary, beloved companions.

I am of the Folk, and of the Clan of Cat, we who must walk nine life-paths, upon the earth and under the sun. My own kind gave me the name “Sings Softly,” when I first awoke in the dawning of my existence, and that name will be mine until I part the veil and journey on.

All of my kind are singers, to some degree. Our songs are of great importance to us. Unlike the humans, we do not write; it is by our songs that we keep the memories of our Clan and our kind. Without the songs, we would be a folk with no past, destined to leave no mark of our time upon the earth.

Today I walk my ninth path; I live my ninth and final life, upon the earth that turns beneath the sun. I counted as old, as the Clan of Cat reckons such things, but I was young when I met Mary of Magdala. When I first came to be with her I was just beginning my first Walk, in the town where I first saw the sun, by the lake of Gennesaret.

She found me one morning, while walking home from the house of a powerful Romani official, from whom she had gotten a few coins as she left by his back door. As usual, the townspeople were ignoring her, looking away as she passed.

I was digging for something to eat in a heap of trash at the edge of town; one more starving kitten, in a place where too many of my kind roamed.

We were a natural pair from the start. Mary’s mother was long dead from the sickness that comes from bad water, and I had become separated from mine, almost as soon as I was weaned. Nobody wanted either of us.

For a few heartbeats she just looked down at me, and then she sighed and shook her head. “Cucu,” she said, as she stooped to pick me up, “I can give you something better to eat than that, if you’re certain you want to be seen with me.”

Thus began our lifelong friendship. We would see places far from the village where we began, my Mary and me. We would witness mighty events, upon the earth and under the sun, things that literally shook the world. We would see the world itself change, from what it had become, to something more like the Spirit Above had intended for it to be.

I had seen twelve weeks of my first Walk on the day she found me, and Mary had twenty-five summers of her one and only life, upon the earth and under the sun.

I have since had other human companions, in my seasons in the world of men. Some have been what humans call good, and others have not, but there have been none that I loved more than Mary of Magdala. Though she has been gone these very many summers, her face, as she was on that first day, is still sharp in my memory.

In the morning of the world, the Spirit Above gifted my kind, the cats, with the power to see the deepest hearts of others, and to know them for what they are. By this means, I reached out to touch her in the way of my Clan and my kind, just as she reached out to take me, in her gentle hands.

I found loneliness, hurt, and a soul that was terrified of trusting any other human person upon the earth.

I could understand that. Anyone given trust is also given the power to betray that trust, and that is pain almost beyond bearing. Those hurt often enough in that way soon withdraw inside themselves, denying those around them the opportunity to inflict such pain again.

Looking beneath, I saw also a different person. The real Mary was a woman who had spent her entire life in waiting for another human heart to love, someone who might love her in return. She desired nothing more than to find, and be accepted by that person. I saw a woman who had not yet given up the last, vanishing fragments of hope. Someday soon she might surrender, but not quite yet.

She took me up in her arms, and carried me in the folds of her cloak, to a mud-brick house just beyond the edges of the town. It was the only place where the unclean, and such women as Mary, were allowed to make their dwellings. There she cared for me, as another woman might have cared for an infant. Such was Mary of Magdala, the human being only I really knew.

That first morning, our meal was two small fish, roasted over a fire of sticks; all the food she had in her house. Mary ate one of them and gave me the other, and with her love, it was enough.

The folk of Magdala ate a lot of fish, the catching and selling of them being almost the only commerce of the area. The crude fishermen, who tied up their boats there also supplied almost as much of Mary’s living as did the Romani, but smelled far worse. They came in for their share of her resentment, as well.

There were always some of them in the mornings, spreading their nets on the shingle beach to dry, or taking their night’s catch of freshwater fish to the market, to be sold before they spoiled. They made the circuit of the villages along the shore of the lake, trying to choose one, where what they had caught would bring the best price.

After a good haul, when they had a few denarii in their pouches, the fishermen tended to look for women like Mary. Their silver spent as readily as that of the Romani, and at least they were men of her own country, she always told herself.

Not that it made their smell any easier to bear. Not that it made her any happier with the whole, inescapable trap that was her life. The simmering resentment she felt only grew, as her isolation deepened. She spoke to others of her kind so rarely, that her voice became hoarse from disuse.

It is amazing what the folk of the earth will bear and do, in order to maintain the breath of life. Any life at all, no matter how futile, is preferable to the alternative, and so my Mary clung to the only existence she had. Someday soon she might give up, but not today.

All these things I knew as certain truth. To me, Sings Quietly of the Clan of Cat, given the name “Cucu” by my companion, her heart was as clear as the drops of dew upon the roses in the stillness of the dawn. To my eyes, the human being behind all that hurt was as beautiful as those same flowers. If her fellows upon the earth had seen what was visible only to me, she would have been made a queen.

The Spirit Above intended from the beginning, that the Clan of Cat should walk as friends and companions to the humans he had made. He gave to us the power to comfort them, and make the pain of their lives easier to bear. I did all I could for Mary, and counted it a privilege.

I loved my friend, the young woman who hid inside herself, from every living creature upon the earth, save me. I pledged myself to her, after the manner of my kind, and swore to the Spirit Above that nothing but death would ever part me from her. My pledge was never broken.

The Clan of Cat are a folk who live by routine when they can, and I soon fitted myself to Mary’s. She usually went to the district where the Romani had their dwellings in the evening, and in the early morning walked to the shore of the lake, just as the boats were coming in with their catch.

The Romani or the fishermen; neither alternative was any better or worse than the other, really. A couple of coins to take to the market in the agora, to be spent on a few fish, a bit of flour, a small jar of oil. Perhaps a handful of sweet figs if she could afford them. Another day of existence, while her life spun slowly, meaninglessly out.

Sometimes the boatmen just gave her fish straight from their nets, thus saving her the trouble of going to the agora. Mary actually preferred it that way. The fish were fresher, and she was spared the ordeal of dealing with the people in the market.

My first summer with Mary passed, and the winter that followed, and the only thing that changed was the way she retreated further from others of her kind. “Cucu,” she would say to me, “Cucu, you are my only friend, with your soft orange fur, and your big, round, beautiful eyes. Promise me you’ll never run away from me, Cucu.”

If I had been able to use the speech of humans, I would have said to her, “Never, Mary. We are a part of each other now. I could never leave you.”

It was in early spring of our second summer together, that the boat from Capernaum came. We had walked to the shore in the afternoon, though at that time of day no fishing boats were likely to be beached there.

Actually, it was because no one was there, that we came. Mary didn’t want to see any men just then, or anyone else, for that matter. The afternoon was the quiet time of her day, and she just wanted to walk, with me in her arms. She wanted to think, there on the beach, with no sound but the gulls and the waves.

I knew what she was thinking, and it frightened me. I knew how easily my Mary could make up her mind to finally break the slender cord of her life and journey on. I knew too, how great a part I played in keeping her from doing exactly that, and I resolved to do still more, if I could.

We had just reached the water’s edge, where the wavelets wash the sand, when we heard the rhythmic chanting of a boat’s crew. The day was almost windless, and they hadn’t bothered to raise their craft’s single sail, but were plying the oars instead.

On its bow I saw the painted mark, which meant its home village was Capernaum, another small town almost directly across the lake from Magdala. “A long way to row,” I thought to myself.

As it neared us, I could see that the boat was quite full, carrying almost as many humans as it safely could. There were more than a dozen men aboard, some in fishermen’s rough garb, others dressed more expensively. There were even a couple of women, sitting amidships between the rowers.

They hadn’t been fishing then, but had simply crossed the lake for some reason of their own. As they propelled their craft up onto the beach, I saw that there seemed to be only four actual fishermen, though the other men had helped with the rowing. Typical Galileans, they were large, sun-browned humans with mops of curly black hair, and they went about their tasks with the quick sureness that comes of long practice.

Two leaped into the shallow water with ropes to heave the craft further up on the shingle beach, while the other pair kept on rowing for a few more strokes. Then the passengers began to disembark.

Mary began to approach the group, but stopped short when she noticed the two women among them. Women were always the cruelest to Mary. The abuse they heaped upon her was open and cutting, and she avoided them whenever she could.

These two however, behaved differently. They smiled at her, with no trace of the snide cattiness she had come to expect from others of her sex. One of them actually waved to her, as they climbed from the boat. Mary froze where she was, unsure of whether to flee or remain.

Then the man, who’d sat in the stern of the wooden craft, stepped ashore, and the others began to gather about him as though drawn, like bits of iron to a lodestone. He smiled at Mary too, and the moment for flight passed, and was gone forever.

His smile was not a thing of show, like the reflection that flashes from the surface of the lake and is gone. It came from deep within him. This was the man I later came to think of as The Galilean.

The nine life-walks of my kind do not always lie near to one another in time. They can be closely spaced, like fired clay beads on a linen string, or again, many summers, sometimes hundreds, or even thousands of summers may pass before we return to live once more.

So it has been with me, and I must look far back in my memory, to that moment when the Galilean looked into my Mary’s eyes and smiled. I realize now, that this was the instant in time when the earth shook beneath us and changed forever.

Perhaps it was the whole universe that trembled that day. I know not; a cat is a creature made to be a companion, and deep thinking is beyond my capabilities.

I do know, that when I sensed what had passed between this man and my Mary, I instinctively reached out with the power given to my kind. I had to know what he intended for my beloved companion.

She had been hurt more than enough for one lifetime, and I would do all in my power to keep any more pain from touching her. If that meant laying down my life, then so be it.

Therefore I looked, and saw his heart, and for me, time froze. I can neither sing of, nor share, the moment when my awareness touched his. It was beyond all my experience, and beyond my power to describe. Yet it is seared into my memory, as clear now as it was all those many summers ago.

This human man, with his plain robe and woolen cloak, was made of love. There was no other component to his being. It was directed toward every living soul upon the earth. His heart shone like the center of the sun… and I found that I knew him.

I am, like all cats, a very simple creature, but my kind are aware of the Spirit Above. It is a different awareness from that experienced by humans, but we do know of the One who, in the morning of the world, made us all and placed us upon the earth. Oh yes.

I recoiled in sudden fear from what I had done. I had touched him! He had sensed the moment when my awareness met his! What would be the price of my presumption?

But he only smiled at me, as he had Mary, and moved to join the group who waited for him on the beach. We watched with our mouths open, Mary and I. If we had been struck by the fire that flashes across the summer sky in a storm, the effect could not have been more profound.

The folk from Capernaum began to move, walking together with the easy comradeship of a family, toward the center of the village. The men talked and laughed, and clapped one another on the back, while the women chatted together, and the Galilean walked as one of them, just as if he had been an ordinary man.

Mary silently followed, at a little distance behind them. I am not sure she even had the power to refrain from doing so, at that point. I certainly did not. Had she not begun to move, I might have jumped down from her arms and followed on my own.

The townsfolk of Magdala began to come out of their houses, as the group from the boat neared the center of town. I’m not sure what called them forth, or what they expected. A growing anticipation was in the air; something was about to happen that had never taken place here before. Something that would change everything.

When we emerged into the agora itself, the Galilean’s group walked straight to the white stone structure in the center, the largest building in Magdala. This was where the human folk came together to read from old rolls of parchment and papyrus, and send up their prayers to the Spirit Above. It was the natural choice, if the Galilean meant to address the people who lived here.

He went straight inside and without preamble, began to speak to the men who were gathered there. These were the town’s religious elders, and at first they were silent. It was evident that the Galilean was a Rabbi, a teacher, and they gave him their attention naturally.

Women were not allowed inside, worship being an activity reserved for men, so Mary found a place in the courtyard where she could see him through an open window, and hear what he was saying. The two women from the boat did the same, and waited silently. Mary was careful not to approach them too closely, but she retreated only a little way, staying where she could clearly understand what was being said inside.

She set me down on the flagstones, with a quiet admonishment not to wander, and I saw that I was not the only one of my kind present. Others of the Clan of Cat began to emerge from their daytime hiding places too, and to approach the edges of the crowd. Such was the aura that radiated from the Rabbi of Galilee. To ignore him was not even remotely possible, for any of the creatures of the earth.

At one point the elders began to answer back, and to dispute against what he told them. The oldest of them handed him a large parchment scroll, and demanded that he read from it. With a smile, he deftly opened it to the place he wanted, and read what was written there. The elders were struck silent by what he said, dumbfounded by his words.

Still smiling, the Galilean rolled up the parchment and handed it back. Then he stepped outside. Standing before the door of Magdala’s house of worship, the new Rabbi began to teach the people, not just the men, but the women and children too.

My kind do not have religion, as it is practiced by the Clan of Man. For us, it is more a thing of being satisfied to live our lives as they are given to us, and in constant daily acknowledgement of the One who set us upon his good, green earth.

I did immediately realize, that what the Galilean was saying to the humans in the square, was very different from what the local Rabbis had always taught them. Those of my Clan learn of human speech and customs by listening and watching, and while it may take us longer to piece together what we see and hear, we do learn, perhaps more than most humans suspect.

What had always come from those men were lists of rules. They told of things humans must do, and of others they dared not. The lists were long, mostly beyond comprehension to one like me, and the penalties for violating them were strict and terrible.

The men within the stone building spoke loudly and often of the Spirit Above, but I could never find him in the things they said, and still less in their hearts.

The Galilean dismissed all of that with a wave of his hand. “It has all been fulfilled in your hearing,” he told them, and moved on to other things.

I felt the growing anger of those elders, for what the new Rabbi had really dismissed was their entire way of life. They were small, petty men really, seeking to be admired, more than anything else.

He was far more interested in what his fellow humans felt in their hearts, and his was a much simpler message: he told them they must love the Spirit Above, and then love each other. No more was needed.

Every living creature within earshot listened, as he gave those grey old elders, and the townspeople who followed them, a whole new way to live, and all heard him out in rapt silence. Even the birds in the branches above him were quiet while he spoke. When he had finished, Magdala was a different place.

And then, while a hush still clung to the courtyard and the agora around it, the Rabbi from Galilee walked directly to my Mary, and before she could draw back, laid both his hands upon her head.

“Be healed,” he said to her. “Be whole again, daughter. Be what you were meant to be. You have found your faith, and it has saved you.”

The crowd gasped, for no other Rabbi of that time would have approached a woman such as Mary, much less touched her. I felt the anger of the elders he had dismissed so abruptly smolder and flare, but they did not matter anymore.

The eyes of Cat are bright, and we see what it is not given humans to see. As the Galilean spoke to her, I saw something dark flee from my Mary, and something else, something much brighter, come and settle upon her.

He healed her broken spirit and gave her back her life, as quickly as it can be told. I felt joy, so long absent from her life, flooding back into her. It was a new Mary, who stood in the agora with me that day, young, and ready to live again.

I, Sings Quietly, of the Folk, and of the Clan of Cat, was there. I heard these things and I saw them, and they are true. So it has been sung, and so it is remembered, upon the earth and under the sun.

The Galilean beamed at all the people around him, and then rejoined his group. They turned and walked back through the dusty streets to the shore of Genessaret, where their boat awaited them. Mary and I followed behind them, as we had before.

The two women from the boat waited, and fell in beside Mary. One of them took her hand. “I’m Salome,” she said.

“My… my name is Mary,” answered my beloved companion, in her soft, seldom used voice. The other woman laughed and said, “I’m Mary, too. It seems there are a lot of us hereabouts.”

The crowd parted like ripe wheat before an autumn wind, and all of us passed through. Some of the townspeople turned and began to follow as well.

As I trotted at her feet, I knew that Mary would be leaving. I was saddened by the prospect of letting her go, but I was willing to give her into the care of the one who had mended her broken soul. I loved my Mary more than life itself, and could never stand in her way.

We reached the beach far too quickly for me, and the Galilean stepped directly into the boat, while the fishermen held it steady. As the others took their places, and the four fishermen prepared to push the craft out into the water, he went to his seat in the stern.

Then he beckoned to my Mary, as I had known he would. Salome and the other Mary helped her into the boat, and the moment was here. She would sail away in the boat from Capernaum, away from everything that was part of a life no longer hers.

I knew grief would come later, but for now I remained quiet, there alone on the shore of Genessaret. I was far from the first of my kind to be left behind, and nor would I be the last. I would probably continue sleeping in her now empty house for a while, but after that I didn’t really know where I would go.

But suddenly Mary straightened and looked about. “Where is my cat?” she said. “Where’s Cucu? I can’t go, if I have to leave him there with no one at all!”

The youngest of the fishermen turned and scooped me up in his callused hands, just as the others pushed the boat out into the lake. Grinning, he splashed out and leapt aboard, and gave me into my Mary’s arms.

The Galilean who had changed everything just smiled, and patted the young man on the back.

I had no idea then, what the future would hold for Mary and me. If I had, it wouldn’t have mattered; I would have gone anywhere and done anything, just to stay with her.

As events actually unfolded, it became a magnificent life, such as no cat or human woman ever lived before, or ever would again. We walked together out of darkness, and into a bright, wonderful new world, my friend Mary of Magdala, and me.

So it has been sung, and so it is remembered, upon the earth and under the sun.

END