Mary and Harry

The New Testament; Mary and Harry

Mary was first in, first out at 113th and Rawson. I asked her what she was doing while she waited at home for her car.

“House work.”
“Well, you’ll feel better when that’s done.” I said.
“It’s never done.”
Alright then. Moving along ...

“Harry! What are you doing today?”
“I’m finishing up a paper I am giving at a conference in Germany in August.”
“Well,” I said, “isn’t that something. What’s the paper on?”
“My research and further interpretations on the Q narrative in the New Testament.”
“Welcome aboard,” I said, offering my hand, “you’re the first Q researcher I’ve ever met.”

“Q?” Mary asked.
“Yes,” Harry said, “there were different source writers in the Gospels and we believe that the Q writer is the most authentic voice of Jesus coming through any of the Gospels. Matthew and Luke borrowed heavily from Mark and John was on his own.”

Harry is a lifelong professor that retired two years ago. When I asked how it was going he said, with a noticeable glee in his voice, that he gets to write all the time now. He translates from old Greek, German, and some French into English, I suppose.

Imagine that. Writing all the time. How wonderful for him.

Later in the morning I picked both of them up and took them back to the dealership - one at a time. Mary said she wished we’d decided to take him home first so she could have spent more time asking him questions. Mary also seemed to have a grip on the New Testament.

She did allow that she favors the divinely inspired camp of bible readers and thinks that Harry’s a skeptic that needs to prove something.

I, the writer/driver, kind of favor the Buddhist Nagarjuna when he offered all four possibilities.
Yes. No. Both yes and no. Neither yes, nor no.

Similarly, Mu, a word from Japanese Zen indicates that a quicker way around is to un-ask the question. And that reminds me of my father saying: “You can’t get there from here.”

On we go.