Under the canons of the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Chicago, it would have been within Bishop Landry’s discretion to suspend Miles from the exercise of his ministry pending the outcome of the investigation. The possibility never crossed Miles’s mind during their phone conversation, but about thirty seconds after he hung up, it hit him—not only mentally and emotionally, but physically. As he sat in his desk chair, energy drained from his body; his face felt flush, and he hoped Donna wouldn’t have reason to step into his study. He also hoped he would not be called upon to stand up for any reason, because he did not believe himself able to do so. Later, he would surmise that he had experienced a storm surge of adrenalin, and then the ensuing letdown as the hormone ebbed as suddenly as it had flowed. His very livelihood, to say nothing of his vocation and identity as a priest, was in serious jeopardy, but the effect of his precarious position had been stayed by the exercise of episcopal prerogative on the part of one who was not only his bishop, but his friend. Would very many other clergy under a similar cloud of suspicion have been so fortunate? He knew of his own innocence, of course, and he knew he would have ample opportunity to proclaim that innocence. He also knew that it was essentially a “he said—she said” situation, and, given the current environment of the church’s newly found awareness of its own culpability in abetting the rapacity of a handful of clergy, there would be no effective presumption in his favor. This was not a random blip on the radar screen; this was a hurricane.
Even so, and precisely because of Chase Landry’s lenient hand, the ordinary demands of his ministry did not suddenly evaporate. As his paralysis slowly abated, Miles allowed himself to glance down at his appointment schedule and task list. There was a sermon to work on, and an adult Bible study to prepare for. His article for the September issue of the monthly parish newsletter was due. He needed to check with Justin Hook about some changes in the altar rota, and touch base with the chair of the Stewardship Committee to make sure plans were in progress for the annual campaign for coming-year operating funds. He had committed himself to the gathering of some statistical data in connection with his role on the diocesan Committee on Vision and Structure. Of course, there was the continuing pastoral fallout from the recent vestry meeting that needed to be dealt with, to say nothing of his perseverant anxiety over the disintegrating lives of Rachel and Brian. Without the Tracy Lindholm mess, his plate would have been amply full; with that added complication, it was overflowing.
From such a state of ordered disarray, then, Miles Coverdale moved instinctively toward emotional and spiritual regrouping. When he felt like he could walk in a straight line, he headed toward the door of the parish office, stopping long enough to lean on the counter and distract Donna from the laborious task of posting offerings from the previous Sunday to the records of the respective donors. “Donna, I’m going to be in the church for a few minutes.” This was not an odd bit of news, as she was accustomed to her boss stepping into the church for any number of reasons several times during a typical workweek. So she merely glanced in his direction and smiled quickly. “Thanks, Father,” was her only verbal acknowledgement.
Miles proceeded through the cloister along the side of the garth and into the church via the sacristy door. It was still pleasantly cool—a residue from the air conditioner having cycled on for Morning Prayer not too much earlier. Once inside the church proper, he genuflected toward the tabernacle that was placed in the center of a long shelf (known technically as a retable) attached to the wall behind the main altar. Hanging above the altar was an oil lamp that burned perpetually, save for the roughly forty-eight hour interval between the conclusion of the liturgy on Maundy Thursday each year and the administration of Holy Communion at the end of the Great Vigil of Easter. The lamp indicated the presence within the tabernacle of the reserved sacrament—the body and blood of Christ under the species of consecrated bread and wine. Ever since the significance of the sanctuary lamp had been explained to Miles near the time of his confirmation as a sixth-grader, he had found it viscerally comforting. On this day, he claimed that comfort once again in full measure, and with a more focused understanding than was available to him as a twelve-year old.
The floor plan of St Alban’s was a traditional Gothic cruciform, the south transept of which comprised the Lady Chapel, a more intimate venue appropriate for daily Morning and Evening Prayer and weekday Masses. (The expression ‘Lady Chapel’ hearkened back to medieval English usage, when it was customary, whatever the dedication of the church itself might be, to place the side chapel under the patronage of Mary, the mother of Jesus.) At one end of the communion rail was a bank of votive candles—blue in honor of St Mary—placed underneath an icon of the Madonna and Child that hung on the wall at that spot. As Miles approached, there were two candles burning, silent emblems of the petitions and intercessions offered by a couple of parishioners who had attended Morning Prayer. The rector knelt and lit a third votive. This was definitely a well prayed-in spot, and at this moment, Miles needed nothing else quite so urgently. He needed nothing quite to badly as to freshly connect with his spiritual roots, to draw upon whatever residue of strength—no, to petition for a fresh infusion, a new work of divine grace—in regaining some sense of self after this latest in the series of assaults that had begun nine months earlier with Sharon’s cancer diagnosis.
As he knelt in front of the votive candle stand, Miles summoned the images and memories that constituted his spiritual biography. Howard and Joan Coverdale both were Episcopalian by long family tradition, which meant they were not overly religious. They were better than “Christmas and Easter” at Trinity Church in Wauwatosa, but Howard never was a vestryman and Joan only rarely attended an ECW meeting and was not even a member of one of the women’s guilds. Miles was duly baptized when he was six weeks old and confirmed at twelve years. He attended Sunday School with relative regularity—quitting, of course, after being confirmed. He served as an acolyte from the fourth through eighth grades, when he lost interest and harassed his parents into letting him quit. Religion, theology, and church in general were never topics of profound discussion in the Coverdale household. So, if pressed to identify a bona fide conversion experience, he would have had to link it with his time at Wheaton College. Wheaton is an evangelical Christian institution located in the seat of DuPage County, Illinois. The college has an unapologetic religious test for admission and employment. As an Episcopalian, Miles did not fit the typical profile for a Wheaton applicant. He did not lack faith, but it was more of a vague theistic moralism than anything distinctively Christian, and grossly inarticulate at that. Yet, networking and string pulling can be effective even in a place like Wheaton College, and Danny Schultz, his high school baseball coach and a Wheaton alum, and Don Sederstrom, the Wheaton baseball coach, were skilled practitioners of the art. A letter from the rector of Trinity Church, who was not himself an evangelical, but knew enough of the buzzwords of that subculture, pushed Miles over the top with the admissions committee. Wheaton did not offer any baseball scholarships, but the Coverdales were not hard pressed financially. Miles liked the atmosphere of the campus when he visited it, liked coach Sederstrom, and enrolled happily in Wheaton College.
In college, Miles limited his athletic endeavors to baseball. This allowed the space for an awakening in other areas of his life—namely, intellectual and spiritual. An introductory philosophy course his first semester whetted his appetite for deep thinking on deep questions, ultimate reality. He developed an awareness of how much he took for granted the material and domestic security of his childhood. He began to see it all in a larger context of mystery, chance, and providence—and wondered profoundly.
Daily chapel was mandatory at Wheaton in the 1960s, and there was palpable social pressure in the direction of Sunday worship attendance. Miles adapted to this milieu with relative equanimity—occasional mild resentment and occasional curiosity. It certainly wasn’t “church” like anything he had ever known, and his first impression was that the whole evangelical subculture as it was incarnated at Wheaton was rather unnecessarily frenzied in its piety. Yet, he adopted a spirit of go-along-to-get-along. He had the uneasy awareness that he was too non-conversant with his own oddball (in that environment) Episcopalian tradition to be intelligently critical of those around him. About every other week, he accompanied one his dorm friends to one of the evangelical conventicles in the area.
It was in January of his freshman year that a chapel speaker whose name Miles—despite his best efforts several times in later years—was never able to remember snuck into the recesses of his soul like an accomplished cat burglar and turned on the lights. His text was from the first epistle of John, chapter two: “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for all our sins.” The speaker explained the cosmic nature of “sin” and the “righteousness” of Christ and the effects of his “propitiation” in a way that radically transcended the image of crossing, then placating, a petty bureaucratic or capriciously dictatorial God that Miles carried around in his mind, left over from his sketchy and ill-remembered catechesis in Sunday School and Confirmation instruction. Miles “got it” for the first time. He did not answer an altar call or walk down an aisle, but he gave his life to Christ as surely as anyone who ever came forward in a Billy Graham crusade.
The next thing Miles did was find the nearest Episcopal parish on a Sunday morning. As soon as they got to the General Confession and the “Comfortable Words” which follow, he knew why he had been moved by the chapel speaker. The words had already been implanted in his soul by the repetition of the Eucharistic liturgy to which he was exposed, even if sporadically at times, during the preceding nineteen years. Rather than rejecting the tradition of his upbringing, as many who undergo a similar conversion under similar circumstances seem inclined to do, Miles embraced it, absorbed it, and lived it. He had no living mentor, but was sufficiently motivated as a self-directed student that the college library itself offered him every resource he needed to develop a disciplined familiarity with Anglican faith and practice. At the same time, he became fluent in the symbols and vocabulary of the evangelical piety that surrounded him. He was quickly able to pray aloud extemporaneously with an ease that caught the notice of anyone who was inclined to be attuned to such presumptive indicators of spiritual depth and maturity. Miles enjoyed being both in and of the evangelical subculture while not being contained by it. One could almost say that he cultivated his odd-duck status as an Episcopalian at Wheaton College.
Miles’ intellectual curiosity led him to major in philosophy (concentrating in its influence on theology), with a minor in history (concentrating in medieval Europe). He made solid grades and played solid baseball, though his athletic endeavors became less a passion for him than they had been when he was in high school. From the time of his “conversion” on he was a regular communicant at Trinity Church, Wheaton, even attending a 6:30 Mass on Friday mornings. He developed a close relationship with Fr Ned Locke, the rector, who was a seasoned priest on the verge of retirement. Neither he nor Miles could later remember which one first mentioned the possibility of Miles having a vocation to the priesthood; it seemed so natural as to be almost beyond question, but Fr Locke certainly fanned the flame. As it happened, Miles’s college career coincided with Ned Locke’s term on the Commission on Ministry of the Diocese of Chicago. By the end of Miles’s junior year at Wheaton, Fr Locke had arranged an informal interview with the Right Reverend Barton Graves, Bishop of Chicago, and greased the skids with the commission. He also did not neglect to take Miles for a visit to Nashotah House, whose loyal son he had been since his matriculation there when Calvin Coolidge was president. Miles graduated cum laude from Wheaton, hung up his baseball spikes for the last time, and took up residence in the cloister at Nashotah House as a postulant for Holy Orders from the Diocese of Chicago. At the same time, he discovered that his spirituality had an ethereal dimension. His experience of the Divine Presence in the Mass was quickened, becoming intense and vivid—not quite ecstatic, but definitely mystical.
As a seminarian, Miles Coverdale was a round peg in a round hole. (Howard and Joan had taken the whole idea very much in stride, and even began to attend services on Sundays in Wauwatosa a little more frequently, pulsating with restrained pride, but they did not replicate in themselves the sort of spiritual awakening Miles had experienced at Wheaton.) Miles soaked up the Anglo- Catholic piety of Nashotah House like a terry-cloth towel absorbing water off a freshly bathed body.
After their wedding and Miles’ sequential ordinations, first as deacon and then as priest, Sharon was transparently interested in Miles’s ministry, not as a corporate trophy wife would be concerned for her spouse’s career advancement, but with sincere care for the spiritual welfare of his parishioners. She was also a cradle Episcopalian, but somewhat more pious and better catechized than Miles had been. She was also willing to allow some of his evangelical experience at Wheaton to rub off on her. The fact is, the edge of Miles’s own pietistic fervor had worn smooth over the years, so the tenor of his spirituality and hers met on common ground. Their joint piety was comfortable and genuine, but not intense, and, like so much else in their relationship, largely unspoken. It was a good match.
In this moment, his prayer was wordless. The verbal and overtly petitionary style of prayer he had learned in college had served him well, and continued to do so under the right circumstances. He did not feel that his present condition constituted such circumstances. What words had not already been spoken? What requests had not already been given voice? No, this was a time for the sound of sheer silence in the presence of the Mysterious One, the Holy One, the One whose mercy and grace Miles would now have to rely on more exclusively than ever. As he gazed at the icon, he had an experience that was at the same time familiar, having occurred before a half dozen or so times in his life, but altogether exotic and engrossing, both because of its rarity and its intense sweetness. He felt himself gripped by the image in the icon, as if he were the object of the exchange, rather than the subject. He was not so much looking at the image as it was looking at him, demanding his attention, gently and lovingly, but with resolute firmness. Miles neither desired nor was able to avert his gaze. For a period that felt timeless, though in actuality less than a minute, Miles was in the thrall of the Virgin Mother and the Eternal Word she had brought forth into the world. Then, with tenderness in proportion to the firmness with which it had first gripped him, the image let him go. Miles rose from his knees and returned to the office, feeling a measure of peace that was sufficient for the hour—not euphoria, but a sense that all was well in that moment. He would face succeeding moments as they came.
Some elements of both his inner turmoil and his mystical encounter must have been evident in his demeanor. Donna looked up from her desk when he came through the door, noted that it was her boss, and looked back down—yet, in an instant, looked back up at him. She furrowed her brow in a telltale manner. “Father, are you all right?”
Miles paused. He did not want to brief his secretary on all that was going on just yet, but neither did he want to be disingenuous. He smiled as he deflected her inquiry in an attempt to buy a few seconds of time. “Why do you ask?”
Now it was Donna’ turn to hesitate. “I don’t know. I just caught something in your face as you walked in—almost a ‘deer in the headlights’ kind of look, I guess.”
“I’m OK, Donna, I really am. But thanks. There are a couple of things I’m trying to get straight in my head, but I’ll be OK.” With that, he repaired to his study, but left the door open. Just then his computer emitted a synthesized chime-like sound, which was its way of reminding him of an upcoming appointment. He was subconsciously irritated by this unanticipated intrusion of the mundane into the mystical, but he instinctively concentrated his attention on the pop-up “dialogue box” that appeared on the screen. It read simply “Elmer Johnson, HC—10:30 AM.” It meant that, in a half-hour’s time, he was due at the home of one of his elderly and homebound parishioners for the purpose of bringing him Holy Communion; this is a standard element of Anglican pastoral practice. The appointment had been made the previous week, part of an orderly process Miles had established for making sure he had face-to-face contact with each homebound member of his flock—there were nearly thirty on the list—at least twice a year. Father Hook, or one of the deacons or retired priests, or one of a team of lay visitors, insured that a visit from some official representative of the parish happened on a monthly basis. Yet, somehow, its presence on his calendar had escaped his attention, not surprising given all that had transpired since the last time he laid eyes—and hands, he ruefully reminded himself—on Tracy Lindholm. Normally, Miles enjoyed these opportunities, but he was manifestly not in the mood today. Should he call and postpone it? He wished for the end result of that idea—no visit to Elmer Johnson in thirty minutes—but he could not bring himself to imagine the process of actually achieving that result. Canceling appointments was just not something he did; it was too out of character for him to even accept it himself.
So, after killing a few minutes looking at his e-mail inbox—there were a couple of messages that required a reply, and doing so would not have required more than a few seconds of time and effort; yet it seemed an intolerably onerous task, so he left them alone—Miles headed back into the church, this time to retrieve a consecrated communion host from the tabernacle. Inside the cedar-lined box—How often had he explained its significance to confirmation candidates as “a refrigerator for the sacred leftovers”? —were a ciborium—a silver chalice-like vessel with a lid—which contained consecrated communion bread, and a pyx, a smaller silver vessel with a hinged lid and a clasp, inside a zipped leather case. Miles genuflected in front of the tabernacle, in token of the Church’s belief that it contains the real presence of the Body and Blood of Christ, opened the door, and retrieved the ciborium. From it he took two wafers, one for Elmer and one for…well, he always took one more than he thought he would actually need, “just in case,” and, indeed, on a handful of occasions there had been a friend or relative who chanced to be visiting at the same time and who appreciated the opportunity to receive the sacrament alongside the homebound person. He then placed the consecrated communion wafers into the pyx, replaced the pyx in its leather case, and deposited the case into his left shirt pocket—keeping Jesus next to his heart, he would have said if asked, though no one had ever asked. With these necessary preparations for his visit now having been accomplished, he closed the door on the tabernacle and made his way out to the parking lot.
Elmer Johnson was 88 years old, and not only homebound, but bed-bound, a result of advanced muscular dystrophy. His wife, Clare, had always been his primary caregiver, and appeared to be in vigorous health at 81 when she suffered a stroke. (Blessedly, Clare was never one for half measures, so she had the only kind of stroke worth having at her stage in life—immediately fatal.) Due to the couple’s frugality and modest lifestyle—and also due to their childlessness, no doubt—they were able to accumulate sufficient savings to pay for round-the-clock in-home care, thus sparing Elmer the indignity of a nursing home. He was not one of Miles’ favorite people to visit. Elmer was one of those individuals who considers it a moral obligation to have an opinion on any conceivable question, and he took great care to make sure it was the correct one, and thus considered it worthy of nothing but his untiring best efforts in expounding and defending it. Privately to Justin Hook, and preceding curates over the years, Miles had confided his assessment that Elmer was “educated beyond his intelligence.” His contention that the entire New Testament was originally written in Aramaic, an enormity that placed him in the same category as members of the Flat Earth Society, and supplemented with the claim that he had acquired a knowledge of Aramaic from a fellow deckhand on a merchant vessel in the 1930s, was only the most egregious of his “correct” opinions.
Yet, as personally annoying as he found Mr Johnson, the rector of St Alban’s kept him in his pastoral heart of love. Perhaps it was an instance of “there but for the grace of God go I” gratitude, because Elmer, like his pastor, was a lifelong Episcopalian, but without the “Aha!” experience Miles had acquired as a result of rubbing shoulders with evangelical Protestants while in college. “He’s an ethical theist,” Miles had remarked to Sharon over dinner after his first pastoral call on the Johnson household, “but not much of a Christian. In fact, I think his real religion is probably Masonry.” Indeed, at every single visit Miles had made over the years of his tenure at St Alban’s, Elmer managed by one means or another to steer the conversation around to his deep involvement with his Masonic Lodge, stories (oft repeated) of trips he and Clare had made all around the country and overseas and the fellowship they had enjoyed with other Masons, and his attainment of the coveted Thirty-Third Degree status. On a handful of occasions he broadly hinted that Fr Coverdale would be most welcome to apply for lodge membership, but receiving no hints of a possible positive response, he did not press the point. All were probably happier for that bit of intuitive wisdom on Elmer Johnson’s part, because, if forced somehow into unqualified candor, Miles would have had to render a decidedly negative judgment on Freemasonry. As he explained to Sharon at that initial dinner table discussion, “I guess you could say I’m jealous of Masonry—jealous on behalf of the Church, that is, jealous on behalf of Christ, actually. If I thought it was just a bunch of old guys down at the lodge dressing up in funny outfits for the evening and chanting some mumbo-jumbo, I could just smile and look the other way. And nobody can deny, they do great work when it comes to raising money for sick kids and stuff like that. But what really gives me the creeps, you know, is that, for hardcore Masons—and I think Elmer is about as hardcore as you can get—for the hardcore Masons, being a Mason is…it. They may go to church, and be very active in church, but their real community, their real family, is Masonry. When they’re stranded in a strange town and need to call somebody at three in the morning, they’re going to call a brother Mason. That’s their first loyalty, their first affection.”
“So, just what is it you’re jealous about?” Sharon inquired as she began to clear dishes from the table.
“That’s what I’m jealous about…the 3:00 AM phone call.”
“You want people calling you at three in the morning? We need separate bedrooms!”
She was kidding, and he knew it, but Miles felt nonetheless compelled to clarify his point. “OK, I’m not being…like…literal here. It’s what the middle-of-the-night phone call symbolizes. It says, ‘We’re family. I may never have met you before, but if you’re a Mason, you’re family, and I’m here for you.’ Do you see what I’m saying? That’s precisely what I sweat blood trying to get my own parishioners to understand. That’s what Christians are supposed to be for each other.”
Sharon couldn’t resist needling her husband just a bit further. “I see. So now what you want is for your parishioners to be calling each other on the phone in the wee hours, eh?”
Miles paused, then grinned through loosely clenched teeth; he truly was not upset with his wife, and did not want to convey any impression of impatience. “I hope you’re enjoying being deliberately difficult. My time will come, and when you least expect it, O light of my life.” Then he added, “But here’s the deal: Why am I jealous of the Masons? Because they’re draining off energy from people like Elmer Johnson who could be—should be—devoting that energy to the Church, toward the community of Christians. It’s not his fault, and it really isn’t even the Masons’ fault; they’re just a convenient target for my frustration. It’s our fault, really. It’s the Church’s fault. We’ve raised generations of Christians, generations of Episcopalians, who don’t know any better. They just don’t get it. Some of them get it as Masons. They just don’t get it as Christians.”
With the memory of this ancient exchange on the surface of his consciousness, Miles parked his Mercury curbside in front of Elmer Johnson’s home. He reached into his glove compartment and grabbed the folded priest’s stole that he kept there for such occasions. It was purple, a vestige of the days when a pastoral call on a sick person always bore a penitential hue, because the prevailing view was that sickness was intentionally visited by God on people as punishment for their sins. He walked up to the front door of the simple three-bedroom brick-faced ranch style tract home, vintage 1960, and rang the doorbell. A few seconds later, the door opened and Fr Coverdale was greeted by Teresa, Elmer’s weekday caregiver. “Oh, Father, thank-you for coming. Please come in.”
Elmer was prepared for his visitor. Teresa had adjusted his bed to a near-upright position, helped him into a clean shirt, and brushed his hair. The bed was in what used to be the formal dining room, right where the table would have gone. This was Miles’ first visit since before Sharon got sick, and the sight of a hospital-style bed in a living area of a house gave him a start, though he masked his reaction. He was quite familiar with the furniture arrangement, of course, but he saw it now in a different emotional context. He approached the bed with his customary warm smile, grasped Elmer’s right hand in both of his, and looked him squarely in the eye. “Elmer, it’s so good to see you. It’s been too long. How’ve you been?” It was a question that formed an essential part of the virtual liturgy for such an exchange, but it had always troubled Miles, and often struck him as utterly ludicrous. You don’t need to ask a man in a hospital bed how he is; he’s in a hospital bed, so quite clearly he’s not doing well. And in addition to this self-evident insight, Miles had in this case the additional data of Elmer’s frequently voiced desire to die, a wish that carried even more pathos in the wake of Clare’s sudden passing.
If the question “How’ve you been?” was indeed liturgical in its predictability, Elmer’s appointed response was some variation of “I’ve got Muscular Dystrophy and I’m stuck in this goddamn bed and I feel like shit and I want to die!” So when he missed his cue and blew his line, this time Miles was not able to hide his surprise. “What did you say, Elmer?”
“I said I’m doing pretty well, Father, and it’s wonderful to see you, too. Please have a seat. Teresa, can you get Father Coverdale something to drink, please? What would you like, Father?”
“Just a glass of ice water will be fine, thank you,” Miles responded, still in a state of semi-amazement as he pulled up a chair—a dining room chair, he would have noticed if he’d been paying attention to such details—to the side of the bed. The two men looked at one another in silence. If it had lasted a second longer, it would have turned awkward. Elmer spoke first. “Listen, I know you’ve been through hell since was we last saw each other, and I didn’t send you so much as a sympathy note.” With a hand gesture, Miles tried to graciously put an end to this ritual of self-deprecation, but Elmer drove right through the stop sign into the intersection. “I’m sorry, I really am. But, you know, even when I was healthy and Clare was around, those little niceties were a little hard for me. Please forgive me.”
Miles raised and waved his hand, in a motion of absolution that was sincere, if not sacramental. “Nothing to forgive, Elmer, nothing to forgive. I completely understand.”
“Well, thank-you.” Teresa arrived with the requested glass of water as Elmer continued. “Like I said, I know it was awful for you. When I lost Clare…I don’t really know how to explain it…it was like the color of light changed. I didn’t know how I was going to make it from one minute to the next.”
Miles was genuinely moved. “Tell me again how long you and Clare were together.”
“You mean ‘together’ or ‘married’?” There was a twinkle in Elmer’s eye that Miles didn’t remember seeing before. “We met when we were fifteen, and we were in love instantly. That would be 73 years ago, I guess. And she’s been gone…what?…seven years? So that means we were together…help me with the math now, Father…”
“That would make it 66 years, Elmer. That’s so amazing. How blessed you are. What a great deal you have to be thankful for.”
“I know, I know.” Elmer’s affect suddenly turned pensive. “That’s something you’ve been trying to get through to me for a long, long time, isn’t it? I have a pretty thick skull, as you’ve no doubt noticed. But the message is finally beginning to get through.”
Miles’ immediate reaction was that he did not recall particularly pressing the issue of gratitude in his previous pastoral exchanges with Elmer, but he was well-accustomed to the fact that what he intended to stress often bore little resemblance to what people actually perceived him to be stressing. This happened in sermons, teaching sessions, and pastoral conversations. So he took Elmer’s present comment completely in stride. “I’m glad the message is getting through, Elmer. It’s a good message. To tell you the truth, I need to listen to a little bit of that message myself!”
“Forgive me, Father Coverdale, but it seems to me that you’re entitled to feel sorry for yourself for a good long while and not have anybody make you feel guilty for it. I mean, I had Clare for 66 years. We grew old together. We were high school sweethearts, and we grew old together. You lost Sharon in the prime of life. I can’t even begin to know how that must hurt.”
Miles was nonplussed, though he tried to conceal it. Elmer was quite uncharacteristically outside himself, transcending his own misery in a way Miles had never witnessed. “Elmer…” This time the silence was awkward. “That’s so kind of you. Thank-you.” He paused again to find words for his feelings. Slowly, they revealed themselves. “You know, I haven’t really opened up to very many people about what it was like. The Bishop, because he’s an old friend, and my kids, but not really anyone else.” Miles took another moment to continue regrouping, and Elmer was entirely focused in his listening. “It’s not that people haven’t been sympathetic. They have. They’ve been wonderful. But nobody has nailed it the way you just did: You and Clare grew old together. Sharon and I won’t, and that’s the mother lode for the pain I’ve been coping with. And you nailed it. I guess I haven’t really given anyone else a chance, but you nailed it, Elmer. You nailed it for sure.”
Now it was Elmer’s turn to lose a grip on his composure. “Damn!” he cried, with a lump in his throat and a tear dropping down the right side of his face. “Now look what I’ve done. I was trying to atone for my social faux pas and now I’ve ended up invading your privacy. Damn, I’m sorry all over again.”
Miles laughed through his own moistened eyes. “Please don’t worry about it, Elmer,” he countered reassuringly. “I’m actually very grateful.” Miles paused again briefly before continuing, “But I don’t want to take advantage of you. I’m the one who came here wearing the minister’s hat. Tell me how things have been with you since we last met. I know, of course…well, hell, you’re sick and you’re in bed and you can’t walk. ‘Other than that, Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?’ But, I mean…” Miles could scarcely believe he was about to ask this question. The Elmer Johnson he had known for so many years would not have known how to begin to answer it. But this morning he had an intuition that things were different, and he felt emboldened to take a pastoral risk. Perhaps he was wrong and would soon regret it, but it seemed an opportune moment to explore uncharted territory in his relationship with this particular member of his flock. “…how are you on the inside? How are things with your soul?”
Elmer turned his head toward the french doors along the dining room wall that ran parallel to his bed, and looked out on the garden that had once been his and Clare’s pride and joy, but which he had not been able to work in for the better part of a decade. If Miles had been connected to a polygraph at that moment, there would have been a flurry of activity on the readout. Then Elmer turned back and looked straight at his pastor. “That’s a hard question to give a simple answer to, Father. But I’m glad you asked it, because stuff has been going on. I’m not sure what, exactly, but stuff has been going on.” Miles said nothing, simply giving an encouraging nod and the faintest of smiles as he stroked his chin, which Elmer understood correctly as tacit permission to proceed. “You know, I’ve always believed in God. I can’t ever remember a moment of not believing in God. I never had an ‘atheist phase’ or anything like that. Hell, Masons believe in God. I’m sorry, Father, I don’t mean to imply that Episcopalians don’t believe in God, of course! But it’s a really big deal with Masons; you know that, I’m sure.”
“Yes, Elmer, I think I know what you’re getting at.” Miles was anxious to facilitate the continuance of Elmer’s main narrative without taking a detour into Freemasonry.
His effort paid off. “So, I’ve always believed in God. But, I have to tell you, I haven’t always been so sure that God believed in me, if you know what I mean. Especially since I got sick, especially since I got this goddamned disease—I can say that, can’t I? I’m not even trying to be flippant or sacrilegious. I know—you know—that’s the way I talk without giving it a second thought, but this time I mean it…well, I mean it literally. And that’s part of what’s been dawning on me: God didn’t make me sick; God doesn’t get some kind of perverted thrill out of Elmer Johnson having Muscular Dystrophy. I never would have said that I blame God for everything that’s happened to me. But I did. Without my even knowing it, I did. And, for some reason, I don’t anymore. I don’t know what that reason is, to tell you the truth, but I don’t blame God anymore.”
Miles sat back in his chair, as if to fully absorb and digest what he had heard. Then he allowed himself a broad grin as he responded, “Well, I’m sure God is relieved to hear that!”
Elmer laughed deeply. “I’m sure you’re right, Father. But there’s another side to the coin. I’m getting the feeling that, all the while I was blaming God, God was never blaming me for blaming him. Does that make any sense? For the first time in my life, I feel like God’s on my side, in my corner, not waiting for me to screw up so he can zap me, but on my side, pulling for me, giving me the benefit of the doubt.”
“Elmer, it sounds to me like you’ve had a genuine bona fide spiritual experience,” Miles concluded. “Who’d have thought that would happen to you at your age, huh?”
Elmer’s demeanor turned very pensive once again. “I like to think you might have thought as much, Father Coverdale. I know I’ve been a pain in the royal you-know-what, but you’ve never given up on me. You’ve come here over and over again to hear me blather on about stuff I don’t even really know anything about. Why would you do that unless you thought you would eventually get through to me someday?”
Now Miles was humbled beyond the point of knowing what to say just at that moment. To fully admit the truth would be embarrassing. He had continued to visit Elmer Johnson because he believed it was his duty to do so, and he was, if anything, a man who did his duty. But he had long since surrendered any fantasy that, this side of Eternity, Elmer would have the sort of breakthrough that would lift him above his own ego and his own constricted universe of wishful certitude. He had been wrong, it was clear now. God was having the last laugh not only on Elmer Johnson, but on Elmer Johnson’s parish priest as well. He was humbled indeed—as if he actually needed to be humbled on this day, of all days; outside the passion of the moment he might have thought to wonder what God could possibly be thinking—yet, there was a sweetness to the humbling that one does not ordinarily associate with the experience. It was as if he sensed permission to tap a small portion of the stream of divine mercy that was flowing toward his parishioner and divert it in his own direction.
“Elmer, how ’bout we say our prayers now?” This was Miles’ accustomed verbal shorthand for initiating the transition from general conversation to the business of the visit—administering Holy Communion. On this occasion, it was also his way of mentally regrouping, assimilating what Elmer had revealed about his recent growth in the knowledge and love of the Lord. It was a great deal more than he had expected, and at the same time some good bit less than he would wish for—for Elmer, or for anyone committed to his pastoral charge. To be speaking of a living relationship with God was a huge step. A fully Christian spirituality factors in the name of Jesus somehow and somewhere. Yet, Miles was ready to declare victory on this day and save the Jesus discussion for his next visit. He deftly removed the pyx from his breast pocket and slipped it out of its case. Taking Elmer’s hand in his own and squeezing it firmly, he began reciting the Collect for Purity: “Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid…”
On the short drive back to St Alban’s, he realized that his visit with Elmer was in fact the answer to his wordless but heartfelt prayer in the Lady Chapel earlier that morning. God had not stopped believing in his servant Miles Coverdale. He was facing the valley of the shadow of death—unresolved grief, a daughter’s alienation, a son’s imploding life, and now the burden of proving a negative in combating Tracy Lindholm’s false accusations. But he was sensing the reality of those words that had crossed his lips in more than two-and-a-half decades of ordained ministry, most recently just minutes earlier as he blessed Elmer Johnson before walking out the door: “The peace of God, which passes understanding….”
When he opened the door of the parish office, Donna looked up at him, a phone on her ear and a pen in her hand, with which she was writing on a message pad. “Oh, wait a minute. He just walked in the door. Would like to talk to him in person?” Brief pause. “OK, hold just a minute please.” She pressed the appropriate button and replaced her handset on its cradle. “I’m sorry, Father, I should have asked you first, I guess. It’s Dean Craig at Nashotah House. Would you like to take his call? I can think of something to tell him if not.”
“No, no, not a problem. Put him through.” He proceeded straight into his own study and closed the door behind him, remarking to himself ruefully in an instant that even if he and the vestry had not procrastinated responding to the polite demand from the church’s liability insurance company, in the wake of skyrocketing claims alleging clergy sexual abuse, to replace all but the frame with clear glass, it certainly served to protect no one if no one else was in the building. What could Fred Craig possibly want? Whatever it was, it would be a welcome distraction from the details of his not-so-ordinary life. His finger hit the “Hold” button at about the same instant his body slumped into the high-backed desk chair. “Fred, how nice to hear from you. To what do I owe the honor?”
“Well, the honor’s all mine, and it’s good to hear your voice, too, Miles. Listen, I’m just doing my usual anal-retentive dean thing, you know, and trying to line up a few guest chapel preachers for the Michaelmas Term.” (Nashotah House followed the slightly quaint English custom of naming the fall academic semester for the feast day that falls near its commencement—St Michael and All Angels on September 29.) “Anyway, I’ve got a very special one with your name on it, if you’re available and so inclined.”
“Fred, I’m flattered. You know, I haven’t preached in St Mary’s Chapel since I was a student there. It would be a real thrill. What did you have in mind?” He meant every word of what he said. Truthfully, he had felt just a tiny bit slighted over the years, since he was a relatively accomplished alum of “the House,” and so close by, but never invited to be a guest chapel preacher, of which there were probably thirty or so during an academic year.
Dean Craig continued, “Well, it’s about time we rectified that, and I can’t imagine what’s taken us so long. So let me make it up to you by not giving you one of those sets of apostles nobody knows anything about, like Ss Simon and Jude.”
“Actually, Fred, I have quite fond memories of Ss Simon and Jude. One year when I was there, the organist got away with a very subtle improvisation during Communion that used the chorus of “Hey, Jude” in the pedals!”
The dean chortled, “I’m sure it wasn’t the first time, nor the last. But I’ve got a good one for you—at least I think it’s a good one. I hope you will too. I’d like you to preach on All Souls’ Day—November 2, of course. It falls on a Tuesday this year, I think.”
“All Souls, huh?” Miles paused for a moment, but Dean Craig made no attempt to fill the void. “Tell me, Fred, do you all still do the whole deal? I mean, with a Requiem Mass in the chapel and then a procession up to the cemetery?”
“You bet we do! We may have gone soft on a few things since the old days, but we still do All Souls right.” Then his enthusiasm was suddenly tempered. “Oh, my God, Miles. Should I be feeling like an idiot now, or what? It just slipped my mind that the last time you were here was for your wife’s burial. You know, nothing’s set in stone. I can find another date for you.”
Miles jumped in. “Oh, no Fred, not on my account. And don’t feel bad. It’s not a problem. I want to do it. I’m glad you asked me, and I’m glad you still do all the rigmarole. I want to do it.” Once again, he spoke the truth from his heart. But this time, he didn’t exactly know why.
