The Reverend

A Fantasy | Part III

On May 19 my latest book, Unseen Existences, was released. Unfortunately it doesn’t have the concluding Fantasy I intended, so I’m publishing it here.

(Here’s the links for Part I and Part II.)

The Reverend

A Fantasy

III

The Reverend was sitting in the edge of the clearing thinking about nothing; he was only enduring the passing of time. How much time had passed he had no idea. The emptiness was endless, cold as the clay. Perhaps the angel in the Apocalypse had already issued his dread oath: “There shall be time no longer.”

Late one evening—for it was always late in the evening—out of the corner of his eye he sensed movement. With a start he looked to his left and saw something entering the clearing from the woods. It was an Indian woman.

In all his long internment in the twilight the Reverend had encountered no living thing, much less another human being. The Indian woman was small and wore a fringed buckskin dress decorated with blue and red geometric designs. Her hair was in braids, and she wore a necklace made of shells. The Reverend jumped to his feet as the woman calmly approached him. There was something unusual about her appearance. At first glance she looked to be a woman of about sixty with deep wrinkles and grey-streaked braids, but a moment later she was a young woman, under thirty, with smooth skin and dark black braids. In the twilight of the camp the images of an old and young Indian woman floated in and out of one another. The woman was now standing only a few feet from the Reverend. He stammered,

“Wh-who are you?”

“I am the help you need.”

“Wh-where did you come from?”

“I came from the Light.”

“From the Light?”

“Yes, from the Light.”

“Where is the Light?”

“The Light is where you need to be but cannot yet go because you are a prisoner of the Darkness.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There are many things you do not understand.”

“Why have you come?”

“I was sent from the Light to help you.”

“Who sent you?”

“The Light sent me to you.”

“Do you know me?”

“I know you are the Reverend.”

“Who are you?”

“I am the one sent to bring you the help you need. I am the sister you have not yet met. I am a friend you do not yet know. I am your guide.”

“What is your name?”

“My name is Kwanita. In your tongue it means God-Is-Gracious.”

“God? Do you know about God?”

Kwanita paused, looked for a long time at the Reverend and then said,

“Let us sit.”

They both sat down—Kwanita upon the ground, the Reverend on a log. Then he repeated his question:

“What do you know about God?”

“God is the Creator, the Great Spirit; and the Great Spirit is gracious.”

“Who is the Great Spirit?”

“The Eternal One who is Light and in whom there is no Darkness at all.”

“That comes from the Bible. So you are a Christian?”

“I am a Pequot.”

The Reverend look at Kwanita through narrowed eyes and said coldly,

“Then you are a heathen, and you do not know the true God.”

Kwanita did not respond to the Reverend, and they sat in silence for several minutes.

Finally he asked the question that mattered most to him:

“Do you know the way out of this place?”

“Yes.”

“Can you show me the way out?”

“Yes. I am your guide. But it will be hard for you. I can show you the way, but it will be hard for you to follow me.”

“That doesn’t matter, I’m ready to go now.”

“I do not think you are ready.”

“I’m ready right now,” said the Reverend sharply.

“Why do you think you are ready?” asked the Indian woman.

“I’m ready to leave this place because I belong to the Elect. There has been a mistake; I do not belong here.”

“Yes. You do belong to the Elect,” she agreed.

“Then I’m ready to leave. Lead me away from here.”

“You are not ready.”

The Reverend shouted at the woman, “I’m ready right now! Show me the way!”

Kwanita regarded the Reverend for a few moments with a sad look, and then stood to her feet and without a word walked into the woods. The Reverend jumped up to follow her, but once in the woods he found it hard to keep up with Kwanita and he was slowly losing sight of her.

“Wait! Slow down! Don’t leave me!” shouted the Reverend.

But the woman just kept walking until the Reverend could see her no more. He stood still, shouted for her to come back a few times, and then dejectedly returned to his detestable twilit prison camp.

. . . . . . .

Because there was never a sunset or sunrise, and because nothing ever happened in the clearing or in the woods, it was nearly impossible to gauge time, but after what must have been a very long passage of time, the Indian woman called Kwanita returned and again sat by the Reverend. He said,

“Why did you leave me behind? Why won’t you help me?”

“I will help you,” she said, “but you cannot yet follow me. You cannot leave until you are ready to learn. When you are ready to learn, then I will help you, then I will guide you.”

The Reverend folded his arms across his chest and said,

“What do I need to learn then?”

“You need to learn many things. And first of all you need to learn who you are.”

“I know who I am,” he snapped angrily, “I’m the Reverend. I’m a Christian. I’m of the Elect. And I should not be here. I know I have died, and I should now be in heaven.”

“Then why are you here?” Kwanita asked softly.

The Reverend sighed deeply, cocked his head sideways, and said,

“I don’t know.”

“When you were in the Light what did the mirror show you?”

“It showed a reflection of myself preaching a sermon.”

“What were you preaching?

“I was preaching the Word of God. My text was Psalm twenty-one, verse nine. ‘Thou shalt make them as a fiery oven in the time of thine anger: the Lord shall swallow them up in his wrath, and the fire shall devour them.’”

“What did you say in your sermon?”

“I said, ‘Thus was God seen in his mount, crushing his proud enemies, and the enemies of his people! Yea, burning them up in the fire of his wrath, and dunging the ground with their flesh! It was the Lord’s doing, and it was marvelous in our eyes.’”

She turned away from the Reverend, looked for a long time at the burnt village, and then asked,

“Do you still believe that? Do you believe the death and misery that your people brought to my people was good? Do you believe it was of the Light?”

The Reverend stared hard at the Indian woman and said,

“Yes. It was ordained by God. I spent the night in prayer and God spoke these words of Holy Scripture to me: ‘Thus saith the Lord of hosts, go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling.’ First Samuel chapter fifteen, verse three.”

The Indian woman looked at the Reverend for a long time and then whispered,

“We do not know those words in the Light.”

“That’s because you’re a heathen and you don’t know the Bible. You are among the damned and I belong to the Elect.”

“You do belong to the Elect,” she said with a sad smile. “And my people were damned—damned by you and your people.”

“You were damned by God,” said the Reverend.

Kwanita stood up without a word and walked into the woods. Again the Reverend tried to follow her, and again he could not keep up with his guide, and eventually she disappeared out of sight. He returned to the clearing, sat down, and muttered to himself, “I know I’m right. The Bible says so.”

. . . . . . .

The Reverend lost track of how many times Kwanita visited him, but the visits always ended the same way: She would leave, the Reverend would try to follow her . . . and fail. Now the Indian woman was back again.

“You need to learn,” she said. “The Voice in the Light said, ‘Know thyself.’ When you looked in the mirror, what did you see?”

“I already told you. I saw myself preaching.”

“What did you say? What were the exact words spoken by your image in the mirror?”

The Reverend thought for a moment and then said, “Praise be to God that on that day we sent six hundred heathen souls to hell!”

“Are those true words? Did you and your people send us to hell?”

“Yes, because you are heathens, and you are damned.”

She stood up to leave, but then stopped, turned to the Reverend and said,

“In the pile of burnt bodies you see over there were two of my grandchildren—they were babies. Did they go to hell?”

“Yes,” said the Reverend. “The great theologian Augustine of Hippo taught us that unbaptized babies share the common misery of the damned.”

Kwanita asked, “Do you still believe we are the damned and you are the Elect?”

“Yes,” said the Reverend.

“But you are here. You are in the place that you and your people made. And you cannot leave it.”

The Reverend said nothing.

Finally the woman said,

“You are right about one thing. We did go to hell. You and your people brought hell to us. You tried to build your heaven on our hell. This is the place you helped create. But I did not stay here, I came to the Light. All who live by the truth come to the Light.”

“Truth? I’ve always lived by the truth!” the Reverend barked. “I believe in the truth of the Word of God. We did what we did by the light of Scripture.”

Kwanita replied, “If you say you are of the Light, but do the works of darkness, you tell lies to yourself. If you tell yourself too many lies, you become a Lie. The Great Spirit does not know a Lie.”

“I am of the Light. I am of the Elect.”

“Your words are empty words. If you say you are of the Light, but hate is in your heart, you are in the Darkness. If you love, you will live in the Light. But the light that is in you is Darkness, and the Darkness has made you blind. Whoever hates his brother or sister is a murderer, and a murderer cannot come into the Light. You led your people into the Darkness. You followed the Evil One. There is no truth in that one. He is a murderer from the beginning. He does not abide in the truth. He is a liar and the father of lies.”

“We had light from the Word of God,” the Reverend replied in a flat monotone. “In Deuteronomy the Bible says, ‘When the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, and when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them.’ That’s the Word of God and we cannot change it.”

“We do not know those words in the Light,” Kwanita said.

The Reverend would not look at the Indian woman as he replied, “It’s in the Bible.”

“I am going to leave now,” she said, “but before I go, I want to tell you the most important thing we know in the Light. Love is from the Great Spirit. The Great Spirit is Love. Those who do not love, do not know the Great Spirit. The Great Spirit loves us, so we must love one another. If we do not love, we can never see the Great Spirit. Whoever loves, abides in the Great Spirit, and the Great Spirit abides in him. There is no fear in Love. Perfect Love casts out all fear. If anyone says they love the Great Spirit, but hates their brother or sister, this one is a liar. If we cannot love the brother or sister we see, we cannot love the Great Spirit who we cannot see. The Great Spirit is Light. The Great Spirit is Love.”

“Those words are almost like words from the Bible,” the Reverend said.

“Those words are from the Light,” Kwanita replied, and walked into the woods.

The Reverend only half-heartedly tried to follow the Indian woman. He knew he would fail to keep up with his guide, and he was right.

~To be continued . . .