The Ghost in the Cathedral

“Hear, O Israel: the LORD is our God, the LORD is One.”

A dream on April 15th………

“It is well” my dad whispers as he sketches the Cathedral, the details designed from the nape to the great stone that shelters the moving shadows in the Roman portico. “Are there ghost here”, I whisper, thinking the answer I might receive might not be kind. “They are here” he whispers back, continuing to manipulate the pencil on his long white draught tablet, his face the color of angels, that of peace, that moves rough rivers to find a better course. My dad, the dad I know no more, a spirit, a moving light in darkness, moves his right hand with flourish finishing the left arch that covers the holy of holies.

“I will put daemons on the outside of this sanctuary,” he says, his now inhuman glowing blue eyes giving the appearance of a shelter, he was unable to offer while yet he was breathing. “Why”, I ask, the question knowing the answer to come. Still, the inquiry helps me hear my own voice. It sounds passive, and echoing, as if in a great hall. “They help us to know possibilities”, my dad mutters, turning drawing rapidly something that stands still, noticeable only to his eyes. His immortal eyes.

“It is well”, my dad whispers, baring the image of something alien upon his arms. They are moving images of creatures, alien beast that move to guard a sanctuary. Perhaps it is they guard a throne, a host, or a plan sketched of what is to come. “What of the ghost” I ask the spirit that speaks as my father. “They are here”, my dad laughs suddenly, as his eyes turn a cobalt cold, color of ethereal energy that moves between worlds.

He draws them then, with quickness, a suddenness that interrupts the troubled thoughts I have. They sit in silence, in quiet death, their bodies in sanctuary, their souls’ deep wells, not troubled by belief or ideology. “They rest”, my dad says, his voice moving to other places. Perhaps mysterious places where bleeding stops. Perchance that place “John Lennon” imagined, with no religion too.

“I would go there, also” I whisper to my dad, this dad who roughs great divine basilicas. “I would climb past these ghosts, I would Passover“, I say, as the night moves in and out of that consciousness that is my soul. “I cannot make it so”, my dad smiles, the same unavailability suddenly present within him, as it was in life. He moves then his pencil moving furiously over the pad he carries with him, and I understand. I know without worry, and I am concerned no more. My life passes beyond cathedrals, celestial and even divinity. It spins so often out of control. Nevertheless, they are there, ghost sketched in great cathedrals, daemons of awe sculpted by my dad’s awl, that help me know deep possibilities. Thoughts that are not bound to past or future. Still it is well, oh Hashem it is well with my soul.

“It is well”, my dad whispers.

For Notre Dame That still smolders this night.
– 04.18.2019 – דָנִיֵּאל