To read from the beginning, please click the photos on the right.
Chapter XXVII pgs. 165-169
“Wiretap her phone and bug her computer. Maybe someone’ll show up on her e-mail.” Ernie said.
“We can always throw her in jail until she divulges her sources.”
“But she’s not putting anything into the paper. Just that wimpy blog. If we get on her case for that and it gets into the news, people who haven’t seen her web site might go looking for it, and we’d end up with a really big mess.”
“If she works for a newspaper, Homeland Security should already have something on her,” said Alex.
A half hour later, a Homeland Security agent brought Alex a thirty-seven page dossier on Johanna. It included educational background, a list of credit cards, religious affiliation, favorite hobbies, stores, and restaurants, an exhaustive list of friends and acquaintances going back to college with background checks on many of them. He also brought copies of phone taps and computer taps.
Alex and Ernie spread the information out over a small maple table and poured through it. "Absolutely nothing. On either side, theirs or ours."
"There has to be something. A gigantic leak somewhere. Look harder." Alex furrowed his brow. “Maybe it’s nothing - or just coincidence. And there can’t be that many people reading her website. Still…” He scratched his chin. “It won’t hurt to keep an eye on her.”
Johanna used the name, Jody, in her web address, and she posted something new every Tuesday evening at seven o’clock. It was satisfying to take all the stories and poems that she hadn’t been able to print in the Gazette and to post them on her web site.
Johanna’s next piece was an ancient Buddhist story:
In a far away kingdom the holy men were fighting about the nature of God. So the king told them a story:
Once upon a time there was a certain raja who called to his servant and said, “come, good fellow, go and gather together in one place all the men of Savatthi who were born blind… and show them an elephant.”
“Very good, sire,” replied the servant, and he did as he was told. He said to the blind men assembled there, “here is an elephant,” and to one man he presented the head of the elephant, to another its ears, to another a tusk, to another the trunk, the foot, back tail, and tuft of the tail, saying to each one that that was the elephant.
When the blind men had felt the elephant, the raja went to each of them and said to each, “Well, blind man, have you seen the elephant? Tell me, what sort of thing is an elephant?”
Thereupon the men who were presented with the head answered, “Sire, an elephant is like a pot.” And the men who had observed the ear replied, “an elephant is like a winnowing basket.” Those who had been presented with a tusk said it was a ploughshare. Those who knew only the trunk said it was a plough; others said the body was a granary; the foot, a pillar; the back, a mortar, the tail, a pestle, the tuft of the tail, a brush.
Then they began to quarrel, shouting, “Yes it is!” “ No, it is not!” “An elephant is not that!” “Yes, it’s like that!” And so on, till they came to blows over the matter.
Brethren, the raja was delighted with the scene.
O how they cling and wrangle, some who claim
For preacher and monk the honored name!
For quarreling, each to his view they cling.
Such folk see only one side of a thing.
Jainism and Buddhism. Udana 68-69
Parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant
She got mail in her chat room almost immediately.
Sandy Pumpkin: I like it. Humans have different gifts and abilities. Why not religions? Like St. Paul’s letter - many gifts; one body.
Magnum: Now you’re talking heresy! Someone should rip out your tongue and saw off your typing fingers.
Jody: The Salem witch hunts ended years ago. This is still a free country, and I’ll say whatever I want, thank you.
Spiderman: You go, girl! Say what you have to say, shout to anyone who will listen, and don’t stop until everyone hears you. We have to take the risk. That’s what it means to have a soul. To tell everyone – friend and foe – this is what I believe, and I offer my name and my life for it. The hardest part is that it seems that we’re the only ones who think this way. It’s hard to be the first to weather criticism. But others will follow. We have to believe it.
Brat: U guys R way strA-A-A-A-nge!!!!
Magnum: Go to church if you want to know God. Listen to your pastor. He’ll tell you what to think.
Sandy Pumpkin: That’s dangerous – not to think for yourself. You can end of with a Kool-Aid ‘n cyanide cocktail.
Magnum: Any Christian will tell you that his path is the only true one.
Shadow: And Muslims will say the same.
Spiderman: But it’s hard to acknowledge the virtue of the ones whose faith is radically different from your own.
Shadow: Sometimes it’s even harder to accept someone who’s the same. Fundamental Moslems and Jews and Christians have so much in common. Guardians of their faith, they are like bloodhounds when it comes to uncovering sin, and they do not compromise. Keeping religion pure is their finest achievement, and their biggest moral danger is pride. In fundamental Islam, there are bans on so many things.
Jody: Maybe there’s virtue to that, but it’s the part of the elephant that I couldn’t accept.
Shadow: It is because you have never lived with death at your elbow. But when you walk through desert, carrying your life in your camel’s saddlebag, or when you hear rifles and soldiers, and know that only Allah can make safe your life – when you have lived this – then you understand. You dare not make a mistake; you dare not risk divine displeasure. Because you see in a rice bowl that your life lies in God’s hands, and as you tie on your sandals, you know that it is only with God’s pleasure that you do so. We believe in Allah’s mercy, but we who live with death on our shoulder, we dare not take it as already granted. We do as we are told. We pray as we are told. We love as we are told. We cannot take the same risks as the rich do. In matters concerning salvation, one cannot take chances. And the reward for obedience is divine ecstasy.
Brat: This is the stra-a-a-a-ngest chat room ever!!!!!
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