Allie Hewson

Driving down the highway or is it the autobahn? She can’t remember and she doesn’t seem to care. “45 years of this shit! When’s it going to end,”… “I just want to be normal tonight, I want to go spend time with my grandchildren,” she thinks to herself.

Still she submits to the highway hypnosis and keeps driving. Eventually she approaches Berlin. “Berlin,”…“I remember how many nights it stole from me,” anger rising within herself, “too many.” I just want to see my grandchildren, she reminds herself. "Enough of this benefit crap. Africa will go on,”…”I wish history would find another hero.”

The city lights become brighter and brighter, but anger has the best of her and she fails to notice. She approaches the first stoplight, but she is unaware. Red….Red….Red…Red…it’s the color of the writing on all those damn t-shirts. Suddenly she awakens…”it’s the color of stop!!!”

“Shit” it’s too late. The only thing that seems redeeming in the moment is her honest thought of recognition of her need of grace…even now. But it is too late.

She pulls up not in the car she was just driving, but rather in the honest nakedness of herself. Suddenly she is confronted. Not by anything, but by someone.

Somehow she recognizes the truth. It’s David Copperfield. How could she possibly know David Copperfield? He was just a character. The stranger reality about this new place is that all epistemological bets are off. They, David and her, have a strange sense of parachoresis and somehow both her and David Copperfield recognize each other.

David speaks…”come try on this well deserved crown.” She is apprehensive, yet slowly she approaches. She bows her head while Coppefield places the crown upon her head. It’s awkwardly heavy at first, but then she finds the strength to lift her head high enough to look David in the face. Then she realizes the irony of the situation. The irony of grace. It’s David’s crown.

“I can’t wear thi”…,but before she can complete the thought she is strangely surprised by her sudden immediate and supernatural strength. Her neck is miraculously strong enough to hold this crown up.

“How?” is the only question to be asked. “How can she hold this crown up?” she wonders, but this same strange sense of parachoresis delivers the answer in an unprecedented way. No words required, just this deep sense of profound understanding. Not just understanding of this is how it is, but understanding that reveals this is exactly how it should be because He has willed it be so from all eternity.

“this can’t be right,” she thinks toward Copperfield. He looks her back in the eye knowing exactly why she is feeling this way. All she spent her time doing was “Chernobyl” she reminds Copperfield. His thoughts come back to her, “But it was not just Chernobyl,”…”it was gracefully standing beside a superstar for 45 years. There’s the real unprecedented strength found uniquely and sparsely throughout human history!” “Because of your patience and your sacrifice, my kingdom found it’s way into the 21st C.”

Recognizing her feeling of ineptitude Copperfield escorts her into her the realm of her company. Company…a metaphor seems to be the only thing left powerful enough in the world of epistemology to make sense of all this. There she sees them. James son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Bartholomew, Itzhak Stern, Scottie Pippin, Sam Gamgee, and the boy who shined shoes in all those redemptive novels.

Below her she sees Peter, Paul and Mary. Above her she sees only the glory, but the propensity to judge and compare is gone. It has no place here. All is equal under the shadow of the almighty.