Jesus' thoughts

"and then the remembering came, driving away the random voices of censure, the remembering...of every single solitary thing i'd ever done in this, my earthly existence. it was not a sequence. it did not have the order of words written on parchment from one side of the column to the other, and then back again and again and again. yet it was unfolding. and sparkling in the density were the moments of pain--of loss, of fear, of sudden regret, of grief, or discomforting and tormented amazement. pain, like the stars themselves, each moment with its own infinitesimal shape and magnitude. all of those memories drew themselves around me as if composing a great garment that was my life, a garment that wrapped itself around and around and over and under until it encased me like my skin, completely. sometime before morning, i understood something. that i could, without the slightest effort, hold any and all of these moments in my mind; that they coexisted, these varied and time and countless agonies. little agonies. when the morning came and the bitter wind died in the glare, i walked on, letting these countless moments come, letting my mind fling them in my own eyes and at my own lips. i went on remembering. in the night i awoke. was this my own voice reciting what was written? "'and every secret thing shall be opened and every dark place illuminated'" dear God, no, do not let them know this, do not let them know the great accumulation of all of this, this agony and joy, this misery, this solace, this reaching, this gouging pain, this...but they will know, each and every one of them will know. they will know because what you are remembering is what has happened to each and every one of them. did you think this was more or less for you? did you think-? and when they are called to account, when they stand naked before God and every incident and utterance is laid bare- you, you will know all of it with each and every one of them! i knelt in the sand. is this possible, Lord, to be with each of them when he or she comes to know? to be there for every single cry of anguish? for the grief-stricken remembrance of every incomplete joy? oh, Lord, God, what is judgment and how can it be if i cannot bear to be with all of them for every ugly word, every harsh and desperate cry, for every gesture examined, for every deed explored to its roots? and i saw the deeds, the deeds of my own life, the smallest, most trivial things, i saw them suddenly in their seed and sprout and with their groping branches; i saw them growing, intertwining with other deeds, and those deeds come to form a thicket and a woodland and a great roving wilderness that dwarfed the world as we hold it on a map, the world as we hold it in our minds. dear God, next to this, this endless spawning of deed from deed and word from word and thought from thought--the world is nothing. every single soul is a world! i started to cry. but i would not close off this vision--no, let me see, and all those who lifted the stones, and i, i blundering, and James' face when i said it, "i am weary of you, my brother," and from that instant outwards a million echoes of those words in all present who heard or thought they heard, who would remember, repeat, confess, defend...and so on it goes for the lifting of a finger, the launching of the ship, the fall of an army in a northern forest, the burning of a city as flames rage through house after house! dear God, i cannot...but i will. I WILL. i sobbed aloud. i will. o Father in Heaven, i am reaching to You with hands of flesh and blood. i am longing for You in Your perfection with this heart that is imperfection! and i reach up for You with what is decaying before my very eyes and i stare at Your stars from within the prison of this body. but this is not my prison, this is my Will. "this is Your Will." i collapsed weeping. and i will go down, down with every single one of them into the depths of Sheol, into the private darkness, into the anguish exposed for all eyes and for Your eyes, into the fear, into the fire which is the heat of every mind. i will be with them, every solitary one of them. "i am one of them! and i am Your Son! i am Your only begotten Son! and driven here by Your Spirit, i cry because i cannot do anything but grasp it, grasp it as i cannot contain it in this flesh-and-blood mind, and by Your leave i cry." i cried. i cried and i cried. "Lord, give me this little while that i may cry, for i've heard that tears accomplish much..." alone? you said you wanted to be alone? you wanted this? to be alone? you wanted the silence? you wanted to be alone and in the silence. don't you understand the temptation now of being alone? you ARE alone. well, you are absolutely alone because you ARE THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN DO THIS! what judgment can there ever be for man, woman, or child--if i am not there for every heartbeat at every depth of their torment? the dawn came. the dawn came again and again. i lay in a heap as the sand blew over me. and the voice of the Lord was not in the wind; and it was not in the sand; and it was not in the sun; and it was not in the stars. it was inside me. i'd always known who i really was. i was God. and i'd chosen not to know it. well, now i knew just what it meant to be the man who knew he was God."
~ Anne Rice
Christ the Lord the Road to Cana