Chapter 19 - Momentary Clarity
Lydia had a lot on her mind at work on Friday. She had fallen hours behind on her regular workload, because of the development team meeting the day before. Luke, whom she assumed was also part of the conspiracy against her and the book project, wasn’t the least bit under-standing about it either.
It was hard to focus on her other tasks when she was thinking about how poorly the meeting had gone the night before and how little progress they had made. Gerald was coming in on the following Monday to review her work, and rather than having made progress, it felt to her that after their last meeting they were actually farther behind.
The other thing on her mind was this hastily planned weekend. A few times she almost picked up the phone to call Oscar and cancel. Perhaps she had written back too quickly without actually putting much thought into the idea. After all, she had just agreed to go on a weekend away with a guy. Even if he was not thinking romantically, he might start wondering if she was. She regretted not asking him to provide more details, but she had packed a variety of clothes to be ready for almost anything he had planned.
The main reason Lydia wanted to back out and stay home for the weekend was that she wanted to get as much done as possible before Gerald came. However, she could only show the progress which the committee had agreed upon together, and no amount of extra work would change the fact that there was very little the team had agreed upon to that point.
A few times, however, Lydia found herself looking forward to the weekend away. She was curious about where Oscar was taking her and she was sure anything was better than spending another weekend at home doing office work.
At one minute past five, when Lydia emerged from her office, Oscar was leaning on the hood of her car with a full backpack slung over his shoulders.
“You want to drive again?” she asked, surprising Oscar.
“Really?” he asked. “Wow, Evangeline never let me drive her car on road trips.”
“Don’t get too excited,” she said dismissively. “It’s only because I’m tired and you know where we’re going.”
Lydia opened the trunk for him to put his backpack in before handing him the keys. He eagerly took them from her and ran around to the driver’s side.
“So is it common for people to check up on your church attendance?” Lydia asked once they were on the road. “Or is this just a Zack thing?”
“Zack may be more vocal about it than others, but when you’re engaged to the pastor’s daughter and all of a sudden you’re not there anymore, people notice.”
“So did you just tell him to mind his own business?” Lydia asked.
“No,” Oscar answered calmly. “Zack is just concerned about me. That’s fine. I just tried to explain my side of the story briefly, that given the circumstances it’s probably better that I not go there. He didn’t see my point, so we left it at that.”
“What’s the big deal? You can skip church a few Sundays can’t you?”
“Sure you can, but it’s important to me. I still went to church; just not the one I had been going to until then.”
“What’s the point of going to church anyway?” Lydia asked, switching from personal to general questions.
“Ideally there are two relationships that people nurture by going to church. Obviously people go to church to enhance their connection to God. We go there so that we can worship God, learn about God, or somehow enter into God’s presence. At some level we believe God contributes to the service by blessing the people who gather to worship and we believe that to some degree God benefits from, or at least appreciates, being worshiped. The other part that’s involved, that a lot of people forget about, is the relationship with the community. Individuals have a responsibility to the group and the group has a responsibility to each individual. The people with needs should be able to approach the group and anyone with extra resources or special insight should be willing to share them with the group.”
“So at both the spiritual and social level there is supposed to be some give and take?”
“Yes,” said Oscar, “but those other people in the group can sometimes distract from the big picture experience. So in my case, if Evangeline’s crew and their judging eyes and inappropriate comments interfere with my act of worship, I’m better off not going. In the same way, if my presence fills them with bitterness, I’m doing them a favour too by not showing up. But since I still want to participate in that individual and corporate worship experience, I go somewhere else instead.”
“Did you tell Zack you were going to a different church instead?”
“He didn’t ask."
Lydia was already quite willing to accept that she didn’t understand male friendships, and maybe the religious dynamic complicated things, but she had no idea why these two guys were friends. As she thought about it, she realized that a lot of cars were driving by them.
“Why is everyone passing us?” she asked curiously.
“Probably because I’m driving speed limit,” Oscar answered.
“Oh! Is there a reason you’re not driving faster?”
“Are you in a hurry?” Oscar asked.
“Well no, but …”
“Driving the speed limit actually makes a lot of sense,” Oscar said plainly. “When this road was designed, the engineers took into account what the speed limit would be, so everything, from the width of the lanes to the grade of the curves, was set up with this speed limit in mind.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you drive around constantly stressing over every driving law, in case you might be breaking it?”
“No, what I do is trust that the lawmaker had my best interests in mind. I internalize the rules of the road, and so when I see a police officer, I have nothing to fear. Instead, I could drive however I want, but I’d be checking behind every tree, overpass, and billboard to see if a police officer. Then if I see one waiting for me, I would have to wonder about which law I might be breaking. Which one of those sounds more stressful to you? Let me tell you, when I look in my rear-view mirror and seen a police car, I never have to freak out. That’s not stress, that’s true freedom.”
Lydia wasn’t convinced by his driving logic, but she was pretty sure that he was speaking in religious metaphors again. She would normally double-check to see if that was, in fact, what he was doing and what he meant, but this time she was pretty sure she knew what he was getting at.
A little farther down the road they picked up supper to eat in the car. Lydia even fell asleep for a while after the meal. When she woke up it was already dark and she didn’t recognize their surroundings at all.
“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” she asked.
“In a bit maybe.”
“Can you answer this at least?” she asked, letting her curiosity get the best of her. “This place that we’re going, are you taking me there as Oscar my friend, Oscar the development team member, or as something more?”
“Does spiritual advisor count as something more?”
“I guess,” Lydia answered, no closer to understanding what was going on. There was a growing awareness in her that she was getting more out of her time with Oscar than spiritual advice, and she hoped he was getting more out of it too.
“Okay, here goes,” he began. “I have been thinking for a while that I needed to get away somewhere, away from all of Evangeline’s family and friends, away from all of my school issues and away from all my other worries. I just wanted to find a quiet place to reflect, meditate and pray. I know you’ve been going through some crap too, so I thought you might benefit from the same thing.”
“You know praying isn’t really my thing, right?” Lydia asked.
“I know that,” he answered quickly, “and that’s why I brought you this.” Oscar reached into his winter jacket and handed her a hardcover notebook. It was exactly the type of notebook she would sometimes buy for herself. She had dozens of books like that in her apartment, ones she had bought for journaling
or for writing short stories, but all of them were less than half full.
“The other people will be reading their Bibles, journaling or praying,” Oscar continued, “so when they’re doing that, you can feel free to reflect on what’s been happening, just space out or write in here to occupy your mind.”
“Wait! What other people?” Lydia asked. “Where exactly are we going?”
Oscar didn’t say a word; he just kept driving. Then, as Lydia looked out the window she started to see a few things, even in the dark, that reminded her of a previous trip she had taken.
“Are you taking me to Bethpage?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“What? Didn’t you hear me say how glad I was to leave after only staying for a one hour interview?”
“I didn’t think you would have come if I told you where we were going, but I really think you should give it another shot. This is exactly what you need right now.”
“I can live without my cell phone for the weekend,” Lydia conceded, “but, what about their gender segregation rules? Are you and I as a man and a woman even going to be able to see each other while we’re there?”
Oscar laughed. “We’ll be able to spend plenty of time together. We just won’t be able to sleep in the same room, which neither of us would want anyway, right?”
“Fine, I’ll try to make it work, but if it gets too weird, promise me we can leave!”
“I promise. You just say the word and we’ll pack up and go.”
At the reception desk both Oscar and Lydia turned in their cell phones without even being asked.
“There’s a one hour prayer service at nine, an hour of quiet time starting after that at ten, and then lights out at eleven,” the woman at the desk said after pointing out where their rooms were.
“Why so early?” Lydia asked.
“The morning prayer service is at six,” the woman answered matter-of-factly.
“Then maybe I should keep my cell phone, it has my alarm clock.”
“We ring a bell,” the woman responded simply, speaking as though she was entirely familiar with this kind of conversation.
Lydia stared blankly at Oscar when they got back to the car to get their bags.
“Look, I can’t force you to pray,” he said without being prompted, “or even to relax, that would sort of defeat the purpose. You don’t have to attend anything that you don’t want to participate in. But a while ago you told me that prayer was something you didn’t understand. You said it was too easy a response to people’s problems. For what a lot of people call prayer, you’re right, but prayer is supposed to be hard work. I think you’ll see that here.”
Lydia’s greatest question about prayer at this point was mostly an internal one; why did it sound so demeaning when ordinary Christians said they would pray for her but it was so empowering to hear that from Gerald’s mother? She decided that if spending some time at this place could help her to answer that question, it might be worthwhile after all.
“Okay,” she said, “but at least help me take my stuff to my room.”
Oscar agreed and took Lydia’s bags from the trunk. He brought them into the building and set them outside the door of the room she shared with seven other women.
Lydia might not normally have made an effort to get to know a group of women like this, but she decided to approach it as a research assignment. The other women were already telling each other why they had come to the retreat center. Lydia listened quietly as they shared what was weighing on their minds; a few of them were in marriages that were falling apart, a few needed to make decisions about what school to go to, one wanted to get pregnant, and a few women responded the same way that Lydia did, saying that they were feeling overwhelmed by work.
Oscar was surprised to see Lydia when she sat beside him in the chapel in time for the evening prayer service. “An hour is a long time to just sit in silence,” he warned, “so if you can’t handle it, feel free to leave; just try to go quietly so you don’t disturb anyone else.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said, gesturing toward the journal book and Bible she had brought with her.
The hour started with a few songs that Lydia didn’t recognize and a few Bible readings that she didn’t understand. Afterwards, the leader at the front of the room said that with five minutes remaining he would invite everyone to start singing again.
In the silence that followed, she tried to meditate, at least for a little while. She tried to empty her mind of work stresses and all of her self-doubt. When that didn’t work, she started observing other people instead. She saw that some people were silent while others whispered and others spoke aloud, some people sat motionless while others raised their arms, wept, or made a rhythmic bowing motion. It would normally all look pretty weird, except that she knew what some of the people were praying about from her previous conversations. Oscar was moving his lips and his face was strained, but wasn’t making a sound. Lydia was sure that he was praying about his situation with Evangeline, but she couldn’t tell if he was praying for a reunion or for help to get over it. One of the women whose marriage was falling apart and the woman who was trying to get pregnant were crying. At other times in her life she might have scoffed at their misplaced emotions, but Lydia found herself sympathizing with them, and the more she did that, the guiltier she felt about watching them voyeuristically.
She decided instead to return to her own meditation. Maybe she would even try praying, just to see how it felt. Immediately, she realized how uncomfortable it was. Even at the beginning, she had trouble addressing God. She didn’t really know many of the religious titles for God. Any relational titles like Father seemed insincere. Some words sounded too formal and some were far too casual. Then, the more she prayed, the more she started to feel guilty about asking for things that she wanted, especially if the thing she truly wanted was for physical harm to come to someone else.
Soon she realized that she had no idea what time it was and that she may have been praying for a long time or maybe there was still a long time to go. Then she realized that she couldn’t check what time it was because she wasn’t wearing a watch and that she hadn’t worn a watch much since she started carrying a cell phone and that the only watch she owned was almost entirely decorative and only went with a few of her nice outfits. Then, she realized she was realizing too many things and not focussing on the task at hand.
When the prayer service finally ended, Oscar walked sombrely to the door motioning to Lydia that he didn’t feel like talking. Lydia nodded and headed back to her room. The other women agreed they should go to sleep early so that they could wake up in time for the early service, but Lydia still had to listen to them talking for over an hour about the complaints of their lives and speculating over what God would do for them.
The bell that rang at 6am was soft, but there was no bell in the world soft enough to provide a gentle wake-up for Lydia at that time of the morning. She somehow managed to climb out of her bunk and drag herself over to the chapel. Oscar would have been impressed to see her there except he too was in an early morning stupor. Lydia found herself going through the same thought process as she had the night before, but to make her praying or meditating even more difficult, she was also trying to stay awake.
“I see what you mean about praying being hard,” she said to Oscar when they were finally able to talk again over a simple breakfast. “I could hardly focus, and even when I could, I had trouble thinking of anything worthwhile to say.”
“Talking isn’t the hard part,” he answered, shaking his head.
“What other part is there?”
“Prayer isn’t just talking Lydia, it’s conversation, and I find the listening harder than the talking.”
“I guess it’s sort of like monkey brain,” she conceded. “My friends who are big into yoga and eastern meditation always talk about that.”
“Monkey brain is mostly about not being able to focus or empty your mind. Prayer is supposed to be talking, th
inking about what you say, listening, thinking about what you hear and then figuring out how you’ll respond.”
“So does God talk to you?” Lydia asked.
“I might say God pushes me.”
“And you have to focus on feeling the push?”
Oscar shrugged and said, “Okay, so maybe it’s more of a nudge.”
Their conversation was cut short when Alistair Graham entered the room. “It’s good to see you all,” he said to the group when everyone quieted down. “There is a lot of work to do out there, so if everyone could sign up for a few work-ship time slots, that would be great.” He then sat down to eat with some of the other guests.
“I’m going to go sign up for a job,” Oscar said, standing up to leave the table.
“See if there’s something I can sign up for too.”
“Are you serious?”
“Of course I am,” she insisted.
When the decision was made to choose Zack rather than the other candidates, Lydia tried calling everyone to let them know, but Mr. Graham wasn’t available to speak on the phone at that time. She had left him a message and he had sent a brief written response. Lydia wasn’t looking forward to seeing him, but she resolved to be professional and go talk to him.
“Hi, Mr. Graham,” she said as she approached his table. “I’m Lydia Phillips, from Westminster Printers.”
“Yes, Lydia! Please have a seat,” he said with a smile. “I was praying over the names on the guest list and when I saw yours I was hoping I’d get a chance to see you.”
She wasn’t expecting he would be praying for people before they even arrived, but as she contemplated his words she wondered if maybe she was getting more used to the idea of being prayed for.
“I just wanted to thank you again for being a part of the interview process and to say thank you for being so understanding about the way things worked out.”
“That’s quite alright,” Mr. Graham said with a gentle smile. “I had a sense that things would turn out the way they did. I prayed about it so I was ready for whatever happened.”
“What did God tell you about it?” she asked.
“Sometimes we get what we pray for, and sometimes prayer helps us to be ready when the thing we’re hoping for doesn’t happen. This was the latter.”
They talked a little longer and Lydia left wondering if she would have advocated for his candidacy a little stronger if she had enjoyed her first encounter with him as much as she enjoyed this one.
Oscar signed Lydia and himself up for work in the sugar bush. There were quite a few maple trees on the property and as the snow was beginning to thaw, the sap was now beginning to flow. Oscar stayed by the woodstove, gathering and chopping wood to fire the boilers while Lydia was assigned to collect the sap. She could tell that Oscar was enjoying his work and getting along well with the rest of the crew, but her arms were soon aching from carrying heavy buckets of sap and her legs were getting tired from trudging through the snow and mud.
When their supervisor noticed she was having trouble, he reassured her that she didn’t need to strain herself and she should work at a more relaxed pace. So, a few loads later, Lydia stopped to sit on an old stump and take a rest. From where she was sitting she could see quite a few others still going about their work. She knew some of them were visiting the prayer retreat center and participating in the “work-ship” out of religious ritual duty and some were brought there by life crises. She couldn’t help asking herself if this was worth it, if being here was doing them any good. Then she perceived a response, which seemed to be coming from within her, but not from her, and it said, “Why not?”
Taking a second look at the various guests, she had to agree. Oscar was having more fun than she had ever seen him have. One of her roommates who had been crying the previous night, during and after the evening prayer service, looked genuinely happy and at peace. As she sat on the wet, moss-covered stump, far away from the other workers, Lydia began to think about the whole idea of faith. She thought back to her encounters with Gerald’s mother and the things Oscar, Zack, and some of the other author candidates had said to her. As she reflected on all of this, it seemed that little tidbits of all of these interactions and all of her previous experiences were weaving themselves together.
Suddenly, it was clear to her that at the center of it all was something pure, maybe even something holy. For a brief moment it seemed as though that entity was accessible. The parts of her that had been full of doubt, anxiety and bitterness, now felt at peace. She could see that it was not Christianity that was ugly, but the ways in which it had been distorted.
Then, like waking up from a dream, the clarity and understanding were gone. Unsure of what to make of it all, Lydia stood up, grabbed hold of her sap buckets and walked back to join the rest of the crew. She was starving by the time lunch was served and was surprised to hear compliments about her work ethic as they ate.
Lydia and Oscar had set aside the afternoon for a time of quiet study, which she used for napping. They were going to leave after supper and Lydia wondered if there was time to tour the property a little more before they ate.
“I want to see what it’s like to walk through the woods without carrying heavy buckets of sap,” she said to Oscar. “Do you think it’s okay if we go out for a walk through the woods?”
“Sure,” he agreed, “but wait until nobody can see us before you try holding hands with me.”
“Stop it!” she exclaimed, giving him a playful shove.
She immediately wondered if some people might see this as flirting. Even though Oscar was joking, given the retreat center’s policies, she realized she should probably pay attention to who might be watching. These worries also reminded her of a brief conversation from the night before.
“You should probably know that one of the women in my room thinks we’re dating,” she said when they were safely away from the buildings.
“Oh, why?”
“Well, she told me how lucky I was that my boyfriend would agree to take me to a place like this.”
“So what did she say when you told her I wasn’t your boyfriend?”
“I couldn’t tell her!” Lydia exclaimed. “She had just spent the last twenty minutes explaining to everyone how terrible her marriage was and how she was increasingly convinced that there really weren’t any good men out there. I didn’t want to burst the one little glimpse of hope she got from us, I mean you.”
“I see what you’re saying,” Oscar said, “but she probably would have been able to handle the truth.”
Lydia was hoping that being in the woods again would reignite her moment of clarity and that maybe Oscar could help her to understand what she had experienced. Her revelation didn’t come, and she didn’t feel comfortable talking to Oscar about it either. Also, the physical work of carrying sap buckets had warmed her up more than the casual walking they were doing now. Oscar also didn’t want to walk too far since they didn’t know the trails and the sun was already starting to go down. Soon the dinner bell rang and they headed back to the base together.
The other guests at their table were either staying for the whole weekend or just finishing stays of one or two weeks. The day before, Lydia saw them as mildly interesting people to observe, but now they were fascinating people to converse with.
The drive home with Lydia at the wheel was quiet, but it was a relaxed and peaceful kind of quiet. They chatted a bit about some of the people they had met and Oscar explained where some of the terminology they used came from. Someone had mentioned ‘putting out a fleece,’ so Oscar explained the story of Gideon from the Bible and how he tested God’s call in his life by putting a dry fleece outside his tent before bed and even though it hadn’t rained, in the morning the fleece was sopping wet. Other people had used the phrases ‘trials and tribulations’ or ‘powers and principalities’ so he explained to her the context of those Bible verses as well.
During another period of silence Lydia weighed in her mind aga
in about whether she should tell him about her moment of clarity in the sugar bush. She eventually chose to ask one of the questions that had been on her mind ever since.
“Isn’t it all ridiculous?” she blurted out.
“You’re going to have to be a little more specific,” Oscar said, temporarily confused.
“Isn’t all of Christianity based on a bunch of stories that are scientifically impossible?”
He just looked at her and smiled, which infuriated Lydia even more.
“I’m asking you a serious question. This is something that prevents me from taking your whole world view seriously, and all you can do is sit there with a silly grin on your face?”
“I’m happy for you,” Oscar said with a laugh. “Now you’re asking questions as a regular person, not just someone who’s trying to sell a book to the Christian demographic. I think that’s a big step. If you weren’t driving, I’d give you a big pat on the back.”
“It doesn’t feel like much of a step forward when I’m still full of doubt and scepticism.” Until now he had always been fine with her disbelief, but now when she actually wanted him to be reassuring, he wasn’t.
“Yes, but now your scepticism bothers you,” Oscar said, “now you know that your personal doubt isn’t the end of the story. That is a step in the right direction.”
“But then what do I do with my scepticism?” she asked, still frustrated. “How do I as a rational personal take those stories seriously?”
“For what’s it worth, this is how it works for me,” he said. “Science and religion don’t always need to be at odds, but you’re right that for much of our story to be true, a bunch of pretty impossible things need to somehow be possible. Christians often are criticized for rejecting scientific explanations, but everyone rejects science from time to time. There is no consistent medical scientific evidence that chiropractic care, naturopathy or acupuncture actually do anything. That’s why they’re called ‘alternative medicine’ because they’ve failed the conventional tests. People still use alternative medicine though, not because they are irrational or superstitious, but because either it works for them or because traditional medicine has proven to be inadequate. At some point I’m pretty sure you’ve fallen in love and had your heart broken. Scientifically, you are going through a temporary chemical imbalance in your mind, which produces a negative emotional state. But if someone ever thought that this was an appropriate time to tell you that, you would happily give up your status as a rational being and ignore the scientific perspective.”
“I guess I sort of understand,” Lydia said. “But wanting to validate your emotions is on an entirely different plane than believing that someone could literally come back from the dead, for example.”
“Right and I won’t deny that it's a huge intellectual leap to make, but my point is that when a person’s internal experience is strong enough, it overrides their externally enforced education.”
“Yes but that's my point,” Lydia insisted. “Every day we witness some form of death and the older we get the more our own mortality becomes real to us. We don’t have to be taught death; we see it. You have been taught by your religious institutions to believe that the resurrection happened, you don’t experience it.”
“That's where you're wrong Lydia. Every day there is life and rebirth all around me. Grass grows in the cracks in the sidewalk, birds fly back after being away all winter, and broken hearts begin to mend and consider the possibility of loving again. The Christian understanding is that we as human beings are predisposed to pride, selfishness, lust, violence and greed and that mindset separates us from the God who designed us to live in harmony with creation. Jesus’ life and teachings went directly against our human tendencies. As human beings, we automatically think of our own needs before anyone else’s, we submit automatically to temptation, we demand respect without having earned it, we slip into automatic patterns that are void of love and affection, and so death is yet another inevitable event for all humankind. Jesus’ teachings of others-centered living opposed those assumptions. In his interactions and relationships with other people, he overcame those assumptions. His resurrection is really just the next manifestation of that. Christians reject those automatic assumptions and we are invited to participate in Jesus overcoming them.”
“So what does that participation look like?” Lydia asked, less frustrated than before.
“It means rejecting temptation and doing what God wants, rejecting your own wants and living for other people, rejecting self-preservation and accepting the hardships of a life of faith, and it means rejecting your earthly, national citizenship every day and embracing instead your citizenship in the Kingdom of heaven.”
“So just like prayer, it’s hard?” Lydia asked.
“It is if you’re doing it right.”
Then after a short pause Lydia asked, “Do you think Evangeline and her dad are doing it right?”
Oscar laughed. “I think they’re doing the best they can. She has a father who refuses to let her take any major life steps on her own. He is surrounded by a group of yes men who endorse his every thought. He’s leading a congregation of people who think every character trait he has is one God in Heaven shares with him. They’re both at a disadvantage in some ways.”
“So I guess that means you won’t be going to their church tomorrow?” Lydia asked as they neared his apartment.
“No, they’ll have to get by without me for a fourth Sunday in a row. I’ll go somewhere else again tomorrow.”
“Okay,” she said, “and one of these days I might come along with you and make it one in a row.”