The Good News of Gotthjalp

The water cooler burbled. Tim stared down at his cup of coffee and listened his co-worker blather.

“— and then he waved his hand, and — kazam! — the plate was whole again.”

“Nice”, Tim muttered. “How’d he do that?”

“Magic.”

Tim looked up, puzzled. “Magic?”

“Yeah. Like, real magic.” Jack smiled. “They say he’s a real magic man. If he raises a hand in a forest, a dove will come down and settle on his wrist.”

“Trained dove?”

“Of course not. He’s one with nature. Calling a dove is no more miraculous than me calling you, and you coming to me.”

Tim had a nasty reply to this, but suppressed it. “Must be nice when fishing.”

“Ah.” Jack winked. “Fish’s bad for you. Gets your spirit down. That’s why he says we shouldn’t eat fish. You should come to one of our dinners sometime. My neighbor reads excerpts from his biography; then we have a bit of food and talk. It’s nice.”

Tim searched, quite desperately, for a way of declining this bothersome invitation. “Biography? Er, he’s a big in Sweden, huh? Still, er, touring?”

“No. He went away.”

“Huh?” Tim spent and few seconds trying to decipher this coy remark, but then Jack went on.

“Walked to the wilds one day. Became one with nature once again. But he’ll come back, and when he does, we’ll be here to greet him, and his bounty.”

“You mean, he went… uh…”

“Nah, it’s deep and mystical. My neighbor’s better in explaining this. You know, there’s this tale about trouble he had with a bank once — a real a-hole of a banker — and my neighbor says he tried to act the same with his bank, and boom!”

“Er, boom?”

“They just rolled over and gave him the loan he needed. A miracle!”

“Woah. What was that bounty you said something about?”

“Nature’s bounty. You know, it stands to reason that if you’re one with nature, you won’t get sick or anything. You won’t get funny in the head, or lose interest in ladies, or any of that depressing stuff. And stands to reason he’ll teach his fans a bit more once he gets back. Bit more than what’s in the biography anyway. It has this really funny and deep story how there were thirty people listening to him and just one Mars bar to eat…”

* * *

And that, dear reader, is a veiled shadow of how Christianity spread in those early days of the first century of the Common Era.

I almost chose the title “…of Gotthjälp” instead, but wasn’t sure if the umlaut-a would display properly. Some Nordic version of “Yahwe helps!” anyway.