The Adventures of Stagger Li

Chapter Ten

The Coins

Stagger Li could see that Viola would not reveal the meaning of her coin until he opened his own
heart. He told his story of emerging from the swamp and encountering Zelda. He spoke with
passion and one could see love’s wounding in his heart.

After beginning to comprehend the depths of attachment Stagger Li had to his missing coin from
Zelda, the three sat back in heartsore calm. Like augurs of old, they called for clear open space,
the clarity of the templum, in order to see, to divine what would now arise.

They sat in silence.

Viola sighed and began to recount the story of her coin:

"She came to me long ago, just as she had to the generations before me, my grandmother and
great-grandmothers. Sophia said, There are only two questions, the first of supreme importance,
the other secondary, but worthy of an asking. The first: What are you staking your life on?

That caught my attention, beginning the end of my long phase of addled essence.

She continued, Because whether you have thought of it or not, have or have not brought it to
your awareness, you better believe you have chosen to stake your one precious life on something.

I was alarmed. The question burned itself into my heart. What was my answer? A husband and
babies? A house and car and furnishings? A career? Stuporous zoning out? Emotional
melodrama? Intellectual comprehensions? A moral code? A spiritual path? I did not know.

And the second question is does it bring you joy?

With that, she handed me a coin and disappeared.

The coin gave me my answers."

Viola went into lecture mode.

"The thaler given me by Sophia herself is the crucifixion coin showing Christ crucified on one
side, the Serpent crucified on the other. It took me a while to puzzle it out and even now it speaks
of mystery, a symbol performing its duty as a gateway to the beyond.

Christ crucified is, of course, a familiar image. Perhaps too familiar, since most everyone has its
meaning firmly categorized and stored away. This coin however with its depictions blows away
the familiar and opens the mind to new understandings.
For some, who have Christ firmly in a box and wish to keep him there, a crucified Serpent is
blasphemous, a nuclear detonation of their icon.

Other more thoughtful, less reactive souls open to the understanding of the Serpent on the cross
as a prototype of Christ, heralding his arrival on earth and subsequent crucifixion. The thaler
given me certainly supports this view in its depiction of the scene (in the Book of Numbers) of
the Serpent on the cross lifted up by Moses (at God's request, I might add) to rid the poisoned
bodies of the Wandering Grumbling from the venom of the snakes sent by God because of their
grumbling.

The theology can get complicated here, but it's like an action - reaction causal chain. God sends
them out into the wilderness (part of a previous chain of events) -- they get tired and grumble --
God sends snakes to zap them -- they start dying and yell to Moses -- Moses says God can't you
do something -- God says stick a bronze snake up on a cross and all who look at it shall be saved.
So Moses does, and they do, and they are.

My missing coin, with the crucified Christ on one side, the crucified Serpent on the other, when
spun, shows a constant cross with a rapid alternation of the two upon it. This is not the time for
me to get into it, but it suggests that if the crucified Serpent is a prototype of Christ, then the
crucified Christ is an outgrowth of the crucified Serpent. There is powerful transcendent meaning
here, one which could vertically revitalize a linear horizontal Christianity."

(Viola, having founded and taught the discipline of Spiritual Criminology at Georgia State
University and much on demand for consulting with various law enforcement offices for aid in
solving puzzling cases, did her best to reign in her natural tendency to elaborate and explain that
which others would never consider unless she did. But she was far from finished with
expounding on the significance of her, now missing, coin.)

"Just as the technological cultures in their pre-modern phase decided to declare war on the
dragon, so also did they on the snake. Not so for other peoples, for whom the dragon is a symbol
of creative heavenly powers, and the snake a symbol of regeneration and transformation with its
ability to shed its skin and become as new.

For example, the healer Asclepius wandered around ancient Greece accompanied by his totem, a
snake, who assisted him in his healing powers. Both man and snake were welcome in people's
homes.

Asclepius journeyed with the aid of a walking staff. Staff and snake are still symbols of healing
as can be seen in the caduceus displayed today on ambulances, medical labs, and hospitals.

The crucifix coin with its Christ and its Serpent is a symbol of healing, of making whole and
holy, of healing in the deepest and most cosmic realms.

Once I understood that, I knew my answers to Sophia's two questions. What is it I am staking my
life on and does it bring me joy? I am a healer. I stake my life on healing and, yes, it brings me
joy. My coin has been taken, but my answers still ring true."

Stagger Li yawned. Man! This woman could really rattle on! "So what are you going to do about
it?"

He could see his question really pissed her off. Stagger had never been to a classroom a day of
his life. His story of his Everglades birth and encounter with Zelda had been told largely through
telepathic imagery. Viola Trumpett's story, told in well-enunciated English with its requisite
shaping of breathed-out air by tongue, jaws, cheeks, and lips, had taken his utmost patience.

"I'll tell you what I'm going to do about it, buddy boy!" shot Viola. "Now that we've got our
preliminaries out of the way, I'm going to solve it! Our coins are missing and I'm going to find
out where mine is. Yours will probably be with it or nearby, so if you want to come with me, you
can follow along!"

Wooo-weee! Hot temper with a quick trigger! Stagger Li smiled. "Which way you headed, girly
gal?"

Viola sat back in her chair, her irritation dissolving.