Through The Narrow Door

Through A Narrowing Door

By Jeff Van Dell

“What’s on my calendar for today Karen?”

“A wedding at noon, circle drumming at four, and a meeting with a Tibetan monk to edit the article you wrote for ‘Yoga Journal.’”

I’d forgotten about the wedding. “Who’s getting married again? Is it Richard and Wanda?”

“No, Susanna and Gail, they wanted to get married at St. Patrick’s because they’re both Catholic, but you know how backwards the Catholics are.” Jill snickered.

“Right, abusing their alter boys and then denying loving couples their civil rights because  of an outdated sense of morality. How could that priest be so hateful after all that couple did for their parish? Who is their love going to harm? I’ll bet they have a healthier relationship than ninety percent of the breeder couples he’s married.”

“They’ll probably outlast most of the couples he married off too.” Jill poured cups of green tea for us. The fragrant aroma filled my little study.

“No one should be denied their love just because of silly religious fables created by a tribe of nomads thousands of years ago.” I pulled my nylons up and carefully disentangled my fingernail so it wouldn’t run. “Anything else?”

“Beth Israel Hospital called to remind you that you’re scheduled for an MRI Monday morning, everything ok?” Jill asked nervously.

“Yes, I was in a car accident when I was seventeen and had a severe head injury. I recovered just fine and agreed to be part of a study. I receive a free MRI every six months that helps researchers map how brains heal. It’s all scientific voodoo if you ask me, but the doctors and scientists tell me that they’re making real progress understanding how the brain functions.”

“I never knew! It must have been horribly difficult for you.”

“I was in a coma for a week. It was lucky that I came out of the coma without brain damage. No one expected me to wake up, let alone be undamaged.”

“It sounds like a miracle.”

“The wind through the trees sounds like music, but it isn’t, merely coming together of air and wood.” I laughed.

“Should I make you some green tea?” Karen

“That sounds wonderful. I’ll be in my office getting Sunday’s sermon together. Don’t let anyone through unless it’s an emergency.”

After the wedding, monk, drums, and one visit to an AIDS patient I sat in a warm bath watching the candle throw light and shadows on the blue walls of my bathroom.

“Hmmmmmm…” My voice echoed pleasantly off the tiles.

My congregation boasted an African Spiritual choir, a classical guitarist, a lesbian punk trio, and a traditional organist. My taste in music ran towards jazz, but I had abandoned piano lessons at age thirteen and had no ability as a vocalist. I saw a shadow in the hallway.

“Hey, don’t forget to turn off the coffee before you turn in Jill.”

“No, prob, g’night.” A whispered voice from the hallway accompanied the shadow past the door.

Jill, my housemate of five years, was as quiet as a mouse and as gentle.

After my bath I sat down at the computer and worked on my lecture for the interfaith clergy group.

“The meta-archetype embodied in the sky god figure of Yahweh is really just another aspect of the sub consciousness evolving into meta-self awareness apart from its reptilian brained origins.”

“That’s going to raise a few hackles!” I laughed to myself.

            “Convergence of the sexual with the rational in the emergent female ID will virtually reprogram man’s (here I mean man as strictly male) hyper-rationalistic violence into a cooperative union of chi and ego.”

“It brings together the disparate ideas of three cultures. Not bad for a night’s work.” I thought.

“Ok Reverend Carter, you remember the drill but the legal department tells me I have to remind you.” Said the MRI technician who rambled on a paragraph of legalese that would set Jill’s tongue atwitter with complaints about how the legal profession should simply speak and write in normal English. The technician had me sign the same form I’d signed for years.

“All I remember is that I need to lie perfectly still. By the way, I’m only ‘Reverend Carter’ when I’m preaching or performing a wedding or funeral. You can call me Helen or, if you like, Miss Carter.”

I laid back and slid into the ring of the machine and stifled a yawn. Part of the study involved me actively thinking about, neutral, positive, and negative memories. I thought about sitting at my desk typing for the neutral memory. My positive memory was of a perfect day from my childhood.

I awoke on clean, white sheets on a warm spring day with the scent of lilacs wafting through my open window. My father comes into my room and carries me to the breakfast table where a bowl of freshly picked blueberries from our garden mixed with cream and honey awaited me. My mother is feeding my infant brother and she’s humming softly as he takes nourishment from her body. My father adjusts his tie, polishes his glasses and reads aloud from a book of animal stories I love.

“Ok Miss Carter, now your negative memory.” The technician’s voice comes through a crackly speaker and jolts me out of my pleasant daydream.

I sigh.

This was for science and the betterment of mankind, but it hurt.

Drunk and crying, I ran from the fraternity house to my brother’s car and fumbled with the keys.

“Wait!” Screamed Sue.

She gets in the car and pushes me to the passenger side. “You’re in no condition to drive. Just forget him. He’s a jerk! You’re not going to waste your life waiting for him to change.”

“But I love him Sue!” I leaned against the window and wept.

“Come on girl, you’re going home.” She put the car in gear and drove down the road towards my house.

“I can’t go home drunk Suzie, my parents will kill me. Can’t we just take a drive until I’m less drunk?” I asked.

“Ok, we’ll take the highway back. That should kill some time. Open your window, get some air ok?” Suzie took the ramp onto the highway and cruised along the highway around our town and then back towards our house. We hit a bumpy patch and I was jostled in the car.

“I think I’m going to be sick Sue.” I felt my stomach heave.

Sue reached under her seat to get a plastic bag that was lodged there. “Here, get sick in…”

Her left hand slipped on the wheel and the car veered out of control into the path of an oncoming van.

Flying, flying through the air, my door opens and I fly upside down into a pile of brush, a miraculous soft landing.

I get up and wonder how it can be so sunny. Fire, consuming my brother’s car, Sue screaming, her hair is on fire, legs pinned under the upside down hood. Sue, screaming my name as I pull on her arms, pauses to vomit blood. Her teeth are red now. Sue unconscious, I’m still pulling but the flames are licking at my hands. There’s a tremendous blast of heat and air as I’m pushed away from the car by a fireball that tosses me like a rag doll against a rock head over heels. Hard landing, darkness.

“Ok Miss Carter, we’ve got everything we need.”

I wipe my face with my hand. The technician hands me box of tissues. They never ask why I’m crying because they always ask for the negative memory last. It’s somehow cathartic.

My routine for the last several years has been to go to an Indian restaurant after my MRI and order the hottest curry dish they have. Being a minister means listening to people talk, a lot. Any break I can get from it I take. Bollywood Grille, complete with tandori ovens, is almost empty and I sit in an isolated booth and order an appetizer platter that I will most certainly not finish and most certainly bring home for Jill to enjoy. A circle of rust spots my fork and I clean it off with my red cloth napkin. People walk by, shopping, talking, holding hands, arguing. Two women walk side-by-side, pushing strollers and drinking coffee. A young girl with a guitar slung over her shoulder pushes an amplifier down the sidewalk on a dolly. Gray haired and frail, someone’s grandmother pulls a wire-mesh wheeled basked full of groceries towards a car whose door is held open by an equally gray haired and frail man wearing a bow tie.

My curry arrives and I eat with slow deliberation, savoring each bite. A pair of women walked by my booth and sit in the one behind me. I’m too gastronomically satisfied to be irked by the invasion of my space, but why did the waiter have to seat them here? Maybe he thought I was lonely. I eavesdrop.

“God is so good. You know that if we’d been just a few minutes later we’d have been on that observation deck when the plane hit. We never would have gotten out of that building alive.”

“I had nightmares about those poor people, dying like that, without the Lord.”

Oh great, I’m seated next to a pair of bible thumpers.

“Satan really hates us because we send so many missionaries over the world. Oh, here it is, thank you, it looks delicious. Would you like to pray?”

I can’t hear what they are praying, but at the end I hear an “Amen”. The two women’s voices sound so familiar that I almost stand up and peep over the booth’s high back. Maybe they’re my parishioners? No, not them.

“So anyway…how’s Mike?”

“He’s great. He’s going to complete seminary and be ordained in August. It’s amazing how God has worked the entire process out for us.”

“Does he have a church yet or are you still headed for China?”

“No, we’re still committed to China. Listen, the Lord provided us with a place to stay already, right in the city!”

“Get out!”

“Yeah, a retiring teacher is letting us use his condo right in Beijing. It’s a miracle that we found a place there.”

“Well, God wants all people to know him.”
”I know, I probably shouldn’t be surprised when he acts and moves to call people to himself, right?”

“Amen, Oh this curry is so good. I wish I could cook like this but my kids would never eat it. Oh, guess who I ran into last week. Rick Stoddard.”

At this point my mind went from making fun of their ridiculous beliefs to startled fear. Rick Stoddard?

”No way, where do you see him?”

“He came to church with his wife and four kids. He’s an insurance rep with MetLife and he’s looking for a new church that has more activities for his kids.”

“Is he going to yours? I’d love to say hi to him. He was such a drinker when I knew him, you remember when he broke up with me?”

“How could I forget? I drove you home and you got sick all over your brother’s car. I thought he was going to kill you when I brought you home.”

Everything changed at that moment. I knew exactly who was behind me, although it was impossible. Did the MRI scramble my brain?

”The Lord is so good. If it hadn’t been for him dumping me that night I might never have come to know Jesus.”

“Oh, you never know. God has a way of breaking through when we least expect it. Can I try a bit of your lamb?”

“Of course, here.”

I shut my eyes tightly and drank the rest of my margarita in one long gulp. The women behind me eat in silence for a while. I desperately want to turn around and look. A cold sweat forms on my face and my heart pounds in my chest. Logic! That could not be me and Sue behind me because I was here and she was dead. I’d visited her grave every year or so. It’s either a weird coincidence or a hallucination.

“Well that was the best meal I’ve had in weeks. Do you want dessert here or should we go to the ice cream place down the road? I know you’re lusting after a peppermint stick ginger-ale float. I don’t know how you can eat that combination of flavors.”

“I have the gift of tongues, and of eating ice-cream.”

“No, no, it’s your birthday, my treat.”

“Are you sure? You’re on a pastor’s salary.”

“Not to worry, I planned for this. Fun is in our budget.”

Not possible.

Not possible, logic.

“What did Jim get you for your birthday?”

“I’m going to the Woman of Faith conference in Dallas next month.”

“Oh how awesome. I hear the worship is great and that the holy spirit moves in powerful ways at those conferences.”

“Ok, ready to roll?”
”Thank you so much.”

“Happy Birthday Sue.”

My legs would not move for five minutes though everything screamed, “Get up and stop them!” They left and I finished my meal in a daze.

Logic!

It was a horrible coincidence. The MRI affected my brain. I am hallucinating and have a brain tumor that the MRI will catch.

Logic, not superstition or wishful thinking will answer this. I am having an allergic reaction to the food. I’m actually suffering from post, post-traumatic stress, brought on by my reliving the wreck.

“Can I get you anything else?”

“No, just the check.”

The waiter’s interruption broke the spell of unreality that clouded the last few moments. The ice-cream shop was a block away but I had a lecture to give in two hours and traffic was always a nightmare at this time of day. Logic.

“…and so, in conclusion, the pseudo moralistic theater that most evangelical churches have become are really a return to the mystery religions’ revitalized sex. No laughs please, I read the book and saw the movie. In a hundred years, Christianity as we know it will give way to a faith in human goodness that has no need for the blood of lambs, goats, bulls, or innocent human peasants in Roman occupied Palestine.”

Applause broke out over the auditorium and I sighed with relief, bowed, and made my way off the platform into a score of people waiting to shake my hand.

After the lecture I stood at the buffet table and wolfed down veggies and dip while listening to praise and criticism, both of which I enjoyed.

“You lecture was right on, religion should be about bringing people together, not dividing them.” Said a young woman with multiple body piercing and a yin-yang tattoo on her right palm.

“That must have hurt.” I pointed.

“Pain is a release for me.” She winked at me.

A tall blonde woman with a tattoo of a rose on her temple berated me for not going far enough.

“Now that we have cloning technology and have perfected in-vitro fertilization, men really aren’t needed, they’re really the cause of humanities’ woes.”

“I’m not really into placing blame as much as I’m about finding solutions.” I said, diplomacy rolling off my tongue.

A black man with horn-rimmed glasses held together by duct tape had an interesting observation.

“How come Superman don’t save no brother’s? Hmm? What’s up with that? That cracker travel all this way just to save whitey, it ain’t right.”

Several people asked for brochures of our church of which I had a ready supply. I was about to leave when a dark skinned man of Indian descent came over to speak with me.

“Excuse me please, but I just had to say that I am from India.” He was as soft-spoken as Jill and I had to lean into him to hear what he was saying.

“You see Reverend Carter, one day I was taking my daughter to a school run by Christian missionaries from Kenya.”

He paused and I noticed scars on his face and hands. He smelled of mint and  sandalwood and wore small round glasses, like Ghandi.

“On that day I was wearing a cross my little girl had made for me out of wire she found in a trash dump where I scavenged for things to sell for food. It was the way I earned my living you know.” He said, with a tinge of pride in his voice. The man would not look me in the eye and several people moved around us to hear his story.

“A group of Muslims stopped us on the road and asked where we were going. My daughter told them, ‘I am going to learn to read, and learn about Jesu.’ She said it with such delight.” The man’s voice broke, we all stood rapt, wondering what was coming next.

“The Muslim men said, ‘There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.’ They said this over and over again and began dancing around us. One of them said, ‘If you don’t renounce Jesu we will set you on fire!.’”

The man paused and licked his lips.

“The men doused me with kerosene an held a lighter up in the air. My daughter yelled to me, ‘Papa, Papa, let Jesu into your heart and he will forgive your sins.’ So I did, I said, ‘Jesu please forgive me for my sins remember me when I die.’”

Tears rolled down the man’s scarred face and he wiped them with his scarred hand.

“The Muslim man pulled out a pistol and shot my daughter in the head and I waited to be lit on fire and join my daughter and Jesu in heaven. Instead of burning me, they beat me and beat me with sticks and lengths of wire. I was fortunate, they usually kill everyone.”

In a day of surprises this was the most unexpected. Everyone stood in shocked silence. The man’s voice remained steady throughout his discourse.

“So, I most humbly tell you that you are wrong, because I forgive them, the men who murdered my beloved daughter because Jesu forgave me. I know that I will see Uvarshi in heaven when I die and that if those men don’t repent of their sins they will burn in a lake of fire for all eternity. I want them to be with me, not in hell. Uvarshi would want that too, she had a tender heart, even before she went to the Christian school. So you see Reverend Carter, you are wrong but I cannot prove it to you. No one can force you to worship Jesus, even though he is God he will not force you to love him. I thank you for hearing me.”

I’m a woman of words. Three sermons  and fifty jokes are poised on my lips at all times. Words failed me then.

“I’m sorry for your loss. You seem to be um…”
”I have a peace in my heart from Christ our Lord.” He said.

The blond woman with the said, “You see! It’s man’s religion that destroys women.”

Another person said, “If Christians in those country’s would just keep their mouths shut there would be no problems like this.”

An older woman said, ”Teaching tolerance is the only way peace will be achieved. I protested the first Gulf War by chaining myself to…”

On the ride home that night I thought about how I could use the man’s story in one of my sermons or lectures. It was good.

“How can we explain forgiveness in the face of such horror?” I asked myself aloud as I pulled into the driveway.

“What’s on my calendar for today Karen?” I asked, shoveling a snack bar into my mouth.

“Two hours of sermon research, marriage counseling for a young pair getting married, yoga at one, hospital visitation to an AIDS patient and there’s a note on your desk to call Dr. Valis about your MRI.” She shot me a worried look that I ignored.

“How do you explain forgiveness in the face of such horror?”

“Ok, screen my calls, unless it’s an emergency I need to study for a while, thanks.” I ushered Karen out lest she find some tidying to do.

Later I found time for the call.
”No Helena, MRI’s aren’t going to cause anything like that. We do thousands of them a month and not one case of hallucinations has been reported. I can check the literature for a case and ask my other neuro-science colleagues if they’ve heard anything, but I’m almost positive the machine itself couldn’t cause one.”

“It was so real doctor. I saw them walk in, I saw the remains of their meal.”

“Just out of curiosity, did you go after them at all or introduce yourself?” He asked.

“No, I was too shocked.”

“It’s understandable. By the way I looked at your scan, everything’s normal, there’s nothing wrong with your brain. You know…sometimes people under stress can go into a semi-hypnotic state and almost re-live an experience. Have you thought about talking to someone?”

There was an unusually long pause on my end.
”Thank you again for getting back to me so quickly.”

I heard him snicker into the phone, he knew me too well.

“Any time Helena, call me immediately if anything unusual happens.”

“I will, goodbye.”

I rested the phone back in its nest and I sat back in my chair with my chin poised on my fingertips, a pose I patented in grad-school. It didn’t help. Because no answers were forthcoming, I wrote my experience down in my journal and went on with my life. Everything was normal for a week or so, until another episode disturbed my world.

I opened my eyes and read the time on my clock radio next to my bed, 3:24AM. The phone sounded  six times as loud as it did during the bustle of daily activity and I rolled over to answer.

“Hello?” My voice croaked.

There was a conversation going on and I thought that Jill must have answered the phone in her room, but she was away and anyway, we had separate lines. If she were gone who was talking?

“Hello?” I said , but the parties on the phone couldn’t hear me. I was about to hang up and go to sleep when I heard a voice mention my name. I sat with my back against the backboard of my bed and my knees pulled up under my covers. I listened to the voices, hearing strange background sounds while the two parties spoke.

“How do we do this?”

“Well, if you apply pressure to an object, even if that object is massive, you can move it. Just imagine suspending a train car by chains. Give a little push and little by little its own momentum will get it swinging like there’s no tomorrow.”

“She’s not a train car sir.”

“Hello, can you hear me? I can hear you.” I said, in a vain attempt to get their attention.

“Correct, but the same principle applies. She has a love of beautiful things, music, nature, art, books, and most importantly… ideas. It doesn’t matter if the idea is true, it only has to be of a complexity and a complexion to delight her…”

“Pride!”

“Very good, you learn quickly, as you must. And pride, intellectual pride, is what keeps her rocking back and forth, like a car tire caught in a rut of snow.”

“Can we harvest her soon?”

“Ok, this is creepy, who is this?” I yelled into the phone, turning my bedside lamp on and wondering if I should call the police.

“No, I’m afraid we attempted to harvest her years ago but were thwarted in our efforts by the unenlightened.”
”I hate them so.”

“I can smell your hatred.”

“Why do we allow her to grow?”

“The growth she imagines is only of a piece. It’s not growth towards anything…him. It is only Helena becoming ingrown.”

“Think of the ones she’ll take with her.”

“Don’t gloat! Our work is detailed, patient, and adaptive. Always be on your guard. She isn’t a puppet, yet. If her free will combines with his…do you hear something?”

“Only you Master.”

“Hello? I’m right here and I’m calling the police. Don’t think they can’t trace your number. Who is this?” I shouted.

“Get off the line, get off now!”

There were two loud clicks, a pop, then the aggravating sound of Doo doo

dooooo…”The number you have reached…is not in service, please try your call again

later, or ask an operator for assistance.”

I held the receiver out in front of me.

Logic.

There was a screw up at the phone company and I was party to another conversation.

Logic.

The MRI altered my brain somehow and I’m having auditory hallucinations.

Logic.

The phone company offered no explanations. The records showed that no one called me

after seven PM the night before and until eleven in the morning the next day. It bothered me to no end but I was too busy to pursue it further. No one was actually harmed. I recorded it in my journal and wondered about the content of the conversation, which I could remember almost word for word.

Was I really blinded by intellectual pride? What was I blind towards?

I was the most spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally open person I knew of. It wasn’t pride is was just a fact of my character. Unitarian Universalism, that was me!

Jill, of all people, had an answer.

“Maybe you’re wrong Helena.”

“About the voices on the phone?” I asked, spreading blueberry jam on my wheat toast.

“No, wrong about everything.” Jill put a cube of sugar daintily into her tea up so as not to disturb the water.

“Jill, you’re a lawyer, more specific please?”

“You may be wrong about your faith.”

Coming from anyone else I would have smiled and quoted something from an article I wrote. Jill would never be satisfied with that kind of an answer so I bit the bullet and asked. “Wrong in what way Jill?”

She sipped her tea with her pinky in the air and daubed her mouth with a cloth napkin.

“Perhaps not all paths lead to God. Perhaps only one faith is actually true both historically and intellectually, that presents problems for universalists. Maybe Islam, or Judaism, or Bahai, or Christianity as practiced by overweight housewives with big hair in the bible belt is true?”

I laughed out loud. “I don’t believe that.”

“Neither do I. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t, or couldn’t be true or that we could be wrong.”

“That still doesn’t explain my weird phone call.” I sighed. “It doesn’t explain overheard conversations between myself and my dead friend.”

“Or that Indian man at your lecture. I heard him, he was real.”

Jill put her cup and saucer into the dishwasher and kissed me on the cheek. She closed the front door so softly I didn’t realize she had left.

Six months went by and I was again inside the belly of the beast, beginning to imagine my worst day ever. Something happened though. I had the most realistic dream I had ever experienced. I could not control the events in my dream state, only react to them. I awoke on clean white sheets on a warm spring day with the scent of Lilacs wafting through my open windows.

“Didn’t I just imagine this?” I said aloud to myself.

There is a telephone by my bedside that rings the instant I see it.

I answer it, “Hello?”

“This is your wake up call Miss Carter.”

“Thank you, where am I?”

“You are at the Circle Three Motel in Dallas Texas.”

“Thank you…um..”

“Complementary brunch is being served right now.”

“Ok, I will be down shortly…um…this is a dream right?”

My arm moves to hang up the receiver without waiting for an answer and the phone disappears without a trace.

Suddenly I am dressed and downstairs, at the brunch. Bacon, eggs, toast, coffee, and orange juice are in front of me.

“May I join you?” Someone asks.

“Sure, I’m only dreaming and it’s kind of boring here. I think the MRI must have scrambled my brain. I hope it isn’t permanent.” The bacon is warm and crisp.

Sue sits down, stirs sugar into her coffee and takes a sip.

“So Helena, how are you?”

“You should know. You are an aspect of my self.” I can feel the food’s texture but the taste is muted, as if my taste buds are operating at only half power.

“Actually, that isn’t quite true. I am my own person, just as you are. Although apart from me you can do nothing.”

“Quoting scripture to me?”

“Helena, do you believe that I exist?”

“You should know you that you were killed in the crash that put me into a coma and eventually sent me here. It’s a nice circle we find our selves in, isn’t it?”

“Actually, I went to be with Jesus, but you don’t believe in Jesus, do you?”

Sue’s question wasn’t an accusation, but it was pointed.

“Is that was this is all about? My dream self is trying to convert me to become a narrow minded evangelical who will put Jesus into a nice little box to keep him safe from hard questions.”

“Jesus loved hard questions. No one liked his answers. The question stands, do you believe I exist?”
”Your non-existent coffee is getting non-existent colder. You’re dead by the way. Frankly I do not know what happens after we die. It is the last great mystery, to be embraced and struggled with.”

“So you don’t want answers?”

“The search is the reward itself.”

“But if you never find truth what good is the search? Would you be satisfied if you searched all your life for a cure for a terrible disease only to be told that although you didn’t find a cure that the fact that you researched should make you happy Shouldn’t you want to find the truth?”

“What is truth?” I said with a flourish of my hand.
”Now whose quoting scripture?”

“It is a legitimate question.”

“If it were sitting in front of you would you believe it?”

“This is only a result of an MRI gone wild. I’ll wake up and this will have been a bad dream.”

“What if you are wrong about Jesus?”

“I’m not wrong! You sound like Jill now.”

“I am not getting through to you so I need to take more drastic measures.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“This is only your wake up call.”

“What now, are you going to tell me something terrible is going to happen, then it will, then I believe I’m talking to my dead friend?”

“No, I’m going to give you something you’ll never have on your own.”
”A penis?”

“Sue, or whoever it was, laughed. “No, faith.”

“You can’t give anyone faith. They have to have it inside themselves to begin with.”

“So intelligent, yet so ignorant…the things we do for our kids.” She sighed.

“You’re not my mother.” I said.

Sue raised and eyebrow. “See you soon.”

At that moment I awoke inside the MRI machine, no worse for the wear.

It began one sunny Sunday while I sat in my padded chair on the platform listening to the organ prelude and watching over my flock. A disquiet not know to me before grew like a virus inside of me that day. Although I preached on peace, I had none inside of me. Shaking hands and smiling, small talk and invitations to lunch or coffee left me cold. This was unusual for me.  Instead of feeling spent but satisfied after a flurry of Sunday morning activity I was spent and empty.

In an effort to quell my disquiet I drove to Cambridge and went to a tiny, independent movie theater and watched “Repo Man.” After that an acquaintance and I went out for sushi and I enjoyed the hot washcloth, miso soup, sushi, rice, green tea, and ginger ice cream. My companion told me stories about her recent trip to Brazil where she met interesting people who were a gold mind of sermon illustrations. In the late afternoon I purchased a collection of new poetry by my favorite author from a specialty bookstore, then sat on a quilt by the Charles River to admire the brilliance of the sun on the water, and the poet’s word pictures. People walking their dogs, golden retrievers, Irish setters, and two greyhounds, provided me with friendly wet nosed interruptions to ensure I didn’t take myself too seriously.

The disquiet persisted all the way home.

“Hi, I’m back!” My voiced echoed off the walls of the long hallway that ran down the length of our house. Jill was working on her laptop at her desk.

“We’re going to trial next week. I thought I had all my ducks in a row but some of them keep quacking at me. How was your day?”

“The usual, busy morning and laid back afternoon. You know, a laptop is meant for sitting on the couch and relaxing into your deep legal thoughts.”

“I get more work done if I’m sitting up. Last time I used my lap top at the office that way I fell asleep in the conference room and a partner walked in with a client.”

“That must have been a Kodak moment!”

“It was for the client. Something bothering you Helena, you’ve got that little crease between your eyes that pops out when you’re worried about something.”

“Very observant! You should have been a shrink. Well, I’ve had this odd sense of disquiet all day. Maybe I’m just in a funk, or I’m pre-menstrual, or maybe it’s the fallout from those weird dreams I had because of the MRI? I don’t feel like my true self.”
”Your ‘true self’?” Jill sat back in her chair and tilted her head sideways.

“I meant my normal self, you know.”

“Actually, when you said ‘true self’ a little bell went off in my head because I heard a lecture about that recently. The speaker was talking about how each of us has a true self that God wants us to become. It made me want to become my true self. So, when you said that phrase it jumped out at me.”

“I thought I was my true self, or that I’d at least found my true calling. What about you? Is law your true self, your true calling?”

“It is my true calling. I don’t know about my true self. I am going to another lecture next Saturday by the same speaker. You’re welcome to come join me if you want.”

“Next Saturday is the big chamber music concert at church. Can you get me a tape of this lecture?”

“Sure, no problem.” Jill stretched and yawned. “I’m going to sleep. There’s some fabulous Nicaraguan coffee I just made in the pot. It has enough caffeine to keep a platoon of third shift workers going all night long.”

Jill kissed me on the cheek and went to bed. I sat up drinking coffee and editing an article about the similarities between U.F.O. abductions and date rape.

The disquiet I felt was subdued by my mental activity.

Monday morning brought news of two deaths to my flock.

Gary, an AIDS patient who had once sung and danced on Broadway, died alone on an AIDS ward at Massachusetts General Hospital. Marla was a thirteen-year-old leukemia patient who began going to my church three years ago, dragging her drug dependant mother Kathy along with her.

Kathy sat in my office, working her way through a box of tissues. Her pupils were tiny dots of black in a circle of blue. To look at her you would say she was sixty but I knew that she was just shy of forty.

“I think she wanted some bible verse read.” Kathy blew her nose with shaking hands.

“Actually, she picked three passages from different books.”

“Oh…”

“Would you like to read them?” I had the passages printed out already and held them out to her.

“No…Do you mind if I smoke?”

I did but I let her.

“Go right ahead.” I pulled an ashtray from beneath my bookshelf. “Marla mentioned to me that if she had a memorial service she’d like three of her school friends to read. Would you like to say a few words at the service or is it too much for you?”

“No…maybe, I don’t know. What’s that thing they always say at funerals? You know, about the shepherd?”

“That’s probably the Twenty-Third Psalm.”

“Could you read that? No, I want to do it. Where do I find it?”

“I’ll have it printed out for you. Don’t be concerned with anything. Here…” I handed her a cheap bible and put a post it where the Psalm was. “It’s in modern English, take it.”

“I’ve never read the bible. My grandmother was wicked religious and I played a chracter in ‘Godspell’ in high school. I sang that song, ‘Day by Day’ and ‘Turn Back Old Man.’”

My eyes popped out as Kathy began singing the song with a very pleasant soprano whose strength belied her waifish stature.

“Wow! You really can sing. That’s quite a gift. Would you like to sing at the service?”

I regretted the words even as they left my mouth. There’s no telling what a junky would do.

“No, I don’t even remember all the words.”

Kathy left me to complete her daughter’s funeral arrangements alone.

Gary didn’t want a funeral. He donated a stack of books, records, and a few small items of furniture to be sold and the proceeds given to AIDS research. He left a letter addressed to me.

“Dear Helena, if you’re reading this then I’m dead. I wanted to thank you for visiting me when I was sick. You were one of the only ones who did. I’m trusting Jesus to forgive me of my sins because frankly, he’s the only one offering eternal life. I hope to see you in heaven. Love, Gary.”

Marla’s funeral was like the girl herself: loud, colorful, and funny. Trisha, Meagan, and Cassidy read from “Winnie the Pooh”, “The Tibetan Book of the Dead”, and “On Walden Pond”. I told a story about Marla consoling a fellow cancer patient whose dog had died. When Kathy got up to read the 23rd Psalm a hush fell over the congregation, or maybe it was I who only felt the hush.

“The Lord is my shepherd...”

As Kathy read the Psalm all I could think of was the unfairness of it all.

“He guides me in paths of righteousness…”

Marla, a beautiful, intelligent, funny girl was dead before her time.

“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...”

Kathy, a drug addicted whore whose only accomplishment in life was not destroying her daughter’s, lived on. My anger burned towards her for not taking better care of herself and her daughter.

Kathy closed the bible with a “thud” and stood with her eyes closed for a long uncomfortable minute. I was about to escort her off the platform and back to her seat when she began singing the hymn “Amazing Grace”. By the middle of the second verse everyone was singing, everyone except me. I could not stop looking at Kathy’s face. Her eyes came alive with a brightness and joy I had never seen in her. It was such a shock that I forgot to introduce the children’s choir as they made their way up to sing “This Land Is Your Land.” They simply started without me.

Four months later I received a letter from Kathy. It brought back the sense of disquiet with a vengeance but I did not understand why until later in my life.

“…and I’m out of rehab. That day at Marla’s funeral God touched me in a way I’d never thought possible. He showed me a way out of the hell I’d been living in and helped me to get off drugs, the streets and into a good church. I’m singing on the worship team and working as a waitress.

Sometimes I see some of my old “customers” and I tell them about the precious blood of Jesus. They usually laugh at me, but one or two have listened. It was all because you gave me a bible that day and I read the whole Gospel story you marked for me. Well, God bless you. If you’re ever in my neck of the woods maybe you can come hear me sing with the worship band.”

My next MRI went off without incident. A week after that I took Jill out for a belated birthday lunch theater show. It was raining and we had only one umbrella.

“I’ll pull the car around, you stay put.” I said.

“Why don’t we just both go?” Jill protested.

“Because I’ve got rubber boots on and you’re wearing those.” I pointed to her Italian red, sued, boots that I knew she would have hated being ruined.

“Ok, I will wait for you here, thanks!”

“Not a problem, just call me ‘Aqua-girl’.”

I pushed my raid hood over my head and ran across the street to the car. Dirty water ran three inches deep along the curbstone and I was glad for my ugly black books. Two cars waved me across the busy street, who said Boston drivers were death to pedestrians? I made it across the street and unlocked the door to my car then looked back at Jill, twirling her pink umbrella.

The sound reached me before the sight. It sounded like a train when it makes that squeaking sound as it leaves the station. A crack so loud I almost thought it was thunder resounded among the concrete and glass canyons of the city. My eye was drawn up to the scaffolding of the building Jill stood under. Steele bracing, oaken planks, chunks of concrete, ropes, buckets, a gigantic orange tool chest, hammers, drills, and styrofoam coffee cups obeyed their gravitational imperative and fell down, towards Jill. I could only watch in horrified fascination as it fell down from the tenth floor towards Jill, twirling her umbrella. For one brief second she looked up and wrinkled her brow, not comprehending the disaster falling towards her.

“Jill!” I screamed and waved at her.

She waved back at me but didn’t move. All she had to do was step backwards into the alcove of the hotel and she would be safe from the falling debris. I could do nothing to  prevent her from bring crushed. All that I could do in those two seconds was utter a brief prayer. Not a prayer like I wrote for Sunday service, to some nebulous spirit thing, or the Godess, but to Him. God-man, the son of Yahweh.

“Jesus, Please, No!” I screamed.

I could not shut my ears and the crash was tremendous, louder than any rock concert I’d ever been to. A dozen car alarms went off and people around me began screaming and running. The glass front of the hotel shattered, adding more noise to the symphony of death. Waves of dust and debris and muddy water roared at me and I instinctively ducked behind my car and shut my eyes against the maelstrom. My car alarm went off and I fumbled with the little buttons on my key ring to shut it off.

“She’s dead, Jesus, she’s dead!” I may have said this aloud or only thought it.

After a few seconds I was able to stand up to look across the street. The dust cloud began clearing and I saw her umbrella, then her hand, then her face covered in dust. Her glasses were plastered with mud and she stood so still that she could have been a modernist sculpture. But her mouth opened and she sneezed, shattering the illusion.

I bolted across the street, past a crushed car with nothing I ever wanted to see in the driver’s seat. Pushing Jill backwards into the alcove of the hotel, I asked “Are you alright?”

“Oh!” She said.

She had no obvious signs of injury.

“Are you ok?” I asked.

“My ears are ringing. I can barely hear you. I didn’t see it coming. I did not see it coming.” She said.

“I saw it coming but I couldn’t do anything about it.”

“I saw you praying.”

“I wasn’t praying…I was praying.”

“We should get out of here before more stuff falls down. My eyes are burning. Is anyone else hurt?” She looked around with red-rimmed eyes.

Sirens, lights, firemen, police, EMT’s, bystanders, photographers, news cameras, three dead, six injured, crushed legs, a severed arm, a business man from Greece, gone, Jill, safe and sound.

Four months later I emerged from the MRI machine and was met with a frown from the technician.

“What’s wrong Steve? Did I move and ruin the image? I had to sneeze but I though I was holding still.”

“No, it’s nothing.” He said, but wouldn’t meet my eyes.

I suppressed my suspicions and went to my favorite Indian restaurant where no ghosts haunt me. But the sense of disquiet ran circles around me.

In my office I wrote sermon notes, return phone calls, prepare a lecture, and meet with a couple who are having trouble in their marriage. The wife drones on about how her husband never helps her with the dishes. I sigh inwardly and wonder how long I should let her go on before I ask her what’s really bothering her. A finch outside my window holds a piece of black plastic garbage bag in its beak and I wonder where its nest is.

There is one message on my answering machine. The red light blinks once time each second. I’m not afraid to answer it but I just don’t feel like doing so right now. After my drumming circle group the endorphins give me the courage I need to listen.

“Helena, it’s Dr. Broady. Can you come in to see me as soon as possible? Something showed up on your MRI and we need to run a few tests, today if possible.”
Somehow I knew.

Thirty-six years old, I had never been married or had a child. Thirty-six years old and I’d never been on a giant, scary roller coaster or eaten at the Brazilian restaurant I drive by every day. Thirty-six years old and I’d never gone white water rafting in Colorado. Thirty- six years old and I knew I had an inoperable brain tumor that would weaken and kill me. My doctor confirmed my prediction the next day, my birthday as it turns out. I made it to thirty-seven.

“Could it be causing my auditory hallucinations?”

“The tumor isn’t located near the auditory center if that’s what you’re asking. Brain science is still in its infancy Helena. Have you had any other kinds of strange sensations?”

“You mean like in my girl parts.”

“Helena…”

“Sorry, no I haven’t…maybe. I’m not sure.”

“We’ll run some more tests.”

He patted me on the shoulder and ambled off to order my torture.

The tumor would explain a lot. I told no one until it was obvious that I couldn’t walk without a limp, then a cane. I needed to give the church time to find a new pastor. My schedule was cut in half to accommodate my failing energy. Periodic seizures prevented me from driving, or taking baths alone. Jill began openly praying for me and reading the bible to me. It was comforting to hear her voice but ultimately meaningless because Jesus didn’t actually rise from the dead, did he?

Pain, a headache over my entire body, morphine, drugs galore! Jill, patient, soft, kind, loving, unintentionally funny…Christian! What a surprise that was. She told me reading C.S. Lewis’s ‘Mere Christianity’ and experimentally praying on her own convinced her of Christ’s divinity. Was he truly human and divine? How could God be a man and be God at the same time?

Family, tears, goodbyes, anger, endings, angry ending.

Jill held the bible. “If you believe if your heart and confess with your tongue that Jesus Christ is Lord, you can be saved.”

“What about Buddha?” I mumble. My speech is slurred and only Jill seems to be able to understand me the first time I say anything.

“He’s in a grave, Jesus is alive.” Jill’s breath smells like the honey from her tea. She has to speak into my ear because my hearing is almost gone.

“Hard to believe…” I counter. “I’d like to believe but it’s outrageous.”

“Faith is required.” Jill waits for me.

“I’d like to have faith, but it’s nearly beyond me.” I’m at the end of my rope, really.

“But not totally beyond you. You have to use your will to ask for it Helena.”

I am so tired I can barely answer her. “God, if you’re there and you’re really Jesus, show me. If you can, save me.”

Strange how everything you think was real turns out to be an illusion and everything you thought was an illusion turns out to be real.

I asked to be cremated and my ashes thrown over Niagara Falls by my parents. Now I wish I hadn’t. I wish I’d asked for a casket in a nice cemetery with a cross on my grave to let Jesus Christ, the God man, know where to find me. However, it’s most likely he’s always known.