This article will be a sign. Political cartoons in the Seattle P-I, the particular wording of a newscast, posters at the local Safeway -- all convey to him something cell-level intimate and therefore galactic about his own nature and the nature of things working, in otherwise apparent chaos, around him. Galactic because Bill Peterson is Jesus. He calls himself "Jesus of Burien." Every few days, under this moniker, he faxes off missives from his home that describe the nature of the signs he has seen in the intervening days, signs that portent his divinity. He also sends out visions.
If you work in a government or media office, or at a university, most likely you are familiar with these faxes. They arrive headed with a complex numerology of days -- "Year 762 of Jesus Christ's Millennium 7!" -- sometimes bordered by scripted smiley faces, asterisks, and Christian crosses, or accompanied by computer-generated diagrams. Frequently, they are answers to questions people send him over the "Worldnet," via Peterson's e-mail address, which he includes with every letter. People ask him questions about the meaning of manifest signs of the Apocalypse, or where they should go to worship, or how gravity works. Peterson was some kind of structural engineer before he retired, and his answers are full of scientific jargon -- bedded in the pure and very appealing logic of the laws of nature, twisted slightly in the maelstrom of Peterson's own deductive Godhead.
Sometimes people send questions regarding his personal life. It is impossible not to wonder what William Peterson is like, who he is. His personality is more opaque than the ink on his faxes. His visions are quite often beautiful: renderings of childhood travels with his family, or detailed cross-sections of how UFOs work. He seems a meticulous, grand-hearted man. He says his firm belief that he is Christ returned doesn't preclude others' beliefs in their own Godhood. It's just that he is more careful than most in categorizing the facts.
As for myself, I first began to notice the faxes from Jesus of Burien when I worked for the University of Washington, in the Office of Affirmative Action and Prevention of Sexual Harassment. The work I was doing was tedious, and every day some bureaucratic glitch challenged any sense of righteousness I had about the socially virtuous elements of the job. In such a charged office, communications from impassioned, unhinged people are a daily occurrence; but the faxes from William E. Peterson stood out for their frequency and eloquence. The first one I actually sat down and read described a road trip that Peterson took with his father to the statue of Crazy Horse, in South Dakota. Like most adolescents, he was unable to talk to his father as he would have wished, and moped in the truck, trying to lose himself in the starkly beautiful scenery outside. He and his father set up base in a campground near the monument, where Peterson awoke the next morning, looked up, and realized that the profile of Crazy Horse looked exactly like his father's.
The fax transported me into a world where relentless symbology makes the shapes of trees as individual as alphabets. If you are God, the world is perforce pantheistic; everything points, everything reverberates, everything responds. The agony this must add to an adolescent's already heightened self-consciousness is beyond me. The responsibility must have been overwhelming.
Recently, Peterson sent out a series of faxes about "The Jesus Syndrome," the delusion afflicting visitors to the Holy Land with the belief that they are biblical figures. The syndrome is remarkable for striking people who have no previous history of mental illness, and there are records of the phenomenon going back as far as 1033. With his wry, perhaps unintentional humor, Peterson writes, "Apparently I got Jerusalem Syndrome 968 years after it first appeared on the scene. That's because I was claiming to be Christ returned in 1968. Billy Graham says that there are 500 who claim to be Christ returned in California alone. So there are all kinds of people who think they have a right to make the claim. "
Peterson titled the fax, "I'm not alone!" -- underlined, and bolded.
An Audience with JesusJesus of Burien lives, one must assume, in Burien, the strip-mall city south of Seattle. He has a family, but understandably keeps most details about them hidden (although he does refer in his faxes to his wife's disapproval of his projects, and it is endearing to think of Jesus being henpecked). From reading his faxes, Jesus' life seems emblematically middle class, replete with visits to the mall. He belongs to his local Rotary Club, an organization that is extremely important to him. He describes the home he has lived in for the past 39 years as "conventional" -- as opposed to the in-some-ways preferable mobile home where he started life with his young family. (I love Peterson's dissertation on mobile homes: "There are some very good things about them. Like when we first got ours everything was new. You don't have all the decisions that are required before buying a conventional house. And you don't have to spend so much time taking care of the yard etc. Also you have the realization that it would be easy to go to some other town if things aren't working out well where you're at.")
Bill Peterson and I do correspond a bit by phone and over e-mail, but he's secretive and hard to talk with. (He refuses an interview, because The Stranger can't offer him "adequate protection.") It's easy to glean details, however, from the wash of raw data he regularly faxes across the city. Peterson is 69 years old and a grandfather. He follows the news carefully in search of allegory and self-reference. "To get an idea of what I look like," he writes, "I went with my wife and daughter to the Bon Marche at Southcenter on Wednesday. While waiting in the aisle a couple of women came over and looked at me. One of them said, 'Oh we're sorry we thought you were a mannequin.' Of course I just laughed it off." He writes that he hopes the telling of this event will encourage someone to send him enough money to buy a scanner. "That way," he says, "I could scan my picture on one of these letters. Hopefully it will be when I still have some hair left on my head."
You could label William Peterson schizophrenic or crazy in some other way, if so inclined. Many people do. He is, like many religious fanatics, clearly uncomfortable with the practical repercussions of his firmly held beliefs, and so he lives a schizophrenic life, isolated but compelled to proselytize. He seems overwhelmed by intelligence -- his own and the world's -- swimming in associations and diagrams.
What if Peterson turns out not to be Christ returned? "If it turns out to be someone else, then so be it," he writes. "In that case I'm just interested in making as good of a showing as I can. It's similar to running for a political office in that only one person can win.
"Now I tell you," he continues, "I know I'm taking a long shot. [Christians are] not supposed to; because we're against all gambling but if you get some good odds out there in Vegas -- long odds on who's going to be Christ returned and whether it will be me -- you take 'em!"
Taking the OddsA woman sits in group therapy. She listens as a man talks about what God has told him to do this week. The man claims to be Jesus Christ. The woman laughs, and the group therapist asks what's the matter. Nothing, she says -- it's just that all this time she thought she was Jesus, and thank God she's not, because, frankly, who wants that kind of pressure?
Betting on your own divinity is no small leap of faith. We joke all the time about our own lack of omniscience, or how insignificant we are, because otherwise one's fragility is just too hard to take. People who think they're God get away with an outrageous self-confidence, and perhaps this is why the delusion is the most archetypal among psych-ward inmates. What could be crazier than denying your own fallibility? Modesty is some sign of health, some gauge of socialization.
But on the other hand, who would not wish for some evidence that one's own self-obsession is justified? Who wouldn't love a catalogue of moments that points to oneself, a kind of family photo album of Biblical proportions?
So if Jesus of Burien is going to take this article as a sign, I hope he takes it as empathy for his dilemma, and as literary respect for his missives. We can all only express ourselves in the words and persona we've been given, and sincerity in any form is worth looking for. Bill Peterson is nothing if not sincere.
Jesus of Burien on the WTO:There were several of the protesters who would not even talk to the media. That's strange when you realize that their primary message is that they can't get their message out. The way I understand it is that it's not easy to deliver a message as complicated as the one I've been delivering. There are no 'Sound Bit' ways of doing it. That's because the general public is completely unaware of this subject.
Like for example; what if they said, 'Let Pyramid Pete Talk!' Or, 'Pyramid Pete for Christ Returned!' The general public would probably just think that it was a crazy demonstrator who doesn't know what he's talking about. So the protester just prefers to keep quiet about it. It looks to me that the protesters are very serious about what they are doing and are trying to make as good of an impression as possible. In fact I was very touched by seeing the people that surrounded the City Jail Thursday evening. It was as if they were at a funeral and not at a demonstration. They obviously wanted to do the right thing. But they just didn't know what to do. It's easy for me to identify with that feeling.
Jesus of Burien on drinking:When it comes to Matt 11:19, 'The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners.' But I think it may have been a good idea. That's because it takes off the edge and doesn't lead to so much confrontation. Being a little tipsy is good protection from a very hostile type of person. The things I've been doing arouse hostility from many people. So knowing how to deal with it is a very important part of what I've been doing.Jesus of Burien
