Your blood speaks a better word than all the empty claims heard upon the earth...
...And of empty claims this earth has many.
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We drove up past the outskirts of the city where the used furniture lots populated the street like a giant hand playing jenga with bed frames and tables. We drove up past where the road became one lane and the homes were decorated with hand pressed circular yak dung patties. We drove up past where the peach trees blossomed pink next to slim trickling brooks. We drove up past where the buses stopped and the paved road ended. We drove up past where monasteries and temples lay forgotten in the mountain cracks like so much garbage littering the land. We drove up past the villages where baby sheep and yak became our main obstacles and the jeep rolled backwards a little bit. Up past caves like the remnants of a kingdom, up past rocks with clumsily painted buddhas, up past construction crews setting up power lines. Up, up, up.
As we drove it became essential for me to learn the Chinese words for shepherd, peace, and refreshment. As the jeep bumped over the meandering mountain roads and the air thinned out and the dust left us gritty I took to beginning stories with: once upon a time in an ancient land called Israel. As the jagged rocks pierced the now blue, now cottony sky honest answers flowed from my dry lips and my cracked fingers traced out meanings where language failed.
Three times he stopped the car, stared at me in silence while the orange dust settled and the mountain peaks peered down, grabbed my elbow and said tell me more. So I did.
What color are the Shepherd's eyes? he asked. Black like yours I answered.
We were forced to turn the car downwards only by gravity and a violent little stream gushing from some unseen place washing out the road entirely. Some chapped construction crews leaned on their shovels and tilted their blue hats back with their all knuckle hands. Until that moment I had thought we would end up in the sky.
As the car bumped and skidded back down the mountain I told him about a wedding banquet of unimaginable glory. If I believe that both the Shepherd and Buddha are equal can I come to the banquet? he asked. No, I answered sadly, because if you believe that... then you don't know the Shepherd. A pause. Then teach me well, he demanded, I want to sit next to you at the banquet.
We drove down, down past a tiny village girl carrying a metal pipe, down past a yak with a face like a panda, down past where the buses lined up and the road became paved. Down, down, down... back into this black valley of a city that breaks my heart and ignores my stories, stories of a Shepherd.
And as we parted, I thanked my colleague for letting me speak a better word than all the empty claims heard upon this earth for the first time with such freedom and at such length in three long years. Because those stories, those words, are indeed life. Life to all who hear them and, as I can personally testify to after today, for all who have the joy of speaking them.
