Mama Willie tells your fortune

Mama Willie tells your fortune


It’s like if you were running hard through the woods, breathing heavy, and then like in a dream it all stops suddenly. Like hitting a wall you didn’t know was there. There’s always one moment when everything gets so still and that’s when things come to me. They just well up in my brain from god knows where and spread out like a blanket. And I say out loud whatever it is that’s come up. Some people call me a fortuneteller. Church people call me a prophet. Mostly because they need me to be. So I don’t disabuse them of that notion.

What would you do if you knew things you shouldn’t know? Or at least people expected you to know them. Wanted you to know. Would you go along with them? Make things up? How easy it is in the name of Truth or the greater good to tweak it just a little. To say, “God told me….” Hell, I’ve done it myself more than once. Nothing is easier. And then that yellow calm inside and out because God has spoken. And no one can argue with God. At least not and live. You just open up your mortal mouth and let out words and put the god-tag on like a sale tag and it makes everybody happy. You don’t even have to take responsibility for what you say. Just wait. And watch. Soon that little drip that dribbled out of the faucet of your mouth will become a rush of water. Then you can watch all that self-fulfilling energy running toward the nearest drain.

I think death must bring it on. Or the thought of death. You start to wonder what portion of all your words have been true. And what does that even mean? You wonder how maybe what some call the gift of sight and others call faith is not much more than you being determined to be right come hell or whatever. Being right is almost as good as being good. Some people don’t have any talent for being good. Maybe not for being right either. But one is easier to fake. You just have to be the loudest, most determined voice in the room. You get yourself a reputation for being strong. People flock to strong. There’s nothing wrong with being strong until it’s your time to be weak. To hurt and doubt and wrestle down the big questions.

Years ago, when everyone else was wrestling them down, you stood there looking pious and saying Just believe like a puritanical Gandhi. But one day you wake up and your loincloth of self-righteousness has slipped. Now it’s your turn. And then pieces of strength start flaking off like rust off a radiator. All your loud-mouthed certainty dries up like piss in the wind. But by then you don’t have the grace to admit defeat. To admit the possibility of weakness or wrongness. Being right is all tangled up with just being. And if one slips, the other just slides along behind. Your brain starts to feel like the Sunday crossword puzzle where most of the clues are tricks and most of the squares are blank and by Thursday you start to realize you’ll never get it all filled in. There’s been no habit of humility woven over the years to cover you when you need it most. You just stand out there exposed with all the nakedness of your need to be right. You have no pocket of quiet to dig your hands into and wait for some light. If you’re lucky, all your words dry up. If you’re not, they keep dribbling out of your mouth like so much spittle. You can stop the drool of words, but then you’d have to do something with them backing up in your head like a stopped up toilet. And the one who has the plunger is the one you don’t want to talk to. Besides, finding a plumber at this hour is practically impossible.

And don’t think Jesus is the plumber. Jesus is the crazy existentialist who stands on the corner and says The kingdom of heaven is here. Is at hand. Is now. Now—that strange word in a time warp. No promise of a future heaven or hell. And what are we supposed to do with that? Think about it later? There is no later. The kingdom of heaven isn’t later. It’s now. It’s black holes and plucked strings and beggars on the back streets of Delhi and cancer patients screaming heal me now, not now, now, not now. It is patient virgins. And a world being borne along by violent men. It’s a gift delivered like a grenade with the pin already pulled.