Christian Clarity Review

Henry

He’s really back?

Behind the wheel, he sits unsure of what he will do as the leaves fall from the oak and sycamore trees around him. The people walk into the park to his left. The old brownstone stands waiting as children draw graffiti on the street beneath the trees; an ambulance goes by, passing through slowly without its siren or lights.

Henry holds the torn out page from the phone book in his hand. There is an address; a small map of how to reach the Fourth Street Misson.

He had driven into the city. Several wrong turns and some one way streets later, he had found a parking space across from the misson. Right behind the Church.

He wants to talk with someone. But having already made his mistakes in front of the pastors in town and theirs in front of him made for a certain emotional economy between them all; a goo he didn’t want on his hands or his heart in the middle of all of this. Together they have always been no more than fake dissidents from something they can’t articulate even as they fight over who will make the next attempt to say it.

Henry doesn’t mind knowing that about himself, admitting it, if it means moving into what he wants to know. He wants, needs a real dissident; a bonifide son of a bitch from his own faith.

That is Tom of all people.

Maybe it’s better just to let things go.

Time had done a lot for Laura since Samuel had first turned up missing–him too. But the missing crew, the artifact and now the laughter. They didn’t simply make his personal life seem smaller and less important: they were hitting at the foundation of his own faith in which he had thought to be discreetly secure in the crowd that mattered.

Dmitri is scary now; really expecting him to articulate how to laugh with joy on the spot. To say it as a sentence!

The number one rule of science is reproducing the proof over and over: Reproducibility.

Joy? It is an unspoken rule: nobody does joy. You do happiness in small streaks if you are lucky. Children. Family. Next to the remnants of the okra and the peas on your plate is suddenly a slice of pie. In odd moments out of nowhere something happens and it is gone before you understand what’s happening. You just pretend you did it on purpose. Everybody knows that.

Joy is a word children use to make their own happiness seem a little bit better than their companions; a church word to make everything seem better than it really is. It is a fake word used in the middle of the general avarice for self-defense to let the other person know their life is just as good if not better than your own. It is one of those things that happens in heaven in the brilliant light that you can’t understand until after you are dead. Trying to actually make it happen on purpose, here and now, is for imbeciles.

Now it is a science project? People are killed for laughing at the wrong time the wrong way. Everyone hates fake laughter.

The whole thing is presumptuous.

You aren’t a joy kind of guy; rarely laughing out loud in public. You understand things quietly. You are steady and level headed. You are for the good and against the bad, for happy every now and then, especially on holidays. You know the rules.

But how do you fight the other guy’s holy vision for you? Now Dmitri really thinks you can do it, but you are horrible, evil enough to withhold the method from anyone else!

I should know where to begin to undo the weird roots of Dmitiri’s accusation and prove my innocence. Dmitri said it himself! You can’t prove you don’t know something.

I resent that I should have to try. They should know better than to ask me. It makes me guilty of something else in their eyes to prove I am innocent of the charge. And they know that.

This is going to wreak how things are, the decent life you’ve built. You are being endangered from these events that can’t be undone and which now force you into an idiocy you dispise in other people’s fake smiles and half-assed jocularity: they expect you to be happy now. They will say things that are their best happiness and well wishing and expect to hear more in return and that you will lead them to some place of paradise and agree that everyone can get there.

They will treat you like a pastor. Like Tom was treated.

After all, it is a vision. No telling how many people Dmitri has ‘confided’ in by now! If he hasn’t already, it is just a matter of time. You know Dmitri: to tell somebody else will be like giving a candy bar to himself. “Hey! I had a vision in which Henry laughted with joy. But now he won’t tell anyone else how!” Dmitri will say it humbly, as if it hurt him to think that about you. But he will say it. In the atmosphere of incredulity surrounding the artifact and the laughter, they will believe him.

Henry opens the door and steps out. His heart races as he makes his way across the traffic and fifteen years of silence.

He doesn’t know what to say. Each step closer to the door, instead of giving him words to say, takes away any thoughts he tries to prepare. All he can do as he opens the door and hears the little bell ring is to breath deeply and try to calm down.

It’s automatic.

The girl behind the partition looks at the ad, points down the hall and says, “He’s in the back. You don’t have to knock–he’s cleaning the closet under the stairs.”

He nods slowly.

“Do you want me to get him for you?” she asks.

“No.” he replies quickly. “I’ll find him. Thanks.”

———

The man hears the door open and close and assumes it is Gloria. If she is coming herself it means someone needs him despite his request that no one disturb him until he has sorted out the junk that has built up in the closet.

There are beer cans, whiskey bottles, old cigarette butts, a large piece of cardboard, a box of old magazines and various plastic wrappers and bags between the mops, brooms and dustpans. He has found a vacuum cleaner in perfect working order that he had lost so long ago he had forgotten about it. All of it is scattered around on the floor in small piles.

He holds a trash bag open and is sweeping a pile of broken glass into it when he hears a voice that speaks to him familiarly. He instantly recognizes Henry Fielding.

Henry: They changed all the roads. They’re all one way. Different.

Tom Chambers turns and stares: They did that three years ago. Henry.

They look at each other. There had been accusations, words said, things done, feelings trampled and spirits broken. Then silence.

Henry: We never came back. Laura..

“They changed the roads?” Tom smiles and begins to laugh. “Is that all you have to say?” He raises his hand. “No! No– don’t say anything. Let me wash my hands.”

Henry nods and rubs his hands together. He watches Tom walk through a door, listens to the sound of running water; a paper towel being torn.

Tom reappears wiping his hands on the towel. They look each other in the face.

“It’s good to see you.” Tom extends his hand and they shake and finally each hugs the other.

Henry: Tom, I’m sorry..

Tom: “No. It’s not necessary. It was God’s will.” He pushes Henry away and gives him the once over. “You’ve gained weight. You needed to. How’s Laura?”

Henry: Good. She’s good. She uh,… she finished her degree and opened an office downtown–consults corporate clients, you know, insurance companies, things like that on their investments. She’s good at it. You know her.

Tom laughs. “Afraid so. No don’t–it’s okay.” he adds quickly as Henry begins to apologize again. “I let it go, Henry. It wasn’t her fault. She couldn’t see anything.”

There is an awkward pause.

Henry: I didn’t know you were back in town.

Tom: Five, almost six years now.

Henry: I didn’t know. Really I didn’t know. I get so absorbed in work. I would’ve come. My god, Tom, there’s no excuse.

“Henry, don’t. That’s over.” Tom motions to a back office. “Come on in. I want to catch up. Tell me what’s going on.”

Henry: More than you can imagine.

Tom: Oh, I don’t know about that.

Henry: Not this. But that’ll hold for a minute. What about you? What happened to you? You dissappeared and no one knew where you were. Somebody–Buddy Wilson I think, told me you were in the Army.

Tom: Yeah. I went in for four. Then I went to a small church in Alaska.

Henry: Alaska? I guess I can understand that. We all acted so horribly. No wonder you wanted to get away.

Tom: It was a good thing. It was good for me. I loved it to tell you the truth. I came back only because I had promised Dad that if he retired and couldn’t find anyone to take his place, I’d come back. So ..here I am.

Henry: I was sorry to hear about your Dad. I didn’t get to go to the funeral. Work…

Tom: That’s alright. How are you doing? What are you doing?

Henry: I’m okay I guess. I’m a senior scientist with the Astrobiology Institute of JPL. We work with Crenshaw Hummings on space habitates.

Tom: J-P-L?

Henry: The Jet Propulsion Lab–NASA.

Tom: I’m impressed! Laura must be proud.

Henry: Yeah. Yeah, she is, I guess. Listen to me: ‘Senior’ scientist.

Tom: Why not? That’s good. Any word of Samuel?

Henry: No. Not since then.

Tom: I’m sorry. Not a word? Nothing?

Henry shook his head: No.

Tom: Something is up. What’s the matter? You looked me up for a reason.

Henry sees he has been misunderstood: No. No it’s not us. We’re strained sometimes you know, but we’ll be together ’til we die. No–it’s something at work. Something has happened.

Tom: A NASA scientist has come to me–a minister at a local misson to ask a work related question?

Henry cleared his throat: It’s a little complicated but…yes. Besides, we have psychologists on staff. It’s not quite the leap you might think.

Tom: Okay. What is it?

Henry relates the events leading up to the discovery of the writing that is the artifact and his theory concerning it. He tells of Dmitri’s vision.

Tom sits back in his chair, stunned and carefully looks at Henry. He leans forward, rises, walks over to the window and stares out at the crowds in the intersection, with both hands in his pockets.

After a moment, Henry speaks again. “So what do you think? What’s going on?”

Tom: Coffee? I drink a lot of coffee.

Henry: Sure.

Tom sets up the coffee maker and sits: This artifact? Can you just walk away?

Henry: I think its too late for that. Something is going on. I’m not sure what. But why would I want to? If I walk someone else will have to do it.

Tom: You know, everybody wants to be holy, until its time to be holy. And where we are going everything you knew is going to be left behind. I just want you to know that. I’m not saying you’ve got free will. I’m just saying..

Henry: You can’t protect me, Tom. We all have to grow. If I knew how to grow toward the answer I would. I just don’t.

Tom: Everything you know about life, about language—how to use it, what it is, what its for, everything–is a lie.

Tom says it comfortably; easily. He is obviously long past the intial indredulity it might have once held for him. He is old, maybe even mature in it. But he is wary of saying it.

Henry suspects Tom has wanted it to come out as if he is making a run for the truth before something catches him from behind; as if Tom thinks Henry would think it should cost him something to speak it but has forgotten to oblige Henry’s supposed expectation. He loves Tom for that weakness and pretense and for the inadvertence of forgetting it. The years disappear as he snaps back. “I don’t understand. And you are acting as if its something you don’t really want to talk about.”

Tom: It’s something I cannot say, but that God says through me. The speech of this world is a creature. He is anti-Christ.

Henry: The artifact?

Tom: No. All language of this earth. The non-creating speech of sin. It’s a creature. It is both an “it” and a “them”. It’s looking for something. I always thought that. Now this.

Henry: Language is a creature? The words we are speaking right now?

Tom: It’s looking for a way out. There are two speaks, two distinct languages in total reality: not one.

Henry: There are a lot of languages. The artifact…

Tom: No. Only two. Here is the proof: create something on the desk between us with an act of speech.

Henry: First Dmitri wants joy on cue– now you want an act of creation?

Tom: You can’t do it.

Henry: Thank you! Nobody can.

Tom: Create something invisible, then. The invisible is real.

Henry: I can’t do that. That’s not what words are for. You know that.

Tom: Would it help if you tried in German or Spanish or any other language? Zulu? Arabic?”

Henry: No.

Tom: So it’s clear that you really only know one language: a language which cannot create anything. Non-creating speech.

Henry: Put it that way, I suppose so. But that would be for everyone. Where do you get two?

Tom: And God said let there be light. And there was light.

Henry says nothing.

Tom: God is one. Jesus Christ is the only word of God. He is creating speech. He created the other. The other is sin, Belial, the anti-Christ, the anti-word of God. The voice of the dead.

Henry: Hold on. Wait a minute…just wait a minute.

Tom: You came to see me to do speech about speech. You speak words in search of other words that when you find them will enable you to speak still other words. That’s not God. That’s a beast that has devoured the world just to speak more of itself looking for a way out of itself. Wading through emotions on this doesn’t change the truth of it. This doesn’t fit in the emotional experience or wisdom you have because all you have up to this point is in the speech of sin—that creature. It could not let you go because it can’t create anything. In order to understand what sin is, you have to be free from it and you can’t be free from it by any use of itself. So if you are free from it and you understand what you have heard, you have heard the voice of God and you have been created again as a new creation in Jesus Christ. Do you understand?

Henry wants to be confused. His confusion would be staring at another human being in a reasonable way while he watches himself and what is going on inside. It would be to do the etiquette perfectly; to remain blameless to all he has known. It would be to be in the middle of graduate class, after years of great sacrifice, sweat and competition to get there, with your soul on display, with various pins in it and diagrams explaining its functions, the professor speaking authoritatively on its origin and uses, and all you had to do was pass the test to get the money; the universe to open up and deposit your own soul in your hand, for you to know it, that the other is a fake, for them to look curiously at it and say in genuine confusion “What is that?” and you, in naked solidarity with them against the truth you know to say, “I don’t know.” It is a bigger catastrophe than Dmitri’s accusation and the problem of joy.

When he had first entered the building he had not thought it possible: Tom had just trumped Dmitri’s accusation. He looks at Tom carefully, the way he has learned to look when saying certain and scholarly things, things of import to security and stability; starts to say something and stops.

Tom speaks quietly: God is sitting on an actual throne in actual heaven. He is issuing decrees as his word that are being created as he says them. One of those decrees is your actual individuality in Christ, his word. I know that you came in at a certain level of emotion, thinking to be of a certain education in the world, fluent in the speech of analysis of the world and thinking to use it to investigate the thing that has appeared in front of you. Now you have started completely over and know you know nothing and there are others waiting on you, depending on you to lead them toward joyful laughter in the speech you came in with as if it were the only speech in total reality. Welcome to eternal life on this earth in the midst of others who are as yet, dead in sin. It’s a dangerous thing to be really holy in this world, isn’t it?

After a short silence, Henry says, “We would’ve played golf and you wouldn’t have said any of this?”

Tom: I don’t control God as Word. But if I did, maybe if you were winning.

Henry: Why not?

Tom: God has to arrange circumstances in such a way as make you hear..quietly. What has happened is that God has re-created you in the belly of the beast and caused the beast to cast you out of its mouth. The sign of the prophet Jonah has been perfromed on you. Hang on a minute.

Tom picks up his Bible and thumbs through the pages: Here it is: Jeremiah fifty one, fourty four: “And I will punish Bel in Babylon, and I will bring forth out of his mouth what he hath swallowed up; and the nations shall not flow together any more unto him: yea, the wall of Babylon is fallen.”

Bel is that other speech, is the beast that does nothing more than set one of us against another as if it were not there –as if speech itself were not a living creature but just something we use in free will. You can’t just go out and tell everyone—you don’t control God. You can’t speak Him on que. You’ll get taken out of the flesh in the end anyway because of the enmity between God and Satan, but at least God may tell someone else through you once. That beast will kill your flesh to keep from being exposed and to keep its prisoners. That’s the reality. That’s why it killed Christ.”

Henry: You are a man of unusual conversation, Tom Chambers, even for a pastor.” Henry stands up. “I don’t know what I came expecting. But it wasn’t this. Lunch tomorrow? I’ll buy. I need to think.”

Tom: I’ll buy. You’ll just have to serve it first.

Henry smiles: You got me. What time?

Tom: Eleven thirtyish.

Henry: Done. But the artifact is real and that laughter activated it. Think..pray on it for me.

Tom: I will. Read your bible.

Henry nods: Why haven’t I heard this before?

Tom: You have in small increments here and there. Under the table. Behind the door. In flashes in the open. The little things that didn’t seem to make sense, that couldn’t be added with all that you knew as knowledge and what it was. Every elect soul goes through that first encounter, that being cast out of Belial, that certainty no matter the religion we think we’ve done for years sometimes.

The coffee announces it is ready with a gurgle. Tom sticks his hands in his pockets as Henry closes the door.

——————————————–

Underground

Izzy, Mike and Gregg walk toward the opening of the caverns.

“I really don’t want to go in there.” Izzy adjhusts his light and looks at Gregg. “Get into the system. See what was happening. Download what you can.”

Gregg nods and breaks off to the control room. Rounding the corner he freezes. “Holy moly.”

Izzy and Mike come up behind him to see the immaculate cavern through the hole in the corridor. It is now squared off into a massive room, the other side and ceiling of which cannot be seen. The columns strectch upwards, disappearing into darkness as if supporting the world above. No dust is evident, not even inside the site at the opening where it had piled up during the weeks. The corridor is in perfect alignment with the opening, as if the two were meant to go together and one an extension of the other.

Mike walks out onto the surface, his footseteps echoing softly into the darkness, his light probing the depths without finding any end.

Gregg watches Mikes light trace a path that is lost in darkness everywhere it points. He doesn’t know what to say.

————————————————–

Proverbs 30:1-6 The words of Agur the son of Jakeh; the prophecy uttered by the man unto Ithiel, even unto Ithiel and Ucal: Truly *I* am more stupid than any one; and I have not a man’s intelligence. I have neither learned wisdom, nor have I the knowledge of the Holy. Who hath ascended up into the heavens, and descended? Who hath gathered the wind in his fists? Who hath bound the waters in a mantle? Who hath established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is his son’s name, if thou knowest? Every word of +God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen