A New Novel by Gary Broughman
(Editor’s note: Each weekend we’ll publish one chapter of the new Christian novel Which One of You? here at Christian Heartbeat.)
Chapter Seventeen
Being a trained and ordained minister of God I guess I shouldn‘t need Shakespeare and Hamlet to tell me there’s more to this mystery called life than we can see, hear, touch or taste. Just
the same, the bard was a pretty smart guy so I put a lot of stock in his
ability to sniff out the truth. When Hamlet said something smelled rotten in
Denmark, I think he was working with more than his nose.
Same with Moses and that bush. I believe he probably “smelled” it burning before he saw the flames and heard God’s voice. I’ve heard it said and maybe you have too, that smell is the most intuitive of the
senses, connecting us more profoundly than the others with how we became who we
are. But still, with all the usual senses and his intuition engaged, and being
a better prophet than me to start with, Moses was still unsure of who he was
talking to and had to ask, “one more time pal, who shall I say has sent me?”
So here I am, trying to figure a way to tell the friends at Mary’s memorial about this other dimension, this place of mystery where she has gone,
and thinking that if Shakespeare and Moses had problems explaining and
understanding, why should it come easy to me. Other than that one detail,
everything was in place.
With John-John doing the detective work, we managed to locate Mary’s daughter in Tampa. Unfortunately, we were the first to find her and John-John
stumbled through giving her the bad news. Regardless, she would be there Sunday
morning. The local newspaper ran a little blurb about the event which generated
a few calls on my cell. Apparently, she and her husband had once run with a
different crowd and some people who didn’t make the local bar circuit weren’t aware of her death.
Like I said, the rest of the details -- music, power supply, flowers -- were
all in place. So as soon as I figured how to describe heaven and the afterlife,
we would be good to go. Needless to say, this wasn’t my first run at death and burial. As a pastor I had led many a funeral and
memorial. But that was different. In the church people are used to stock
formulas and definitions. We say the deceased “crossed over” or that they’ve “gone home.” Sometimes, if there’d been suffering, I’d say they “went to a better place,” or that they were “now in God’s hands,” or “bosom.” At any rate, if you said they were “now with the Lord,” the living who were church-going folk knew what you meant. They didn’t really want further explanations because that might get them thinking about
what would actually happen when they themselves “passed on” or “crossed over.”
I thought this crowd might want more than the stock formulas. Or maybe it was
me. Maybe in my new life I needed more than formulas -- or just didn’t feel comfortable spouting the old clichés. I put aside the conventional funeral verses and start scouring Shakespeare
for clues. Not much help in the Hamlet story. Surprised by a ghostly visitor
who had crossed over and back, Shakespeare’s Hamlet tells his friend, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your
philosophy.” That’s about it; Shakespeare’s Horatio walks away with a healthy fear of ghosts, but without learning much
except maybe he needs a new set of friends. Pretty soon he’ll convince himself the whole deal was a fantasy.
It’s not my goal to tell people about ghosts, demons, devils or evil forces -- from
beyond the grave or otherwise. We have Hollywood for scaring the pants off
people. I’m trying to figure a way to open a window on heaven, not hell. So my search
turns back to scripture.
I know Revelation has something to say on the subject but, you know, that’s all so confusing and controversial. I’m not looking for an argument. I try Paul’s stuff in Corinthians. Hey, I think, maybe this says it: “There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly
is one thing, and that of the earthly is another. There is one glory of the
sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars.” But he seems to lose it there. This isn’t easy stuff to work with, which is probably why Paul left it alone until some
people pressed him about it. I jump down a few verses and see something with
more promise “… if there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body …” I skip farther down the page and see he takes up this thread again. Something
about “men of dust’ and “men of heaven” … all very nice but I’m not feeling much truth beyond the words. I suspect that people looking for
more than ritual funeral service formulas about “going home to heaven” will want a little more specificity. I decide to try the man himself, and head
into the gospels to see if Jesus can make this flesh and spirit paradox a
little clearer.
Unfortunately, I learn that Jesus isn’t much more specific, just more poetic. I run through all the kingdom of heaven
parables. The kingdom of heaven “is like” this or like that. I’m reminded again of Hamlet where he tells his mother he isn’t interested in “seems,” he wants to talk about “is.” It’s the same deal. I don’t want “is like.” I want a street address -- at least an intersection, not a general
neighborhood. You say “knock and the door will open,” well, just show me that door and I’ll commence to knocking. I see a note in the margin of my Bible about Jesus
wanting us to participate in our own salvation. “FIND YOUR OWN DOOR” I wrote in capital letters. Great!
So I think of the John passage, the born again from above passage with Jesus
and Nicodemus. Maybe I’ll find a clue there. I read it over three times. Three times. Did I say three
times? Finally, I see what I’m looking for. Jesus tells Nicodemus that finding passage to the spiritual world
is like discovering the wind. You hear it, you feel it, and you know it’s real, but you can’t say where it comes from or where it’s going. You just know. You know it with your heart, not your mind. With the
right brain, not the left. You know it with your spirit. It is the language of
kindred souls, spirit speaking to spirit. It takes one to know one. Spirit
seeks spirit, spirit finds spirit, and your spirit make God’s spirit real.
But here’s the kicker, the startling thing in the whole passage, the thing, looking back
that changed my entire impression of being a preacher and a pastor. After
laying out a path from flesh and blood to rebirth as spirit, Jesus says to
Nicodemus: “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?” Nicodemus is not only a teacher but maybe the only teacher in all Judea who has
even an inkling that there is more of God to be had. And even he is confused.
Why, all these years later, does this obscure, poor-boy prophet from Nazareth
still enchant us so? Is it that he is the one, perhaps the one for all time,
who could begin to show us from where the wind blows and where it goes. He was
the one who could at least point us toward a door leading into a life full of
spirit. But even as he draws us like moths to the glowing mystery of his
vision, when we arrive we act like the Israelites who asked Moses to veil his
face so they wouldn’t have to look on the full glory of God.
At that moment -- succeed or fail, win or lose -- I vowed to never again wear
the veil. I vowed never to be the preacher on whom Jesus looks and says, “You are a teacher of my word, and yet you do not understand these things?” I would either help people solve the mystery, help them feel, follow and know
the blowing wind, help them discover rebirth in the spirit, or I would die like
Ahab strapped to the great whale. And I would no longer call myself a pastor
and preacher.
Sunday morning. It’s 10 a.m. The memorial service is to begin at 11. We are making final
preparations when Mary’s daughter comes in and introduces herself. I’m going over the music placement with our singer. John-John is out on the deck
with the guitar player making power and microphone checks. I see him testing
the tie-downs for the canopies. Several vases of lilies standing on tall wooden
stools flank our makeshift chancel. They flutter a little in the breeze but not
too much. Just enough wind to take an edge off the heat. It’s a beautiful day.
Mary’s daughter is named Teresa. She has a subdued style and tells me she did not
expect to be burying her mother so soon after seeing her father die. She asks
how well I knew her mother and how I came to be the one conducting this
service. Not wanting to complicate the day with too many personal situation, I
explain that her mother had sometimes attended the church I “once” pastored -- adding, “I hope I haven’t offended you in some way by taking the initiative with this.” She says, “not at all,” and I respond with the standard stuff about memorials being for those left
behind and that many of her mother’s friends here by the beach had wanted a chance to say goodbye. I think that is
basically true although it was only John-John who suggested it to me. I can see
out on the deck that some friends are arriving early and stopping out there to
shake hands and say hello to John-John.
“Actually …,” Teresa says, “… actually … I’m sorry.” She stops trying to speak and finds a tissue in her purse to wipe away her
tears.
“Take your time dear,” I say.
She continues. “Actually, I was glad when I heard this memorial was planned. I really wasn’t in a position to do anything -- didn’t know what to do, and it just seemed so … I don’t know, so abrupt, just to let her life end and not to somehow stop and say, ‘hey, here was a real live women, a good woman, who walked this earth.’ I don’t know; I mean she didn’t invent a cure for cancer or anything, but she wasn’t a nobody. So no, I’m not offended. I’m thankful.”
I stare into her eyes for several seconds. All that secret knowledge I was
searching for in the words of the Bible and Shakespeare? It’s right there in her eyes. Unspoken. Pure wish of the heart. Without intellect.
I finally see what her mother had wanted that day she asked to be baptized. It
wasn’t about theology at all. I had read her wish as a haunting remnant of some rule
peddling pastor who had scared her with the “you must be baptized to be saved” nonsense. But she was simply searching for a path and wasn’t sure how to get there. She thought baptism might carry the right magic, but
all she really wanted was to open a door and see the cold darkness inside her
conquered by light. I knew if I tried to put all that into words for Teresa I’d lead us both astray. I determined instead to lift her up when the time came,
to lift them all up, until the brilliance of God’s spirit penetrated like the heat of today’s Florida sun. I returned to the narrative about how I knew her mother.
“I mentioned before that your mother sometimes attended my former church?”
“Yes …” she said.
“Well, that was back before your father died. To tell the truth, I remembered
seeing them there because … well, I remembered them, but they always left right after the service -- never stayed around to say hello so I wasn’t sure who they were.”
“Then later, really just a few weeks ago, your mother saw me fishing down by the
river, and …”
“That figures,” Teresa laughed, “she loved to fish that river.”
“I sure wasn’t one of the regulars down there so I think it was just coincidence she spotted
me,” I said, “but when she saw me she asked if I would baptize her. She explained how she was
concerned your father had died without being baptized … and I told her that wasn’t something to worry about but she was worried, and so I baptized her right then
and there in the river. Honest to God, I don’t think I ever felt the spirit more active at a baptism in all my days, and I
believe that was because she was special inside and God wanted to shout out, ‘this is my daughter, and I love her so much!’”
“Thank you pastor,” she said.
“Don’t thank me, thank God. A lot of that blessing spilled over on me. I was lucky to
be there.”
I wanted to go on and say more about the night her mother died. How we talked
at the bar about how much she loved her husband, Teresa’s father. But if I started, I wasn’t sure how it would end. It was like starting into a blind canyon. Right now I
could see Teresa coming out of this day with a positive result. I kept the
details of that troubling night to myself.
Around 10:30 people start to arrive, coming inside and taking seats at the bar.
I’m wondering what time Jerry usually opens on a Sunday. I can see he has a
bartender on duty and drinks are being served, mostly Bloody Marys. John-John
is moving up and down the bar shaking hands, smiling, saying welcome and
thanking them for coming. It hits me, given the role alcohol played in Mary’s death, that maybe they could have held back until after the service. To be
drinking Bloody Marys after the violent way Mary died … somebody has to see the irony of it. What was I to do? We’re not here to start fights, I tell myself. Take them where you find them; that
was Jesus’ way. Anyhow, if I say anything I’ll probably hear back that this is how Mary would have wanted it. If it was
someone else who died, she’d be sitting here having a drink too. And maybe they’d be right.
Teresa is wearing a nice dress for the occasion and I ask if she’d like to sit up top on the deck rather than stand below in the sand where most
of the crowd will be. John-John has placed a half-dozen plastic chairs under
one of the three blue canvas canopies. I had figured Carolyn would sit there,
and maybe Sagan and his mother, and the two musicians when they weren’t playing. If anyone should be there, it is Mary’s daughter. Until this point, I realize, I’d been thinking of this as my deal, my chance to shine again, my chance to get
back before an audience. But as the people arrive I understand the stuff I told
Teresa isn’t just boilerplate; this
is for all those left behind, for Mary’s daughter, and for all the bar room regulars and unrepentant alcoholics who
counted Mary as one of their own and, just like her, need to fill the empty
spaces they try to cover with booze -- just like her, need to come out of their
hiding places like she did when she found me down by the river. And it is for
John-John who I knew was covering up something about that fatal night. And it’s for me, because I needed to break from captivity as much as anyone.
Carolyn had gone to our old church and borrowed a wooden lectern they had stored
away. It was light enough to transport and the wood gave the setup on the deck
a classier look. Looks matter. Jerry had roped off the area below the deck so cars wouldn’t park there. The tide had moved out far enough that they’d opened the gate to the beach and cars were parking just to the north. This is
a busy part of the beach and it was already starting to fill up.
