Christian Clarity Review

Chapter Eighteen:

BethAnn
Tallahassee:

The buildings are red brick; grey stone. The campus is filled with green lawns, walkways, benches, sports complexes, security phones, lamposts, trees and fountains. Driving is easy ( an ambidextrous confusion juggling coffee, books, and cellular phones mandated on all by the rules) as it is all one way roads blocked here and there with historic monuments and artsy statuary. Parking is no longer a problem, given the new decks and lots. The weather is good for outdoor scenery all four seasons.

She wants to see snow; the familiar and clean of it; the way it unites everything in white and cold and makes everything start over from a clean, abrupt line; to see the line grow and recede unpredictably as the days and hours go by; to see a standard of what is uncontrolable as the backdrop and surface against which people come into focus. But things being what they are here, the snow can’t exist here. There is a different kind of winter here; a cold of bare limbs and blown leaves; the absence of mosquitoes; vegetation growing and falling between the evergreen hollies and the wind that still has the nip that puts red on cheeks and chaps on lips. There is just enough of it for sweaters and warm coffees in the small shops that cater to lovers of books and winter fashions.

——-

In a large room with stadium seating and a huge heat pump humming in the background, she sits doodling on a pad.

Instructor: “What is disease? Beyond the textbook answer, what is it?”

The class is silent.

Instructor: There is no wrong answer. Other than God.

The class laughs at her obvious humor.

Instructor: But what is it? What does it do? When we say someone has a disease –of course we don’t say it like that –we say they have cancer –or MS –that they have a particular kind, even class of disease. The big news these days is bird flu. But what does it really mean to get a disease? To get bird flu? What happens to you? Anyone? Somebody!

The class laughs again.

Student: It’s a loss of function.

Instructor: Not bad. Loss of function. But what is a loss of function?

The class doesn’t answer.

Instructor, as she writes on the overhead: It is a ..loss ..of ..freedom.

She caps the pen: How much freedom? Depends on the disease and how far it has progressed. So philosophically, in reality, what is a disease? If disease is evil –and I think you’d better check into Chattahoochee if you think it isn’t –what is the evil of getting a disease beyond the possible pain?

Student #2: A temporary or permanent loss of free will.

Instructor: We have a prodigy among us. You’re the first student in my ten years of teaching this class to answer correctly. What is your name?

Student #2: Beth Ann Black.

Instructor: Well, Beth Ann Black, if the loss of free will is the result of disease, what of those born with organic dysfunction? To what can they be restored if they never had true freedom to begin with?

BethAnn: They have the freedom they have.

Instructor: But they are born into a larger world of freedom and their lack of freedom necessitates their care by others who have more freedom than themselves. So their dysfunction results in a net loss of free will for the overall civilization. They are, in a larger context, a disease of civilization, of us. Right?

BethAnn: No. If their care teaches, shows something deeper than what would be found without it, then they have contributed to the overall freedom by expanding what it is to be free. To be noble. To sacrifice.

Instructor smiles: The religious education peeks through. I take that back. You’re not a prodigy. You are a lawyer.

Class laughs.

BethAnn smiles.

Instructor: But we can agree that the foundational understanding of a disease is that it takes away freedom; it impairs the will first and foremost? That a loss of free will is evil and a disease to be fought? That fighting against losses of free will is the coordinating job of society? It brings us together. As nurses we are nurses not just of individuals but of society. Right?

BethAnn: Evil is a disease. Absolutely.

Instructor: Well done.

BethAnn blushes.

————

In a quiet neighborhood on the other side of town she unlocks the door. Dropping the book bag, she looks at the phone. There are two messages.

Message #1: “Hi Bethy. This is John. Meet me at Starbucks? Call me.”

Message #2: a hang up.

Your Mom still hasn’t called? : Her roommate comes in with an empty clothes hamper.

Beth: No. Nothing. You get my clothes too?

Roommate: Yeah. Again.

Beth: Thanks.

Roommate: How was class?

Beth: I made some points. I guess.

TV: In other news two more Marines killed today just outside Baghdad when a IED went off beside their humvee. Army spokesmen said the tragedy was that a Iraqi civilian had reported the possibility of an attack in the area but the report did not reach the unit in time.

Beth: Why would she say that?

Roommate: What?

Beth: Professor Guilles. She was going along on a line of thought and I was following in the book, then all of the sudden she goes off about retarded people and society.

Roommate: What class?

Beth: Nursing ethics.

Roommate: Maybe she’s skipping ahead.

Beth: Why tell us to study the book if she isn’t going to follow it?

Beth flops into a papazon chair and grabs the tv remote.

Roommate: My mom said you could stay with us over break. You should really think about it.

Beth: You worry too much. My mom hasn’t disappeared like this before. But she is gone sometimes for long periods doing stuff for the government. She’ll show up, say she’s sorry and buy me something.

Roommate: She shouldn’t put you through this.

Beth: She’s forging ahead to gain rights for us sisters in the marketplace.

Roommate: Riiight. Still, she could at least call. Maybe you’ll get a car this time.

Beth: I wouldn’t do that too her.

Roommate: Why not?

Pictures of large ice caps and rocks filled with penguins looking at the ocean’s edge flash onto the TV. An image of a leopard seal swimming under the water fades in. His underwater range is so far empty of penguins.

TV: The leopard seal hunts most successfully by laying in wait. His best chance is when the penguins first hit the water. Once they are out at sea they are safe. From him.

Music soars as the first wave of penguins flop onto their stomachs, slide toward the raging surf and plunge into the water in slow motion. The scene changes to an underwater shot of the penguins and lines of air bubbles they leave behind as they zoom deeper and deeper and then out to sea at normal speed.

Beth: I did something good today. Or something happened to me –I’m not sure which.

Roommate: What now?

Beth: I saw a beautiful boy and I let him go. I didn’t say a word to him at the cafeteria. You know how you can just sit near a waterfall in the woods and it’s a beautiful thing. You wouldn’t even think to take it with you or change it. It just is. You can’t stop it, even if you wanted to. He was like that; just sitting there reading a book. I didn’t go over. I just ..let him go. In my mind I guess I put him back when I never picked him up.

Roommate: You just got it like that, huh?

They both smile. Beth shrugs.

The phone rings. .

Beth looks at the caller ID and picks it up: Hi, John. Starbucks is good.

——————————————–

Homam:
Islamabad

Homam,

These things take time. I know I’ve said it before, but a coin like this just doesn’t ‘get sold’. It’s so rare that it will be a rather long process of authentication and then only an institutional buyer would do you justice. Working on it. Be patient.

I know it’s real. I just don’t know how I know. Perhaps it was you, standing there so simply in what, I’m sure as compared to what you’re wearing now, was rags looking straight at me with no guile. If there is any gold in this world, that is it.

Not to be rude, but to warn you: one dealer has already suggested it might be a multi-generational fraud. That your father or grandfather or even a great great grandfather made it, didn’t tell his son and now and you in good faith have passed it on as a true find. You shouldn’t worry about these things. Somebody made it. It’s gold. That is all. Besides, if you had somebody trying to look out for you that way, we shouldn’t look too hard on them even if it’s a fake.

The rest is a process you needn’t worry about.

Peace and prosperity,

Paul

Homam signs off the net and folds the notebook up.

He hasn’t told Paul that Paul is the first coin dealer he had come across or that when he had asked of coin dealers, he had only asked one friend. Non-believers don’t believe. That’s what they do. That’s who they are. They want you to go with them through a journey of discovery as if doing you a favor. They want to hold you up as a simultaneous liar and friend. They are caught in the laws of gold: they say yes to buy, then ‘I’m not sure’ after they have it while they try to make everything have a rare quality and are never sure if they have succeeded. They try to make every normal thing extraordinary.

She looks at him through the chic sunglasses and he smiles. She wears no burka amongst the heathen who are certain that they are holy because they do. And she is holy.

They are due at the airport in three hours. Paris is waiting.

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Underground:

Albrite: It could be a very plain .. a simple abecedary program.

Gregg: Ab-sah what?

Albrite: Abecedary. It’s the whole list of little sayings for an alphabet to help you remember them. “A is for apple, B is for boy”. Like that.

Mike: So it isn’t trying to reach out from some distant past?

Albrite: Maybe. If it is, that would make sense. It would use an emotional situation of the same heart as that remembrance device. It would use the situation as the same kind of reminder to something we know, that we just haven’t noticed we know.

Mike: To turn the remembrance, or experience of feelings into..

Izzy: Pronunciation. It wouldn’t even need to be in the same type of body. Just something physical to make a sound through. So no matter if there were any physical changes..

Mary: ..the emotions would be the same.

Albrite: But which one ? That’s the thing about abecedaries: they are very subjective. You could just as well say “A is for another.”

Mike: It could be a validator for the whole alphabet in a wrap? It can be any pronunciation of any word or combination of them comprised of feelings as alphabet?

Albrite rubs his hand on the wall: Like a guardian. A passphrase brought out of the subconscious instead of a password. Only this could be an emotional set, like a master list of all possible emotions ordered and linked to be a database.

Jimmy: It’s waiting to hear something.

Albrite: The things people say.

Mary: It’s not teaching, it’s asking?

Hayt: Maybe.

Gregg: Six people walk into a strange room. At least one of them is going to worship it because it is strange. Another is going to doubt it exists and is strange at all. Another will doubt whether they exist at all because of what the room supposedly does to them as the essence of its strangeness. At least one will try to get out. At least one will say everything has always been strange. And somebody will try to break it up to prove their power over everything.

Albrite: ..and at least one will try to learn something from the room to use after one gets out.

Gregg: That would be the one that worships it.

Mike: Everywhere we go we take speech, emotion and awareness with us.

Albrite: And all of that came from somewhere.

Izzy: What would you call a living being, the source of a spirit that shapes other spirits into charms and spells as a alphabet and is an abecedary of those charms and spells? A guardian? Of what?

Mary: This room? Of getting out?

Albrite: Men.

Mike: An idol. Anti-Christ.

Albrite looks at Mike: What is an idol?

Mike looks at the wall, glimmering in the light: It’s an understanding you think you can’t get past. Because you think you are past all the obstructions and have arrived at enlightenment already. And we can’t force out way past it.

They stand in silence for some time.

Jimmy lays down and goes to sleep.

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Jonah 2:7 When my soul fainted within me, I remembered Jehovah; And my prayer came in unto thee, Into thy holy temple.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen