I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk: eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved . . . (Canticles v.i)

John Mitchell pulled his feet off the desk and extended his left hand to Cindi, who came into his study and sat on his lap.

“Are you sure you have to go the baby shower tonight?”

“I’m sure,” she said.

“I hate it when you leave me.”

“You’re a dear . . . why do you always say that?”

John had been waiting for her to ask, and it had only taken three months. “It’s from an old blues song I heard on the radio.”

She snuggled down closer to him. He reached up and began to stroke her neck with his finger, the way she liked it. “You be careful,” she said.

“Why?” he said. He thought this was a reasonable question.

“I think Sandy might still be here. We have children.”

He grinned and breathed in her ear. “Do you know why we have children?”

She pushed against his chest, a little half-heartedly, and sat up. “Do you like my hair like this?”

“I love it when you wear it up like that,” he said earnestly. “Your barrettes are twin fawns grazing among the lilies.”

“You are in a state,” she said. “How does the rest of that blues song go?”

“It is similar to Adam’s sentiment in Paradise Lost—‘Her long, with ardent look, with eye pursued, delighted, but desiring more her stay’”

“Right. But what does the song say?”

“I hate it when you leave me, but I love to watch you go.”

Cindi jumped to her feet, but it was clear she had taken no offense. This was a dance they both knew the steps to. “You are absolutely impossible,” she said, and out the door of the study she went. But there was a little extra swing in it for him.

John sat quietly at his desk, fiddled around with his commentaries, and tried to think Second Corinthianish thoughts. It wasn’t working very well. All he could think about was the fact that Sandy wouldn’t be home for a couple more hours—Sandy had told him that herself. And Cindi would be out late at the stupid baby shower. This is was the chance of a lifetime. Or of the week, maybe.

With a sigh that fooled nobody, had anyone been there, John put his books down and headed off to the kitchen. It was time to lift Cindi’s ponytail up and nibble on the back of her neck. To make up for quoting that song.

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues . . . (T.S. Eliot)

About four weeks after the Lester divorce was final, Brian and Michelle got married in a small ceremony with a justice of the peace. The witnesses were Shannon and Kimberly, who got on well enough with Brian, and who were happy to be sort of moving on with everything. And Brian and Michelle really were a good match up, more or less, and got along really well together, more or less. They only had two points of conflict, and they had worked out a reasonable truce on those before the ceremony. Michelle had said that she might or might not ever go to church at Grace Reformed with Brian, and all she wanted was absolutely no pressure on it. And Brian had insisted that Michelle keep all her money in a separate account, protected by a pre-nup that he had had his own attorney draw up. He had done this, he told Michelle, because he did not want to be seen in any way by anyone as a money grubber. He had plenty of his own anyway. The second reason for it, which he had not yet explained to Michelle, was that he was still uncomfortable with how she had gotten the bulk of that money from Chad. They had talked about both issues, about the church and the pre-nup, and had agreed to just leave it there. The ceremony was nice.

The fact that Brian Lewis had been attending Grace Reformed intermittently was evidence that he was caught up in what might be called a slow-build spiritual crisis. Not like St. Paul, who by most accounts was blown off his horse all at once, Brian had always been thoughtful and deliberate about spiritual things, and he had been assembling the pieces for a number of years. He had been very diligent in his own way, but he was like a guy putting together a jigsaw puzzle of a lighthouse, but one where things got mixed up in the closet, and the picture on the box lid was that of a sailing boat. He was diligent, but was making slow progress.
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Ephraim is a cake half turned . . . (Hosea vii.viii)

Michael Martin walked out of the meeting of the leadership team shaking his head in amazement. The vote to call him as the new senior pastor of Camel Creek had been unanimous, no dissension, no hesitations whatever. Michael did not have the same gifts that Chad did, but at the same time he was certainly in the same league. He was professional, cut, chiseled. His slacks had a crease in them that could cut weeds if he walked through a field of tall grass, not that he did this very often. His one idiosyncratic feature was that he always looked like he was chewing beef jerky whenever he talked, but most people who even noticed it thought it made him look masculine in that jaw-jutty way that you see in Eddie Bauer catalogs.

The call was effective almost immediately, and Michael was invited to “share” his inaugural message the Sunday after next. The reason for the delay was that the leadership team wanted the extra time to run an ad campaign so that they could start this new era off with a bang. The church leadership was prepared to spend a great deal of money in order to market the “under new management” theme, and the ad boys in the basement were all over it. Their ads extolling the virtues of flexibility in changing times, adaptability in the face of difficulties, and going-with-the-flowness in the event that your church was ever caught in a flash flood of scandal, were ads that were hip, ironic, self-effacing, detached, and exuded a coolness unto death. The team had pulled a couple of all-nighters, and they now had in hand a flurry of ads that were calculated to bring all the straying sheep back home again. And, it must be said, they knew their business.

During the scandal, before Chad had accepted the pressure to resign, these graphics impresarios had been just so many advertising hounds locked in the kennels of indecision, with the raccoons of market share running through the woods pretty much as they pleased. It had been a genuine trial for them all. But now with the resignation in hand, the leadership knew what direction they were going, and the woods were soon filled with the sounds of their baying.
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Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk (Henry David Thoreau).

Mercedes Hanson had always believed in swinging for the fence. If she was ever to break out of this local news market, she needed to do something spectacular, and she was always on the look-out for what that might be. Every story was reviewed by her with this consideration in mind. She was competent, hard-driving, and ambitious, which successfully grouped her in with about three million other blonde local news reporters. She had never heard the term News Babe applied to her, but it almost certainly would not have bothered her if she had. She believed in swinging for the fence, and that meant using everything you had. No harm if other people noticed some of what you had.

The court date for the civil trial had been set for the third Tuesday of the month. The months leading up to this point had seen all sorts of motions and countermotions, but this was the first time that everybody was going to be in the courtroom together. Mercedes had succeeded, through flattery, cajoling, and smashmouth negotiations, in securing a very brief interview with Chad Lester at the courthouse just fifteen minutes before he was to appear in the courtroom. She had had the room reserved and secured, she had her people confirm and reconfirm with Lester’s office in the weeks leading up to the interview. At the beginning, it was just going to be a regular interview, but as the date approached, an idea began to form in her mind, and by the week of the court date, she was resolved on what she was going to do. Nothing like a little extra sensationalism in the midst of an already sensational trial. It was a national story already, and so why not? She had been in the corridor outside their reserved room many times, and whenever court was in session, it was always crowded. More than crowded enough.

The court time was at 10:00 am, and Mercedes was there with her crew at 9:30. There were two connected rooms reserved for them. The first room was small, and that was where she intended to put her plan into action. The second room sat empty, and the only significant thing about it was a door that Mercedes had somehow overlooked, a door that emptied out into another corridor. She had set the camera crew up in the corridor outside the first room, so that she could do her preliminary intro, and set the stage for what was to come.
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Injustice is relatively easy to bear; it is justice that hurts (H.L. Mencken)

In the U.S. Navy, a steady bearing rate is not really a happy thing. Since this involves basic physical principles operative all over the globe, it is not a happy thing for other navies either, but the U.S. Navy will work for purposes of illustration. Say a ship spots another ship 30 degrees off the starboard bow, and let us say the ship is a little bobbing dot on the horizon. Then suppose that some time later, it is still occupying the same place 30 degree-wise, but it is no longer a dot, but rather the size of something significantly bigger than a dot. Then, a half an hour after that, if the ship is still right there, 30 degrees off the starboard bow, but this time it is three times bigger and a lot closer still, this indicates that unless something changes, and soon, there is going to be a collision, and at least three heads on the admiral’s desk in the morning.

* * *

Mystic Union was nothing if not industrious. Not only did she continue her ordinary herbal sales, in which her dogmatism more than compensated for her level of expertise, and a demanding slate of midwifery appointments, with no deaths yet, but she also had taken on the equivalent of a full-time job in her advocacy of the Robert P. Warner II situation. Her lover, if you wanted to call him that, wasn’t being exactly helpful because the more energy was expended on the subject in his presence, the more it made him weak and trembly all over. Mystic Union regularly gave him some herbal tea for it, but it really was a nasty business and so he just poured it down the sink when she wasn’t looking.

She had persuaded the two city papers—one morning edition and one evening—to accept an interview with her instead of with Robert. Those interviews had actually gone quite well, with Mystic Union sharing some lurid details that hadn’t really happened. But although they had never actually occurred, they nevertheless made good copy, and the editors ate it all up with a spoon, straight out of the carton. One of those editors had read some Derrida in college, and so he was good with the idea of perspectives from every which direction, especially if it made good copy. Mystic Union also, with the natural shrewdness of a born master, knew when to leak and when to go on the record. In one fashion or the other, she kept a steady stream of information flowing to the appropriate news outlets.

Robert P. Warner II wasn’t stupid though. He was lazy, and he was narcissistic, and could act like a moron sometimes, and for some reason he thought that he knew how to write, but he wasn’t stupid. He could see that Mystic Union was going to shoot the moon, and he instinctively knew that his story wasn’t built for no moon shooting. And when this small instinctive notion lined up with his inveterate slothfulness, it gave him all the moral authority he needed to go limp and stay limp. He would consistently sleep in till noon or after, walk around their neighborhood for a couple hours foraging for the kind of food that was not to be had back at the Health Temple. Come to think of it, maybe that had something to do with his lack of cooperation too. If the moon got successfully shot, then there the two of them would be, as wealthy as all get out, but he would still be eating those slabs of tofu.

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Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice (Plato)

Prosecutor Radavic leaned forward, squeaking his chair with authoritative mien. His long fingers were splayed, hands together, fingertip to fingertip, as though a spider were sideways on a mirror, doing push-ups in an agitated manner. His hair, just a tad longer than it really ought to have been, was slicked back on each side, giving the appearance of an attempted comb-over without actually going for it.

“Tell me that again, Detective Rourke,” he said. “I am having trouble believing my ears.”

The ears that were having this particular difficulty stuck out from the side of his head like a couple of car doors left open whenever Rourke’s wife would unload groceries from the back seat of her little Toyota, stacking them there in their short little driveway. “An SUV would be nice sometime, Daniel,” she would say when he came out to help her bring the groceries in. And Rourke fully intended to fulfill her wish, maybe for Christmas this year, and he used his periodic car-door interviews with Radavic as a little prompt or reminder to keep making the necessary financial arrangements. Shaw in the forensics lab had a nice little Bravada he was willing to sell.

Mike Bradford sat quietly, renewing his resolve to say nothing whatever during the course of this mini-drama. It was unfolding in detailed conformity to the script that he and Rourke had talked about at their office just before they crossed the street from the police station to come over to the courthouse. Just uncanny, thought Bradford. Rourke cleared his throat, and tried again.

“I am sure,” he said, “that there are some very fine evangelical churches out there, and maybe there are even some big ones. But this isn’t one of them. The place is a snake farm. There appear to be all sorts of activities there that would better be conducted under a flat rock in a dismal swamp somewhere. Some sincere people here and there it seems, but they are the ones who are largely clueless. Those who are there and who also have brains—and of those there are more than a few—are running a game that would make a cardinal’s mistress envious.”

Bradford raised one eyebrow slightly. Cardinals had mistresses?

Radavic furrowed his brow in what he thought was a gubernatorial way, a look he had been practicing in the mirror. “So,” he said, “the place is, as you call it, a snake farm. And yet, despite this clear-headed and level assessment, your bottom line recommendation here is that we give it a pass? Help me out here. Is it not part of our sacred duty to the public to be clearing out snake farms?”
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Ethics: A Christian holding four aces (Mark Twain)

Stephanie Nelson was the last of the leadership team to arrive. She closed the door lightly (and quite thoughtfully) behind her, and walked through the eddying atmospheric tensions to her seat. At that particular moment, no one was speaking. They had apparently opened in prayer already and had even reached their first impasse. And Stephanie was only three minutes late.

Chad looked extremely sullen, and he may actually have been sullen. But of course the black eye would make him look that way whether he was or not. It was a garish overdone display, about a quarter of an acre, with deep magenta and black and a few isolated blue stripes. That is what had happened when Pastor John Mitchell had extended the right hand of fellowship forcefully to Chad’s left eye. Pastor Mitchell had laid hands on him in a way quite dissimilar to what had happened to Paul and Barnabas at Antioch, when relations between clergymen had been somewhat more amicable. John Mitchell had perhaps missed his calling as an amateur boxer, but he had clearly not missed Chad. Chad, still trying to look dignified, despite the purple affront to others, nodded at Miguel.

“Financial report?”

“Tanking. Giving down 35% over the last two weeks, and the trajectory doesn’t look promising. This week was significantly worse than last week. Interestingly, attendance is only down 10%, which means that people are still coming to watch the show, and are sitting on their wallets. This indicates some kind of thought-out plan on their part.” Miguel doodled furiously on the edges of his balance sheet while he was talking.

Bill Turner was on the leadership team because he was a world class bean counter. His many late hours spent in acquiring this valuable profit and loss expertise were a large part of the reason that his wife Mary was currently spending assorted hours in the arms of another man. A country song or two has been written about this kind of thing, and the Arkansas poet who wrote them knows whereof he speaks. Still, Bill knew how to count the beans, and it now appeared plain to him that 35 out of 100 of the beans were missing.

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It seems my soul is like a filthy pond, wherein fish die soon, and frogs live long” (Thomas Fuller)

John Mitchell was steamed in the abstract. In the concrete world around him at that very moment, to wit, his time at the evening dinner table with his wife and daughter, he was most content. But Chad Lester got to him at the basic worldview level, at the place where theological doctrine and principled animosity intersect.

On top of that John had been in puppy love with Michelle Lester in junior high school. But that hadn’t been her name then. What was it? Davenport, that was it. He had never asked her out or anything, preferring instead to worship her from afar, usually at a distance of thirty yards or more. The thought of Chad Blister just taking one of his early feminine icons off and then treating her that way . . . John was not even sure that he could recall what she looked like back then, and he had never seen her since.

Part of the reason he had not played the role of an aggressive shepherd to Brian Lewis was that he knew that bringing Lewis into the fold would also probably bring in Michelle at some point. And then what? Had he ever told Cindi about that junior high crush? Probably. What did it matter? There had been three other crushes, probably that same year. That’s what junior high is for. And the earth would go around the sun ten entire times before he had finally met Cindi, who, as Puritans go, was as hot as it gets. And, John thought smugly to himself, for those who think that means “not very,” he could write a book, although no Christian publisher would ever touch it. She could make him bleed from both his ears, like some very unfortunate kind of parachute accident. John grinned inside his head.

“Careful, these are hot,” Cindi said, bending over to place the cheese potato casserole at the head of the table.

John opened and closed his mouth, remembering just in time that Sandy was present. You bet they are, John thought. Cindi read his mind and gave him one of her warning looks. After she was seated, they said grace, and passed the food gratefully around.
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Conceit: God’s gift to little men (Bruce Barton)

After the police officers left the Health Temple, Mystic Union spent a long afternoon with the woman in the back room who was in labor, a woman who finally produced a man child sunny side up, despite all attempts to keep it from happening the way it usually happens in nations with indoor plumbing. At the Health Temple, the best efforts were made to recreate conditions for mother and child that approximated the conditions found at higher altitudes in Nepal, and the effect of this was that both of them almost died several times, but since no one actually did, they happily departed the Temple late the next day, with no one the wiser.

But when the delivery itself was accomplished, and the aftermath of the delivery settled down to a semblance of quiet, Mystic Union trudged slowly up the wooden stairs at the back of the Temple. The steps were tucked away behind the painted scenery that made the usher girls feel like they were a couple of the chief feminine ornaments of Solomon’s court, although Solomon would likely have been nonplussed by the Raiders tat. Mystic Union (Robert P. called her Mys) had the self-assured glow of a job well-done, work accomplished, time for some herbal tea, and then a late dinner. She was pleased also by the fact that Mitchell had come that morning. The policemen had been expected, but he was most certainly not expected. What was his game? Another surprise was that Peaborne fellow, with the interesting offer of a working alliance. More than enough to think about. Good things happening here, and the horoscope concurred. The only stress in her life was waiting for her upstairs, good old Robert P. Warner. Mystic Union’s soul did not have teeth, but if it had, they would be gritted, and occasionally grinding. If he doesn’t have that thing written, I’ll just do it.

There was a landing near the top of the stairs which Mystic Union rounded, and then took the remaining three steps at a bound or two. Slouched across the decrepit sofa was her tattered lottery ticket out of there—Robert P. Warner II—poet, prophet, pasty blogger of the early a.m. The sofa was of the old gray mare swayback school of design, and from somewhere within the cushions, de profundis, came a groan from Robert P. He was disconsolate, and had been listening for her steps on the landing for the last half hour or so. He timed his groan according to the short melodrama he had worked out as he laid there.

Pretending that her soul did not have dental issues, Mystic was all solicitude. “Love! What is the matter?”
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I went to the river to jump in,

My baby showed up and said, “I will tell you when.” (Tore Down)

Michelle Lester had decided about a half an hour after the scandal broke that she and the two girls were going to go up to their mountain condo for the weekend, in order to do some journaling, grieving, and deep communicating. There were so many issues, and there always seemed to be more, no matter what they did, or how fast or how much they wrote in their journals. The girls were used to this process and really would have been fine about the whole thing except that each one of the girls thought the other one was going to bring the pot. Turned out neither of them brought it, and there they were, confronted with a long weekend of quality time with their mother, without any assistance from the world of herbal remedies.

Michelle had called Brian about the weekend away, and he had encouraged her to go. He said he would miss her, and asked what time they should connect again on Monday. He was so nice—the only thing that was worrisome about him was his attraction to that Mitchell church. They had only talked about that a few times, and Brian was apparently far less non-committal about it in his conversations with her than he was in his conversations with Pastor Mitchell. She had never attended Grace Reformed with him, and was quite content with the perceptions she had formed at fifty yards. She wasn’t really going to church anywhere, but she remained a contemporary evangelical to the back teeth. She had lost her faith while still managing to hang on to all the platitudes.

The three of them—Michelle, Shannon the elder and Kimberly the younger—dropped their bags just inside the front door of the condo, and headed out for a bite to eat. Their condo was located within walking distance of a number of upscale eateries, and they had no trouble picking out a little bistro with espresso and ferns, the kind of place that served sandwiches with bark still in the bread, exotic little art sandwiches. The only problem with these places is that there were always waiters there named Chad, and that kind of kept the tender issues right on the surface.

When they had ordered their bark sandwiches, Michelle folded her hands together, and said, “Girls, we need to talk like this because we really need each other. I know we have the inner resources to get through this.” Her facial expressions and cadences were just like Oprah, only a great deal whiter. [Read more →]