Besides, they can’t all be right, can they?” He spread his palms out questioningly and smiled, then his expression turned more serious. “But you’re saying something very different. Something much more fundamental. You’re saying you don’t believe in God.”
Gracie held his gaze, and nodded. “I don’t. I didn’t. At least, not until these last few days. Now I don’t know what to believe. Or not to believe.”
“But before all this. Why not believe in God, outside religion? The idea of something wondrous and unknowable—and putting aside all the associations the word
“Logic. You can boil it all down to the basic ‘chicken and egg’ question. The only reason—the only need—to believe in God is to try and explain where this all came from, right? Where we came from. Where we’re headed. But it doesn’t work. If there was a creator, a designer who created all this, well then there had to be a creator to create that creator, right? And one to create him. And so on. It doesn’t hold water.” She paused, thinking further, about something closer to heart. A deep-seated sadness seemed to emerge from within her. “And then my mom died. I was thirteen at the time. Breast cancer. She’d been clear for five years, then it just came back and took her away in ten days. It was . . . brutal. And I couldn’t see why anyone would create something that nasty or take away someone so wonderful.” Even all these years later, her eyes glistened at the memory.
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.” She studied him and hesitated, as if unsure about whether to mention something, then decided she would. “You know, back at the monastery. When you leaned down beside Finch. For a moment there, I . . .”
“You thought I was going to bring him back?”
She was taken aback by his insight. “Yes.”
He nodded to himself, as if he had wondered about the same thing. “I have to say . . . I wasn’t sure myself. Of what would happen. Of what I could do.” He looked up at her, his expression foggy.
“But that’s what I’m talking about,” she said. “That’s what I can’t understand. One minute, something we can’t understand—something that could well be what we call God—is sending us some kind of message, showing itself, and it’s hopeful and inspiring and wonderful . . . and then, the next minute, a perfectly good man’s life is taken away, just like that.” Her whole face was questioning him. “It’s like when my mom died. There wasn’t a better, kinder soul on this planet. And I couldn’t understand why something like that could be allowed to happen if there was any kind of super-being watching over us. There was no way that could be justified. I talked to a couple of pastors at the time. They just gave me the standard sound bites about her ‘being with God’ and his ‘testing us’ and all kinds of other platitudes that, frankly, sounded like complete nonsense. Their words meant nothing to me.”
Father Jerome nodded thoughtfully. “The reason your preacher couldn’t help you is he’s lost. He’s still using the same words preachers used to try and comfort people five hundred years ago. But we’re a bit more sophisticated than that now.” He paused, as if pained by his own words. “That’s the problem with religion right now. It hasn’t evolved. And instead of being open and looking for ways to be relevant in today’s world, it’s gone all defensive and protective and it’s regressed into lowest-common-denominator sound bites—and fundamentalism.”
“But you can’t reconcile religion with modern life, with all the knowledge we have, with science,” Gracie said. “I mean, let me ask you this. Do you believe in evolution? Or do you think men and dinosaurs wandered around the planet together six thousand years ago . . . after it was created in six days?”
Father Jerome smiled. “I’ve lived in Africa for many years, Miss Logan—”
“Please, call me Gracie,” she interjected.
He nodded. “I’ve been to the digs, I’ve seen the fossils, I’ve studied the science. Of course I believe in evolution. You’d have to be a blinkered halfwit not to.” He studied her reaction as she flinched. “Does that surprise you?”
“You could say that,” she laughed, still stunned.
He shrugged. “It shouldn’t. But then, religion in your country is so focused on fighting science and all these compelling atheist voices that your preachers have lost track of what religion is really about. In our church—the Eastern Church—and in Eastern religions like Buddhism and Hinduism, religion isn’t there to offer theories or explanations. We accept that the divine is unknowable. But for you and for a lot of rational people like you, it’s become a choice. Fact or faith. Science or religion.” He paused, then added, “You shouldn’t have to choose.”
“But they’re not compatible,” Gracie insisted.
“Of course they are. They shouldn’t be in competition. The problem is with your preachers—and your scientists. They’re stepping on each other’s toes. With big, heavy boots. They don’t understand that religion and science are there to serve different purposes. We need science to understand how everything on this planet and beyond works—us, nature, everything we see around us. That’s fact, no one with a working brain can question that. But we also need religion. Not for ridiculous counter-theories about things that science can prove. We need it for something else, to fill a different kind of need. The need for meaning. It’s a basic need we have, as humans. And it’s a need that’s beyond the realm of science. Your scientists don’t understand that it’s a need they can’t fulfill no matter how many Hadron colliders and Hubble telescopes they build—and your preachers don’t understand that their job is to help you discover a personal, inner sense of meaning and not behave like a bunch of zealots intent on converting the rest of the planet to their rigid, literalist view of how everyone should live their lives. In your country and in the Muslim countries, religion has become a political movement, not a spiritual one. ‘God is on our side’— that’s all I hear coming out of your churches. But that’s not what they should be preaching.”
“It didn’t exactly work for the Confederacy, did it?” Gracie joked.
“It’s very effective at rallying the masses. And at winning elections, of course,” Father Jerome sighed. “Everyone claims Him at one point or another.”
“The way they’re now claiming you,” she pointed out.
“Are they?” he asked, curiously.
“We’re in this plane, aren’t we?”
Her comment seemed to strike a nerve, and he pondered it for a beat.
“Although,” she mused, “they might be in for a bit of a surprise.
The priest smiled. “I’ve seen a lot. I’ve seen good, kind, generous people do the most charitable things. And I’ve seen others do the most horrific things you could imagine. And that’s what makes us human. We have minds. We make our own choices and live by them. We shape our own lives with how we behave toward others. And God —whatever the word means—is just that. We feel his presence every time we make a choice. It’s something that’s inside us. Everything else is just . . . artifice.”
“But you’re a priest of the Church. You wear that,” she said, pointing at a cross that hung from a leather strap around his neck. “How can you say that?”
She thought she detected some nervousness inside him, some uncertainty, as if it was something that had been troubling him too. He looked at her thoughtfully, then asked, “When the sign appeared . . . did you see a cross up there?”
Gracie wasn’t sure what he meant. “No.”
He smiled, somewhat uncomfortably, and his eyebrows rose as he opened out his palms in a silent gesture that said, “Exactly.”
Chapter 63
Framingham, Massachusetts
At around midnight, the Chrysler 300C swung into the front lot of the Comfort Inn. Two men got out. Dark suits, white shirts, no ties. Lean, hard men, with flat glares and purposeful steps. A third man
