The Dust Devil

“No one has more wonder than children,” Jesus told me. He had always been fascinated with children, but whenever he had had the chance to talk with them, he overstayed his welcome. They ended up running away. Or growing up real fast.

One of the loveliest aspects of being human, he had told me, was that our species was blessed with a long childhood. Jesus loved children because he felt their wonder. In fact, when asked who was a shoe-in for Heaven later on in his public life, he said, “Those who would be like children. Those who would thrill in the wonder of life.”

The fact that I had never grown up seemed divinely vindicated.

I thought about my childhood. We weren’t afforded the luxury of a carefree day, but were always helping Joseph in some way, whether it was getting wood turpentine from a terebinth tree or going here or there to get supplies for his woodwork.

There’s a place a short walk from home where Jesus or I would go to fetch nails or other carpentry items from time to time. At our age, it wasn’t such a short walk, but a major outing. It was to a small town called Japhia, and it was just a few miles south of Nazareth. It wasn’t that it was some center for carpentry or anything, but Joseph had a fellow carpenter there and they traded stuff they needed with each other. Sometimes they would charge each other, other times they would just keep scratch mark scores of the recent trades back and forth.

There were always a lot of kids hanging around the town center, playing, shouting, causing a ruckus. Occasionally I’d tag along with Jesus, or he with me, for these errands. The place was a hut market that had a lousy selection of odds and ends, but always seemed to have the items Dad needed. One particular time, it was wedges he had to have. We weren’t charged anything since they were nothing more than scrap pieces of wood anyway. As usual, there were a jillion kids around, cutting up.

“Seems to me Joseph’s got to have such pieces lying around his shop floor—hey you kids, quiet!” the merchant’s voice transitioned from conversational to yelling way loud. He was an unsightly middle-aged man with a lot of growths on his neck and forehead. His breath stank. He was almost impressive by Middle East newly A.D. standards, but the kids still ignored him.

“What can I say? He’s gotta have wedges,” Jesus told him. “Don’t know why.”

“Don’t care,” I added. The man smiled. Then he frowned just as easily when his eyes tracked one of the kids chasing a wooden wheel right across his yard.

“Jerky?” he offered. I loved the jerky each time we went, even though it was hot outside and the jerky was salty. “Fine jerky. Next store,” he informed us with a toss of his head and a finger point to the next hut. It was more than a hut, though, because it had a porch affair that offered shade. The kids knew the spot and took advantage of it. Likewise, Jesus and I decided to take a cooler under this porch where the locals there were giving away the jerky. They didn’t seem to mind the kids, so they must have been their parents.

They were also selling the water, if you can believe that. Actually, with the free jerky, it was brilliant capitalism. It was the hottest time of the day, and the break was welcome even if the water wasn’t free. The wedges, however, were free, so we had a copper coin to exchange for the water.

Jesus watched the children while I watched Jesus watch the children. We weren’t much older ourselves, but old enough to have our chores and duties. It was with an envious eye that Jesus watched the children running and playing and just being silly for no reason at all. Children always seemed to make Jesus stop dead in his tracks. But it wasn’t the children he watched, it was the childhood.

That was then, but this was now and, as it turned out, our journey this day toward Capernaum brought us through Japhia, so I pined for free jerky and not-so-free water, while Jesus pined for something else.

“Yes, Japhia,” he said, “I’ve always like Japhia. Good memories.”

It wasn’t long before we were at our usual spot from before. Nothing had changed, except that the children there had been replaced by another brood while they themselves had become the fussy people running the cool, shady place where Jesus and I found ourselves relaxing to fine jerky and clean water.

“Stop all that racket!” yelled the merchant to his children and nieces and nephews who minded him not, as he had not minded his own elders at one time.

Our awning projected from a corner made up of two dwellings that had roof lines that almost touched, the structures themselves almost adjacent in a tight cater-corner. There must have been some interesting cyclonic properties to this arrangement, because a little girl, about ten I guess, was darting to and fro, dancing with a dust devil that enjoyed a long life due to the juxtaposition of the buildings and the whistling wind that flooded in between them. You could tell she and anyone she belonged to was dirt poor. Her clothes were nothing more than rags. Her hair was cropped short, as if she were recovering from a previous treatment for lice. Nevertheless, she was mesmerizing, lovely, so graceful, the other children seeming to fade into my peripheral vision. She danced like an angel.

It wasn’t long before I noticed that this particular dust devil was strangely long-lived. She continued dancing with it and Jesus delighted in the whole choreography that was performed.

Although she was a mess, her traditional wraps and veils disheveled with her darting and dashing, she was a cute, pretty little mess. Most in this world might wonder how well she might fit into his hedonistic world in just a few short years, but Jesus was locked on her with delight for the child.

The dust devil began alternately chasing her, then retreating skillfully from her return pursuit. At one point her veil flew totally off of her face and began dancing in the whirlwind. I turned to look at Jesus, and there was no doubt in my mind that he had everything meteorologically to do with this mirth.

The veil dove then rose jerkily, flipping around and pivoting on the alternating colors of its front and back. It would just about be within reach of the girl’s snatching fingers when it would bolt away again, buoyed by the thin column of dust. She began laughing, and with each near miss her giggling became more uncontrollable. Jesus began smiling, then began giggling with her, sharing the game.

She suddenly took notice of us, alerted by Jesus’ chuckles. When Jesus noticed he was being noticed, the dust devil abruptly collapsed, the girl’s veil slowly circling down, ultimately upon her outstretched palm. She straightened up and then walked slowly our way. Jesus tried to sip demurely from his water cup but only succeeded in gulping a mouthful.

“You saw that, didn’t you?” she asked him. He looked up from the rim of his cup.

“Yes,” he answered. “What is your name?”

“My name is Phoebe,” she said.

“A Greek name. What’s a little girl like you doing with a Greek name?” he asked her.

“Goddess of the moon,” she announced proudly.

“Ah, yes,” he agreed. “But Greek.”

“No, my dad was a Roman,” she told him. Ah, aggareia strikes again. Some Roman blood-sucker went the mile with Phoebe’s Mom, no doubt. “When he came back through here,” she continued, “he changed my name to Phoebe. He was praying for something special, and the goddess Phoebe was the one he prayed to.”

“Did he get what he prayed for?” Jesus asked.

“Yea, but he died in it when one of the wheels came off the day he got it.”

“Did you like him?” Jesus asked her.

“Didn’t even know him,” she said with a blank stare, then, snapping out of it, “but my Mom didn’t like him, so I guess I didn’t like him either.”

“Do you know what that wind and dust was?” Jesus asked.

“A dust devil,” she answered.

“Why not a dust angel?” Jesus challenged.

“Because,” she replied as if rehearsed, “I’m the angel here.”

“Oh,” Jesus backed down, “of course. And why are you the angel?”

“Because God made me.”

“Didn’t God make the dust devil?” Jesus began smiling, trying to make the logic dance as elusively as her veil had.

“No,” she answered resolutely.

“Oh, then I guess the devil made it?”

“No,” she answered again.

“No? Well then who?”

“Yea, then who?” I joined in.

“You keep out of this,” she warned sternly.

“Yea,” Jesus said.

“Well, sure,” I butted out. Just give her a few years, I thought menacingly.

“No one made the dust devil,” she explained. “It just made itself, came from the world, because there was nothing there to stop it.”

“Your veil wanted to be a part of it,” Jesus teased. She tugged at the veil, now drooped on her forehead, a signal that she had won her contest with the wind. “Oh, I see,” Jesus admitted. “You won your battle with the world.”

“I suppose I did!” she boasted.

“Phoebe, there are many things that will just…happen, you know.”

“I know that, silly.”

“Problems that make problems that make problems.”

“I suppose.”

“And you’ll be minding your own business, but you’ll be taken in anyway.”

“Sir,” she said very seriously, “you do have a point, do you not? I’m hoping so.” I loved her for that.

“No,” Jesus answered, “I don’t. Points just come about by themselves, too. Often when you’re chasing after something else unimportant.”

“You just told a big, fat fib, sir.”

“Oh, I didn’t, child.”

“You did. You said you didn’t have a point.”

“He tells a lot of fibs,” I offered.

“I was just kidding you,” Jesus said defensively.

“No, he wasn’t,” I objected. “He was trying to sneak in a parable.”

“A what?” she asked me.

“A parable—a teaching lesson,” I told her.

“Lessons are for boys,” she announced, chanting the party line for Galilee. “Besides,” she said, “I don’t want anyone to teach me. I just want to learn it all by myself.”

“That’s all one can do,” Jesus said to her. “Sometimes you need someone to show you the way, but you have to do it all by yourself.”

“You’re doing it again, aren’t you?” she teased him.

“I think he is,” I chimed in. “You’re smarter than most of the people he talks to. You may even be smarter than him.”

“That’s because I learn all by myself,” she laughed. “No one has to teach me. I let things happen. It’s the best way to play.” Without goodbyes, as if we were simply being put on “pause,” she scampered off coquettishly, quite finished with us.

“The wonder of it all,” Jesus pointed out to me. “From a child.”