Chapter 12
Fiacre saw Mrs. Heartbreak, driving quickly, go past the Church and turn onto Pritchard Street. He knew that John would ask Mrs. Heartbreak, in just the next few minutes, for the use of her van so that he might travel to Wall Eye and fandango the Reverend Jake Cooker. The thought made Fiacre laugh, which he did with a deep and rumbling sound that came straight up from his belly. People were surprised by Fiacre’s laugh, though it was not uncommon and heard frequently: Fiacre was a slight man but his laugh belonged to a Whale or a singer of German operas; it was that deep and rumbling.
Fiacre’s happiness stemmed from the eagerness with which poor John Heartbreak now brings to the task of tipping over Jake Cooker’s manure wagon. Fiacre knows that God doesn’t care very much about what a church does or does not do, but He does care, and quite a lot, about what people do. Consequently, Fiacre cared too, but he would have anyway because he had immediately liked John and hoped that he would behave well. John’s eagerness is a sign that he is going to behave well; so Fiacre is happy, and God is happy. This is very important to Fiacre because, well, when God ain’t happy nobody is happy.
Be mindful that God has never been in the church business. Nor has God built a church or set up a building fund. And, as far as anyone knows, God has not chosen to join a particular denomination, although we have it on good authority that he most frequents churches that keep tidy lawns and refuse to play recorded music.
Notwithstanding God’s indifference to churches, He concedes that churches are quite important as starting points for fulfillment of the great commandment to love one another. The main reason why God wants people to belong to a church is that such affiliation requires both faith and work, especially work because love is often a low paying job.
Many (many) people are satisfied and self-satisfied by identifying themselves as ‘Spiritual,’ and holding high minded thoughts about themselves. Frequently, these Spiritual Beings are excited about the potential of others to become as high minded as the Spiritual Person him or herself is high minded and, well, spiritual. Sometimes this gives God the giggles. Other times it just pisses Him off.
According to God—I have this on good authority—a true spiritual self only emerges after often long periods of succeeding at loving the self-righteous, immoral, hypocritical wing nut who sits in an adjacent pew every Sunday for the sole purpose of depressing you. Frequently, you are the self-righteous, immoral, hypocritical wing nut sitting in an adjacent pew, and that is really depressing. Anyhoo, claiming a successful Spiritual Self without pew time is no different in God’s eyes than claiming the Congressional Medal of Honor without having been in a war and behaving heroically in it.
Of course it is possible to become a spiritual being without attending to the rigors of life in a church! Viktor Frankl described Nazi concentration camps as a possible venue, and Hermann Hesse suggests the whole Siddhartha thing if you’re process oriented and learn best through trial and error. But gosh, do you really want to go to Auschwitz when you’ve got a church handy on nearly every corner where you live?
And so it is that Fiacre’s main observation is that the ‘Spiritual People’ he’d met in his long life had been born on third base and believed they’d hit triples. But Fiacre also observed the same thing about ‘Religious People.’ They too possess an extraordinary faith in their own Wonderfulness, and enthusiastically and artistically articulate it by condemning churches other than their own, sins for which they feel no temptation, science, and any governmental activity that might approximate the behavior of the Good Samaritan. Jesus was especially hard on these folks, the irony of which they seem utterly incapable of comprehending.
Fiacre had been a religious person, a Roman Catholic monk actually, which you know if you have been paying attention. And you know he was a pretty good gardener too, which is why he was interested in the Garden of Eden, and now, in the First Christian Church’s garden. What you don’t know but will know in the next four words is that Fiacre was famous during his first tour on earth as an herbalist and curer of disease. Fiacre’s occupation was one that he grew tired of and was the main reason why he left Ireland and went to France. It was also the basis for his becoming a spiritual person on top of being a religious person. It happened like this:
Fiacre and three pals were sitting around a camp fire which, in the 7th century was really just a fire because people hadn’t become soft enough yet to yearn for semi-annual wilderness adventures in State Parks. In Fiacre’s day a fire was just a fire.
Into the light of the fire came stumbling Seamus Cleary, terribly wounded by a blow to the head; blood flowed freely; Cleary seemed close to the end.
“O Father Fiacre,” he cried out. “Mix me a potion from yer magic garden and stanch the flow of blud from me head!”
Fiacre quickly jumped up, surveyed Cleary’s wound and told Heinous Fleary, one of the three pals, to fetch a shock of lambs’ quarter from the garden. “By the Grace of our Lord,” Fiacre exclaimed. “How did you come to possess such a wound?”
“Timothy O’Reilly came sneaking up through the forest and smacked me one with a sheleigly right on me noogan,” Clearly cried. “I fear I’m doomed!”
Fiacre sat back on his heels and frowned. “Tim O’Reilly’s just a little man. Could you not defend yourself? Couldn’t you fill your hand with a weapon and fight back?”
“Aye,” Clearly said. “I had me hand filled with Mrs. O’Reilly’s breast, and while it is a fine thing, it isn’t worth much in a fight!”
Fiacre was able to save Seamus Cleary’s life, but both his gardening and medical career went downhill from there. He was tired of growing Lesser Snapdragon, Meadow Barley, Small-white Orchid, Opposite-leaved Pondweed, Betony, Red Hemp Nettle, Narrow-leaved Helleborine, Lanceolate Spleenwort, Annual Knawel and Basil Thyme. Mostly though, he was tired of Seamus Cleary and tired of trying to love the self-righteous, immoral, hypocritical wing nuts who sat in front of him at every mass; who, he was certain, existed for the sole purpose of depressing him. And sadly, he knew himself as a self-righteous, immoral, hypocritical wing nut sitting among them much of the time, and that was really depressing.
“Lord,” Fiacre prayed, “I am in Your church, doing your bidding, growing Lesser Snapdragon, Meadow Barley, Small-white Orchid, Opposite-leaved Pondweed, Betony, Red Hemp Nettle, Narrow-leaved Helleborine, Lanceolate Spleenwort, Annual Knawel and Basil Thyme all day long, and healing one drunken Irishman after another.
“I am, Father,” Fiacre finished, “in a bad way.”
“No kidding,” God said. “I realize the joke two paragraphs up is pretty lame, but geez, you didn’t even smile. It wasn’t that bad. And what’s with the plant list? You keep repeating yourself. Dude, you’re in a rut.”
Fiacre was not surprised to hear from God. Although he did not know at the time that he would become a Saint, and an inveterate Time Traveler, he took the presence of God for granted, which is how you become a Saint, and how you become Beethoven, Mozart, Lincoln, Chesterton, Dostoevsky, and Kurt Vonnegut. So he naturally assumed that when he spoke to God, God answers back. This is a variation on the old “believing is seeing” shtick, which William Blake and Dorothy Day had down pat. Therefore:
“I know, Lord,” Fiacre answered. “All I want to do is pray and meditate, and maybe hoe a row of beans once in a while. I just can’t get excited about Thursday Night Bingo anymore, although Sister Patsy says we’re ahead of last year by two lambs and eight chickens. At this rate we’ll be able to buy a new bell for Your church.”
“Fiacre, you know very well it isn’t My church. It’s your church. And a very fine church indeed. The bell is a nice touch.”
“Lord, You sound an awful lot like one of those ‘Spiritual People’ we were dissing just a moment ago. Surely churches are important to You?”
“Churches are important—and necessary—to Human Beings because you would otherwise fall, as you properly note, into sort of a spiritual chaos without them. You’d all be out moon dancing on one of My magnetic fields. Pretty funny when you think about it; people who don’t believe in Me will believe almost anything.
“But really, Fiacre,” God laughed, “You don’t imagine that Thursday Night Bingo and all the bells and smells on Sunday morning are important to Me, do you? Those are disciplines you engage in to prove to yourselves that you are following My greatest Commandment.”
“And what, Lord, is it that we are proving to ourselves?”
“That you love Me with all your heart and soul and mind.”
Fiacre nodded. “I do, Lord. But you have to admit that it’s a big hill to climb.”
“I AM WHO AM.”
“There is that.”
“There is that, indeed,” God answered. “And don’t think I’m not grateful. You’ve mastered the bells and smells and Bingo Night, and healed the Seamus Cleary’s of the world and made long lists of plants. What you’ve done is very impressive, because you have faith, and you work. Be confident, therefore, that I AM pleased, because I know you did it all for love.
“Therefore again, you have accomplished a great thing, you have been tested by religion and fired by spirit: you are simultaneously Religious and Spiritual and thus, ready to begin living genuinely.”
Fiacre liked the sound of that. He was prepared to go on indefinitely right there in Ireland if he had to, but he was, frankly, ready for a new gig. “So, what’s next,” he asked?
“Pack your bags,” God said. “You’re going to France and will garden a tad longer. Your church will make you a Saint after you die—which is very cool, by the way—and ladies all over the world will put little statues of you in their gardens. Then you’ll become a Time Traveler and go back and visit the Garden of Eden in Early Time. Somewhere in about the Middle of Time you’ll help John Heartbreak and the Warrior Queen Sloan save Normal Christianity.”
“Is this one of those Crusades that is rumored?” Fiacre asked. “They seem like a lot of bother.”
“It is a Crusade, but it will just be two crusaders, Dr. Sloan—the Artist and Scholar Formerly Known as Dr. Sharon Sloan—and John Heartbreak, a retired bookseller and like you, a gardener. Their mission is to Fandango Little Jake Cooker at his church in Wall Eye, Missouri.”
“And apparently, Fandangoing will cause some effect on this person Cooker that You, Lord, approve of?”
“Of course not,” God said. “It won’t have the slightest effect. He and the Lovely Lulu are so deeply rooted in the pathology of Self that they cannot stop acting out one ameliorating fantasy after another. They are not in the least bit interesting.
“No,” He continued, “Human Beings in general and the Cookers in particular are so dull and feckless that I spend an inordinate amount of time in Collective Bargaining with you earthlings. Good heavens, read the Old Testament! It’s one deal after another.
“But,” God said, with a sigh, “It is what I do. However much I think about playing dice with the Universe, I won’t, because I’ve made a covenant with its people. Whether they’re Pharisees in High Churches, or Dingbats in the Human Potential Movement, they get the same deal and the same offer I made to Adam and Eve and to Lucifer and Abraham, to John the Baptist, and to the Apostles, to Martin Luther the drunkard and anti-Semite, and to his spawn the Cookers. It is the offer I’ve made to you Fiacre and to the Heartbreaks as well.”
And it came to pass, a phrase Joseph Smith used in the Book of Mormon 3,187 times, that Fiacre went to France, visited interesting gardens, and is now observing life behind the First Christian Church in Berryville, Arkansas.
