Nora closed her eyes and saw nothing. This was natural, of course, only she wanted it to be different. Her mind was all aflutter—it always was—with what it was that might, this morning, have accounted for the distraction that simply would not cease to plague her. The sun had not yet risen, and the only light coming into the room was that of the LED street lamps lining Harrison Avenue, which her dormitory bedroom’s window almost overlooked from four stories up. Their light wasn’t radiating so much as like prying its way in through the flimsy aluminum blinds, making itself all the more a nuisance—one Nora had, mind you, made known first to her RA and then to Fischer Hall’s RD, both of whom said they’d “look into it” (into what, precisely, they did not say). But as of yet, eight weeks into the spring semester, they’d not done a damn thing. Typical. The admins back at Bethel were no more reliable in taking seriously her concerns. Why should she have expected any different of Wheaton’s? Still, if only her parents hadn’t so fiercely insisted that she move back closer to home…
All of this she tried to put out of mind as she once more tried to gather her composure. Noticing the slight hunch in her posture, with a quick inhale Nora dropped her shoulders down and back and sat herself upright in bed until she could feel the cold acrylic coating of the breeze block wall behind her. She clinched her eyes more tightly and mouthed as she sighed out, “Let nothing disturb you…”
It would be, she guessed, at least another hour before the doors down her hallway began to open and slam shut, sending out a scurry of hurried feet and frantic bustle, at which point all odds of sinking deep below the mad eddies of consciousness into a state of silent bliss were very well near to zero. Vocal prayers, she’d read, were the surest, most efficient way to still the onslaught of vexatious thoughts that most often keep beginners from attaining inward quiet, and so she mouthed the words some more.
Lizzie now was still asleep and the least of Nora’s worries. Sure, sometimes she talked in her sleep a bit, but never for long stretches and never really louder than the sound of Nora’s own breathing. Lizzie’s first class wasn’t until later in the morning, at 11:15, and she greedily devoured nearly every minute till then in unshakeable sleep, the whole while with the same stupid, heavenly smile she wore even in her waking. Nora could never quite work out what it was that slipped through Lizzie’s dreamy speech, but she could only imagine it was more of the same toothless optimism that so characterized her vocabulary when she finally emerged from their room for the day. She was always “flourishing”; everything was always “splendid,” “delightful,” or, on the best occasions only, “absolutely marvelous.” Everyone she met was “darling,” “love,” or “dearest”... And how often was that actually true? There was no way to tell for sure, of course, but Nora had to doubt that everything was so regularly peachy keen (another phrase Lizzie was fond of) as to bar warrant to a simple “fine” or “okay.” It was kind of repugnant, really, the way she—but no no no focus, Nora, focus, dammit, let nothing disturb you. Inhale, exhale…
Another method she’d read of being effective was one of meditative reading. Nothing like lectio divina or anything like that—she felt she’d outgrown that practice a few years ago. Not in any sort of dramatic way, it just simply stopped working for her. Anyhow, everyone back at Bethel was always on about the lectio this, lectio that. Some of her classmates there had even started inventing their own variations on the discipline—visio divina, ambulatio divina… By now, she thought and smirked, “they’re probably all going on about defecatio divina… But no no, focus, focus…
This other reading practice had proven helpful on a few occasions, but the success rate was spotty and, well, reading obviously involved some effort, which was precisely the thing she was trying to eliminate. Set atop a small bundle of blankets next to her was a rather large paperback volume, bearing all about it the marks of frequent, if not incessant, reference. There was one passage in particular she found especially vexing and yet, she could hardly help herself from returning to it again and again. Her first time through she’d found it almost downright appalling—odd, because so much of the other passages, difficult as they were, had only brought a sort of thoughtful calm over her. It must be me, she thought upon finishing it, finding herself much troubled. I’m just not—well, I’m not reading it closely enough. Soon, though, it was practically the only passage in the whole tome she could turn to—and not just out of force of habit. It was as if everything else in the volume had gradually taken on the same execrable quality instead. Nora opened her eyes just slightly, glancing over at the book next to her. Its strange orange cover had a rather unearthly glow. It was almost as if something were goading her on, “Pick up and read, pick up and read…” She closed her eyes once more, reminding herself to fix her attention in one place and in one place only, that purity of heart depended upon it, that her very own heart was at stake should she fail to divest her attention completely upon the one thing, but maybe—no, but maybe—no no no—maybe, yes, just the first paragraph would help…
Nora had her first truly religious experience when she was only about fifteen years old. But it was probably nothing—at least, it was nothing like the experiences she would go on to read of. One woman she’d read had often levitated during times of prayer, much to her own embarrassment, and once met an angel who pierced her heart with a lance; Nora had always remained firmly on the ground. Some other man, a contemporary of this woman, supposedly received the privilege of a bird’s eye view of the cross, Christ still hanging on it; Nora could hardly imagine the scene from the view of an ant, much less through human eyes. Still another recorded that she had seen God in a single point at the center of everything and, at the sight of a simple crucifix, beheld Christ bleeding out in ample rivers, sending forth and returning all things to Himself, eternally suffering his creation into being—or something like that. The former of these last visions Nora found rather alluring, but the second—that quite confounded, even repulsed her.
Her experience had been strange in its own right (it was a dream, after all) but had nothing in it so virulent or outlandish as suffering, not in the slightest degree. And though she was sure there really had been a man named Jesus, who “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried,” she was also certain, steadfastly so, that for as reluctant to suffer as Jesus himself was, he surely would never dare dream of involving her in that with him.
No, indeed, it was an experience she was sure she’d even heard of in youth group, maybe even in her own curious wanderings through the pages of her mother’s old brown leather Bible.
It came about on a cool day in March. That day she could recall more vividly than the dream itself, actually. It was a Friday, somewhat hazy. A string of storms the night before had left the sky swept with broad wisps of high, gauzy clouds, and the sun shone through them so tenderly that the world beneath was barely warmed, but enough still that the delicate purple heads of squill and crocus had unfolded slowly in what light they received. A faint breeze still lingered and teased at the skin of her arms, bare in short sleeves.
She was in ninth grade. School hadn’t been canceled that day or anything—she had just decided, on a whim, that she would skip. Her parents had already left for work by the time she usually left to walk herself to class, and the train station was just as close a walk as the high school. If she timed it all out right, she could catch the 8:33 on the UP-West line to Geneva, grab a coffee and a scone at Graham’s, walk down to Island Park to feed the geese and watch the river, and make it back to Wheaton by 11:45 to finish out the school day. None of these details were apparent, though, until the train was nearing West Chicago at 8:41. In fact, she wasn’t sure she’d have called it a “decision” to skip. It was more that some weight had fallen upon her and she, in obedience, took it up and followed. Or perhaps that something had called to her in secret and she responded just as furtively, “Here I am, send me!”
It was an unfamiliar feeling for Nora, one that came after a rather extensive time of waiting, or preparation perhaps. The terms she’d learn later were tempting to ascribe to her condition—anguish, affliction—but she felt to use them was more on account of deference to tradition than veracity to experience. That, and, foreign as the feeling was, it hadn’t been unpleasant, nothing so painful as these terms would suggest. It was simply… a blankness. But ah, how bland! It lacked all the fervor of the prophets and mystics! But it was in this blankness that Nora had wandered off that day. Its origins were as imprecise as the term describing it, but she wondered sometimes if she could trace them back even earlier…
There was an intimation of it, indeed, somewhere in her memory—only where? She remembered the night before her vision that her mother had come and sat at the foot of her bed, thinking she had already drifted far into sleep. Nora imagined her mother’s brow all knotted up with concern. She imagined that even in the dark of the room her mother’s eyes flashed with compassion and confusion.
“Nora, honey…” she’d heard her say. “Where has my sweet girl gone?”
It was true. That Nora, the Nora who had for much of her adolescence given the impression of a most gregarious and affable girl, had just sort of silently slipped away into someone more… hermetic. But to Nora herself—the quiet, withdrawn one—the former identity she wore only ever seemed affected, the product of some exterior compulsion, from entirely without her. Really, for as many people as Nora knew and engaged, she felt to the same degree inexorably un-known, an alien interloping into alien affairs, a stranger in the strange land of talk and chatter and milling about, with every moment of it sending something in her shrinking further and further from the surface. And so it wasn’t quite a slipping. How could she describe it? Language felt so insufficient. Perhaps only as the slow accumulation of a thousand—no, a million—little surrenders to the Nora everyone saw but who never truly was.
Ah-ha. The play. Yes, there was something… Sixth grade. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, was it? And she was Puck, the trickster fairy, yes… Come to think of it, she hadn’t made any display at all of such lively extroversion until then. She’d auditioned for Edison Middle School’s production thinking maybe she’d just end up with some miniscule role, standing somewhere off near the wing of stage right with a line or maybe two—something only mildly humorous, nothing to get an uproar. Or all the better, something to drive the plot forward an inch and no further. That’d have been nice. But no. When the cast listings were posted, she could hardly believe that written by her name was “Robin Goodfellow (Puck).”
Her parents, of course, were delighted. Over the moon, even. That Sunday at church they gushed to any sorry soul that so much as looked in their direction.
“Did you hear about our sweet, Nora? She’s going to be the lead in Edison’s play this fall!”
“Maybe we’ll finally see what’s underneath all that precious bookishness!”
Now there was a word she could keep: Bookish. Yes, bookish, and nothing more. But with the production’s opening night, all bets of holding on to that descriptor were gone. As soon as she entered the audience’s view for curtain call, they were up on their feet—a standing ovation. For the show’s duration she’d tried to put them as far out of mind as possible. Come to think of it—there had hardly been a moment when she’d failed to evoke the cachinnation of the crowd, or at least just utterly captivate them. With what, exactly, she couldn’t say. But with their applause and cheers, the aftershow greetings and job well dones, a new reality had ushered itself in.
Why had she let it? She’d have belied herself if she said she didn’t like the praise—well, not praise. It really was assurance of a job well done and nothing more. She’d been given a role (she was “practically born for it”, her mother told her) and in her studious, practical turn of mind had set about doing it, as she endeavored in all things, to the utmost. The reward was an almost instantaneous promotion to the height of middle school social standing—not a bad reward in and of itself. It just so happened that in the following days, weeks, months, and even years, the role lingered on beyond the stage. People liked the sprightly Nora, and Nora, for a time, even came to like her quite well, too, if nothing else than for the commendation that came with it; each and every laugh was another “Job well done!” ringing in her ears.
The illusion, of course, could only last so long. She grew tired rather quickly of people sniggering before she could even say a word. Worse still, she’d have something to say—something pressing, something ardent and sincere (she often did, so full she was of books, ideas, philosophies!) —and still all she could elicit from both peer and parent was incredulous guffaws. Could no one hear her? Could no one see her? And so that something shrank and shrank.
But the dream, the dream… Yes, the ground had mostly thawed, and the banks of the river were thick in clover, squill, and crocus. The air was cool, the breeze was faint—have we mentioned this? Well so there by the river Nora was sitting when it happened that she closed her eyes for just a moment. It was dark, at first, then brown and red, then the most perfect, most pleasant, softest white. At the center of this white slowly emerged the shape of four enormous birds—egrets or cranes, maybe. She could hardly discern them from the white scene she saw before her, so brilliant they were themselves. That they were birds was clear enough, though only certain of their features were more than a bit unusual; they almost seemed to have faces. These she could not make out with any sort of acuity, but there was at least one other element she could recall strikingly. Alongside the egrets were these enormous spoked wheels, the kind you might see on some sort of ancient chariot... There were four of them, one for each of the birds, and they hung suspended in the air. Nora could recall the awful burning with which she wanted to study them, and that she had even observed them closely enough to now remember that the rims of the wheels were riddled with the most terrible eyes; that in those eyes she felt she saw herself, not merely as a reflection but somehow as both object and subject at once; most of all, that in them she had never felt so deeply known, even something more… This all unfolded rather slowly, but when she opened her eyes once more and saw the sky was still streaked with the same clouds as when she closed them, it was clear that the vision had impressed itself upon her in less than a moment’s passing. Her skin had felt so cold, but in the dream’s passing had almost grown warm. The warmth even seemed to be radiating outward, like somehow it was within. It was all beginning to feel so near, so near… so near that the warmth was returning like… like a flower in her chest…
A door in the hallway suddenly slammed shut.
“Dammit, dammit, dammit!!!”
Nora howled and tossed the open book across the room and it fluttered clumsily in the air before crashing into Lizzie’s desk and sending its array of pencils, picture frames, and trinkets flying in all directions. Nora sat at the edge of her bed, a frenzy still seething in her eyes, panting heavily. It didn’t take more than a moment for her to realize what she’d done, and the frenzy turned to horror.
She leapt from the bunk to the floor on her bare feet and rushed to Lizzie’s desk, swearing under her breath as she tried to reassemble its various knickknacks back to their place. Finally, she picked up the book. Its pages were all bent. The spine had torn away from the binding slightly, so that the front cover hung off it askew. She examined it a bit, then hurriedly leafed back to the passage.
“Please, please, please…” she muttered, hoping to find it intact.
A slight stirring came behind her, then a sweet, delicate voice. “Nora?”
Nora didn’t turn. She pursed her lips, took a sharp inhale through her nostrils, sighed it back out, and crouched to gather the remaining rubble of Lizzie’s things. “Sorry, Lizzie… Go back to sleep, I’ll clean all of this up…”
“Is everything okay?”
“Yes, everything—everything’s fine, just please go back to sleep, okay.”
Stupid Lizzie. She slept through everything. Even fire alarms didn’t bother her. Why did she have to wake up now? Nora cursed herself for it.
“Oh, darling, I was hardly asleep. Here, let me help you.” She started to get up. Nora turned to beg her please, just stay there, and go back to bed, but Lizzie was already kneeling next to her and picking up the detritus before she could issue any further protest.
“You’ve been mumbling in your sleep for the last hour, Lizzie, now please, just go and—I’m sorry about your stuff, let me just—”
“No, darling, please, I really insist!” Her sandy brown hair was matted and tousled into knots. “I don’t mind at all. In fact,” she stopped and sat everything down again, “pause. Time out. Nora darling—are you o-kay?”
Nora blushed, a combination of humiliation and anger. This was maybe only her third interaction with her roommate since arriving from Mishawaka and, up until now, she’d made drastic efforts to avoid availing herself to meetings of any length with Lizzie after their brief introduction. She could tell in that first instant that there was no depth to the girl, none whatsoever. She’d met others just like Lizzie back at Bethel, only somehow Lizzie was about ten times more… evangelical than them. Nora knew the type—quite intimately, mind you: had grown up surrounded by it, had wanted to escape it by the time she got to college, and now had been forced to endure not one but two semesters of it in its most distilled concentrations. Furthermore, she was certain—no, convicted—that all its accompanying sentimental slop was no more than a facade to cloak some unconfronted silent despair, and that, above all, such shameless sensibility could only be to the detriment of the inner garden she’d been working so carefully to cultivate for nearly four years now. What did Lizzie care if she was “okay” or not? Anything less than “just dandy” would be sure to sour her spirits, anyways…
“I’m fine, Lizzie, just please—”
“Nope, nope, nope, no-o-o-o-o ma’am, ‘fine’ people don’t yell and throw their textbooks across the room. Besides, it’s far too early to be studying, love, why don’t you—”
“I wasn’t studying,” Nora snapped. To anyone else, it would have been clear that she was losing her patience.
“Well, still, it’s far too early for…” She craned to see the book better, but Nora nudged it behind her, just out of line of sight.
“Just some—personal reading. Really, it’s nothing, just leave me—”
“Oh, that’s okay,” Lizzie yawned, accepting the small defeat, and set again to cleaning up. “No worries, at all, darling, I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
“You can go back to bed, seriously. I made the mess, let me—”
“Pah! Bed, schmed. I wasn’t asleep, don’t worry. I just like to start my mornings with a little Jesus time, you know? He’ll still be there when we’re done cleaning this up, don’t you worry. Besides,” she laughed, “I don’t need all these tchotchkes lying around! You, dear, have done me a great service. Some might even say a grace! I just get so attached to all of this… It’s not good for my heart, even if it does remind me of good and happy things.”
Lizzie giggled at her own self-perceived folly, but Nora was stricken, taken aback. Half a minute passed in silence before she glanced up at Lizzie, who was still patiently collecting piece by piece the splinters of a shattered wooden picture frame. “So you were, like… praying…?” she said at last. She’d meant her tone to sound more neutral, more relaxed, but she sensed it conveyed a judgment she had not intended. Shame seared red her cheeks.
To her surprise, though, Lizzie only giggled. “Sure,” she said brightly. “But I don’t know… I’ve never cared for that word, prayer. It means so much that I sometimes wonder if it actually means anything. That, and well… It just sounds so… rigid, doesn’t it? Oh!” She suddenly looked from her pile of splinters at Nora, the most sincere concern flashing in her eyes. She seemed surprised at what she’d just said. “Nora, darling, I’m so sorry, I hope I didn't offend you.”
“No… No, not all, actually…” She herself was surprised to hear Lizzie, of all people, say something so… contemplative. This was the same girl, after all, who had plastered above her bed a print of big, swirly script that read, Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. “I think I know what you mean.”
Lizzie let out a dramatic sigh of relief and swept her brow with the back of her hand. “Oh, phew! I’ve stepped on toes with that opinion before… And it really is just an opinion, I’m really not entitled to say anything conclusive about it…”
“No, really, I get it.”
“It’s just that… Well… It makes it sound so much like an action, doesn’t it? And it is an action, I guess, but… Well, I’m not making any sense.”
“No, I’m serious” Nora replied, her impatience waning, “I know what you mean. Or, I think I know what you mean. I’ve been trying to… pray, I guess… But yeah. I guess I just hear where you’re coming from, is all.”
“Trying?” said Lizzie.
“Yeah, but I don’t know…” Nora trailed off indefinitely. Her thoughts were all still so scattered and the clutter on the floor wasn’t helping. “It’s just… that’s what I threw the book for. I’m sorry, Lizzie…”
“No, no, hush. Not another word of that. Tell me more.” She touched Nora’s hand. “It’s okay, you can tell me.”
Nora sighed. She shifted from her knees to sit on the ground and bent over her lap, resting her chin in the palm of her hand, brushing back her hair from her face with the other. “Well… Several years ago I had something of an… ‘experience’ isn’t the right word… I guess, I’ve been trying for a while now to learn how exactly to pray. Like, I know the Our Father and whatnot, but—I’ve just been reading and reading and reading, and it seems like everyone has just some slight variation on the method and, well… I don’t know. It sounds really simple until I go to try it, then it’s like everything just… screams for attention. Which obviously isn’t helpful when, you know, you’re trying not to try.”
She paused. Lizzie too, stayed silent, inviting Nora to continue. Some warmth still lingered in her bright blue eyes. Something in them reminded Nora of the sky above the river.
“I don’t know,” Nora continued. “I guess… Here.” She reached behind her and picked up the book. “ I think this says something important.” As she leafed through the wrinkled volume, she was a bit surprised to find that she turned not to the passage that called to her most strongly, but to a different one altogether, one she’d not come to for some time.
“Can I read this for you?”
“Of course, dear,” Lizzie said. She too made herself a seat on the floor and leaned in to hear.
Nora began. Her voice lowered, almost to a tone of reverence. “‘The most powerful prayer, one well-nigh omnipotent to gain all things, and the noblest work of all is that which proceeds from a bare mind. The more bare it is, the more powerful, worthy, useful, praiseworthy and perfect the prayer and the work. A bare mind can do all things. What is a bare mind? A bare mind is one which is worried by nothing and is tied to nothing, which has not bound its best part to any mode, does not seek its own in anything, that is fully immersed in God's dearest will and gone out of its own….’”
Here she trailed off again. She gazed out the window above them for what must have been a minute. The sky had softened from black to a velvet deep blue. Suddenly she rebounded to the present and stared fiercely into Lizzie’s face, with an energy that even made Lizzie give a little leap.
“‘A bare mind…’ I don’t need to know what that is, that much I understand. What I want to know is how to get it. Isn’t that what Christ meant by a ‘pure heart’? Isn’t that how you see God?”
Lizzie remained silent and nodded once more. Something fantodic had begun to rouse itself deep in the well of her roommate’s voice. Still, an invitation to go on remained in Lizzie’s posture.
“How can I make my mind bare like that? How can I immerse myself—like, literally sink myself down into God, whatever that means? And here—”
Before she could think twice she was tearing her way through the book once more. Her fingers knew precisely where to go. When she arrived at the passage, she spoke each word as carefully as before, but with a nervous angst that was growing with each breath.
“‘God cannot work all His will in all hearts, for, although God is almighty, He can only work where He finds readiness or creates it….’”
She shot her eyes up from the text and back at Lizzie, who was still as ever. Nora was becoming more agitated with each breath. “So only God can do it?” Nora proceeded, closing the book. “So it is God and God alone that can strip my mind and my heart bare of ‘this and that’? But of course, I have to be ready… And who creates the readiness? God. Well how about this: what if I am ready?! I’ve asked for it! I’ve asked Him again and again, I’ve tried to make myself as blank a slate as possible. I’ve felt the blankness before, Lizzie. I’ve seen God. So will He answer me or not?! The writer goes on—he says, ‘Detachment and purity cannot pray, for whoever prays wants God to grant him something, or else wants God to take something from him. But a detached heart desires nothing at all, nor has it anything it wants to get rid of. Therefore it is free of all prayers, or its prayer consists of nothing but being uniform with God. That is all its prayer.’”
Nora concluded there. Her breath heaved steadily, and her whole body rang with percussive vigor. A pronounced, rhythmic throb coursed from behind her left breast, up her neck, into her temples, and even down to the soles of her feet. The tendons in either of her wrists pulsed, as well, but only faintly. She closed the book conclusively and tossed it to the floor beside her. “So there,” she said finally. “There you have it. Do you think I’m insane now?”
Lizzie smiled. Her eyes softened again, and she reached out again to touch Nora’s hand. Lizzie’s hand was warm, but the room itself, Nora noticed, was quite cool, cold even. She wanted to pull away, but felt almost immobilized by the sudden warmth. “No, dear,” Lizzie said. “You’re not insane. It’s like I said about all this junk!” She gave a little laugh. “And it’s not even just stuff, but I mean—I think sometimes we get just as attached to the stuff that’s not stuff. Ha! Now Isound insane! But how do I explain… Can I tell you a little story? If I start to babble or anything, please just stop me, dear, I won’t be offended.”
Nora was beginning to calm down, but her breath was still so heavy she could hardly say a word, so instead she gave a vacant nod. From the blue irises haloed about the dark of Lizzies pupils shone forth a certain tenderness. Even her pupils seemed to emanate light more than they absorbed it. There was in them a kindness, a wistfulness—and somehow, too, a pain—as Lizzie set ahead.
“Well,” she began, “I must have been thirteen. Our church always put on these absolutely marvelous youth retreats, just really lovely times. So every February, we’d drive to Gatlinburg from Charlotte for this big conference and—have you ever been to Gatlinburg? Well, they have the most adorable little street that runs through the village, and it’s right there in the mountains and it’s just so gorgeous—but sorry, dear, I’m babbling already! But so we’d all stay in these little rooms just right off the main stretch, and for a whole weekend we’d just go and worship and sing and hear the most amazing messages from just these marvelous pastors, and between these ‘sessions’ (that was what they called them) we’d go and tell people about Jesus.
“In all of these sessions, Nora, dear, it seemed like everyone was in tears. I mean, like, ev-er-y one. It was sobeautiful. But I remember that year—it was my first one, I was in sixth grade—I was just so afraid. Not because of the crying, but because I couldn’t. I’d look over during worship—and we were in this e-nor-mous convention center with like thousands of other kids—and I’m serious, it seemed like everyone was just crying and raising their hands and blessing the Lord, but I didn’t feel anything. Like, I was aware of what was going on, but I was just… like… not there. Then each of these pastors would finish their message—these powerful sermons that just cut straight to the heart—and they’d say ‘I wonder if any of you are ready to give your life to Jesus today. Don’t wait. Come forward if you are. Jesus is calling.’ And then like this whole stream of children would just pour out of their seats, into the aisles and just flock to the front to give their lives up to Jesus and welcome him into their hearts. But Nora, I was so scared. The whole time I just sat in my seat and thought to myself, ‘Jesus, I don’t think I’m ready. How can I be? I don’t even know if I know you. I don’t even know if I love you.’ Over and over I just sat there repeating this to myself—‘I don’t know if I know you, I don’t know if I love you…’ The same thing would happen when we shared the gospel. We’d just walk up and down the stretch asking all these people—tourists, locals, homeless, hikers—‘Do you know Jesus?’ And just the whole time I was thinking, ‘I can’t do this, I don’t even know if I know him, I don’t even know if I love him…’ The whole weekend. ‘I don’t know… I don’t know…’
“And then, finally, on the very last day, we were getting ready to leave and our youth leaders decided to have one last little activity together. So they took us into this separate room back in the conference center. They turned off the lights and had us all—like forty of us—they had us all sit in a circle, there in the dark. So we were just in this room, the lights were off, we couldn’t see a thing, and they told us, ‘As you feel led, repeat these words: I confess that I’m a mess and I need Christ to save me.’ So one by one, at first just kind of popcorn-y then one right after another, all of these kids just said—and everyone’s sobbing but me—each of them said ‘I confess that I’m a mess and I need Christ to save me.’ One by one, each of them said it. Except me. Everyone was crying, everyone was saying that they’re such a mess—except me. And Nora, this terrified me more than anything else. Like, I couldn’t even bring myself to say that I was a mess. And I know what it says in Scripture, that if anyone says they haven’t sinned they deceive themselves, but I just couldn’t say it. I didn’t feel it. I didn’t feel anything. I just sat in the dark listening to all these children weeping their hearts out and I didn’t feel an-y-thing. And like, if who we are at the most basic level is sinners, I was thinking, ‘I don’t even know myself.’ So not only did I not know who Jesus was, not only did I not know if I loved him, but I was realizing then—I didn’t even know myself. Nora, I was so scared. So all of this was just eating me up. My heart was pounding, my head was pounding… Then—Nora, it was the strangest thing. It was like that scene in the Bible, when Elijah doesn’t hear God in the wind or in the earthquake or in the fire but in a gentle whisper. I heard just the faintest little voice in my head, it said ‘I know you. I love you.’ Like, it was speaking back to me. This whole time I’d been saying to myself, ‘I don’t know if I know you, I don’t know if I love You, I don’t know if I know myself’ and it just said, ‘I know you. I love you.’ So right then, I just felt the most perfect peace wash over me. Like all of the wind and the waves going on in my head just knew to be still, and they were. And I was too. But more than that, I felt this… and this sounds so crazy, dear, but hear me out… I felt this warmth around my heart, just right here,” she pressed a hand to the left side of her chest, “that almost… I don’t know how to say it. It sort of… bloomed. Like a flower. So right then, I stood up, and I marched myself out of that dark room. I went to the bus, pulled out my Bible and flipped to the first verse I could think of, ‘For God so loved the world…’ And I just read it over and over and over again until I was just sobbing, saying over and over to myself, ‘I know you, I love you, I know you, I love you…’ By the time everyone came out, I’d cleaned myself up and sat on a bench by the bus, and everyone was coming up to me like, ‘Are you okay, Lizzie? Are you okay?’ It must have scared them half to death that I just up and left like that! But I just sat there, smiling, the most amazing warmness still blooming in my chest, and said, ‘I’m flourishing!’”
Lizzie tittered and beamed as she finished, as if the mere recounting of this story had summoned up again that calm she’d felt all those years ago. For the duration of the story Nora had listened warily. But now she was puzzled. And not only puzzled, but even somewhat repulsed.
“So there you have it,” Lizzie giggled.
Nora stared back, fixed in her dumbfoundedness. Confusion and disgust simmered in her eyes. Had she really listened to all of that to find the origin story of a foolish girl’s favorite catchphrase? Finally, she replied, “I’m not sure I follow.”
Lizzie laughed gleefully, “There you have what I think about prayer! I suppose…” she said, “I suppose what I’m trying to say is that prayer for me is like… an exercise of love. Like, if I can remind myself that Jesus loves me, that Jesus loves everything, then somehow it feels like… like I’m involved in it, participating in the loving, like all the love in the world is, like, growing in me… Does that make sense? Oh, I hope I haven’t said anything stupid!”
A dense silence hung between the two girls. Nothing seethed in Nora now but scorn—for Lizzie and her trifling little story, for Wheaton, for Bethel, for the whole mass of people who could delude themselves with such spineless, soppy religion. The scorn had even begun to contort her face into a snide grimace until her eyes met Lizzie’s. They no longer appeared blue only, but a whole spectrum of colors swirling and collapsing upon one another. By sheer force of will she kept them fixed there, until a flare of shame again shot through Nora and caused her to blush, as though she’d defiled and offended something of great value. Those eyes, those eyes! Terrible! They saw everything, didn't they? Nora half expected to find her scorn mirrored back in them, but Lizzie remained completely unaffected. She looked patiently upon Nora, awaiting her reply.
At last, with the ignominy’s passing, Nora dredged up a response. “But love… it requires more than just a sentiment, doesn’t it? It’s an action. And prayer, well—you said so yourself that it’s not an action.”
“Well,” said Lizzie pensively, “it’s all terribly complicated… I mean, it’s actually quite simple, but… Ah! There I go making things more of a fuss than they need to be! I guess… I guess maybe outwardly there’s not a lot going on. I mean, you thought I was sleeping! But in my heart there’s so much going on! Only I don’t feel like it’s me doing anything there, but just… God.”
“So it is God alone.”
Lizzie thought for a moment. “Well… it seems there’s something like… like a mutual understanding that has to take place. I have to be ready, but so does He. I think it’s Solomon that says something like, ‘Do not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.’”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning I guess I have to make myself ready for love, but I can’t actually make it… come to me.”
“You’re losing me.”
“Well, so when I’m ‘praying’ I guess all I’m really doing is just… Have you ever been on a date before? It’s like getting ready for a date. I can fix my hair and put on my best clothes and all of that, but that’s not gonna make my date show up any sooner. Like, hopefully he gets here on time, and the wait is just agonizing, but… You just sort of have to… wait.”
“But why even bother getting ready? Isn’t that just an attachment of the expectation that he’ll show up at all?”
“How so, dear?”
“Well—here.” Nora snatched the orange book from the floor and returned once more to the passage and began to read again. “‘...Everything wants to be in its natural place. Now God's natural place is unity and purity, and that comes from detachment. Therefore God is bound to give Himself to a detached heart.’”
Lizzie now looked thoroughly lost. Something had gone over her head. She squinted a bit, thinking over what the passage was trying to get at and arriving nowhere. “It almost sounds like he’s saying detachment is somehow, like, superior to love…”
So she had understood! Nora’s anger dwindled. She was all but ecstatic. “Yes, yes!” she said emphatically. “That’s exactly what he says! He says, ‘The teachers greatly praise love, as does St. Paul… But I extol detachment above any love.’”
“But God is…”
“Detachment!” Nora’s ecstasy grew, perceiving little of the concern that had begun to show itself in her roommate’s positioning. Lizzie’s head was tilted, her hands folded, fingers interlaced. But Nora went on, blind to all else but the words on the open page. “God is detachment, Lizzie! Yes, before He is anything, He is detachment! ‘God has stood in this unmoved detachment from all eternity, and still so stands; and you should know further that when God created heaven and earth and all creatures, this affected His unmoved detachment just as little as if no creature had ever been created.’ It’s there, Lizzie! It’s right there on the page! Ha, ha!”
“Nora, dear, you’re sweating…”
Excitement had deafened her, too. She had become so engrossed in the book, ragged and tattered as it was, that perhaps no spoken word could bring her back. A raving smile had spread across her face. She read on, turning the pages not as a madperson but with an alarming degree of self-control. Lizzie fell silent. If she had touched Nora’s hand, Nora didn’t feel it.
Nora went on like this for some five minutes, tenderly turning each page, silently pronouncing each syllable, basking in the interminable cohesion of logos and pneuma, the key to the whole of cosmic justice and reason unfolding mark by mark before her, compelling and constraining closer to herself the heart of it all, the self-contained, removed, unmoving heart of her very being’s Mover.
Then, turning one more page, she stopped. Her face went pale. Her eyes fixed briefly on a line of text, one she’d never, for all her many hours spent enraptured in this volume, noticed in the slightest. The swiftest steed to bear you to His perfection, it read, is suffering, for none will enjoy greater eternal bliss than those who stand with Christ in the greatest bitterness.
She came to in an instant. Her temples, wrists, feet, heart… all ached terribly within her, even down to the bone. Lizzie’s eyes had not for a moment broken from Nora.
‘Nora, dear, are you alright?”
Her mouth was dry. She could not speak.
“Nora, darling…” Lizzie pleaded gently, lifting the book from Nora’s loosened grasp. Having removed it, she brushed a strand of Nora’s hair behind her ear and smoothed back the hair on her head. “Everything’s okay…” she said, a few times over. She sidled over next to her and embraced her gently, like one would a frightened child.
Out in the hallway, doors had begun to close and open all the more frequently. Footsteps and bits of passing conversations floated past their door. All was silent within.
Eventually, Lizzie spoke again, in a voice just above a whisper. “What I told you earlier, dear… Really, when I think about it, that was probably the most painful experience of my entire life…”
Nora listened. She was so tired, so weak.
“Yes,” Lizzie went on, “the most painful… But you know, after I heard those words, ‘I know you, I love you…’ I felt so… grateful. For all of it. I couldn’t imagine being more grateful for anything. Then, it didn’t really bother me that I hadn’t had this great ‘mountaintop’ experience in the singing, in the sermons, even in that weird, dark room. I was grateful that I hadn’t. And it was all the same thing in the end, wasn’t it? I met Jesus. He met me on his own. He spoke to me again after that, you know…” Her voice fell even quieter as she trailed off. Nora heard a pulse in her chest much like the one in her own, only slower.
“It was the strangest thing,” Lizzie said. The quiet of the room remained unperturbed. “First he said… ‘I would suffer again and again for you if I could.’ I imagined him smiling at me really gently when he said that. It just filled my heart so much. But the really strange part was that he said… ‘Thank you, my dear, for your suffering.’” Lizzie’s eyes were starting to glitter in the room’s scant light. She looked at the girl nestled to her shoulder. “What do you think that means?”
In a thoughtless instant, that crumpled girl wrestled free from the arms of her keeper, wound back her hand, and brought it in a single, swift motion to the flesh of Lizzie’s jaw. Lizzie doubled back, reaching her own hand to the place where Nora’d struck her. She dabbed a spot of blood from her lip as Nora clambered to her feet and stood petrified in the room’s center.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” she hissed. “None of you idiots know what you’re saying! Shut up. Shut up!”
Lizzie didn’t say a word but only looked her roommate. Anyone else might have seen anger, scorn, hate. But Lizzie only noticed that her eyes were the most perfect shade of hickory—simple, humble, pure. The girls watched each other a moment longer—Nora from above, Lizzie from below—before a whisper filled the quiet.
“Nora.”
But Nora didn’t hear. She had left the door wide open as she fled down the hall.
She didn’t break her pace for some fifteen minutes. The sky was only just then bright enough to see by and had, back towards the east, become a brilliant sheet of yellow, bleeding above into an infinity of blue. Once she’d stopped, she looked about her but did not recognize her surroundings. Her bare feet had carried her over concrete, asphalt, and crushed limestone until they rested at last in a patch of cedar mulch at the bank of a pool of still, black water. A slight breeze sent a few ripples over its surface then turned it to glitter in the sun’s dawning light. Out along the farther banks of the pool cattails grew in a thick expanse and stood nodding and bowing in the wind.
The morning was cool. She knew that soon her skin would tighten into ridges up her arms and legs and down the nape of her neck. The mulch beneath her bristled at the soles of her feet. A warm, earthy aroma rose slowly to her nostrils. She inhaled it deeply and closed her eyes, letting its heat swarm her lungs before she exhaled and it was gone. She noticed once more the wild, racing pulse of her heart. The throb in her temples, wrists, feet. A cardinal cheered somewhere out in the brush. I hit her, she thought. A rush of shame flashed to the back of her eyelids the image of the beaten face, damp with blood and tears. The thought lingered a bit before it went on its way and the face, too, dissolved, passing into darkness, leaving in its wake a void. The throb persisted. She welcomed the hurt. Dark dissolved to white and a warmth unfolded petal by petal left of center from her sternum. Something emerged from the white as from a mist. She could almost see what. Her eyes fluttered open before she could, and instead she saw, standing in the pool, four great egrets that had descended to the water, their white plumage dazzling with the ripples in glassy black liquid beneath them. Nora watched them for a moment then gasped as they turned, all four at once, to leer in her direction down the length of their beaks. Their eyes were terrible, ruthless, remote—and yet also somehow mild, merciful. Yellow beads pierced through with the world’s own Dark Center. They contained Everything. Her knees asked to kiss the ground and she obeyed them. Bowing to the mulchy floor, the faintest breeze whispered at her ear. It spread a net of glittering runnels across the water’s dark surface and the birds stretched wide their wings to greet it, departing.