Yesterday morning, I received the most haunting and devastating e-mail from a long-lost friend.  All day, his e-mail hung in the foreground of my mind, and I couldn’t shake it.  It’s one of those correspondences that makes you shiver, shake, and cry, and immediately, you want to drive over to where he is, and wrap your arms around him and say, “Oh, but I love you.  Don’t you see?”  His depressing tales of abuse by church people chilled me.  I should not be surprised; I hear it so often.  Why, why, why? I want to scream.  Why is it this way?  Why are the people who are supposed to be light (and not darkness) not?  I know what other Christians would say, “Well, the only difference between us and them is that we’re redeemed.”  Really?  Seriously?  [Do you hear an echoing refrain when I do that?..it’s my incredulity showing through.]  There should be something different about you as a Christian.  Okay, excuse me while I climb down from my soapbox.

Now, I must warn you, my dear readers, I must discuss the most fascinating book I’ve been reading, and it contains a snippet of language that not all readers want to read or hear, so I’m warning you now.  The language is not gratuitous; it is necessary in this case, so if that helps, sobeit.  Do you remember several days ago when I mentioned “The Novelist as God” broadcast from Krista Tippett’s NPR Speaking of Faith?  She recommended two books by Mary Doria Russell called The Sparrow and Children of God. Both are works of science fiction, which gave me pause, because I haven’t read science fiction since I was a child and don’t find them particularly interesting, but I’ve begun The Sparrow, and I can’t put it down.  Her characters are deep, and they’re struggling with faith and life and how-it-all-works, but in such an engaging way, that you can’t help but be absorbed.  I’ll include several snippets.

In the first, John Candotti is assessing the well-being of an ailing Jesuit priest Emilio Sandez who has returned from the alien country, minus his fellow travelers.

“But when Sandoz spoke, it wasn’t what John hoped for or expected–a cleansing breakdown, a confession that could make way for the man to forgive himself, the pouring out of a story with a plea for understanding.  Some sort of emotional release.

‘Do you experience God?’ Sandoz asked him without preamble.

“Odd, how uncomfortable the question made him.  The Society of Jesus rarely attracted mystics, who generally gravitated to the Carmelites or the Trappists, or wound up among the charismatics.  Jesuits tended to be men who found God in their work, whether that work was scholarly or more practical social service.  Whatever their calling, they devoted themselves to it and did so in the name of God.  ‘No directly.  Not as a friend or a personality, I suppose.’  John examined himself.  ‘Not, I think, even ‘in a tiny whispering sound.’’  He watched the flames for a while.  ‘I would have to say that I find God in serving His children.  ‘For I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, sick and you cared for me, imprisoned and you came to me.’’

“The words lingered in the air as the fire popped and hissed softly.  Sandoz had stopped pacing and stood motionless in a far corner of the room, his face in shadows, firelight glittering on the metallic exoskeletons of his hands.  ‘Don’t hope for more than that, John,’ he said.  ‘God will break your heart.’  And then he left.”

And here is when the intimate group of friends discover there is music coming from this alien society.

“There was a part of Anne Edwards that was thrilled about the discovery, that gloried in being this close to history in the making.  And deeper, in a place she rarely inspected, there was a part of her that wanted to believe as Emilio seemed to believe, that God was in the universe, making sense of things.

“Once, long ago, she’d allowed herself to think seriously about what human beings would do, confronted directly with a sign of God’s presence in their lives.  The Bible, that repository of Western wisdom, was instructive either as myth or as history, she’d decided.  God was at Sinai and within weeks, people were dancing in front of a golden calf.  God walked in Jerusalem and days later, folks nailed Him up and then went back to work.  Faced with the Divine, people took refuge in the banal, as though answering a cosmic multiple-choice question: If you saw a burning bush, would you (a) call 911, (b) get the hot dogs, or (c) recognize God?  A vanishingly small number of people would recognize God, Anne had decided years before, and most of them had simply missed a dose of Thorazine.”

And here are the struggles of Emilio Sandoz again:

“He found the life of Jesus profoundly moving; the miracles, on the other hand, seemed a barrier to faith, and he tended to explain them to himself in rational terms.  It was as though there were only seven loaves and seven fishes.  Maybe the miracle was that people shared what they had with strangers, he thought in the darkness.

“He was aware of his agnosticism, and patient with it.  Rather than deny the existence of something he couldn’t perceive himself, he acknowledged the authenticity of his uncertainty and carried on, praying in the face of his doubt.  After all, Ignatius of Loyola, a soldier who had killed and whored and made a thorough mess of his soul, said you could judge prayer worthwhile simply if you could act more decently, think more clearly afterward.  As D.W. once told him, ‘Son, sometimes it’s enough just to act less like a shithead.’  And by that kindly if inelegant standard, Emilio Sandoz could believe himself to be a man of God.

“So, while he hoped someday to find his way to a place in his soul that was closed to him now, he was content to be where he was.  He never asked God to prove His existence to little Emilio Sandoz, just because he was acting less like a shithead nowadays.  He never asked for anything, really.  What he’d been given was more than enough to be grateful for, whether or not God was there to receive or care about thanks.

“Lying in bed, that warm August night, he felt no Presence.  He was aware of no Voice.  He felt as alone in the cosmos as ever.  But he was beginning to find it hard to avoid thinking that if ever a man had wanted a sign from God, Emilio Sandoz had been hit square in the face with one this morning, at Arecibo.

“He slept, after that.  Sometime just before dawn the next morning, he had a dream.  He was sitting in the dark, in a small place.  He was alone and it was very quiet and he could hear himself breathing, the blood singing in his ears.  Then a door he had not suspected was there began to open: and he could see a flare of light beyond it.

“This dream first sustained and then haunted him for many years afterward.”

I’m only a third of the way into the book, but it’s so difficult to put down!

So, pull yourself away from the book now.  I have to show you something that my sister Amy posted on her Facebook page: “I love Jesus but I drink a little.” It had Dan and me rolling.  I’ll let it speak for itself.

Gladys has a website here if you want more laughs.  She’s sure to crack you up!

Now, pick one person around you and give them a hug.  Just because.  If that’s too intimate, give them a big smile.  Enjoy your day!