When Jesus Walked On The Potomac - The Crippled Were Made Whole And An Old Progressive Did Even More Good

Bob Muzelle was not a religious man.  Yes, he was brought up as a Christian but his modest Long Island family wanted nothing to do with evangelism or any particular devotion. They were content to go to church on Sunday, to listen to the gospel, and to be seen with Pastor Phillips on the steps of The Westmoreland Church of Christ. They were desultory Christians, not unfaithful or unmindful of the Lord's teachings, certain in their settled rectitude, and expecting little in the way of joy or redemption. 

Bob's indifference to Jesus only increased as he got older, especially when he was a student at Yale, a campus just beginning to find its political mojo after decades of aristocratic propriety - summers on Nantucket, skiing in Gstaad, and a second home on St. Bart's.  Bob, perhaps because of some residual churching, found the Reverend Billings Longworth, Yale Chaplain and missionary to Mississippi Negroes.  First on Freedom Rides, first to be manhandled by Bull Connor and his racist thugs, first to be bitten by police dogs, and first to be beaten with KKK ax handles.

He came back from these sojourns bruised and bloodied, but a happy man wearing The Red Badge of Courage, and banged up and bandaged, he proudly addressed the congregants in Woolsey Hall.  'We shall overcome', he said in a loud, stentorian tone, and the Yale men said, 'Amen'. 

There was something about Longworth's passion that woke the young Bob Muzelle from the indifferent slumber of Great Neck, the half-baked quasi-religious, tepid secularism of his growing up.  He went to him and from that first meeting became the Chaplain's acolyte, his altar boy, his advocate.

'Doing good is our mission', said Longworth. 'Will you join me on the journey?' Bob, smitten with the beatific vision of his mentor enthusiastically agreed and together they, martyrs to the cause of the black man, travelled to Selma and Montgomery to get beaten, bloodied, and crucified. 

There was indeed something spiritual if not epiphanic in those heady encounters with angry white men. Bob and the Reverend were retracing the steps of Jesus to Jerusalem, taunted, abused, and cursed but holding their own in the service of the Lord and America.

 

Bob went on from Yale to continue a life of doing good but never regained the spiritual dimension he had found with Longworth.  His commitment was purely secular, for according to the progressive canon, religion was an obstacle in the way of reform, reconfiguration, and realignment.  The Christers of the backwater Bible Belt were to be challenged, argued with, and eventually erased - cheered with a rousing 'good riddance' as their ignorance no longer stood in the way of revolution. 

Yet there was always a niggling regret in Bob's mind. Although his parents were not the born-again type and the Reverend Longworth was no wild evangelist, he could never shake the persistent image of Jesus which kept appearing at the most inopportune moments; and so it was that he, unconsciously and certainly unwillingly, was preparing himself for apparition. 

It takes such letting down of one's secular defenses to be ready for a spiritual experience; or, as cynics might say, to let the psychotic nature of the febrile minded come out of the closet.  In any case as Bob was walking along a lonely stretch of the C&O Canal along the Potomac River, Jesus Christ appeared  walking on the water. 

At first the irony of it all made Bob even more incredulous.  From the Sea of Galilee to the political waters of the Potomac? You've got to be kidding.  It can't be; but there he was looking just like the thousands of pictures of him hanging everywhere - bearded, handsome in his long white, silken robes, arms extended with a smile on his face, beckoning. 

Of course Bob turned away, worried enough about dementia as he proceeded towards old age, and not willing to let it gain any more of a foothold than it already had.  He walked quickly back to his car, shaking his head, trying to think of hot Barbara Alden from HR, the Redskins, or Donald Trump, but only saw the recurring vision of Jesus. 

After a week of night sweats and unsettling nightmares - Jesus or Satan were always after him- he decided it was time to confront the facts about what had occurred, and he retraced his steps back to Mile 22 and waited.  There from the Virginia side of the river, the same man in robes came walking on the water towards him.  'Come to me, my child', the apparition said, and Bob, weak-kneed but desirous, walked to the river bank.  Just as he was about to push back the tangle of kudzu and walk in the Potomac to meet Jesus, the apparition disappeared. 

Who could he tell about this?  Who among his progressive friends would possibly take him seriously, listen to a crackpot who was seeing things?

And yet a few days later there it was, right before his eyes, the answer.  A short piece in the Style Section of the Washington Post reported on an unexplained medical mystery.  A homeless man, crippled since birth and a fixture on Thomas Circle dragging himself and his useless legs along on a sawed-off skateboard, got up and walked.  The article went into 'spontaneous psychological remission', suggesting that the poor man had been emotionally crippled by abusive parents, transferred the trauma to his legs, and ever since was living out his childhood nightmare; but suddenly - as often is the case - saw the absurdity of his self-enforced imprisonment, and walked.

Bob thought otherwise and went to Thomas Circle in search of the homeless man and found him sitting on a park bench feeding the pigeons.  He stank but looked peaceful, and Bob struck up a conversation with him.  The man sidled away from this uninvited guest and spat out some incoherent nonsense; but when he realized that Bob was friendly, began babbling about 'the light...the clouds...him...' interspersed with enough references to rats and bowsprits to throw Bob off the trail, but when the bum said 'Jesus', Bob knew that he had found what he had been looking for, thanked the man, and walked back to K Street. 

From that moment on Bob became a whirling dervish of good.  He was everywhere - in homeless shelters, in the hollers of Appalachia, in the slums of Calcutta, and on the streets of Anacostia, the Capital's worst, most pestilential ghetto.

'Whatchoo doin' here, white boy?' yelled a big black man all blinged and do-dadded up, perched on the hood of his Cadillac smoking a doobie and swigging from a can of Colt 45.  'Get the fuck up outta here', to which Bob only smiled, expecting this crown of thorns, the sword thrusts, and the vinegar. He was there to do good, the Lord's work, and this truth would be known. 

Pharaoh Jones was not convinced, rolled the sucker, took his money and his Prius and left Bob on the curb. 

It was not long after that that Bob went completely around the bend, bonkers, and was committed to St. Elizabeth's.  He had long before drawn down on his already meagre bank account and given all to the poor, so only a public institution would do. 

'What ever happened to Bob Muzelle?', asked a colleague about to suit up for rally against some offense or other; but no one seemed to know until the scuttlebutt about him being straight jacketed in D Ward of St. Liz came 'round.  'Always knew he was cracked', said one.  'A good progressive, but completely wacko."