{"id":390,"date":"2013-06-28T01:29:11","date_gmt":"2013-06-28T08:29:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/?p=390"},"modified":"2013-06-28T01:29:11","modified_gmt":"2013-06-28T08:29:11","slug":"bethesda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/2013\/06\/28\/bethesda\/","title":{"rendered":"Bethesda"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

“Bethesda” connotes a place of healing and\u00a0mercy\u00a0– but I could never see the logic of it, myself.\u00a0 In the Gospel of John, verse 5, the eponymous\u00a0Pool of Bethesda was a place where miracles were strictly rationed, where only\u00a0one customer\u00a0could win a\u00a0miraculous healing, by\u00a0being the first to make a splash when an angel troubled the water.\u00a0 That never made much sense to me, partly because it seemed like the one who could hit the water first\u00a0would be the one who least needed healing.\u00a0 And what about the rest of the poor sods, the also-rans?\u00a0 The whole\u00a0idea hardly seemed fair, or kind; in fact, it felt downright cruel.\u00a0My opinion of that particular passage of the Bible follows, in fictional form.<\/p>\n

\"bethesda\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BETHESDA<\/p>\n

(John 5:2-4)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Well, folks, it’s a beautiful afternoon<\/p>\n

down there on Earth, beside the pool of Bethesda –<\/p>\n

sun shining, not a cloud in the sky.<\/p>\n

And I gotta say, it looks like a really<\/p>\n

exciting bunch of competitors we’ve got today, too,<\/p>\n

lots of newcomers as well as<\/p>\n

good old crowd-pleasers<\/p>\n

hunched and twisted under the arches,<\/p>\n

waiting for the race to begin.<\/p>\n

First crip into the water gets healed!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The great viewing stand hangs in the air between Heaven and Earth, hidden from mortal eyes behind the blue of a perfectly clear sky.\u00a0 The latter effect is either a miracle or something to do with ectoplasm-catalyzed refraction; whatever it is, it works like one-way glass.\u00a0 The immortals remain invisible while having an excellent view over the Sheepgate and the porches surrounding the pool of Bethesda, and beyond them to the rest of the noisy, noisome conurbation of Greater Jerusalem.\u00a0 The I AM is not in the viewing stand, but He does not need to be, since He sees all things.\u00a0 No doubt He will be watching from wherever<\/i> when the time comes.\u00a0 Gabriel and Asmodeus are already lounging in the archangels’ private enclosure, Michael is wafting in that direction to join them, Lilith is directing the lesser angels and demons to their places and making sure they all have programs.<\/p>\n

Below, amid the arches of the colonnade, the competitors sprawl on their bits of bedding or sit propped against the hard stone.\u00a0 The sighted are watching the still pool with varying degrees of hope and despair, while the blind are listening for the smallest lapping of water.\u00a0 Some of those waiting around the pool are not actually infirm, but are able-bodied friends and relatives who keep certain competitors company through the long days of waiting, always hoping to render physical assistance at the crucial moment.\u00a0 They have already proven their worth in the early morning struggle for places; many of the suffering who occupy advantageous spots near the pool’s edge are those with strong-armed brothers or virago mothers, able to push the weak and unprotected out of the way.<\/p>\n

In fact the early morning scrum has been carefully watched, to help in drawing up the form sheets.\u00a0 Today, the best judges of form are all talking up Simeon the Pegs, second-runner by the merest tip of a stump in the previous race, strong enough to make the course without assistance, and clearly hungry to win this time around.\u00a0 But one of the newcomers, Miriam of Hyrcania, also has the punters talking; it is not actually she but her child who needs healing, and the woman is fast on her feet, good with her elbows, and well prepared to intimidate the cripples.\u00a0 Then there is the eagerly anticipated performance of Matthias \u201cThe Snake,\u201d always a great hit with the crowd; plus the good old standbys Susannach the Footless, Mad Manny, Old Abdiggan and the one known in Bethesda simply as Twitcher, plus a host of others.\u00a0 Altogether, it looks like being a splendid race, with a number of potential dark horses to keep it interesting.<\/p>\n

And it will begin at any moment, at the Duty Angel’s discretion.\u00a0 A hush falls in mid-Heaven as the punters wait and watch and weigh, assessing the field, deciding on their favourites.\u00a0 Susannach, or the orphaned boy with scoliosis?\u00a0 The beautiful blind maiden, or the ulcerated widow with two hungry children sharing her mat?\u00a0 Twitcher or The Snake?\u00a0 The hydrocephalic baby with the well-muscled father, or Old Abdiggan, who is hiding leprosy beneath a tattered blanket?\u00a0 Nor is it entirely a disinterested debate\u2014many who might wish well to The Snake, for example, would still not wish him to win, because then he would never have to race again, and he really is most entertaining.<\/p>\n

And now, slowly and very deliberately, conscious of its dignity, the Duty Angel is beginning its descent towards the waters of the pool far below.\u00a0 The actual moment of troubling the water has to be carefully chosen, and could yet be a long time off.\u00a0 The Duty Angel will often hover above the pool for hours, waiting for a suitable diversion to attract the eyes of the hopeful\u2014otherwise, the first tiny ripples will produce such a rush that all sport will be lost.\u00a0 On the other hand, it is not a good idea to allow any kind of pattern to emerge.\u00a0 The racers are crippled, not stupid.\u00a0 For a while earlier in the century, any sign of an apparent diversion would send half of them plunging into the pool willy-nilly, long before the Duty Angel got anywhere near to troubling the waters.\u00a0 Nowadays, the Heavenly Racing Commission works on the principle of irregular reinforcement: sometimes a diversion, sometimes not, just to keep the competitors off-balance; and the days on which the Duty Angel descends are also carefully randomized.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The time is approaching mid-afternoon, and the sun has driven many of the competitors back from the pool’s edge into the shade of the arches.\u00a0 Ironically, this has pushed some of the weakest out of the shade into what will be quite good positions for a fast plunge into the waters if sunstroke does not get to them first.\u00a0 Quite a few of the competitors are sleeping now, lulled by the heat.\u00a0 Silence and gentle snoring have replaced the quarrels and conversations of mid-morning, the few jokes and the many complaints.\u00a0 Nothing, of course, not even sleep, can interrupt the moaning of those in chronic pain, the periodic shrieks from the acute cases.<\/p>\n

But not everyone is asleep.\u00a0 Miriam of Hyrcania sits awake with her back against a pillar of the south-side colonnade, her baby muffled in a light cloth in her lap.\u00a0 Until the child is healed, she will allow nobody but herself to see his little face.\u00a0 The shocked inbreaths, the bright compensatory talk, the furtive glances that are worse than frank stares, these all pain her too much on his behalf.\u00a0 It is for his sake that she has left her husband, abandoned her other children, and walked all the way from Hyrcania to sit with him under the stone arches of Bethesda.\u00a0 Sleeping, he snuffles like a piglet through his incomplete nose.<\/p>\n

Simeon the Pegs, tough old soldier that he is, has managed to secure his usual patch of territory on the narrow colonnade that runs down the centre of the pool.\u00a0 Both his legs end just above the knee.\u00a0 His mere survival should have been enough of a miracle to last him a lifetime, but he is greedy for another.\u00a0 Last time he came so close, so close.<\/i>\u00a0 For the thousandth time he surveys the competition, weighing their chances against him and hating them all.<\/p>\n

Twitcher has the palsy; was born with it, has lived with it nearly twenty years, will die with it unless someday he manages to win this race.\u00a0 He is too palsied to speak much, but he does indeed have a name: Calphas of Hebron.\u00a0 His relatives dump him in the morning and haul him away at dusk; meantime he lies on his pallet and twitches so violently that the others tend to give him a wide berth, which is useful for not getting stepped on or picked on.\u00a0 He has just wakened from a dream of being tall and clean-limbed, like his brothers, rambling in a flower-strewn field with a pretty woman\u2014unfortunately, what has wakened him is the stench from his own napkin, a stench he and his neighbours must live with until the evening.\u00a0 Jerking in great body-wide spasms, he watches the water and tries to remember the woman in his dream.<\/p>\n

The hydrocephalic baby dies quietly in her father’s arms.\u00a0 The father, dozing, does not notice.\u00a0 Miriam of Hyrcania does notice, and thinks: Good – one down.<\/i><\/p>\n

Mad Manny is not so much mad as brain-damaged.\u00a0 He was hit on the head by a toppling chunk of masonry in the Siloam Tower disaster, and now he speaks barely better than Twitcher, is prone to fits of weeping and outbursts of rage, and has a permanent and unsatisfiable dripping erection.\u00a0 He begins weeping now in huge gasping bellows of grief, rather too loudly for his neighbours’ comfort, until one of the able-bodied wakes up and threatens him with a fist.\u00a0 Manny continues to weep after that, but he weeps without noise.<\/p>\n

Susannach the Footless actually does have feet, but they are no more than twisted spurs of bone angling off from the ends of her legs.\u00a0 Jacob of Kidron, groaning beside her, has an abcessed infection that has eaten away much of his lower left jaw, and delivers exquisite pain from the touch of his own breath blowing through his mouth.\u00a0 Sarai from the Bethlehem Gate is an acute case brought crosstown by desperate relatives, stinking gangrene spreading up and down her left leg from a compound fracture of the femur.\u00a0 Without a miracle, she might last through the evening, but certainly not until morning.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And so it goes, every heap of rags hiding a dream of wholeness, a rage to be the one<\/i>.\u00a0 The program that Lilith is distributing enumerates the following:<\/p>\n