We are But a Child, in Need of our Mother's Heartbeat

Originally, this was written as a sermon; but, my homiletics professor recommended turning it into a short story. It's a work in progress (as I imagine most, if not all of the work on this blog will be), so, please, be so kind as to comment. :)

(setting: a small, Evangelical college-town)

It’s Friday night. Looking into the mirror you gaze long enough just to make sure there’s no fish cake or stringed bean left in your teeth. After squirting the final spray of cologne or perfume on your lapel, you straighten your jacket, or smooth down your dress and begin the walk down the shadowed hallway of your dormitory or home. Greeting you in the foyer is your date – “not exactly as pictured, but it’ll do”…says your date. Only kidding – you remembered to remove the stringed bean, right?

Arm in arm you step the icy concrete steps and shuffle the main street chunnel shuffle. Having arrived early to the evening program, you choose what you think to be prime seating – close enough to the front to see but not so close that you find yourself seated amongst mothers and their young children – heaven forbid. Flipping nervously through the program you make small talk that amounts to nothing, and anxiously await the commencement of the play. You’ve waited your whole life to see this play – your mother used to promise you’d see it “one day” but here you are a college student or a married professor and have yet to see your mother’s word fulfilled. At last you bought the tickets yourself – eager to curb the curiosity that has plagued you for so many years.

“Shh, it’s starting!” someone barks (rather rudely you think) two seats down.

Sheesh, you’d been keeping your internal dialogue, well, just that, internal. As if someone actually heard you. Nevertheless the brutish woman is right, and in a flash of light the stage is illuminated. Immediately, your eyes are drawn to a single stool in the centre of the stage. Upon this stool sits a stout man of about forty. Neatly dressed but not neatly enough to hide his slightly overweight physique and grizzly beard, he reminds you of your father, or your friend’s father if the image is too difficult to accept.

“Objective truth is everything!” shouts the stout modern minded man, slumped to one side as he proclaims this statement with vigor.

As the whiteboard lights up in the background and the podium before him comes into view, you see that he’s just played his theological trump card across the age-old debate about why bad things happen to good people.

“Well that certainly hasn’t been my experience!”

Suddenly, your head jerks to stage left as you adjust the rim of your glasses and carefully focus your eyes on the scene about to unfold. A young woman, no older than twenty stands upon a teetering kitchen chair, her leggy physique immediately capturing your attention.

“I said, ‘that certainly hasn’t been my experience!’” she yells once more, desperately trying to reveal the truth in the dark closet of her encounters.

You fall back against your seat -- your shoulders tense as the stout modernist sharply unfolds a newspaper.

“Once a thriving city in Sumatra, Indonesia, Banda Aceh is a deserted wasteland following a devastating tsunami that ripped through the area a week ago…. Survivors of the disaster -- Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu or Christian – face a severe test of faith…. Local fishermen carry the body of an infant amid piles of debris…in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.”

A slow yet precise tutting noise develops from the mouth hidden behind the grizzly beard.

“Ttt, ttt, ttt. Where is God?”

From his pocket appears a pad of sticky notes – you see, he’s come prepared.

“Once a thriving city” he begins, “Banda Aceh is a deserted wasteland following a devastating tsunami. Ah, yes, of course.”

He feverishly scribbles on his notepad with the dedication of a well-spoken politician.

“God is good!” he exclaims as he thrusts the sticky note haphazardly across the inked up page.

“Survivors…Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu or Christian, all face a severe test of faith. Hm. Aha! Jesus is Lord!” he exclaims once more, this time writing more feverishly than the last as if such a pace were possible.

“Local fishermen carry the body of an infant amid piles of debris…God is faithful!”

You start to chuckle a bit in your seat glancing to see if your date and those around you are catching the irony on stage. Because, again and again the stout modernist scribbles the objective so called “saving” truth and again and again he defiantly slaps the sticki note to the newsprint, only to watch his words literally fall off the page.

“God damn sticki notes” he curses, “I’d like to meet the guy who thought this dumb stuff up…clearly it’s not working!”

All at once he curses the manufacturer, not realizing the unintentional curse of the creator, the Almighty God. You feel a sort of sympathy for the guy – clearly what he’s doing isn’t working, so what is?

You turn your eyes once more to the leggy post-modernist, who this time enters the stage, her legs shaking, knees buckling, with duct-tape placed across her mouth.

“Just listen” you hear…but not from her mouth.

This time a hidden voice from offstage speaks the words, signaling an internal dialogue.

“Just listen,” she tells herself.

A man with a ratty shirt approaches the leggy girl and she slowly notices what at first glance appear to be grape stains from the local Indonesian market. Instead, blood stains mark up his shirt and pants, and even his hands and feet testify to some sort of injustice.

Suddenly, Indonesian mothers carrying their infants flood the stage with four fishermen at their side – as if they were being herded somewhere. All at once the crowd sits at the feet of the girl, staring with their glassy hopeless gazes at her pained face. The young postmodernist’s eyes well up with tears and they fall gently yet unnoticeably so upon the faces of those staring up at her. As the lighting shifts you notice that they are all reading something…some thing or many things written all over the young girl’s body. The leggy postmodernist realizes what they are doing, or at least she thinks she does, and immediately her heart is filled with cheer – they are reading and noticing what she has worked so hard her whole life to portray! Across her chest the words “good morals” are read. Down each leg – “authenticity”. In the crevice between her shoulder blades – the words “burden carrier” are scrawled. Oh, how she is delighted – they are noticing and reading about, well, Jesus! Her Lord, their Lord, creator of the universe! Then, all at once, their gaze shifts ever so carefully to the ground, and suddenly her joy turns to mourning. Their eyes, yes, are seeing, but their ears are not hearing. Their faces? Filled with confusion.

“Who is this?” one of the fishermen asks.

The three men standing next to him do not know.

“Who is this, who is this one who saves?” the oldest of the Indonesian mothers asks.

One by one, no body knows. A muffled cry seems to almost bleed from behind the duct taped mouth. Jesus?

“Mhmjeshmsus” -- you hear it again.

The climax of the play has arrived. Afraid you’ll miss even one moment of the conclusion to follow you move only to regain your posture. Here you are, on the edge of your seat, waiting, yearning -- desperate to see what will happen next. As the lights dim to signal the start of the last scene your ears are tickled ever so slightly by a noise a few rows ahead.

“You must be joking!” you mumble.

“I thought we sat away from all the moms and crying babies!”

You roll your eyes apologetically at your date and twiddle your thumbs anxiously as you wait for the mother to take her child out of the theatre. The scene opens and dialogue between the leggy postmodernist and the stout modernist begins. But that stupid woman with her stupid baby -- why won’t they just leave? You know that you are justified in your annoyance because three rows over a man in a leather jacket has just casually coughed to signal his frustration, and a few seconds earlier another mom leaned over and pointed towards the exit. But nothing, nothing is happening! Just when you thought your face couldn’t get any redder, the bloody woman starts singing to her child!

“Shine Jesus shine, fill this land with the Father’s glory.”

As if!

“But I am Israel!” you hear from the stage.

“But I am Israel! Father we are Israel!”

No! This can’t be happening – what’s going on – Israel? You’re missing the play – the theology, the historical allusions – you’re missing it all because of, because of:

“Shine Jesus shine, fill this land with the Father’s glory.”

You’ve had enough. You stand up and with misguided steps plunk your way over to the mother and her nursing infant. As you round the corner you find your hand gripping the varnished wood of the front pew. The mother turns and for a moment clutches her chest before crumpling to the ground, the infant tucked gently and quietly beneath her breast. The mother’s chocolate colored eyes no longer look intently into the expectant eyes of her child. Nor do they fix themselves upon your shocked and lit up face. Instead they look past you as if they were considering something in your background, something there but not yet.

“Hear us, O Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock”.

Not realizing what is happening in the depths of the floor below, the actors continue their lines on stage.

“You who sit enthroned between the cherubim, shine forth before Ephraim, Benjamin, and Mannasseh. Awaken your might; come and save us. Restore us, O God; make your face shine upon us, that we may be saved.”

As you fumble in your pocket for your cell phone, the stout modernist fumbles with the edges of his sticki notes and continues:

“O LORD God Almighty, how long will your anger smolder against the prayers of your people? You have fed them with the bread of tears; you have made them drink tears by the bowlful. You have made us a source of contention to our neighbors, and our enemies mock us. Restore us, O God Almighty; make your face shine upon us, that we may be saved.”

The doors to your left from where the 'Exit' sign stares you down fly open, and men and women in uniform rush in, their faces dull as if words were never spoken from their mouths. Meanwhile the leggy postmodernist continues on stage:

“You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it, and it took root and filled the land. The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches. It sent out its boughs to the Sea, its shoots as far as the River. Why have you broken down its walls so that all who pass by pick its grapes? Boars from the forest ravage it and the creatures of the field feed on it. Return to us, O God Almighty! Look down from heaven and see! Watch over this vine, the root your right hand has planted, the son you have raised up for yourself. Your vine is cut down, it is burned with fire; at your rebuke your people perish.”

In unison the stout modernist and leggy postmodernist craft their final words:

“Let your hand rest on the man at your right hand, the son of man you have raised up for yourself. Then we will not turn away from you; revive us, and we will call on your name. Restore us, O LORD God Almighty; make your face shine upon us, that we may be saved.”