Chapter 12
"And She Knew Him..."
Second Expanded 2026 Edition
12-1. The Early Białystok & Lublin Days
To really know a man you have to be around him a great deal. In this respect plural marriage presented me with two handicaps.
Firstly, I was Stan's junior by over 20 years and that meant there was a lot of catching up to do in terms of experience, wisdom, and life in general, a not as impossible a task as I at first had thought because to be in some else's aura or spirit is to very much walk with them in their thoughts and feelings too.
Secondly, time was my enemy for I had to share this lovely man with six other equally deserving wives, and there is no doubt that those of us who were more outward-going stood at an advantage, being less reserved in approaching him. But as I have already mentioned, this difficulty Stan resolved by encouraging the stronger, on their own initiative, to give way (he would never push us away) to the more introvert, and encouraged those who were shy and less imposing to be a little more courageous. Most of the problems lay in the sharing of physical and emotional intimacy, and in a variety of ways.
Stan stood somewhere mid-way between us seven when it came to these things. Occasionally he would like to be alone - particularly on the Sabbath - but for the most part he was always glad to have our company, no matter when. Visiting rights extended in two directions - either he would visit us in our apartments or we would visit him in his room.
There is quite a history to the Królewiec family sleeping arrangements which had essentially gone through three phases because of circumstances. In the first phase, when they lived in a tiny apartment in Białystok, there was only Isabel and Kryztina, so the mathematics was simple: he saw them on alternate nights. The two wives rotated between the couch in the small living room (which converted into a bed) and the single bedroom...which was also Stan's and Isabel's office. Small, cramped apartments were very common in communist East Europe and no one thought twice about the inconvenience. People just buckled down and got used to it but it did make plural marriage extremely difficult practically speaking. They knew they couldn't have children there. But for a Westerner accustomed to more space like myself it would have been intolerable. But they made do without much complaint.
There were also times Kryztina had to be away because of her job when she would either overnight at her parents' place or a friend's, giving more time to Isabel. Equally, when Isabel visited her parents' home in Silesia, this gave more time to Kryztina. So things had equalled out. They learned to be flexible. The equation didn't always balance but then that was life. They did what they could.
Then communism fell and their world began to change. When Kasia joined the family a couple of years later, she initially had to commute between Piława (Baltijsk) in the Russian enclave on Poland's northern border and Białystok which meant Kasia was given the 'early weekend' nights (Fridays and Saturdays) while the other two got two alternate days each with one 'open' day when either could visit unless Stan wanted to be alone after a long week's work. So this was usually on Fridays.
The arrangement did not last long. For not only did this mean a long and complicated 427 km commute for Kasia, as well as extra expensives for Stan which made a major dent in the family economy, but it meant that Kasia was exhausted by the time she got home to Russia late each Sunday which negatively impacted her week that followed. No wonder. The journey had multiple stages: Baltijsk (Pillau) to Kaliningrad (Königsberg) to Gusev (Gumbinnen), then the complicated border crossing viâ newly independent Lithuania to Suwałki and thence to Białystok - five bus changes and three currencies needed for tickets!
It was fortunate that Kasia and Stan found each other after communism fell in both Poland and Russia because the border had been sealed until 1992, the Kaliningrad area she lived in being a restricted Soviet military district. They would never have met otherwise. So for poor Kasia the journey took 6-8 hours each way and sometimes she missed Friday nights altogether! This put Stan under tremendous pressure to get Kasia out of Russia permanently and into Poland, no small matter, as the old bureaucracy survived the collapse of the Soviet Union for some years after 1991. Then there was the tedium of getting visas too. In those days everyone had to have jobs to make ends meet so evenings and nights were the only real time any of them could spend together. No one was particularly happy as it meant having children was unaffordable.
"It was a Herculean task living this way," said Stan to me once. "We were under so much pressure. Add to this equation the fact I was pastoring a small congregation in Białystok, there was opposition both within our congregation and from outsiders, and so on. Something had to give. Then one day the Lord told me to sell the apartment and to do so on a specific calendar day. I had to find somewhere bigger to move, but where? I knew we couldn't all keep on working jobs else we'd never have any children, and Kasia couldn't keep commuting as it was breaking her health...and my bank account. We needed a radical change. Long story short, Yahweh brought us here to Lublin and literally everything changed overnight. We finally had lots of space with all the freedom that brought, privacy, a vegetable garden, and much more. My parents helped me purchase Raj, Kasia got out of the Kaliningrad Oblast by not going back after one weekend visit. She applied for refugee status as an assylum seeker. It took a while but now she has a Polish passport."
So in the early days before I arrived, each wife had had fixed nights on a strictly rotational basis in Białystok whom he would visit in their own rooms. But once in Raj, with so much space available to now breathe in, Stan radically altered his family organisation once they had properly settled, which took a long time. But the family had no home businesses at this time so Stan was forced to find work in Lublin and commuted there every day, leaving the house to the three women. Isabel got pregnant and gave birth to Stanisław, Jr. and was in heaven. The rotational system started breaking down as Stan's health crumbled from exhaustion, never having had time to recover from the Białystok years. An 'open-door policy' more or less replaced the rotational system while Stan did his best to convalesce. He lost his job so Kryztina had to find more work, putting the economic load on her shoulders. Kasia enrolled in the Lublin Polytechnic to study computer science and was gone by day. When she got home she made up for all the separations she had experienced before and spent as much time with Stan as she possibly could. It was apparently rare for her not to be found around him!
"My dream of the ideal plural family getting underway was being frustrated all over again," Stan recounted, "this time by new economic problems because of the cost of running a large home. We had a fabulous house but no stable economy. It was in the early days of Raj that I learned that a plural family needed a reliable economic foundation to function properly but that we couldn't rely on conventional jobs. We had to be self-sufficient as far as we could. It was while Kasia was in College that she started exploring the possibility of starting up a mail order firm.
"Kryztina and Kasia were away in Lublin by day on weekdays which pretty much left me still convalescing at home and Isabel managing our baby all on her own until we could work things out better. This was a close as Isabel ever came to having a 'monogamous family' with me again, apart from at weekends and at night, a dream she hadn't entirely got out of her system yet, which would prove a disaster as her spiritual roots were being sunk down into an illusion. She had initially resisted Kryztina coming into the family because of this hope, and then Kasia, even though in our wedding covenants it was stipulated others would join the family. So in her mind she was split, trying to juggle reality with a vain hope. When Kryztina got pregnant with Tytus, the illusion finally popped, and she was forced to deal with reality and had to finally decide whether she wished to abide by her covenants or not. She chose to run. And that was the beginning of our first estrangement."
I felt so sad for Isabel yet it was clear she was her own worst enemy. She had married Stan as a polygamist and knew that was where he was going. Not only that, but God had spoken to her and told her to marry him while he was still married to Suszana, a direct revelation by His own Voice which few of us were ever privileged to get. She chose not to choose and ended up choosing with her feet. She also stole the family car which would have created even more economic problems had Kryztina not been given an 'old banger' of a car by her father that sounded as though it would fall to pieces at any moment. This is what she and Kasia used to commute with to town and which we used for shopping at weekends. Thanks to a friend of Stan's who was a mechanic, the Polski Fiat 126p was rehabilitated and was still in use when I arrived at Raj! So they managed.
"With Isabel gone, everything changed...again," continued Stan. "This big house felt even more empty than before until Tytus arrived and filled it with the first of many more children-to-come. And though there were enough rooms for each of us with many to spare, we none of us wanted to be apart. So all three of us moved into the biggest bedroom together until Tytus was born who got his own room next to ours to which Kryztina would go to to feed and spend time with him. When Kasia got pregnant and Alexei was born, the two ladies occupied an apartment each upstairs and I picked a room downstairs which I still use to this day. Because both had babies with their unpredictable routines, we opted for the 'open house' system, and Kryztina and Kasia came and went whenever it suited them. It worked pretty well until Kryztina got pregnant with Rachele and was forced to spend more time with the two children, and we restored the rotation system again. We could afford to be flexible because there were so few of us at that time."
I was beginning to understand the complexities involved. Nothing was static, nor could it ever be, until the family reached a certain size that absolutely demanded proper organisation.
Stan resumed the family story.
"Kryztina had to quit her job, obviously, with two children to take care of, and it was then that Kasia's mail order company plan got underway and we were starting to become economically independent. Kasia managed to get a ride into Lublin every morning with a fellow student and took a bus home in the evening. When she graduated from the polytechnic she flung herself enthusastically into the mail order firm and was largely responsible for its success. Then Isabel returned, Sarah-Jane and Anna joined the family, Suszana returned, and things took off. The rest of the story you know, Hélène."
By the time I joined the family, there were six wives and several children, and I was curious to know more about the present sleeping arrangements. The changes that Stan made can only be understood in the context of several other things happening, for the dynamic of a plural marriage is necessarily complex with so many different personalities. During the time imemdiately prior to my arrival, Yahweh had been revealing to the the community more of His ways which Stan was gradually implementing as the Spirit led. I need to explain these before going on.
12-2. Appointment in Wittenberg
A three two weeks before I returned to Raj Stan was summoned by the Founder to an important meeting in Germany.
"I knew something unusual was up," said Stan, "because he had chosen the town of Wittenberg in what had been East Germany."
"Oh," I said, sitting upright suddenly, "I know that place! Isn't that where Martin Luther started the Reformation?"
Stan nodded. "Yes, darling, you're absolutely right - that's where he nailed his 95 Theses to the door of All Saints' or Castle Church on the Schloßplatz which sparked a revolution. He had originally moved there in 1508, into the town's Augustinian monastery, where everyone dressed in large black cloose-hooded cowls. He arrived as a celibate Catholic monk and as a theology professor at the University. The Lutherhaus dining room became one of the most intellectually influential rooms in the whole of Europe! They talked about anything and everything, from politics and religion to sex and social issues..."
"A bit like Raj, then!" I said, and we both laughed.
"The notes from those meetings were eventually compiled and published in 1566 as the highly influential Tischreden or 'Table Talks'. Anyway, Luther started preaching his first sermons in St.Mary's Parish Church which might not seem out of the ordinary except he preached in German, and not in Latin, so that ordinary men and women could understand."
"You mean, the man-on-the-street listened to sermons in a language he didn't understsand before then??" I asked incredulously.
"Oh yes, that was the 16th century Catholic Church for you - the people couldn't read the Bible (because they weren't allowed to) and couldn't understand the sermons either because they were always in the scholars' language, Latin. And so th ordinary men and women were held in such a state of ignorance they were easily manipulated and controlled. Luther changed all of that...
"But back to my meeting with the Founder because there's something else you need to know about Wittenberg, for this is where Luther, the former Augustinian monk, got married to Katharina von Bora, a Saxon aristocrat who had become a nun! The Founder called me to Wittenberg - firstly because his, and my, first wife, were both aristocrats like Katharina, and secondly, because like Luther, he had an important revelation to share with me - about firstborn marriage in our case, and in Philip Melanchthon, the message of the Reformation - which he had shared with no one else outside his family. So this was an enormous privilege! This will ever be an important moment in our own New Covenant history.
"He told me mosr particulary to bring along two wives whom I considered to be the most trustworthy and spiritually-inclined - he said this was most important. So I dutifully motored to Wittenberg with Kasia and Sarah-Jane. The Founder had brought two of his wives along with him too, of roughly the same age as Kasia and Sarah-Jane, whom he said represented Luther's wife Katharina and another woman of importance to the Reformation, Argula von Grumbach, who was a prominant German noblewoman who played an major rôle by writing and publishing defences of Lutheran theology, to complete the symbolism of the event. The Founder had rented a small property next to the now famous Lutherhaus for a week for this special occasion.
I was wide-eyed listening to this fascinating story which had never been mentioned to me by anyone in the Królewiec family until now.
"What's the Lutherhouse?" I asked, trying to take in so much new information and in a language I did not really know that well.
"Where Martin and his wife Katharina lived with their children for over 35 years," replied Stan, "that had originally been a part of the Augustinian monastery. Today it's a museum.
"So for a whole week, interrupted only by meals and an occasional promenade in the compact old town with its immaculately restored 16th- and 17th-century pastel buildings, the Founder and his two wives instructed us for as much as 10 to 12 hours a day on a new revelation he had been given over the previous year that only his own wives knew about."
"Wow," I gasped, barely able to contain my excitement. Now I was beginning to understand why I was able to best relate to Sarah-Jane and Kasia and why they seemed to possess that overflowing joy and enthusiasm about at just the very thought of plural marriage which none of the others seemed to possess!
"The 815 km (506 miles) drive from Lublin took us nearly 8 hours, Hélène, so as you can imagine we were quite exhausted when we arrived that evening. The Founder and his two wives, one of them Norwegian like Björn's Sanja and one Swedish, were waiting for us and told us to just relax and get our strength back, as the instruction, which would demand our fullest attention, wouldn't begin until the next day. We chatted, sang some hymns, prayed and basically got to know each other better, retiring early because he wanted us up at the crack of dawn for a prayer session followed by Communion to prepare us for what was to come.
After breakfast we assembled in the little living room. One of his wives handed us each a thick, identical copy of a thick gold-embossed, leather-bound book that had it been made of gold would have been worth its weigh considering what it held. It was divided into 12 books. For the next five days we read through these together, the Founder reading the narrative and playing the rôle of the male characters in the story line, and his two wives reading the parts of the female characters, together with quite a bit of narrative as many of the books had been written by women."
Stan paused at this point to call Sarah-Jane and Kasia to join us in the living room, as what Stan was about to share with me also very much concerned them.
"I can't go into this with you now in any great depth, Hélène, as it would take far too long and you must first go through much spiritual preparation to be able to receive it. What I will say is that this book contained one of the deepest and most profound revelations I had ever heard in my whole life. It read a lot like the Bible and covered the way the ancients had lived plural marriage from the earliest times before the flood and how it would be lived in the Millennium-to-come. It's most important book was the 12th and last one, which described life in the Holy City what the eternities would look like. It was so deep it was hard at times for me to grasp as was unlike anything I had ever heard before. After the readings a discussion followed in which we were permitted to ask the Founder and his two wives any questions that lay on our hearts. And as you can imagine there were lots. After supper we retired to our room so that Kasia, Sarah-Jane and I could discuss and pray what we had learned from that day and get an early night's sleep before the next morning's readings."
I could barely contain my hunger to know what Stan, Kasia and Sarah-Jane had learned, and imagined myself there with them working my way through this mysterious book.
"Did the book have a title, my lord?" I asked Stan.
"Yes, though it was written in Hebrew. Embossed in gold, it read, SHIRI AVRAHEM VEHA'AVOT or THE SONGS OF ABRAHAM AND THE PATRIARCHS", though they'll be better known to you as the 'Books of Abraham'.
"Oh," I replied, hearing the word 'songs', "like the Song of Solomon"?
He nodded and Kasia picked up the thread.
"We got through, on average, one or two books a day," said Kasia speaking very reverentially in a hushed tone, picking up the thread from Stan. "Some books were short, others much longer and needed a whole day to digest. The 12th book took the last two days to get through as it was the deepest and concerned the eternities. We also spent much of one day looking at its namesake that you just mentioned, Hélène. My life completely changed after that week. I saw plural marriage in a way I had never appreciated before!"
Sarah-Jane was by now nodding vigorously. Her enthusaiasm was so great that she looked as though she would burst. She could barely contain herself from interrupting Kasia to share her own testimony when she too spoke:
"It was soooo...sublime...soooo deep, soooo dense, soooo spiritual, soooo full of life, and hope, and passion, and was sooo Christ-centered," she said, almost spluttering. "I don't know how many times Kas and I were in tears because it was soooo absolutely lovely....soooo incredibly beautiful...I never knew marriage could be so wonderful! And I wanted what I heard so badly! From that week on that's all I wanted, apart from the Saviour Himself, of course. My mind just expanded like never before. And I sooo much want to share it all with you, hun", she said looking at me with longing in her eyes, as she so much wanted me to be an intimate part of the vision she and Kasia had received from the Holy Spirit."
"You brought your copies of the book back with you to Raj?" I asked wide-eyed and infected with Sarah-Jane's enthusiasm, hoping I might get a peek there and then.
"No, Hélène," said Stan seriously, "they weren't given to us to keep but to connect with and memorise in my heart so that I would be enabled to teach it in my own words...and Kasia and Sarah-Jane in their's. The Founder took them back with him to Kadesh-biyqah after he left, and they've never left there again since. But we can re-read them whenever we visit, as you will be able to one day, Hélène."
My heart settled after Stan's "no" and I was again content just to hear what he, Kasia and Sarah-Jane had to say.
"Only one book was completely released for public consumption, the second volume (as the first is extracted from the Bible itself and already public), plus extracts of all but the last and most important one. I have been given permission to put them up on my website. The Founder's purpose in bringing the complete works with him was so that we could connect deeply to the Holy Spirit and so have their truths written deeply in our hearts supernaturally. These have to be internalised, hence the full week of instruction on nothing else. He said they were but springboards to an endless stream of revelation that would follow and enable us to one day set up a community of like-minded souls."
I guessed those books must be locked up securely in a safe somewhere.
"He also said that we would adapt it to meet the peculiar needs of our family because every plural family in unique with its own special needs. Its not a manual of instructions to be followed letter by letter, but more like a string of concepts or patterns which, he said, could be found throughout the Bible, and by this means know they were true. All revelation is simply an expansion of Megilat haMegilot.
"Megawhattyy?" I asked confused.
Sarah-Jane and Kasia giggled, Stan smiled.
"It's what we sometimes call the Bible," said Kasia. "It means 'Scroll of Scrolls' because the Bible is the Master Book."
"Everything we teach has to agree with it or be literal expansion of it," added Sarah-Jane, It has to conform to sacred tavnith...that means 'pattern' in case you'd forgotten," she reminded me, "otherwise it must be rejected outright."
Stan continued again.
"The Founder assured us that the Spirit would bring back to our remembrance all that we would ever need, when we needed it, just as Christ had promised to His apostles after He departed from them concerning the Gospel (John 14:26). He also said that the apostle John had been taught these very same truths, that it had been touched upon in original the ending of the Gospel of Mark before that either got lost or removed."
I interrupted. "Part of Mark is missing, my lord?"
"Yes, there are two different endings that we know of, the 'shorter' ending consisting of one verse, and the 'longer' ending containing 11 verses which appears in most English translations, neither of which were written by Mark, who was Peter's biographer. Tradition has it that there was an entirely different ending which either got lost or was deliberately removed by John because it contained material unsuitable for a Greek and Roman audience that was still too steeped in paganism. It's a long story, my love, you can read about it in the Founder's Commentary on the Gospel of Mark, which we don't have time to go into right now."
"Yes, my lord," I replied obediently, and went and checked it up later.
"Kasia and Sarah-Jane are, for the present, the main teacher-wives of these sacred principles - and are therefore my chief assistants, sweetheart, until other sister-wives can be called and prepared - which, unbeknown to you, whose number you have already started being added to as you learn simply by observing us and listening to what we have been teaching you. It is our responsibility to share these principles of echad plural marriage whenever Heavenly Father wishes to communicate them to the family and to future polygamy-practicing members of the community we shall one day set up, which you're going to be an integral part of, Hélène. All the others have been, and are being, taught, as and when they are prepared. Most of the main principles are known by all seven of you wives now, to varying degrees of depth. In the meantime you're to go to Sarah-Jane with your questions or to me if she can't answer them."
I was so thrilled and wanted to know more but it was plain the way they were speaking that I would have to be patient. It wouldn't be for many years before all the others would be able to fully understand all Kasia and Sarah-Jane had been witnesses to, or until that great day when Christ would appear to us when Stan's last two-but-one wives joined the family and gave us an anointing in order to bring everyone into complete alignment. Étoile, Stan's last wife-to-be some years hence, and of aristocratic origins like Suszana as also one more wife-to-come too, would play a prominent part in this, and have much precious truth concerning the inner healing that would occur revealed personally to her. Like Luther's intimate female circle of influencers of the Reformation, we would do something similar. Little known to most Protestants, and certainly to me too before Stan shared this snippet of buried history, Luther had informed a Saxon nobleman that plural marriage was in harmony with God's Word.
"The Founder prophesied that five of my wives yet-to-come would immediately "know" everything revealed in these books once they had been told them. The first, he said, was Sarah-Jane, and told her, that two more would be arriving very soon, one after the other, the first (you, Hélène) would be coming from very far away, and the third from nearby. This third one would be your 'trin', a second 'twin' for you and Sarah-Jane...a 'triple twin' or 'trin' if you like. The fourth, he said, would be from the land of the second (as we now know to be the United States) and be your 'quadruplet' or 'quad'. Oh, and he said two other things specifically about her that you two will find interesting - first, he said, she would have a name that was spoken in the same way in nearly every language around the world. Secondly, he said, the moment the second twin (you, Hélène) meet her, you would know beyond any shadow of a doubt who she was and love her unreservedly because she would speak directly to your mind andheart without any words being spoken verbally. Finally, he prophesied that a fifth would come from the land of your western-most ancestors, Hélène, who would be much older than you and come at the very end, and be your and Sarah-Jane's 'quintuplet' or 'quin' sister-wife."
(He was speaking of Étoile, Stan's French wife who was as yet still unknown to any of us, who would become Kasia's understdy or teacher-wife for a while.)
I looked at Sarah-Jane in amazement. She beamed back at me.
"I wish you could have been there, honey, because I was as amazed as you are now," said Sarah-Jane.
Stan looked at Kasia and asked her to tell me what the Founder had said to her:
"Yes, he said that one who was already at home was already my 'twin' but that I didn't know it yet (I discovered soon after it was Anna) and that a third would be coming quite soon from nearby in the north, and that she would be my 'trin'. Oh, and he said, that there would be more wives but that he could not speak more and that the rest of us wister-wives would know what we needed to know when the 'big event' happened. Oh, and one more thing" - Kasia laughed - "he said that your fifth would be mesmerised by my red hair!!"
Kasia lifted and waved her head about as though spotlighting her hair and grinned that Kasia grin.
"So this is when you learned about twins, my lord," I asked Stan.
"Yes," said Stan, "and much more besides, including the seven different kinds of women that Yahweh has created, how they mature and spiritually develop in different ways and at different rates, what their principle callings are in the Holy City plural marriages, and how to smoothly integrate all this constant change and growth into a plural family dynamic without causing chaos. These are very, very deep, things, my love."
"Can I tell Hélène what the Founder said about my and Anna's trin?" asked Kasia.
Stan nodded affirmatively.
"He said she would join the family right at the end of Stan's life, that Yahweh would change all of us one last time through her...and we, her...and that she would only be with us a very short time before it was time for her and Stan to be taken home, so that we could all start preparing."
I thought my heart would break hearing that because I was suddenly jolted by the awful realisation that Stan, being older than many of us, would one day leave us husbandless until the resurrection. In all the euphoria of my new life as a plural wife I had forgotten my mortality. It was something I wasn't remotely ready for.
Stan, seeing my distress, took both my hands and looked deeply into my eyes.
"Hélène, darling?" he asked.'
"Yes, my lord?"
"I want you to know that nothing that happens in this family is haphazzard. Now's not the time to be worrying about death. That's some time far off still. More importantly, you have arrived at a key moment because one day, quite soon, you will be a teacher like Kasia and Sarah-Jane with much responsibility to shoulder. So you must promise me that you will obey Sarah-Jane in all she asks you to do, knowing that she too is carrying a sacred responsibility to teach you all you need to know. And if she is away or detailed elsewhere, that you will obey Kasia?
I nodded vigorously. "Yes, my lord, I promise faithfully."
Stan smiled appreciatively and gave me a long kiss to express his gratitude.
"And I want you to respect Kasia in a similar way, for though she isn't your twin and and won't teach you in quite the same way as Sarah-Jane, she's there as a resource at all times when Sarah-Jane isn't available to be questioned. Alright?
"Yes, my lord," I said for the third time.
Kasia came over and kissed me to express her gratitude too, for we all knew how Stan set great store by proper authority and loyalty to it, and none of us ever take that authority for granted. Sarah-Jane too. We always seal any acknowledgement with a heart-felt sacred kiss so that love always has the last word in everything. I remembered how the Saviour had asked Peter three times if he loved Him (John 21:15-17). If Stan says or asks anything three times, I discovered, he is always being deadly serious. Sarah-Jane and Kasia smiled back at me...how my love for them just gushed over at that moment, and how safe I felt knowing they were the respositories of a sacred revelation that was already playing out in my life, and that they loved me with unrestrained affection and would always back me up, and I, them. This moment went into my "drawer of treasured memories" to be called upon whenever I needed to emotionally recallibrate during or following a difficult time, for we surely forget our legacy-pearls so quickly unless we are continually reminded of the good times when we received them.
12-3. Nights & Heavenly Bodies
The theme we had started with - the history of how we wives spent our nights with Stan - resumed. Everything had changed in the last few weeks because of what the Founder had shared in Wittenberg with Stan and my two precious sister-wives. Stan and Kasia arose and left hand-in-hand to attend to some pressing matter in the nursery, leaving me alone with my teacher-wife, Sarah-Jane, to complete my instruction.
Sarah-Jane was bubbling over with excitement as it became clear to me that she wanted my companionship to unload some of the knowledge she had acquired from the Founder. My respect for this Canadian woman had grown exponentially in the previous hour once I learned of her high and holy calling. I had supposed, quite erroneously, that she was the least mature of the family, because of her occasional bouts of frivolity and seeming childishness. I soon came to learn that, in spite of her young age, she was actually wise beyond her years, like John the Belovèd Disciple, very patient and deeply intuitive in spite of her playful eccentricity.
I had noticed that this was quite a common trait in Stan's family, what with all the gentle teasing that went on. The moments of boyishness in my husband and the girldishness of most of his wives belied hidden depths that Stan wanted to remain hidden to everyone but us, and the more especially to the world. The whole family possessed this unique quality of coming across as simultaneously wise and apparently childish at the same time, leading outsiders to draw all sorts of wrong conclusions. That's why Stan was always quoting John 7:24 - "Don't judge according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment", because in the flesh we do.
He used to like to illustrate the desirability of this character trait after showing the children the 1980 Star Wars movie called, The Empire Strikes Back, in which the young hero, Luke, visits a very elderly and wise Jeddi Master called Yoda living in a dome-shaped hut on the swamp of a jungle planet called Dragobah in very humble circumstances. His childish and slightly mischievous behaviour purposefully concealed the deep wisdom that he possessed and could only reveal when his pupil Luke was ready enough to receive it, and though Stan taught that deep wisdom can be usefully concealed in many other ways too (he once went for wisdom to a janitor, he told me), childlike innocence was one of the best and most natural, provided it was genuine and not contrived.
All wise men and women of God hide the deeper truths they carry in such ways until such times as they are instructed to reveal them. We are not, Stan used to say, to serve meat to infants still only able to digest milk and so disrupt and possibly harm their natural spiritual growth (Hebrews 5:12-14; 1 Corinthians 13:11). The Mount of Transfiguration experience, when Jesus was glorified in the presence of Moses and Elijah, given only to Peter, James and John (the three presiding Patriarchs from among the twelve apostles) was one such time in the New Testament. My becoming privy to the family's "Wittenberg Endowment" (as Stan sometimes called it) so soon after the event was, he said, something like that, because it constituted an important family moment of spiritual metamorphosis, a time marking fundamental change or transformation. The other wives would fully 'catch-up' when the Saviour appeared to all of us.
By means of this apparent character contradiction, deep, simple truths could be presented alongside complicated truths that would address both the needs of the mental intellectuals among us - the 'craniacs' as he liked to call them - and those more endowed with emotional heart-intelligence, which he insisted were quite separate but equally important facets of our humanity, and were distinctly male and female traits, respectively. He carried, as it were, one of these approaches in his metaphorical left hand, and one in his right, so that every type of woman might be spiritually fed according to her disposition. He recognised that we were all different character and developmental mixtures - some were more feminine than others, some had more life experiences, some were more educated, some better connected to Yahweh's Heart, and all of that was OK, so long as we didn't go too far in the exclusively male direction and remembered who were created to be as women, and not men. He recognised the same spectrum in the males of the household.
If you're going to have a plural marriage with different personalities, which can hardly be avoided, this is a skill essential for a patriarch to possess. He must be able to relate to all the women he is married to and not have favourite 'types'. A man unable to do this is almost certainly not called into plural marriage because his ministrations will be unequal and therefore, in a way, unfair. He must be able to intimately relate to all his wives, and do so naturally and effortlessly if the trust between us was to be maintained. He said we should celebrate each other and our differences for who we were and never try to force any sister-wife into a particular character mould because it made us feel more 'comfortable'. That's one reason we had twins and trins, because their character dispositions were complimentary. It would naver have worked, for example, with me and Suszana because we were just too different. Age differences between twins or trins didn't necessarily matter and were often beneficial. This was true of Stan and us his wives too.
Sarah-Jane shuffled up to me as soon as Stan and Kasia started to leave the room, took my hand, kissed me, and resumed Stan's instruction for him as we cuddled up into each other's arms. I was so thrilled in anticipation of her teaching-to-come.
"If we are going to live eternal plural echad marriage the way that Christ revealed to the Founder and which he revealed to us, then we must learn new family habits so that the higher dynamic can find place in us and settle naturally. So instead of the strict 'rotation' and unstructured 'open-door' policies, the two are to be combined. Stan's going to announce it to the others in our family gathering this evening.
"This is the way the Founder and his wives put it to us. Heavenly Father's measurement of time consists of two cycles within each other. One is lunar, and other solar - one which follows 'moon time' and the other which follows 'sun time'. In other words, the higher, divine system is luni-solar. It's the way the divine calendar works too. If you look at the different religions around the world, they're either lunar (like the Moslems) or solar (like the Gregorian Calendar we follow in the West) which has now more-or-less gone global. The Moslems and other traditions follow the phases of the moon and the rest of the world follows the rotation of the earth around its axis and its rotation around the sun."
"That's complicated," I said, a little fearful Sarah-Jane was going to give me a Stanian craniac lecture.
"Yes, and no," replied Saharh-Jane, mimicking one of our husband's favourite responses to a difficult and involved question. "When we count time the solar way, we do so by means of an endlessly repeating cycle of seven days, right?"
I nodded.
"That's how we count weeks," continued Sarah-Jane. It's the earth-centric or earth-centered way. One day is a whole number - one rotation of the earth around its axis, a fixed 24-hour period of time. The orbit of the moon is a bit more complicated as is the orbit around the sun. But the time the moon orbits the earth isn't a whole-number or integer like that of an earth-rotation. The moon takes 27.3 days. That's called a 'sidereal month'. But there's another kind of month..."
I groaned. Sarah-Jane smiled and kissed me again - delicately - to reassure me it wasn't that complicated, but I wasn't sure.
"Bear with me, sweetheart. Yes, there's a 'synodic month' too which is the time it takes to go from one new moon to the next. This cycle is longer - 29.5 days (almost 30 days) - because the earth also moves around the sun during this time, requiring the moon to catch up an extra 2 days to the same visual phase."
"But, but..." I stammered out, but Sarah-Jane shushed me the way Stan often does by softly laying her index-finger on my lips - in fact she was so very much like Stan when she was acting under his instruction that it sometimes bowled me over, a phenomenon Stan called 'acting in male-principle', for she was instructing me under his authority and not her own, something very different from a bossy woman standing alone in her own presumptuous authority.
"Just listen to me, honey, everything will become clear. I'll make it simpler in a minute."
I settled back into her arms and listened on.
"It's more complicated than this because the moon always faces the earth...," she tried to say.
I reacted with my body as if in protest but she held me in a tight grip as Stan might have done until I yielded obediently to her.
"The sun orbits the earth in 365.25 days or 365 days and 6 hours. Those extra hours don't just 'disappear' because we have a 365 day-long calendar. After four years, that adds up to an extra day."
A lightbulb turned on in my brain and I swear I heard the 'click' of the switch. "Ahhhh, that's why we have a leap-year!" Now I didn't feel so stupid.
"Right. Again, it's more complicated than that as we also have tropical years, sidereal years and anomalistic years which are slightly different in length by a matter of minutes. But we don't have to go into that."
She must have seen the pain in my face and knew when to stop, just as Stan would. This is what I meant when I said Sarah-Jane was wise. She kissed me again to calm me, I relaxed, and she concluded.
"So you see that the astronomical cycles are as complicated as human beings are."
"I nodded vigorously and we giggled."
"Now let me give you a woman's answer," she said, gently throwing her hair back.
I heaved a sigh of relief.
"There are four weeks in a month in the biblical month, right?" asked Sarah-Jane who continued when I nodded back. "Stan has always taught us that these four weeks - and the four Sabbaths in particular - correspond to the four wives of Jacob. What he hasn't told you, as far as I know, is that just as Jacob had two types of wife - full wives and servant-wives or concubines - so there are two types of week in a month. One set of two is male (full-wife) and one set is female (concubine). There's a reason Yahweh ordained Jacob to be married this way because, the Founder said, this was to teach a spiritual principle. Also be assured that later in life, after Rachel died, Jacob made his two concubines full wives. But I'll let Stan explain that to you himself, other than to say that in plural marriage wives enter as pupils, as you are now, and eventually become teachers, as I am now. It's a maturation process. Just as a concubine has fewer rights, so too do new wives. But that's not permanent. Once your education is over and Stan releases me as your teacher-wife, we become fully equal in every way."
I smiled gratefully and nodded again, glad she had answered a nagging question about concubines which I had never before really understood. Father always has a purpose for everything if only we'll trust Him!
"The Founder said we are to organise our nightly visits in a similar fashion. For two
'every other' weeks each month we are to employ a system of rotation in our apartments. So Stan will visit you alone in your apartment on 'your' days. This, he said, corresponds to Leah and Rachel. On the other two weeks, you will still have 'your' day but it will be in Stan's room and anyone can come who needs to or wants to. Those days correspond to Bilhah and Zilpah. None of this will make much sense until you experience it but I promise you it will because we've been doing this for several weeks now."
"How do the others feel, I asked? And what about twins living in the same apartment?"
Sarah-Jane paused and I could see from the look in her eyes that she either didn't know much more or wasn't allowed to tell just yet.
"Kasia loves it. So does Anna. So do I. Suszana and Isabel are struggling and find it awkward - they're taking things slowly. Stan has asked us to be sensitive to the needs of those struggling and not to impose ourselves on their nights in Stan's room. He's told them he will give them the time they reasonably need to work things out, including all of us talking things out with each other. Nothing is forced here, hun. As for twins, that's up to us to decide. We'll talk more about this when you're fully married. Right now the one-to-one relationship between you and Stan is important because that's the formative stage of the one-flesh relationship. You can't have a proper grounding, stability and security without it. It's where all relationships start."
"You mean, like the three one-to-one spring festivals?" I added, pleased that I was learning.
"Yes, Hélène, exactly right. We're still transitioning out of the old ways so this will take a bit of time. The Spirit will tell you what's right or wrong for you, depending where you are in your personal, spiritual growth, because we're all uniquely different. Talk to Stan about this, don't bottle it up, ever, OK?"
I nodded again, always grateful for Sarah-Janes gentle, assuring Holy Spirit-like way of teaching.
"Again, I want to underline, honey, that nothing is forced in this household - ever - when it comes to inter-personal relationships unless a wife becomes rebellious and disruptive, unbalancing the whole family and undermining Stan's leadership and family order. But I am not now talking about nights but oridinary daytime activity."
I remembered what had happened to Sarah-Jane when she had rebelled and Stan had confronted her at the front door, threatening to send her back to Canada. She was a living example of a hard lesson learned - reluctantly, as some lessons are, but necessarily for her - and our - good.
12-4. The Shower
So the rigid fixed times routine was being abandoned by the time I arrived. Whatever system was in operation, Stan always went out of his way to make an exception for a new wife while she settled in. Because there were now children in the household, and to make whatever system was in operation all work practically, Stan had wired a complex intercom system around the house with four master controls in the kitchen, living room, nursery and his own room. These could be set either as an ordinary communication system or as a baby alarm. Thus a wife could leave small sleeping children in her apartment when visiting in Stan's room. With the baby alarm system on, she would be free to be in Stan's room without having to worry about them being unattended. Alternatively, if she shared an apartment with another sister-wife, commonly that sister-wife would have the 'baby watch'. They say that "necessity is the mother of invention" and the mothers had little problem working out a variety of solutions between themselves. So the new challenge would be met in the usual genial, stalwart Królewiec way.
Five of us liked to shower with Stan and he in his turn enjoyed our company. On not a few occasions more than one of us would turn up. I remember coming into his shower after we were fully married (wives didn't have to knock on the bathroom door) to find Kasia with him. My instinct was to turn on my heels in acute embarrassment but Stan called me back.
"Didn't you ever shower with your girl classmates at school?" Stan asked, looking surprised, as I pretended not to be embarassed still. "Don't worry, there's no sin in being innocent and natural in plural marriage."
Kasia smiled and reassured me that I was not intruding and so it was that all three of us showered together. Such encounters frequently occurred though on a couple of occasions it got out of hand when three wives turned up and he had to turn some of us away. In actual fact these showering incidents had the desirable effect of not only lowering inhibitions and so helped some of us overcome shyness but also demystified that Edenic state and made us feel more at ease around each other. After a few visits we thought nothing of it and came to enjoy the sense of freedom and oneness that it gave us - we might just as well have been in the kitchen cooking food or relaxing together in the living room. It was just another way of togetherness that is so essential for unity.
But Suszana and Anna would have nothing to do with the "showering thing" as they called it which the rest of us felt was their loss in so many ways because it was usually in the showers that Stan would share some of his night experiences with the Lord. Kasia was the chattiest in this respect and whenever she and Stan were together there was always a long discussion in progress!
The only thing I didn't like about showering with Stan was when he rinsed shampoo out of his hair as it would rinse straight out onto me! That comes with being taller than all his wives! And another disadvantage to us shorties was the way we would get splashed in the face all the time by water bouncing off his body! Sarah-Jane, being almost Stan's height, seemed to be the only one immune to all these practical irritations and often teased us, pretending not to see one of us come in the shower and saying: "Oh, sorry, honey, I didn't see you down there!" We pretended to be unamused and had a good laugh.
As with all novelties, at first everybody wanted to come so as not to feel 'left out', which Stan did not appreciate. We tried to sort that one out by agreeing privately amongst ourselves who should go on what day but that was impractical as those with children never knew when their little ones might demand their attention. So we stopped being so possessive and just accepted that events could not be controlled and learned to be satisfied with whatever we could enjoy and whenever.
The important thing was the movement...the spur-of-the-moment dynamic, and to accept that part of the adventure of life in mortality was the unexpected, with the underlying knowledge for reassurance that we all loved each other. The important thing was always to welcome others when they came, the way of grace. If ever anyone was in doubt, it was Stan's default wish that we talk and kiss. Stan was always up like clockwork at 6.30 a.m. so usually the small ones were still asleep during shower-time - the ones who lost out were usually those who didn't like to get up early, namely, Kryztina (in the early days) and Kasia. Besides. We couldn't hear the baby intercom in the shower. We came to look forward to the informality of showering-time so much that when we moved to a bigger house Stan had a special bathroom made with several showerheads in three rows next to each other...just like at school. There were always private shower rooms for those who wished to shower alone, like Suszana and Isabel.
"What about intimacy in the showers?" I asked Sarah-Jane.
She smiled back at me in that polite, reserved Canadian way.
"That's for the evenings, hun. If anyone wants something more adventurous on their night, that's up to them. In the communal morning shower we conserve energy for the day ahead." She said no more other than to slip in a practical reminder: "Remember, we also have to conserve hot water too. Money doesn't grow on trees."
"What about snoring," I asked worried, suddenly changing the subject, as lots of questions started popping into my head from a conveniently positioned mental basket of unresolved issues. Sarah-Jane read my mind as usual.
"Yeah, that's a tough one because Stan's a light-sleeper as are one one or two of us sister-wives. Sleeping on your back practically guarantees a lot of noise, so unles you're a mousey sleeper like Kasia, avoid that. Mind you, she just breathes deeply!" Sarah-Jane giggled. "One or two of us sleep on our fronts." Sarah-Jane giggled again but wouldn't tell why as some things were best left to be discovered in private. "All part of the fun," she said, with a twinkle in her eye. "There are all sorts of practical ways we use to deal with snoring like sleeping on the side, elevating the head with pillows, and keeping the air humid. We find ways to work that out. Don't worry about it." Then, in mock surprise, she added: "Oh, and if you're wondering what the clothes peg is on Stan's bedside table, it's to put on heavy snorers' noses..."
I reacted in horror.
"I'm kidding you, darling!" she said louder, and stuck her tongue out at me.
We rolled around laughing on the sofa for a solid minute, tears streaming. That was Sarah-Jane being jocular in her inimitable, down-to-earth Saskatchewan way. I understood why Stan loved her humour so much because they were a lot like each other in that regard. Me, I love a good giggle but I'm not as bold as Sarah-Jane, not as plucky as Anna, nor as cheeky like Kasia!
Unless very ill or back late from a trip the night before, everyone was expected to be up by 7.00 a.m. in the Królewiec household. Breakfast was not at first at a fixed time with everyone free to take that when they wanted to, but as the family grew Stan wanted everyone together as far as possible, allowing for the time mothers needed to get their children ready each morning. So breakfast started at 7.30 and ended at 8.30 a.m. with the day's activities starting at a comfortable 9 a.m. So long as we we done by 8.30 a.m, to give the kitchen shift time to wash up, we could come and go between those times when we wanted to. With no commuting to do, since we all worked at home, this made our daily program very pleasant and stress-free. Since we wanted to be with Stan, most of us (but not Kasia who was a heavy sleeper and nearly always overslept) turned up at 7.30 a.m.
Shopping in Lublin was by rotation twice a week, sister-wives going out in pairs leaving all but their tinest children in the nursery with other supervising sister-wives. The convenience and freedom to put children into others' care was one of the practical blessings of plural marriage that was appreciated most of all, for it meant that the mothers could not only get regular breaks but also be free to pursue a career without having to leave the upbringing of their children to strangers with all the attendant risks, including the use of babysitters who most likely would have values distinctly different from our own, which was the fate of children left to the state nursery system. It also meant that for the older children they were exposed to child care - boys and girls alike - developing not only a sense of parental responsibility but training them for marriage and parenthood in a way that children in the state system could never enjoy.
12-5. Wife About the House
Kryztina and Kasia had pioneered a system of child care in the early days, inspired in part by a Czech mother of nine (a non-Christian, as it turns out) and by Stan's own philosophy mingled with their own ideas. As a result of this, children were encouraged to be involved in adult activities from an early age such as cleaning, cooking, gardening and a variety of other tasks. The result was much to everyone's liking, not because of the shared work load, but because it developped within them a keen sense of responsibility and community-awareness. The communists would have envied us had they survived in Poland for the one quality their authoritarian system lacked was motivation!
Lunch (or 'luncheon' as the more formal and aristocratically-minded Étoile would later come to call it) was usually at 12 p.m. followed by 15 minutes of Bible study adapted to the small children's level, and then a mandatory period of half an hour's rest on our beds from 12.45 p.m. to 1.15 p.m. during which time there was to be absolute silence in the house. Stan called it our "Golden Half-Hour". Everyone either read books, meditated, or slept. The phones were turned off and nothing was allowed to disturb the peace save babies requiring attention or emergencies. Latterly he set up a collective nursery system for those who wanted to cooperate by taking shifts. During this time Stan would either retire to his room to be alone or rotate visits with his wives, lying quietly with one...or two of us...if they were twins. He usually slept but sometimes he cuddled with us if that was our preference, provided it was a quiet, relaxed time. I often fell asleep in his arms. Twins commonly spent the time together too so Sarah-Jane and I typically lay side-by-side reading, sleeping or cuddling if Stan wasn't with just the one of us.
Supper (or 'dinner' as the Poles insisted on calling it until Stan threatened to use the German Abendeßen instead if they didn't stop quibbling) was at 6 p.m. At 7 p.m. the whole family would gather in the living room for a short Bible reading and evening prayers for the children followed by games and other family activities until 8 p.m. After this the smallest children would go to bed and Stan would either conference online with ministers in different time zones when needed or spend time with the teenagers. In the winter and during bad weather, we would watch movies with them, play snooker, table tennis, chess, Scrabble and other indoor activities. Many of us loved needlework.
Come summer we were outside most of the time playing ringo polskie (throwing a rubber ring over a net to land in the opposing zone), serso (a ring-throwing and catching game where players use a small stick to catch a flying hoop), kubb (where teams toss wooden blocks to knock over wooden king and soldier targets), badminton, basketball (Kryztina's forte), football (Kasia's passion), French boules (a favourite of Stan's and mine), croquet or some other game. Latterly when we moved house and left Poland to establish a commnity with other families, a tennis court and small indoor swinmming pool were also added, the former releasing the mikveh bath at Raj for what it was originally exclusively intended.
After the children had been sent to bed, the adults gathered for an hour's intense Bible study and prayer and at 10 p.m. we usually went to bed. "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise," Stan would often remind us. As they, and we, got older, and the teens preferred playing with each other, the Bible sessions took place earlier too and became shorter 15 minute devotionals, and we too retired to bed earlier in search of extra sleep.
As some of the wives like Kryztina and Kasia were keen outdoor types, cycling tours, swimming trips to local lakes like Lake Piaseczno (about 30 kilometers northeast of Lubin) or the much closer Zemborzycki Reservoir, canoeing and biology field trips to the Tatra mountains were also popular. Finally, in winter, skiing (Kasia's favourite sport) and skating on a frozen lake or river were much enjoyed as an early afternoon activity. And as the family grew, more stimulating leisure activities were added. The less sporty types like Isabel either made puzzles or had various crafting hobbies. Stan and some of the boys were talented carpenters, model-makers and keen philatelists. Isabel was a keen coin collector. Music was another passion of ours which I will speak more of another time. In our second community home Stan even built a small observatory for the budding astronomers and would often be found with his eye glued to its reflecting telescope. I could go on. One of his daughters was a keen rock-collector and went on to become a geologist.
Getting to know Stan as a person was, of course, one of my principal objectives. As a wife deeply in love, I wished for nothing but complete union with him in everything, as did the others. It proved not to be as easy to do as I had at first thought, not because he was closed, but because he was both a deep and a complex human being. For this reason, outsiders often misunderstood (and misrepresented) him.
He was not, as I have said, an "ordinary" Pole, or even a true "Pole", for that matter, given his mixed blood and his unique way of being. He could be both intense to a point that one felt overwhelmed by the shere power of his psyche, as well as relaxed by the ease at which he approached people and made them feel his equal. There was no air of superiority about him in the least and he was as friendly with a stranger as he was with one of his teenage children or one of his wives.
But this did not mean he was an open book. His communion with God was perhaps the most mystifying of all because it was uniquely personal, and whilst it was always his desire that we should all share in that, we knew that unless we did our part as diligent disciples this could never just be a matter of desire or will. Spiritual anointings, especially when Christ appeared to all of us one day many years hence, catapulted us to new heights of unity and spiritual intimacy. I'll talk more of that later too.
Stan would often be far away in his communion with Yahweh, relating to Him in a way that was for me, at least, sometimes frightening because they both then seemed so distant. Only as our love deepened and as we yielded more and more to Christ, did we find the deepest communion of all which was the supreme goal of all we did. But it took time and effort.
It's a bit like swimming in the sea. Personally, I always like to be able to feel the sand beneath my feet so when, as a youth, my swimming companions would head out for deep water, I would be afraid and remained where I was. There was, as it were, a spiritual pool of water that Stan loved to bathe in, which had no bottom at all because it was a part of the infinite. There one was at the same time both completely vunerable as well as completely safe. To get there meant letting go of every fear and carnal crutch, a place he likened to the Shekinah, or the manifest presence of Yahweh.
He did not like casual, vain or repetitive prayer and preferred silent meditation to superfluous wordy exercises. He loathed "word salad" waffle talk, as he called it. To pray, for him, was to be able to involve your whole soul, mind, heart, and body. To this end he had been inspired to create some spiritual dances, which we all joined in on special occasions, in the room on the top floor above the apartments which was called simply "the temple". It occupied the entire upper floor and was practically bare except for a carpet and some paintings of beautiful scenes on the white walls. It was in this room that we not only danced but met with other members of the Church to take marriage vows and enter into Priesthood covenants. For us, it was sacred space, like the Temple of old, though more as an adjunct to the temple which in the New Covenant of Christ is our bodies. Many of us would come here to meditate and pray in the evening or very early in the morning. We had to be very quiet as the apartments were directly beneath.
When Stan did pray, it was intense, deep, and very personal, and you often felt that someone else was in the room, an invisible Guest with whom he would converse much as he conversed with us. Sometimes he would pause to listen and often he would hear the voice of the Ruach haQodesh or Holy Spirit speaking. He hated prayer for prayer's sake, or pretending to communicate with God when one was only talking to oneself. At such times he preferred to be silent. He could pray at the most unexpected times, whenever the Lord deeply moved him, and that included during love-making. It's hard to explain that but he made me realise that our Heavenly Father wanted to be involved in everything we did ... if we would let Him. Quite out of the blue he would be found praising God or just talking to Him such that at first I thought he was talking to one of us. This he did quite naturally when at home but was more circumspect in public - he would pray silently too.
At times he would arise from prayer as though on fire like Moses. Though his face didn't shine like that prophet's did, there was an undoubted Presence that was electrifying. Once during such an experience I reached out to touch his hand and literally got a small electric shock. No kidding! And I was not the only one. There was a time, Isabel told me, that the presence of the Spirit in him was so strong that lightbulbs would start popping. That, I learned, was why at one time we had no lightbulbs in our chapel, only candles. One friend of his in the States was glad to be rid of him because of all the dud lightbulbs around his house! But this, mercifully, belonged the past. His superstitious friends had accused him of being demonised by occult powers and so he had approached the Lord to have this phenomenon put to rest. Still, I didn't like the electric shocks, though they were mercifully rare!
Stan explained to us that latent within man is great psychic power which has been sealed since the Fall. This power is what Satan and his demons lust after and try to release and feed on through occult exercises like yoga, perverse sex, or through more violent satanic rituals such as torture and murder. He taught us that this 'Kundalini' power had been unknowingly tapped by many in the charismatic movement, which they had mistaken for the the Holy Spirit, and deceived millions in the process:
"The Holy Spirit does not operate on this level, at least not yet. The gifts of God's Spirit - the Ruach Elohim - are externally bequeathed - they come from heaven to us, and not from within. You may recall that the evangelist Timothy obtained his gift prophetically through the laying-on of hands - it was not something he "naturally" possessed. The presence of certain kinds of gift may, from time to time, release this psychic energy, but it is not the power of the Holy Spirit itself. All the supernatural displays you see amongst the gurus, witches, mediums, shamans, and the like, are all the result of releasing this energy by magic, which thing Yahweh has forbidden, because demons use it to delude their naïve followers into believing that they and their master Satan are the ones who are bequeathing this energy. The truth is, Satan has no "natural" energy of his own - it's all stolen. He's like the petrol thieves in Warsaw in the early days after communism fell who went around siphoning gasolene out of people's cars and then sold it back to the gullible public at cut-down prices. In the occult, Satan steals your psychic energy by encouraging you to channel, do yoga exercises, and the like. He gives you a perverted form back in return and with it some special experiences of well-being, harmony, maybe some healing, levitation, clairvoyance, or some other ability, and then guzzles the rest himself, and laughs all the way as he takes you more and more into spiritual bondage.
"As Christians, psychic power may occasionally be released through us viâ the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) when it is needed for healing, walking on water (seldom, and only to meet emergencies), etc., but usually these supernatural miracles are the result entirely of the Ruach. We are certainly not supposed to go looking for this psychic energy. It will be used in a spectacular way later on during the Tribulation, perhaps, and certainly during the Millennium. But more of that another time..."
Stan could effortlessly discourse on so many different subjects which for us were new and exciting discoveries. He always had our rapt attention when talking about such things. There were few non-Christians who dared to debate him, because he would trap them in their own illogical thinking and expose their deceptive techniques.
We, his wives, soon picked these things up too, which is probably why we had so few friends in the world. For the most part, people wanted to spin illusion, play games of deception, manipulate, and create fantasy worlds to justify their own sinning, which we would have nothing to do with. Whenever we would meet someone who appeared charming and delightful, Kryztina would remind us of her favourite scripture when it came to finding those who would be true disciples of the Lord: "What you have heard from me through many witnesses, this commit to reliable men who will be able to teach others as well" (2 Tim.2:2).
Finding reliable people - that was the difficulty. We had all known those who had outwardly appeared to be wonderful Christians but who had deserted when the going got tough. We learned how to spot them by getting them to teach the truths we knew. If they couldn't communicate them, we knew they didn't understand them.
12-6. Wedding Night & Honeymoon
Notwithstanding the LaHayes' book which I had devoured, I could not have prepared for Stan when it came time for our full-marriage. He had the great advantage, as I supposed, of being a matured lover with a lot of experience behind him whereas I had none. He was gentle, skilled, and wonderful. He believed his wives should always be well-bedded and sexually satisfied.
The first night was uncomfortable, as he had forewarned me, but it was also in a way the most satisfying for once I had been penetrated I knew that my body belonged to him forever, and his to me. He was gentle and patient with my clumsiness and I was content in the beginning simply to let him teach me. Sarah-Jane had already prepped me in so many things for which I was eternally grateful. His kiss was exactly as she had taught me! With the fire of passion awakened and fully expressed, I felt as though I had at last become a complete woman. And the more I was together with him, the more I wanted him.
For a week I was in utter and complete bliss, we retired early and I learned what it was to eat of one of Eden's most delicious fruits for hours on end. His eyes were always upon mine, gazing deep into my soul as we made love, his embrace tight and protecting. This calm and often reserved man became transformed in his nuptial garden as he revealed to me an ocean of deep, steady fire within himself. I began to know him as I had not known him before.
Modesty and decorum prevent me from going into any details as these are private. In our family we are forbidden to discuss our sex lives with anyone but our own sister-wives where, as I have said, we are completely open and unemcumbered by unbiblical religious and cultural taboos, whether so-called 'conservative' or 'liberal'. When it comes to sex education for the children as they grow older (for we strongly oppose the modernist sexualisation of children), Stan teaches the boys and we sister-wives teach the girls. Crude language and smutty humour are utterly alien and repugnant to us - we sister-wives are expected to swiftly cut it off the moment it appears and, when necessary if the desired outcome has not materialised, call in Stan for back-up because everyone knows (the children especially) our husband gives no quarter to it. Very clear lines are therefore drawn in the Królewiec family and in the local congregations - standards of behaviour, speech and dress that show good taste, respect for others and self-control are non-negociable.
Though some think us 'old-fashioned', even amongst worldly-compromised Christians sad-to-say, fashion is something we have no time for. Rather, we follow the strict rules laid down by our Heavenly Father in the Scriptures. I have spoken about how God wants us to clothe ourselves in righteousness such as the godly women of old did so I won't repeat that now.
Stan is always reinforcing these principles - especially when new wives enter the family and later, when we moved abroad, into our community: humility, such that all have an unassuming or humble view of themselves, without vanity or boasting (save of Christ); decency in appearance outside the exclusively marital areas like the bedroom, bathroom and mikveh pool, by dressing in a way that avoids drawing excessive attention or revealing too much of the body; and reserve, by keeping personal matters private and showing discretion in actions and feelings - using appropriate tone, avoiding loud outbursts and offensive actions that disrupt harmony.
Of course, all of these things happen naturally when we are indwelt by the authentic Holy Spirit, and are only sabotaged by recourse to the flesh or - worse - by sinning that lets in dark forces. The rules exist in our family and fellowship as a standard of holiness by which we can measure ourselves to see if we really are fully in Christ or not. And if we are found lacking, then we must repent, forsake our wrong doings, ask forgiveness of God and of any we may have hurt or offended, and then invite Christ to cleanse us by the Spirit and restore us within, to where we should be as His disciples.
12-7. More Delightful Than Wine
One of the most fascinating series of lessons I ever received at Raj - because I had never heard anything like it before - was Stan's three-level teaching about the cycle of five love songs that was read out aloud and explained every Passover known in Hebrew as Shir haShirim or the Song of Songs. I knew vaguely from my Baptist upbringing that this seemingly out-of-place biblical book (which the Mormons are so terrified of that they removed it altogether from their Joseph Smith KJV Bible) is simultaneously an allegory of the love of Heavenly Father for Israel and the love of Jesus the Bridegroom for His Bride, the Messianic Community or Church. I also knew that it was a love poem supposedly written by Solomon for one of his wives, a Shulamite shepherdess. The LaHayes had hinted in their book, which I had read before coming to Raj, that it had sexual allusions. What I didn't know was that it was Israel's own romance and sex manual too but deliberately coated with poetic language to make it incomprehensible to children as well as hide much that carnal adults would not understand either. Nor did I know, out of embarrassment and prudery (not to mention fear) that, first, the Catholic, and then the Protestant, churches would go and change the meaning of a number of words when translating it into Latin and then English and other European languages, so that its sexual explicitness would remain hidden.
During their week-long visit to Wittenberg, the Founder and two of his wives had spent the better part of a whole day explaining the deeper levels of the Song of Songs to Stan, Sarah-Jane, and Kasia and how the "Songs of Abraham and the Patriarchs" revealed its application to plural marriage.
"It's called the 'Song of Songs' because that sounds like 'Holy of Holies'," said Stan, "...it was never called the 'Song of Solomon' by the ancient Hebrews". And it's likened to the most sacred space in the Tabernacle or Temple because this book is the greatest and most excellent of all songs. Like the Mormons, the Talmudic Jews were seriously considering excluding the Song of Songs from the Canon that was being decided upon at the Council of Jamnia (around AD 90) until Rabbi Akiva famously defended its inclusion by declaring that while all the writings of the Old Testament were sacred, 'the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies' - the most sacred of all the Tanakh. He declared that it was of incomparable value, saying that 'the whole world is not as worthy as the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel,' because this text representd the pinnacle of holiness. He also warned that the book should never be read casually, warning also that it should never be sung as a secular folk song."
"And you believe he was right, my lord," I asked.
"Absolutely!"
I looked expectantly at him wanting to know why. Stan smiled that Stanian smile.
"You've not read my unfinished book called the Brides of Solomon I take it, then?"
I hadn't.
"Well I'll leave you to read it and then you can come back to me with questions. But I'll share one verse with you to prime your interest. That should be enough."
I was already interested and smiled, and he smiled back so I knew that he already knew what the subject matter was going to be about. I giggled.
"Do you have your Bible with you, darling?".
"Yes, my lord," I said, impatient to hear his gem.
"I see you have a modern version. Good. Would you read verse 2 of the first chapter for us?"
I did.
"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth; for your love is more delightful than wine" (Song of Songs 1:2, WEB).
"There are two errors in this translation - 'kiss me' and 'your love'. Some translations get the first part right but not many; none get the second right because of the implications. Yet the translators know very well what the original Hebrew text says. Do you want me to translate it literally for you?" asked Stan.
He knew I did but I nodded all the same.
"Try to picture this being read out in a Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Conservative Protestant Church, and then try to imagine the congregation's reaction - do that with today's Christians in mind as well as believers from the 1800's, 1700's and before all the way back to Roman times. Are you ready, Hélène?"
"Yes, sir," I responded, saluting him like a soldier, not for one minute knowing what was coming:
"O that you would inflame me with the kisses of your mouth! For your breasts/nipples are better than wine!"
Sarah-Jane and Kasia giggled uncontrollably when they saw the shock and disbelief on my faith.
"The Hebrew word dideyca, which our translators mistranslate as 'love', can be translated as either 'breasts' or 'nipples' though strictly speaking both are implied simultaneously. And the intense Hebrew word 'yishoqani', which our translators mistranslate as the more passive 'kiss', actually means 'to be kindled' or 'set on fire'."
They told me afterwards that aside from my cheeks turning a brilliant beetroot red, my mouth hung open in shock like a giant chasm and just locked. And I was in shock - total shock - not just because of the explicitly erotic imagery but because Scripture had been changed by those I had implicitly trusted and because we had been lied to by our pastors. My initial shock first turned to anger, and then to ecstatic delight, as though I had played the lowest note on a piano keyboard - an A0 - then hopped to Middle-C, and then leaped once more all the way to C8, the highest note on a standard 88-key piano, all in one fantastic span of a gigantic hand! My whole vision of who the Hebrews were, and what Jesus and the apostles had been a part of, completely shifted. Then I remembered the Proverb:
"May your spring be blessed. Rejoice in the wife of your youth. A loving doe and a graceful deer - let her breasts satisfy you always. Be captivated always with her love" (Proverbs 5:18-19, WEB).
Always. ALWAYS! The thought caused my "two fawns, twins of a gazelle" (Song of Songs 4:5; 7:3) to instantly stiffen, perk, tingle, and then furiously burn. It was as though they had both been catapulted into orbit as Stan read the words aloud, awakening a still fresh and vibrant memory from the night before.
Stan later explained to me that the twin gazelle symbolism was specifically designed by the writer to underscore perpetual youth, symmetry, grace and tender beauty, that the poetic imagery was not trying to describe literal shape, but to invoke feelings and aesthetic qualities which we associate with does. Female gazelles possess an energy dynamic built entirely around extreme energy conservation punctuated by explosive, high-intensity bursts all of which perfectly equate with sexual climax. Stan just sat there, looking deeply into my eyes and smiling, for he knew not only that I was matching the words with the previous evening's climaxes but that I had just had an epiphany: my whole worldview had suddenly shifted by a few degrees and was now pointing in a new direction. My reaction was instananeous, right from the core of my being and wrapped in still fresh marriage-night ecstacy:
"So it isn't dirty, then! It's actually holy and God-blessed!!"
Stan smiled. "There are other passages in the Old Testament that speak of similar things. You'll read them differently from now on...now that you know how the Hebrews actually thought, felt and made love"
Then I rememembed my wedding night and how Stan had aroused me so deeply just caressing my breasts. I had literally leaped like a gazelle! I was so hungry for more truth now, and for Stan, and for his wives, that I became dizzy from the possibilities. I would never view sex within covenant marriage negatively again - ever. And all this from just one verse. Suddenly Hebrews 4:12 altered in shape and depth too:
"For the word of God is LIVING and ACTIVE, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and is able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart" (WEB).
My eyes were wider open than they had ever been before. Stan's timing of this teaching was, as always, right on target. He must have known I would suddenly 'see' all this at this unique window in time as a newly bedded wife. God's Word isn't dead or an old book in any part! It's dynamic, alive, fiery, and true; and hearing it read right for the right time in just one verse altered my perspective on sex completely. Like a sword, it cuts deep into human nature to reveal the truth, it judges the heart to expose our real motives, thoughts and hidden feelings. Not only did Yahweh use human marriage as an allegory of the relationship between Him and Israel, or bewteen Jesus and the Church, but He expresses the depth of His divine love for us by using fiery sexual language to underline just how passionately He loves us and wants us in spiritual union with Himself, just as much as a godly husband and his wives passionately want to make love. The comparison isn't obviously identical, this is an allegory, meaning His love for us is like marital love in terms of depth and passion without being sexual, but in energy it is the same. Exactly the same! WOW!
My bosom was so on fire, the 'gazelles' so frenzied with all this love I was feeling bubbling up, that I didn't know how I could contain it any longer. It felt as though my twin 'does' desperately needed to be released - set free - to give expression to what I was feeling in my heart and seeing in my mind. It literally felt as though my whole chest would catch fire!
"My lord," I cried, "I feel as if I am about to explode and I don't know what to do. Help me!"
Stan understood. He nodded to Sarah-Jane and Kasia who also understood and, smiling, they led me to his room, knowing what was coming. Stan followed, closed the door, and for half an hour released me over and over again, taking me to the seventh heaven..or maybe it was the twelfth or the hundredth, I don't know which, but it was so high up I thought I would pass out. Wave after wave of soft flames, darting back and forth, between points of intense light, covered me from head to toe and then, suddenly, in a burst of unrestrainable energy, the flames shot upwards as though penetrating solid rock, like a volcano erupting through the earth's crust and hurling lava into the stratosphere, to produce - not molten destruction - but a masterly fireworks display of immense beauty, a kaleidoscope of colour and brilliance, roaring, thundering, yet utterly gentle as I effortlessly burst open and blended into Stan's own soul.
I don't know how loudly I screamed when I hit the summit but no one stirred in the house, because everyone knew what was happening (if indeed they had even heard me in this isolated corner of the house) - it was so unspeakably lovely and I knew I wasn't alone, for not only did Stan understand it but all of his wives understood it! The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness neither understands it nor was able to overcome it (John 1:5). If I had broken through into the mystery of intimacy in a way I had never dreamed possible simply by Stan riding my gazelles, what else might be possible?! I was no longer the 'old' me either for, as I said, this happened after our first night...and unexpectedly during the day! Here I was being "burned but not consumed" (Exodus 3:2) all over again, with Stan like a flame of fire - and in a new and unspeakably glorious way. I had crossed over yet another bridge into echadness and this still only Day #2 of my honeymoon. HalleluYah!
That night Stan took me through his "burning bush" again and from then on my breasts always wanted to satisfy him, because his satisfaction was also my ecstacy, and my ecstasy was his ecstacy. The 'Big Twin O' was born.
12-8. The Hidden Song
The next day, on the third day of our honeymoon, Stan asked me if I would like Sarah-Jane to decode more of the Song of Songs before evening. You can well imagine, after the experience of the day before, what my reaction was.
"Oh, yes please, my lord!" I couldn't believe how intensely I was begging for another helping of this out-of-this-world dessert. I clutched onto his arm and gazed wide-eyed into his with such youthful anticipation that I felt I was a teen all over again. If, I thought to myself, one Bible verse could so easily blow the lid off my Christian, conservative Missourian view of sex (which was now starting to look like celibacy in comparison), and if just one part of my body could catapult me into the heavens as Stan had shown me the afternoon before, and again that evening, what on earth else could possibly be awaiting me? What else was there to learn? I braced myself as I saw Stan nod to Sarah-Jane as we repaired to his room. Gone now forever was the homely Missourian girl hoping only for what would otherwise have been a plain and boring sexual marriage snack, and in had suddenly marched the gourmet love of heaven. And none of this had been so much as hinted to me in courtship because the aim was never to bait a prospective wife with sex but always to point in the Spirit. Stan and his wives knew that the fruit was not only a reward for holiness in holy echad marriage but it's greatest surprise too. And it was the surprise that made it all the more delicious.
"Would you be a sweetheart and get my Bible next door, Hélène darling?" Stan asked.
I raced into the living room like my stockings had been set on fire. Kasia and Anna looked up at the newly-arrived road-runner who had suddenly materialised in front of them with a trail of emotional dust behind her, smiling the by-now all too familiar Królewiec smile of approval, and giggled approvingly. And, you khow, it was their constant approval and encouragement that made everything so much sweeter, so more pleasurable, because they were my accomplices rather than my rivals. How could that be? Why wasn't there jealousy? Because they knew that as Stan's orchard grew, they would have a new variety of fruit to enjoy themselves.
"Sweet-spot time!" whispered Anna emphatically and deliberately into Kasia's ear behind a secretively placed hand. Kasia frowned at her and told her to hush. Anna blushed and realised she might have spoiled her husband's next serving to me. My thoughts were in any case elsewhere and I didn't hear Anna anyway. I could only smell the luring aroma from the Paradise Pantry.
I leaned down to the coffee table and picked up Stan's burgundy-coloured, leather-bound Bible which I had never held in my hands or seen up close before. The Holy Bible from Ancient Eastern Manuscripts in Aramaic and English was embossed in gold on the front cover. I paused to look at it for one second out of curiosity as I had never heard of that version before and then disappeared back into the library with it tucked under my arm to rejoin Stan and Sarah-Jane. We passed through Stan's office and then on into his room, to the chef's bistro. The three of us sat on his couch and we sister-wives leaned into his bosom, so that we were never more than a kiss away as was by now becoming our little custom, and held hands across him.
"My Bible, darling?" he asked me as I had forgotten I was carrying it. I dug it out and passed it to him. He gave an opening prayer and then reverentially opened the well worn volume. The ultra-light pages, which were tougher than they looked, were annotated in Stan's tiny handwriting in English, German, Polish and some languages I didn't recognise but which I supposed were Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. There was also some French but in someone else's handwriting. I gasped at the beauty and complexity of it all and for a moment forgot why we had come to his room. Holding his previous volume in both hands, he leaned them on ours, for that four hands propped up this antique curiosity. Stan extracted his right hand from the bundle of fingers and set to work. The sound of the soft rustle of the pages turning and the way they seemed to float in the air completely mesmerised me. They sounded like the indistinct whispering of people, or a faint, continuous noise like wind in trees, or flowing water, or rustling leaves...all of them, really, combined, with the 's' and 'sh' sounds predominating. My senses were exceptionally heightened by now so I missed nothing.
"What a lovely Bible, my lord!" I exclaimed, turning my head to look up to him. He smiled gently back. "How long have you had it, Stan?"
"A very, very long time," he whispered, evidently pleased by my interest. "It's old, 1920's, I found it in an even older suq or bazaar called Al-Hamidiyeh in Damascus, and quite by providence. This was back in the 70's when a group of young fellow trainee Polish engineers visited Syria. This was before I became a believer. I fell in love with its beauty. You'd have to drink in the atmosphere in that place to fully understand that first moment I set my eyes on it, Hélène...I just love Damascus, it's one of the oldest cities in the world, it connects me to the ancient world and to the world of the Bible.
"You bought a Bible when you were still an atheist?" I asked rather astonished.
"As a work of art, yes. Little did I know how totally useful it would later come to be. An Aramaic Bible. You don't get to see those very often unless you're in that part of the world as I was as a student. It was second hand when I got it and had belonged to a Frenchman previously. You'll see his notes here. Look," he said turning suddenly back to the inside cover and pointing to a faded photograph, "here he is: Antoine Poidebard."
Stan paused engrossed in thought.
"He was a very famous Jesuit archaeologist and aviator - he was the one who pioneered arial archaeology in the Syrian desert..."
I had no idea what that was. I imagined him in an old biplane peering over the fuselage with an old box camera.
Stan turned back to where he had been searching and finally alighted on the Song of Songs.
"Ah, here we are," he said triumphantly, and let the book lie on his knees in front of our clasped hands. I felt so much love in my heart in the cosiness of this little bit of heaven that I found myself spontaneously kissing Sarah-Jane.
"Would you two climb out of your hot pot for a moment and please pay attention?" said Stan, amused and annoyed at the same time.
"Sorry, master," apologised Sarah-Jane. We looked at each other, giggled, and then turned upwards to look at Stan with a hint of naughtiness in our eyes.
Stan looked down at his two minxes, grimmaced in mock frustration, shook his head, and resumed. We squeazed hands and behaved.
"There isn't time to make a careful study right now and really all I want to show you today, Hélène - since this is our honeymoon and especially after your experience yesterday - is what this book actually says, how the Israelites thought about sexual matters, and even more importantly, who our Heavenly Father is. The version you were raised on in Protestantism is semi-sterile. I want you to understand why Israel's scholars considered this to be such a holy book because it's not unlike the discovery you made yesterday. Do you remember what you said when I read out the true translation of the second verse of chapter one?"
"Yes, my lord, I do! I said that pure sex was holy and of God!!"
"You didn't use the word 'pure' yesterday but I know that's what you meant. All sex within covenant-love, be it in a monogamous or a polygamous relationship - and only within covenant-love (because all sex outside of marriage is impure, ungodly and contaminated) - is pure. Moreover, it was created by Yahweh not only for procreation but as an act of worship to God who created sex for pleasure too, but with an express goal or purpose - the kind of echadness or unity that is only possible and whose highest expression is to be found in plural marriage rightly lived. Perfect marriage is therefore the pinnacle of God's creation and serves as a model for the unity of the Body of Christ as a whole, of which we are of course a part, of which plural marriage is the highest and deepest expression.
"I said marriage was an act of worship, and it is. We cannot (and must not) worship God with sex because that is what the pagans did. In the old English, Hélène, the wedding vows made by the groom used to contain the phrase "with my body thee I worship". Now don't misunderstand this. This wasn't idolatry because while it's true we must worship God alone in one sense, the English word 'worship' that you use actually comes from an old Anglo-Saxon word meaning to show honour, respect, and worth in a non-religious sense. I believe in the UK they still - or used to - address court magistrates as 'Your Worship'. At least that's whay Molly told me."
Memories of the Molly business flashed into my mind and I felt ashamed at my petty jealousy. But that was all history now.
"So in old Anglo-Saxon when the groom promised to worship his wife with his body, he was vowing to treat her as a person of high value and worth, by honouring her with his physical self and holding nothing back. This included his possessions and love-making, and to do so strictly within the bounds of holy matrimony. The wife, in her turn, promised to obey her husband, all of which was 100 per cent biblical truth. It's not like that today, sadly."
"Can you explain for Hélène how all that works in plural marriage, master, and what the biblical model is?" asked Sarah-Jane.
"It's exactly the same, only multiplied, as I have already taught you," continued Stan, addressing Hélène again. "The heavenly model is our Heavenly Father and the seven Ruachot or Spirits (Revelation 1:4; 3:1; 4:5; 5:6; Isaiah 11:2) which is imaged in the earthly model which is in Isaiah chapter four, and verse one, and in King David's seven legitimate wives (excluding Bathsheba who was acquired through gross sin) (2 Samuel 3:2-5; 1 Chronicles 3:1-3). This is a very, very deep subject as you know, which we are highly privileged to be living, and carries with it a heavy responsibility that we do this right. Sex is always a very emotive subject so we tread carefully, respectfully, and openly. So, shall we get this little study underway, as I have a few things to attend to before I return later, my loves."
We giggled, squeezed Stan and each other's hands and listened.
"I'm going to let Sarah-Jane explain the details to you afterwards. As you have by now learned, Hélène, I ensure you sister-wives get your grounding in each other so that you can build strong bonds. This marriage isn't just about me but about all of us. We don't know why Yahweh set up the Godhead the way He did, only that He did, and we are supposed to image it to the degree we have been called and in proportion to our preparedness based on the choices we have already made. We're also constantly learning, as the recent Wittenberg exerience has shown you. Much of what Sarah-Jane is teaching you now, Hélène, she's only known for a few weeks so you're on the frontline of new discoveries. You've both got a lot fo exploring to do, so make the best of this time. I think you are incredibly blessed to have arrived at this exact time. It means that Father is entrusting you to pass this on to the others who are to come, including - and especially - your trin. You also, in addition to me, have each other where you two can especially grow close and set an example to the others, and they to you. Just stay on track, don't deviate to the left or the right, and you'll be fine."
"Oh Stan...Sarah-Jane, I am so happy, and so grateful...I want you both to know that...everything you have taught me and shown me has just made my joy grow and grow."
We all three kisssed - because we couldn't help ourselves - and finally started! Stan dove in.
"First thing you need to know, my darlings, is what the translators of your English Bibles put in their chapter and segment headings tells you something about what they understand. And it's very little. Be careful of headings. It's interpretation. Mostly they're genuinely helpful in quickly locating segments of text, sometimes they're outright misleading..."
"Like the Scofield Reference Bible," interrupted Sarah-Jane.
"Yes. I deliberately take them with a pinch of salt, let alone his misleading footnotes. In fact I have a couple of Bibles where there are no chapters or verses and no headings at all. You'd be surprised how differently they read, because one has a grid superimposed upon it (the ones we buy in the shop) and the other is the way it was originally written and was intended to be read."
"You mean the Bible books were supposed to be read like regular books?""
"Yes, replied Stan, "that's exactly right." He resumed: "And another thing you've got to watch out, particularly with books of poetry like this one, is the chapter and verse divisions (which, as I said, are artificial) and the way the text is laid because the Song of Solomon is not only poetry but a play. It's written a bit like an actor's script. I have a Bible version where it's exactly laid out like that - like a Hollywood script - with the three part-titles, 'Bride', 'Companions', and 'Bridegroom' heading each part."
"Wow," I said, "who knew?"
"Again, let me remind you, this book is a very elaborate allegory with many layers, one of which is a sex manual for married Israelites. And because it has many layers, different churches and traditions tend to focus on different layers. The 'gound level' is raw love-making and that's what I want to talk about now...briefly...as I don't want to get you too excited before tonight, Hélène, a reason I'm letting Sarah-Jane take over in a minute."
I couldn't stop giggling. Nor could Sarah-Jane. Determined to get us serious again,
12-9. The Fortuitous Intrusion
After the week's honeymoon was over and Stan was reunited with his other six wives I began to crave him. My passion ignited, I just wanted to be in his arms always, and in the most intimate ways possible. The others were gracious to me, knowing what it was I was going through, so he saw me rather more often than the others for the first few weeks, as was by then the generally accepted standard practice though it was not so in the earliest days, I am told, when plural marriage was still very new to the first wives and not yet fully explored. Allowances have to be made as new families learn to adjust from the monogamy-only mindset of the surrounding culture to the firstborn one of the patriarchs. And though Stan's instruction was always detailed and extensive, to the extent God's ways had been revealed to him at any one particular time, experience is only something that can come with time and inevitably after making lots of mistakes. That's one reason why coming into a larger, more mature family such as I had was such a blessing. Grace had had the time to abound more abundantly!
Sometimes the lessons learned in the intimacies of plural marriage happen by fortuitous accident rather than by any premediated instruction. I once came into my husband's room, a couple of days after the week's honeymoon was over, whilst Kasia was with him. I had clean forgotten there was nearly always someone with him. I felt acutely embarrassed and like an intruder.
"Don't go," pled Kasia motioning me over, "come and be with us." It was always the wife's privilege whose night it was to make that decision, not Stan's, though she always sought his permission. That was the way the open-door part of the new policy worked, as I was to unintentially find out.
"Oh I couldn't, really," I cried feeling even more foolish. "You two carry on. I'm soooo sorry for barging in - it was selfish of me!" Tears were pouring down my face.
But Kasia, who was by nature inclusive, would have none of that. "Come and lie next to us and let us talk about good things," Stan nodded his permission to Kasia.
I slipped out of my robe and sheepishly climbed into bed with them, very embarrassed, ashamed that I had interrupetd their love-making, but neither seemed to mind. Their mastery of the flesh amazed me, how they could simply stop, and find time for someone lonely as I was then. Most couples would have been angry. We all three lay together, Stan and Kasia on the other side of the bed, cuddling and sometimes kissing as we often did when we were together around the house, whilst he shared some thoughts. I looked across at Kasia who smiled. She stroked my hair and took one of my hands, to indicate that she loved me and was glad to have me there. At fist I was astonished - perplexed - and looked away, but Kasia tugged my hand and told me to face them. How could I? But I forced myself. And as Stan talked, I began to relax, and forgot what it was I had come for. Stan and Kasia, still coupled, with kasia lying on top if him, got into a spiritual discussion about oneness and I listened fascinated for they were always talking about the Lord. Always, just like David and Joshua said we should be (Psalm 119:97, Joshua 1:8). I felt ashamed again that all I was thinking about were my passions. Stan looked at me while leaning on his left arm and facing me together with Kasia, and said:
"Hélène, my darling, our desire is to find the innocence of Eden once again, where harmony prevailed everywhere. The torch of passion has been lit in you and shown you its delights. But Eden is full of all kinds of trees with every sort of delightsome fruit to eat. Here we move from tree to tree with the ease of small children moving from one toy to another. Here one can partake of any tree and relax knowing that we do all in the purity of Christ."
I don't know how many hours I laid next to them for we all eventually dozed off until Kasia was awakened by Alexei's voice on the baby alarm, and she was gone, leaving Stan to me. I buried my head into his bosom, imagining that I was lying in a field of dew-covered grass early on a summer's morning. Stan breathed steadily, and half awake detected my presence, wrapped his left arm around me more tightly, and drifted off again. I lay snug and warm until I too was taken into sleep's deep mystery and was no longer there either.
I was awakened early, at 5.20 a.m, by Kasia's child alarm call a second time, and took advantage of my sleeping husband to look all over him for an hour more before he also awakened. Kasia had returned moments before I woke up and had left quietly without me knowing. She had been there all along and was responding to Alexei for the second time who was kicking up a fuss about something or other. I wanted to memorise every curve of my husband's body with my eyes and hands. His little groans of pleasure as I touched him sensually made me feel special and though I know I should have let him sleep, I could not in the end stop from kissing him and waking him up completely.
"Hello, my summer butterfly," he said melodiously with a song in his voice, "you're looking radiant this morning!" I smiled that wide innocent smile of one hopelessly in love and stared helplessly into his deep brown eyes, lost in my own dreamy happiness. He drew me close and filled me with his fire as we made love. Kasia popped into the room without knocking to collect her things, and told me not to stop on her account! It didn't bother her in the least that we were making love, let alone that it was 'her night'. She even paused to soak up the sight of our love-making for a couple of minutes, remarked that we looked beautiful together, and when I looked back at her in surprise she was smiling approvingly with that free-and-easy Kasia grin. She gently blew a kiss, turned on her heel, and left once again.
You have no idea what a relief I felt and how that broke any barriers that remained between us. Other wives would have been embarrassed and made a hasty retreat but not Kasia or indeed Sarah-Jane who were the closest to the natural state of Eden than any of the others were at that time. Both were keen "sun-bunnies", as we North Americans call those women who are habitual sun-bathers, and in the summer would find a private spot on a sunny summer's day and strip down for an hour or two. Stan hated it, expressing his disapproval, both because he thought it was vain and unhealthy (risking skin cancer) but also because he liked his wives to be the way God made them. Sarah-Jane obediently stopped the practice but Kasia in her stubbornness did not. It was such acts of rebellion that caused the very family disunity that Stan hated so much; but for reasons he never explained he never forced the matter which I considered to be a mistake, perhaps because Kasia was such a model in other areas.
Those brief moments of our mutal acceptance of the naturalness of that encounter when Stan was with Kasia when I barged in, and when she returned to collect her things the following morning, deepened the freedom we felt in our relationship. This was the proof that we enjoyed both a single, collective marriage (the imagery of the singular Bride of Christ) as well as our many individual marriages to Stan that were slowly but surely converging and merging. To me it was strong evidence that the mystery of echad unity that Stan so often talked about was attainable (even with all all the cultural handicaps that we in the West had inherited from Catholicism and Protestantism) but which we were still far from completely realising, mostly because of the way Western society had evolved over the centuries, and in the process losing the simplicity of the ancients.
This was not, Stan had told us, something that could easily be recaptured and would take at least a generation to develop, and should not therefore be forced or hurried in our generation, as we could only be expected to handle so much at a time. So what happened that night was proof positive to me of the possibility of that complete oneness Jesus prayed for in the Garden of Gethsemane that His disciples would discover (John 17:21), of which plural marriage was the model spiritually. Only our relationship with Stan was physically intimate too. We were both one and many.
12-10. Tents, Honais & Polish Smoke-Huts
What Eko and Sri had told us about polygamy in their West Papuan community began to make sense too because in that culture everyone slept in a honai, a large communal family room.
"Like other bedouin of the desert in the Middle East," Stan had explained, to prepare us for such moments, "Abraham and Jacob and their families each lived in a large single tent divided by wool curtains into separate living and sleeping areas for different wives and children so there was a little more privacy than Eko and Sri enjoyed until they reorganised living conditions after we had instructed them. The tents were wide and made of dark goat hair. And though the less wealthy families had no such curtains dividing wives' areas, Abraham's almost certainly did though it's not clear that Sarah and Hagar slept in the same tent as Scripture seems to suggest that Sarah had her own private one (Genesis 24:67), perhaps because Hagar was a concubine, though at other times Scripture gives the impression there was only one family tent (Genesis 18:9-10). We're told that when Isaac married Rebekah that he took her to "the tent of his mother Sarah" (Genesis 24:67).
"In our Abrahamic tradition, there was both a communal tent as well as wives having their own separate tents to sleep in, but there's no way that can be proved yet.
"But given that Jacob married his four wives abroad while in Harran of Mesopotamia, it's quite likely that they all lived in one tent like everyone else did in those days, both the wealthy and the poor. The wives would have had their own designated areas, separated by a curtain or not, we can't be sure, because curtain dividers were a later development by all accounts. This arrangement was practical for a variety of reasons, not least because wives shared cooking and camp chores daily, and child-raising was regarded as a collective affair. So if a wife went off to a well to collect water, which might be far off, the others would take care of her small children.
"Most people aren't aware," he continued, "but the idea of a 'bedroom' separate from the main living space in European homes evolved gradually between the 16th and 19th centuries. During the mediaeval era, entire households cooked, ate, slept, and made love in the same communal space..."
"What, with the children around??" I gasped in horror.
Stan laughed. "Sex was regarded as a natural part of life. Most people farmed in those days so children grew up seeing animals copulating and thought nothing of it. The separation started with the nobility and really didn't touch the middle classes until the Industrial Revolution. The 'open-space' arrangement continued for both middle class and rural communities in Western Europe well into the 18th century. Here in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, this arrangement continued well into the 19th century because of the greater poverty. Both in Russia and Slavic countries, we lived in traditional log huts consisting of a single main heated room where the whole family cooked, ate, socialised, slept...and made children."
The wives who weren't shocked giggled. Suszana, the most 'conservative' of us all, looked appalled. She hated such discussions because they upset her aristocratic sensibilities. Stan always told of the disadvantages of being born with a silver spoon in one's mouth. He would marry a second aristocrat in days to come though her background was very different to Suszana's and she did not face quite the same kinds of struggle. Also with his last wife who had known both plenty and poverty.
"Yes, the Russians called these 'smoke-huts' or chernaya izba'. Later," Stan continued, "as in the Levant, Eastern Slavs erected curtains, partitions for specialised sleeping spots, or in the freezing winter they slept together in an integrated zone on top of a large masonry stone platform called a polti under which was the large brick or clay oven, or next to it if it was a small family. One supposes love-making largely ended in the winter and resumed in the warmer spring months when the family spread out in the room again. My parents remember such open-space huts in eastern Poland, in Volhynia (what we call Volyń,) what's mostly now in the Ukraine, well into the 20th century! It was only in the post-war communist collectivisation and modernisation era of the late 1940's and 1950's that peasant homes got their own private sleeping spaces."
Needless to say I had no idea, and neither had most of the others, as we have always taken bedrooms for granted. Even Kasia, who was born and raised in Russia, had no idea.
12-11. The Tree of Life
But back to the night I intruded - or so I thought - on Stan and Kasia. I knew Stan usually got up at 6.30 a.m. but did not want him to go. His alarm went off, and my face told a story of disappointment and grief.
"How can I keep him a little longer?" I thought selfishly to myself, and then hit on the idea of starting a Kasia-type discussion which always got him going.
"Stan," I asked sheepishly but with an intent academic look on my face, "what was the tree that Adam and Eve ate in the Garden of Eden? What kind of knowledge did it represent?"
Stan paused, wondering I suspect what I was up to, but fully believing that my question was sincere - and it was...mostly!
Stan gave a soft laugh. "Well now, my love, you do pick hard questions, don't you? I hope you're not going to be another Isabel?"
"What do you mean?" I panicked, wondering if he was on to my little scheme.
"Isabel always comes with tricky questions, and in that respect she's my Queen of Shebah, tickling Solomon's philosophical mind."
I snuggled up to Stan again whilst looking him in the eyes, satisfied that I had already achieved my naughty aim.
He continued: "What do you think that tree is, Hélène?"
I was mildly annoyed. I hadn't wanted to work, just relax in his arms, feel his touch, and drink more of him up. But now I'd have to turn off some physical senses and get the grey matter going.
"Uh, I don't know," I lied, "what do you think?"
Stan by now had sensed something was up. You could not easily fool him. His spirit was like an antenna or a satellite dish, picking up the slightest changes in mood. He could tell when something wasn't quite right. The muscles around his eyes tensed and I sensed he knew I was up to something.
"Come on, Hélène, what's going on?" he asked seriously, not willing to let me get away with it.
I felt stupid. I knew he would start probing me until he was satisfied that he knew what was going on, so I spared myself the interrogation.
"I just want to be longer with you, my lord, that's all."
He smiled and gave me a big wet kiss on the mouth. "Thanks for being honest, Hélène. Honesty means everything to me. Let's go and shower and I'll answer your question...that is, if you're still interested."
I was. And now I was going to get a Kasia Institute lecture. Gee!
He turned the shower on, waited for it to warm up, and we hopped in. "If you want me to talk, my love, you're going to have to soap me so I can concentrate", and gave me a big wink. I liked that idea very much. "But just be sure you concentrate, OK?"
"OK!" I gave a wicked smile and started soaping him as slowly as I possibly could.
"And don't forget the hot water tank isn't infinitely big and that there are dozens of other bodies that need washing down before breakfast!"
I grinned.
"I'm going to let you solve this one, Hélène. All the clues are in the Book of Genesis. I hope you remember the story in detail so we don't have do go looking for a water-proof Bible mid-way."
"Come on, Stan, " I teased, "we'll run out of hot water if you don't get on!"
I squealed as he pinched my bottom, and had to go searching for the soap which had slipped out of my hand onto the floor in the steam-filled room. He tickled me as I went down and I squealed again.
"What's going on in there?" came the half serious voice of Anna.
"Oh, nothing," laughed Stan, "I'm just trying to catch a mouse that got in here."
I giggled uncontrollably as the soap flew out of my hand again.
"It's no good," I said, "I just can't concentrate!"
"Forget the bar of soap, there's liquid soap on the wall," he said a little impatiently. "Just don't tread on it or you'll have an accident!"
Stan didn't like to be kept waiting when he considered an important matter needed to be discussed. "Let's go back to Eden..."
"What now?" I asked, a giggly mood having taken me over completely. I got one of those girly fits and was hopeless.
"OK, just wash," said Stan, "and I'll tell you while I'm dressing."
I silently soaped him and then unexpectedly he did the same to me.
"I think you've missed out a bit," I said.
Stan laughed.
"In fact, I think you've forgotten nearly all of me."
You can't usually out-tease Stan as I soon discovered.
"Is that so?" he said. "That's intolerable" and began to soap me so fast that I went into another giggly fit, slipped on the bar of soap onto the floor of the shower room, and just couldn't stop laughing.
"Hey you two," came the voice of Kasia from outside where Anna had been, "when am I going to get a soaping?"
I creased up again.
"Breakfast in 20 minutes," she said firmly and walked off.
After the shower I collapsed on the bed, exhausted from all the laughing. Stan gazed at me while he got dressed and I loved every moment of it.
"You heard Kasia! Only 15 minutes now!"
"But you haven't told me about the tree," I protested.
"Not true. I've told you all about it."
"Huh?" I sat up, baffled. "When?"
"Think about it," he said and was off.
Hurriedly putting on my nightie and slip I went after him, catching him as he opened his door.
"I'll tell you after breakfast, OK? Now you go and get ready or I'll get into trouble."
I arrived at the breakfast table just in time for the bell and grace. Kasia, Anna, and Sarah-Jane all looked at me, winked, and giggled.
"I hear you dropped the soap while climbing a tree this morning," teased Sarah-Jane.
"Oh no, you've got it completely wrong," said Anna as she put on a melodramatic pose. "Our Hélène has been out fishing but the fish got away."
They giggled again, and I blushed.
"Sorry," said Anna, "I didn't mean to embarrass you. But you'll discover that we've all got a wicked sense of humour here!"
Isabel was not amused.
"Correction," interjected Sarah-Jane, "nearly all of us," put off by Isabel's harsh look.
"Alright, ladies," intervened Stan, "the mud-wrestling isn't until 2 o'clock this afternoon. Let's get serious and give thanks for this lovely day."
I covered my mouth, trying not to laugh. But everyone else did...except Isabel.
We settled down to breakfast and the day's activities started again. Stan resumed the conversation: "Suszana is going to Lublin to shop this morning, Hélène - would you like to swop with Anna and then I can talk to you because I've got some things to do in town too. Is that OK, Anna? You can take her spot on Thursday."
"That's fine," answered Anna. "But tell me all about it when you get back."
"Right, thank you. Here's your assignment, Hélène, to give a 10 minute talk in our Bible study this evening on the Tree of Knowledge. OK?"
I had to agree. "But only if I understand what you teach me," I quipped.
"Of course. When are we leaving. Suszana?"
"Half an hour," she replied, "if that suits you."
I sat next to Stan while we drove down to Lublin, Suszana at the wheel.
"You said that you had already told me about the Tree of Knowledge," I said, "but we never discussed it."
"True," replied Stan, "because we were enacting it."
I remembered Suszana in the front as she spoke: "Can you remember what Adam and Eve did after they ate the fruit, Hélène?" she asked.
"Sure, they hid themselves because they discovered that they were naked."
I twigged.
"You mean," I gasped, "that they had sex???"
"Simple as that," Stan butted in. "But they had it before they were given permission to do so by Yahweh. They had sex before their time - out of season. They were betrothed but not fully married. Yahweh would have married them and blessed when the right time had come but instead they got the serpent to give his blessing instead. From that moment Satan obtained the legal right to be spiritually present anytime man engaged in illicit sex. That's why corrupting sex is high on Satan's agenda."
I was silent, astonished at the simplicity of it all. But then I wondered: "But if my memory serves me right, God blessed them right after the creation before they partook of the fruit."
Suszana told me to get the Bible out of the pocket on the back of the seat in front of me.
"You're thinking of Genesis 1:28," she said, "where it says: "God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it". You're right in the sense that God blessed them to fulfil a divine imperative to reproduce, just as our children are. But they aren't married yet. This was a general benediction, not a marriage service, Hélène."
"OK, I'll buy that," I replied. "But doesn't God say somewhere that He had already married them? What about the stuff about leaving home and being one flesh?"
"That," said Stan, " was a general blessing to mankind, since Adam and Eve had no father and mother to leave. There is no indication from the text that God ever married them before the Fall, only that He blessed them to be such at an unspecified time."
"But what has this got to do with wisdom?" I asked. "Eve was enticed by the fruit because it would make her wise, not because of some desire for sex?"
"The act of marital intercourse is always known in the Bible as 'knowledge'. The modern translations obscure this by saying, for example, that 'Adam lay with his wife, and she became pregnant'. But you were brought up on the King James Bible, weren't you? Can you remember how it translates the act of intercourse?"
I remembered: "Yes, my lord. I can even quote it to you from memory: "And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain..." (Gen.4:1). I paused. "OK, I can buy that too...I think, but I also remember that Adam called Eve his 'wife' shortly after she'd been made from his side, and that was before the fall."
Suszana answered: "Yes, that's right, just as you were Stan's betrothed wife before you were married fully to him. The first reference is in Genesis 2:25, 'And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and they were not ashamed.' They were like our small children who run around naked in garden in the summer when Stan sets up the pool, without the slightest concern. But Adam and Eve hadn't had sex. If they had, it's astonishing that Eve never got pregnant. She was certainly fertile. But Cain was the fruit of that illicit sex..."
"You mean, she got pregnant while in the Garden?"
"Yes," replied Stan. "That's why she gave birth to a killer. Genesis 4:1 is usually read to mean that Adam had sex with Eve after the fall, leading to Cain's conception."
"But why did she thank the Lord for the newly born child?"
I couldn't make out what she was so pleased about if this was, in a way, a devilish conception.
"You have to remember that this was her first pregnancy, the first of the human race, in fact. Of course she would be excited and spontaneously grateful, for she also suffered the first labour pains. Her thankfulness could have been for many things that we aren't certain of, because her joy isn't explained. Some think she was grateful that the Lord kept His promise to her, and that he would grow to manhood. Others think she jumped to the unwarranted conclusion that Cain was the promised deliverer, the Messiah, who would reverse the effects of their terrible sin. But she was definitely wrong there. John tells us that Cain was the seed of the devil..."
"I've heard some say that Satan had sex with Eve," remarked Suszana, "and that was why he was so wicked, being Satan's literal seed."
"Yes, that's one theory," reponded Stan, "but it's false because it says quite clearly that Adam knew his wife, and she conceived, not Satan. The satanic seed was spiritual."
"Are you saying, then, my lord, that when men and women have unlawful sex, that Satan corrupts their offspring from the time of the womb?" I asked, half shocked.
"It pretty well looks that way, doesn't it?" said Stan soberly. "Unfortunately the Bible says very little about him before he gets jealous of Abel and kills him. That's not to say that Cain didn't have a choice - we all have free agency, but that he was disadvantaged from birth."
These were indeed troubling thoughts. No wonder Stan was so very careful about sex and seemed to stand almost alone in condeming all sex outside marriage.
"Satan was swift into action," continued Stan. "He didn't wait around. What a bitter pill for Adam and Eve to swallow to watch their firstborn murder their second-born. Cain was a natural rebel. He knew which sacrifice was required but decided to do things his way and provoke the Lord. Abel, by contrast, was a true man of faith, and was conceived during lawful sex. He is the first listed amongst the heroes of faith (Heb.11). Yah'shua says he was righteous (Matt.23:35) and one of Yahweh's prophets (Mk.11:50-51)..."
"Maybe this is what angered Cain so much?" suggested Suszana, "because he probably urged Cain to repent and believe Yahweh's Word - this only sent Cain into a blind rage."
"I agree," said Stan. "The Serpent was quickly striking at the Seed of Eve, corrupting her first son, and murdering her second one, so that the Messiah couldn't be born."
"Do you think that Abel was Yah'shua incarnated the first time round?" I asked.
Stan shook his head: "You are a deep thinker, but no, I don't think so. But I believe Satan thought he might be. Satan at least knew that he was in the line of the Messiah." He paused. "There's a funny twist to the Abel story which is very interesting. And that's Abel's name means "vapour" or "vanity"..."
"Are you sure, master?" asked Suszana.
"Yes. It means that which is transitory or temporary."
"So Adam and Eve knew all along, do you think?" I asked.
"That seems to be the case. But they had no idea what was going to happen to Cain - his name means "acquisituon", by the way, a name spontaneously given by Eve in gratitude for the Lord keeping His promise. Maybe she wasn't supposed to know. Yet why tell her of Abel's fate? It is a mystery to be sure."
But Suszana understood as I was to learn later.
"OK, sweethearts, drop me off at Radzwiłł's Palace. I'll meet you back here at 12 o'clock. Will that do?"
"Fine," said Suszana, as Stan passed the moument and pulled the car up at Litewski Plaza. Suszana swopped seats and we were off to the main store.
"What do you think, Hélène?" Suszana asked me.
"I think I've got a lot to think about."
This page was first created in 2002
Last updated on 5 October 2026
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