Madness and Love Mixed: Part 3 — Arc 2
Jonah: Accidental Bigot, Intentional Drunkard and Drug User, Penitent Priest of Whale Vomit
The arc of this series entry begins On the link I added below.
Eiri Waters
The scene is not as we have witnessed it before or in times past.
This time the bite of the air comes sharper, and the warmth of the same dark-green shag hoodie Star-Dust wore earlier now encloses us as the sun heats its darker pigmented fibers, waving them in the autumn wind.
The iPad feels lighter on our lap this time around—whether we chose it or future Star-Dust did makes very little difference—but it warms, glowing softly. The louder mechanical keys of the rugged black rubber case tap out our staccato narration and scribing.
We glance to the right as a swirl of fragmentary leaves gathers itself into a mint-colored vortex, forming two memorable figures: Jonah the Bipolar Albino, and Star-Dust as future me—who has decided to don a completely searing white outfit for reasons we are not yet aware of.
Star turns to us and whispers into our mind tenderly.
We recoil—until we remember she is who we are becoming.
Of course she can think backward to us, even if we cannot respond in kind.
“Dust, I’m wearing white to help him feel less jumpy. He only gets like this when he’s outside His presence. Down here, he’s like a rabbit hopped up on your Trenta cold brew with ten shots of espresso. Whatever you do—seriously—no sudden movements. No breaking the fourth wall. He will bolt, and we will not get him back.”
She turns her searing cosmic hazel gaze toward us and raises an eyebrow, as if asking, Can you cooperate?
We nod slowly, carefully, and slow our typing.
Listening.
Star gently takes Jonah by the hand, careful not to disturb the leaves or make any startling motion. She uses her superior strength not to muscle the man but to mother him toward the prepared chair. She concentrates—she still makes the same face we do when thinking: constipation lacking dentures.
We freeze, flicking our gaze to her, shrinking, making the I’m sorry face for nearly breaking the fourth wall. She squints, then returns to Jonah and proceeds to adjust the rays of sunlight with her actual hands.
A mental whisper flicks our way:
“Under direct sunlight while wearing white is the closest feeling to heaven on earth. It’ll soothe him.”
“Jonah, hun, how’s that?” she asks as she settles gently into her seat across from us.
He groans—uncoiling like a lazy cat in the sun.
“Star… sorry for earlier. I wasn’t myself. When I stand outside the direct Presence—”
He shudders, in either ecstasy or agony. We cannot tell.
“It terrifies me. I missed the signs once. Ignored them. It nearly cost an entire nation.”
He shakes his bald pate, sorrow etched like weighted albino mountains shedding streams from his pink-white eyes.
Star rises slowly—the chair creaking as she uses her upper body to avoid startling him. She wraps her arms around him, rubbing circles and whispering:
“Shhh… no, Jonah. He does not judge us by our failures when we repent. We know this. Weep no more, Beloved.”
She rocks him a few minutes.
We say nothing.
We barely breathe.
The air tastes salty with the anguish of a man undone, momentarily apart from total saturation in the Presence of the Father.
Star clears her throat.
“Hey, Dust.”
“Yeah?” we answer, solemn.
“Keep the vulnerability in the report. It humbles us but also elevates. Emotion is praised in Heaven. Jonah is tapped in. He walks with Enoch in nearness to the Father.”
We nod seriously. Our fingers grow nippy in the cooling air.
“Star—sorry for that,” Jonah murmurs, shaking with the last remaining sobs.
“Jonah, hun, you know better than to apologize for being real with me. We’re awkward because we’re authentic—not actors in whatever bizarre play modern culture is staging these days. What Heaven sees is not always representative of our surface feelings. Some things are hard to sit with.”
She shrugs as if to say, I showed up for this. Let’s go.
“Silly me…” Jonah chuckles, mood finally lifting.
Star softens her voice.
“I know. But tell us why you hated the Ninevites so much.”
Jonah deflates like a man about to confess his darkest secrets on a livestream.
“Star… you have to understand. It was the culture. Our time. We grew up using them as slang for shit. Literally beneath us. That mindset was baked into me. So when the God I claimed to serve sent me to warn them—to save them?”
Molten golden tears slide down his cheeks.
“The priests, the temple treasurers, the guards, the king’s men—when I came to them as a prophet they said, ‘False. No way. We hate those people.’ What I didn’t understand then, but can articulate now, is this: cultural rot is almost impossible to remove once it becomes organic and viral.”
His voice cracks.
“My own family spit on me. Called me a sodomite—in the hateful way, not the relational way. I…”
He weeps softly.
“I ran. I dulled the pain and loneliness with anything I could find. All while HE whispered like a Lover, calling me back to bed where it was warm and safe.”
He inhales sharply.
“He softened me by breaking me open through communal rejection.
He tempered me on that tempestuous sea through those holy fool sailors who showed me unprejudiced love.
He blessed me by ceremonially killing me—casting me into the raging currents.
He saved me by enfolding me in lifegiving, fish-stinking, stomach matter.
And He delivered me once I realized He was not who my nation said He was…
He was who HE says He is.”
Jonah breaks down—truly breaks—for the perceived betrayal of all those now-heavenly souls he once despised.
Star rushes past our fluffy hoodie and envelops him.
Shushing him.
Soothing.
She turns to us and thinks:
“Dust, can you close this vision? We’ve got to get Jonah back to the Father or we may never finish the series.”
We shrug, mystified but willing.
We think the picture—the setting—the scene—into dissolution.
The leaves become birds of temporal disturbance, fading always into the next narrative arc.
Eiri Waters
What wonder will unfold next?