A fine day for a long explore.

I routinely drive by a Gulf Road the entrance to which is littered with signs - No Thru Traffic, Road Closed, Seasonal Road, Private Road, and Danger! Danger!

Naturally, I took it.

There's a large pond down the end I never knew about. A few canoes were pulled up onto a grassy area and there was an old house hard by. It was very peaceful. Somebody's little world, eh? One of the few signs I didn't see was one which read For Sale, otherwise I'd have knocked on the door. Did I mention I was shy?

Driving through the woods reminded me of the woods behind the fence in the neighborhood where I grew up. There were abandoned Gold Coast mansions back in there. Once we found a basement - or, cellar - without a house on top of it anymore. Robbie found a vent pipe that stuck up through the ground above, and while we were knocking the darkness around in our newly discovered cavern he defecated through it. We were 11 or 12.

The story about the woman who collected the children's grave stones is true. There was such a house near us - called a castle. It was torn down in 1970. For some time thereafter some ruins remained of it. At last a developer bought the property, incorporating the design of the old house into the gate house for his condominiums. The story is that the woman who had lived in the house collected children's grave stones from around the world. Many were used for building materials.

I've always liked finding secret places, hidden places. It's easy here on the frontier. The forests hide a multitude of people's secrets. The roads come out in unexpected places, or don't come out anywhere at all.

The woods near home eventually went the same way as the castle. There is a large housing development now where the woods used to be. My mind took me under ground and through secret doors which had been hidden by stacking old furniture or dusty books, or doors that had always been there but can only be seen on St. Philippa Day. Falling into the ground - into a forgotten cellar - is also quite appealing.

Today my discovered road did indeed come to an abrupt end, not a hundred feet beyond the end of that pond. I turned around in the driveway of that house and headed back. I've since looked it up on the map, and on the satellite image here on my computer, which shows the pond as a black blob with the road a whitish ribbon running next to it. According to both map and aerial image my road would have met up with another road within another hundred feet of the impasse which had been erected to close it.

Obviously, I am bound to seek that intersection from the other road just as soon as I'm done writing this.

A fellow with a very large white poodle dog asked me if I was lost while I was admiring the view of a ruined house on the way back. No, I said, I'm just exploring.

He said, "Well, did'ja see the signs?"

I answered, Yes, but it wouldn't be much of an explore if I bothered readings signs, now would it?

He thought about that for a moment, nodding while he stroked his chin. I knew people assumed that pose in stories, but I don't think I had ever seen it outside of a story before.    

It's also a fine day to watch an old movie.

Grandpa is somewhere in America, or Canada, or Mexico, or perhaps in places south of Mexico, but somewhere. When we were at the family reunion in June we had made plans to go camping before the summer was done, in fact imminently. Dad's next destination was a family camp in the Catskill mountains which is not two hours from home, then at some point he would mosey on up to see us in his little house on wheels. After Mom died he bought an RV.

Well I remember that last night, as though it were yesterday. The summer was young, and it promised to stretch on endlessly as did the eternal summer of youth. I was imagining as I lay at the gate of sleep within Dad's camper that a very large bear was pealing back its metal roof and saying, Ooh - just like sardines - how tasty! It was very, very difficult to leave the following day. Driving away was like going against a gigantic rubber band wrapped 'round the front of the car. It finally snapped about ten miles out.

I considered finding someone who owned a CB radio, wondering if it were possible to relay a message to my father, wherever he may be. The usual channels were unavailable. He does have a cell phone, though what he does with it I have no idea. Once during the summer - during those weeks that turned the calendar pages twice before you could say I wonder where Grandpa is? - I heard a distinct ringing sound on the other end of the line, and I realized he actually had the silly thing turned on, probably by accident, and probably packed inside a duffle bag or a suitcase between the spare underpants and the first aid kit.

The boys go back to school quite soon. I had been trying to coordinate with their mother which week it would be - our trip, that is - depending on the timing of my Dad's visit. I know I have mentioned Dad is a free spirit, for lack of a better term, and not always on a schedule which coincides with the revolution of the Earth around the Sun.

Well, I tried his cell phone again a few days ago on the off chance. I had assured her, When I reach him he'll probably say he's five minutes away from us and on his way here. Indeed that's possible. Anything is possible. I've learned that anything is possible from Dad, and when a person says to me that such-and-such a thing is impossible I am able to declare from my experience, Nothing is impossible! I'm still alive, despite it all, and that was impossible!

And I mean that.

The phone on the other end did ring. I was sitting right here by the computer - actually in the Morris chair under the gigantic artificial tree in the library's bow window. It rang and rang, and at last a voice answered, a voice which sounded exactly like my own voice, and since I knew I was not in two places at once I concluded it was Dad.

I said, How are you?

I'm... terrific!

Where are you? I asked.

I'm driving along the Pacific coast.

How is it?

Blue.

Is it also wet?

I assume it is wet.

We are planning a Fall camping trip.

Is the Peace that passes all understanding the same as absence of war? When Jesus gives us His Peace is He telling us not to make war? Or, is He speaking of Peace as the opposite of war? If so, He is not God as some of us suppose. 

The war-like God of Moses is here speaking to us in the person of Jesus Christ. In the historical context He is speaking to people who have not known a war for the better part of a century. In their lifetimes they have no memory of war. What is He talking about when He says, "My Peace I give you."

At mass there's a point where everybody in the congregation turns to offer in words and by some gesture the Peace of Christ to the ones near them. It always makes my eyes wet to do this, silly girl that I am.

When I pray for peace I get peace. When I pray that this person over here does what I would like him to do and that person over there does what I want her to do I don't get that. I would like that my old friend J- should have not died a few days ago, but he did. I would like that the girl I loved had loved me back, but she didn't. I would like that my sons would do everything I tell them to do when I tell them to do it, but they don't.

I don't believe the Peace of Christ has anything to do with removing the Free Will of our neighbors. Nor is He instructing us to kill everybody who doesn't do what we would like him to do, or think as we would like him to think, and we know when we are angry that is precisely what we are doing - killing.

Christ lived in a period of stability - peace, as some people define it, the absence of war enforced by the power of Rome. It would not be very long after the Resurrection that Rome's oppressive stranglehold over the known world would begin to be seriously challenged. Shortly after Christ's crucifixion the Jewish people would rebel against the power of Rome, which many of them had been itching to do for a while - naturally.

I say 'naturally' because I also say "Give me liberty or give me death," - not Give me peace or give me death, or Give me security or give me death, or Give me safety or give me death. If someone tries to take my liberty, or my neighbor's liberty, I will make righteous war. Peace is what will follow after my victory.

That stability - that absence of war - is what I call The Peace of Rome.

But, when I pray to God for Peace - not to Rome for peace - I always receive Peace. The more I do it the more quickly - immediately - I seem to receive it. Nothing about the outer world has changed, but I have peace. I've also learned that I can offer this same peace to my neighbors, and that they can either receive it or reject it as it pleases them.

I don't quite know how to describe it except to say that it is a stillness in which I am in attendance to God and able to hear Him. I call it the Peace of Christ, the Peace of God.

But, the really interesting bit is this: While I say outer conditions haven't changed as a result of my prayer for Peace, I have found that over time they do. And while people still don't do what I would like them to do, or think what I would like them to think, they often seem to discover another option I had not imagined for them. When I pray for Peace the people around me do begin to change in subtle ways so that they no longer offer me the same trouble they once did.

I think the trick is to receive God's Peace, not to demand that I become God - not to tell God what I think this one should do or that one should do. I think when many people say they are praying for peace that's what they are really praying for - that other people should believe in particular things or behave in a particular way, that Free Will should be suspended.

One way to do that is the way of Rome - to sufficiently oppress the will of others so that they have not the strength to rise against you. But of course, one day they will, just as I would. One day they will, and they may lose or they may win, but your evil empire will eventually topple just like that brazen tower back in Bible days.

A hundred years of peace under Rome is like a single day to history, following which are several hundred years of wars.

No, I don't think Christ's Peace has anything to do with wars.

Now - if only everybody in the world would do as I do and think as I think, and prayed for Peace the way I pray for Peace, then I know there would be world peace. I guarantee it. I couldn't guarantee it would last longer than the space of time in which that prayer was made, but in those moments there would be world peace.

So - are you prepared to make me your God? Are you prepared to surrender your will to me and do as I tell you, and behave yourself as I tell you to behave?

No?

Well, it just so happens I'm not prepared to make you my God either, and if you try to control me I will make war against you. And in my heart I'll be at Peace doing it, too.

See? I'll rise up and fight against the Peace of Rome, but the Peace of Christ is something completely different. It is received instantaneously the moment it is prayed for, and nobody can take it away from those of us who have it.

So, when people get together to pray for Peace are they praying to God or are they praying to Rome? It's easy to tell. If they are praying to God then you will see that they are receiving His Peace. But if they are really praying to Rome they'll come out of that prayer just as angry, rotten, and miserable as they were when they went into it.

Who's the silly girl then? His eyes become wet in the church, all because of a handshake and some mumbled words of Peace. 

Here is German actor Klaus Kinski during his "Jesus Tour." The scene opens the documentary film "My Best Fiend" which chronicles director Werner Herzog's tumultuous friendship and collaboration with this most superb of actors.

Kinski portrays Jesus as a madman, which many people found offensive. Whether it is offensive or not may depend on how familiar one really is with the Gospels.

I am interested in pursuing the meaning of Christ's commandment that we should love another as He (Christ) has loved us. In order to follow that commandment it is necessary to find the answer to this question: How did Jesus love us? Only by knowing the answer to that can we know how to love one another.

Next we need to ask, Who is Jesus? Can we separate the second person of the triune God from the others? If not, then Jesus is speaking not only as a man who was a spiritual teacher but as God Himself. The question then becomes, How does God love us?

John 3:16, we know.

What does that mean? And does it not also follow that examples of God's love for us must be contained not only in the Gospel accounts but also in all of Scripture?

Surely, the most shallow and inaccurate picture of Jesus is the modern one in which He is no more than a benevolent Maharishi. Indeed, such a picture could not possibly be based on the Gospels. It is a highly sentimental picture in which we attempt to project onto the person of Christ certain attributes that we find appealing.

A thorough reading of the Gospels can certainly lead one to conclude that Jesus was a madman. As a matter of fact, a thorough reading of the Gospels must conclude that He is a madman if He is not the Son of God.

Klaus Kinski died in 1991.