For Rowdy Christians Everywhere Page 24

Chapter 22: Cold Sea Conversations

  “Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand.” Romans 14:4

  They kept sailing north, and the colder it got, the more Luke wished that they had sailed west. Huns handled the cold weather pretty well, (comes from sleeping in tents all year), but that’s a different thing from liking the cold. It’s like a slight earache or toothache--a mild discomfort that stays with you all the time, no escape from it, until eventually it gets on your nerves. “So why are we going this far north anyway?” Luke wanted to know, as they started to meet the polar ice cap. “Even the fish know better.”

  “Well, we would have hunted the elusive Narwhal, the strange whale with the beautiful horn,” the Admiral sighed dreamily, then added, more down-to-earth, “Get some money for that, I’ll tell ya! But no, you spoiled that plan. So now we’re just trying to get from there to here, from the west to the east.”

  “By going north.”

  “Precisely.”

  It seemed a little complicated to Luke, until Bert later explained that they were going north, then east, then south again. “Can’t just sail straight east, coz there’s some, uh, land there,” he pointed out, slightly mocking. “So the ship would get stuck. Unless...” he built suspense with a pause, “Unless you had one of those cool new ships...” (“Yes?”) “...called a bu-us!”

  Without whaling, there wasn’t too much to keep busy in the north, and most of the crew could stay below decks and play euchre. But not Bert and Luke: maybe it was the mutiny incident, or maybe the Admiral was still trying to find jobs that landlubber Luke could handle, but in any event, they sure wound up with a lot of shifts on ice detail.

  They had timed their voyage with the late summer, so the ice had had some time to melt and thin, and they mostly had open water.86 But still there were times when the ice would start to pack in around them, or they would sail into large ice floes. The Jonah had a little bit of metal plating just on the bow, at the waterline, to help protect her, but it wasn’t enough to bust right through (no nuclear powered icebreakers on this world, just sailing ships.) So that’s where Bert and Luke came in: Ice Detail involved tying a ‘misery cord’ around you, and when necessary, rappelling down to the ice to break it up and pry it apart with sledgehammers and pikes. Sometimes you could stand on footholds outside the hull of the ship (like a mermaid figurehead, ‘cept not as pretty), and kind of lean out and just steer the ice to one side with a pike. But other times it was necessary to take a little more rope and walk out onto the ice and start swinging.

  Luke liked the ‘swing away’ part. Good exercise, and a good opportunity to vent some aggression at a harmless target. He swung a little too exuberantly, fell through and got a cold soaker once, and after that experience he was more careful to watch what he was doing--or better yet, what Bert was doing. “Pound it when necessary, but give it a slight tap-tap once you are getting close, and then when you feel the tremor and see it splitting, climb off it quick!” the veteran taught him.

  Once they had this task mastered, it was kind of a fun job, certainly not the dirty job the Admiral had intended. The best part was, there were long periods of open water, and open time. Just waiting, watching the weather, feeling the silence. “The silence of holiness,” Luke described it in one of his stronger moments, and wrote both words into his Bible.

  Also there were conversations with Bert, since they were together a lot. Luke had tried to make conversation with Che Vanier the Christian Caribbean Cook, but he was usually busy working when Luke was off duty. It was hard talking to the man when he was cooking: always eggtimers being flipped, and food going in and out of this or that oven, being stirred, whipped, beaten and finessed, and Che always mostly engrossed in his art. Keeping those ovens quite busy for the sake of their heat. “If you ohnly rememba one ting I teach you, rememba dis,” he had begun. Then Luke had to wait a while for it as Che basted some chickens. Finally he finished: “Anyone who tell you de gospel of Christ isn’t true, hasn’t known Him. Anyone who tell you it is, has! So, who are you goin’ to believe, mon?” A moment of banging ovens, and then Che forgot it was his own question, and supplied the answer too, “Trust day ones who know.”

  Turned out that was about the only thing he remembered learning from the Cook. Luke always felt that he was in the way in the kitchens, and so he had to settle for the next best thing, talking with his partner Bert.

  One night when they were waiting in the bow, like children waiting spoons-in-hand for ice cream, (“Bring us more ice, please!”), the sun actually sank below the horizon, and gray turned to darkness. It was a big event coz they had been living in that midnight sun for quite a while. Summer must have turned to fall, or they may have dipped back below the Arctic Circle. Luke was too baffled in this new milieu to keep track of either calendar or co-ordinates. In any case, it brought quite a response from Bert. He stood in the bow and watched the darkness fall with elation. “Ah yes, the night!” he proclaimed, and launched word-for-word into Pozzo’s exquisite soliloquy from Waiting for Godot.

  Luke didn’t get much outta that, but did ask, recalling also ‘Blowing kisses at the night’ from Bert’s earlier credo, “You like the night don’t you?” Then, playfully, “Is this the best night you’ve ever seen?”

  “It might be,” Bert replied thoughtfully. “We haven’t seen her in so long--this night, this Young Night, this Forever night. Each day she leaves us, and each day she returns. Each evening she arrives with a fresh new face, and falls anew, the Young Night, with a sense of wonder. With her fairytale moon, her fabled stars, and her storied darkness.” He sighed and smirked simultaneously. (Luke had never seen that done.) “Yet… each day she remains, merely circles the globe, visiting all the other nations, all the good peoples...and then comes to us again, bringing presents: dragging soft and exotic scents from the east, carrying strange noises and wild voices from distant nations, and singing and whispering the things she has learned, down through Forever! The Forever Night, with the wisdom of the long ages, the seasoning of eternity; and the Young Night, with the innocence of just beginning, the joy of first being! Both rolled into one! And now she comes back, after weeks away, and who knows what gifts she might bring, what things she has seen, what treasures she has lovingly stored up for us?” Then he took a deep breath of cold night air, held it in anticipation with his eyes closed for a thrilled moment, and then let it out with a laugh.87

  Luke liked Bert’s personification of the night, and resolved, with a contented smile, “I want to be like that too.”

  “You are!” Bert exclaimed excitedly. “Have you read this part yet in your book? ‘If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.’ Or this one: ‘His mercies are new every morning’. Every day is a new chance, Luke. You sleep and then wake, like a miracle! Alive from the dead. Is it still you? You remember some of what you learned before, no doubt, but you also have a clean slate, a fresh start, a new opportunity to make your life wonderful. The trick then, is to make the most out of each day. I’ve heard various theories about how to do that...” he teased, waiting for his friend to ask.

  “Okay. So go on,” Luke demanded eagerly, prompting Bert to continue.

  “Well, some people say you should ‘Live each day as if it were your last’. Coz it could be, after all,” Bert reminded him, gesturing out at the dangerous dark waters and the menacing ice. “Live as if it’s your last chance, your only time to show love, to do right, to enjoy this place--the good sights, the clear sounds. Do the things you always have wanted to do. Treasure each moment. Speak your feelings honestly. To yourself. To those you love. To God. Ask yourself Bruce Cockburn’s question: ‘If this were the last night of the world, what would I do that was different?’ And follow up on the answer.”

  “Not bad,” Luke decided. There was a fullness to it, at least. It would prevent wasted mom
ents, help you remember to savor.

  “Aah, but you’d be sayin’ good-bye and weepin’ a lot. It starts to get on people’s nerves,” Bert joked. “The opposite way is described by what I saw written on a desk one time back in University. I even made up a poster with a rainbow and this slogan, and hung it on my dorm room door. ‘!st Day of Life’. I like that one too. Try to see each day with new eyes, as if it was your first day here: a brand new miracle, a brand new blessing! Full of new potential, new opportunities, new things to learn, new friends to meet, new tastes and feelings to enjoy, a new person for you to become. I love it. That’s mostly what my whole Freedom speech boils down to: the possibility to choose what we believe in, what we want to live for, without being restricted to what someone else chooses for us, or what our own past habits have condemned us to.”

  “Even better,” Luke agreed, (jotting ‘First’ and ‘Last’ into his notes, below the cook’s word ‘Know’.) Coz he had a past of his own that it would be nice to be free from.

  “Yeah, but like the other, it’s hard to do,” Bert pointed out. “You can use them both as a guide, a memory aid, to try to get more out of life, but you can’t really do it. To really sincerely convince yourself that it’s either the first or last day of life is hard. But to do it every single day? It kind of becomes pretending. I have an easier way...” Bert promised.

  “Lay it on me,” Luke said with a laugh.

  “My personal philosophy? Is to Live each day as if it was the Weekend!” Bert explained. “A little drinkin’, a little fighting, a little partying, some taking it easy... and a whole lot of having fun!”

  This did sound like an easier regimen to stick to than the others had been, Luke had to admit. “So what about Sundays? Do you have those on your ‘weekends’?” Luke asked, trying to pin Bert down again.

  Grudgingly, Bert gave a vague reply again, “A little bit of that too.”

  Another thought occurred to Luke. “So you must not work very much? If every day is the Weekend?”

  “You’ve seen me work. I work hard,” Bert said proudly. Then came the tie-in: “Just I always make them pay me time and a half!” It came clear to Luke at last--this explained the wage discrepancy at Industrial Dave’s. He got a little jealous briefly, but had to crack a smile again as Bert explained, “Hey, if I can be part of a Two-Man Mutiny, why not a One-Man Union? A ‘Union of One’, to borrow a slogan.”

  “Where did you learn all this stuff? All these ideas, all these tricks?” Luke asked admiringly.

  Bert answered with an offhand reference that startled Luke until he remembered they had read the same book, after all. “Oh, here a little, there a little. ‘Line upon line’ don’tcha know. The religious stuff I learned at Wingham Bible Chapel, in Ontario. But it was a Texas Italian named Tomicic who told me to ‘Try to learn something, to take something good, from everyone who affects you.’ I guess that lesson is what I took from him! So, I’ve accumulated some ideas, here and there. You sift, and try not only to remember the good ones, but to apply them.”

  “I was told that you can remember the good ones better if you write them down,” Luke chipped in.

  “I’ll have to write that down,” Bert said wryly, with no paper.

  Then Luke had to ask about all the unusual placenames Bert kept dropping. “Wingham? Ontario? Texas? You talked about Kansas and Canada earlier. Where are all these places? You must be from far away.”

  Bert got a kick out of that. “You have no idea!” he laughed. Then, why not? He decided to let Luke in on the trick. “I’ll let you in on a little secret,” he confided. “I’m not from the pretty planet of Timnalauren. I’m from the not-bad planet Earth.” This went way over Luke’s head, so Bert tried to help him understand. “All the stars?” Bert said pointing, “They’re far-away suns, that’s why they look so little. Some have planets around them, just like this one. I lived on one of those other planets.” Bert tried to describe the differences briefly, mentioning subways, overpasses and satellites, torpedo boats, supersonic fighter squadrons and fast-drying paint. He also bragged beneficently about having spared the inhabitants of Timnalauren the perils of quicksand and the machinations of the bubonic plague. “Yer welcome.” None of this meant much to Luke.

  Luke wasn’t too lost to pose the obvious question, however. “So how did you get here then?”

  That was a long story...

  Good thing Luke was sitting down, Bert thought, coz this would floor him: “We designed this world, my friend Joshua Feldspar and I. Drew the maps, made up the characters, sprinkled in some monsters. Kind of a fantasy world.” He laughed, thinking about it, and admitted, “Some of it was us being creative, and some we just borrowed from Earth: threw in all the cool placenames and people we liked, like Penetanguishene and Muhammad Ali!88 Set up a world we liked for a game we were playing, ‘Tunnels and Times’. A make-believe game, real fantasy-type knights and castles stuff. Role-playing--we pick a character and pretend that’s us, and control what they do, send them on adventures and stuff. Well, after our party defeated the mighty dragon Duncan Speedboy, I had my character Simonus Prayicus rub a magic lamp from the treasure hoard, and have a Genie named Simmons grant his wish--that I, Bert Loreword, was here on this planet...”

  “And here you are,” Luke supplied, skeptically.

  Bert nodded. He tried to remember word-for-word: “What was it that Guru Jim Splitlevel told me about that, in a later encounter? ‘Genies got magic. Magic is magic. That’s why you’re here.’”

  A simple enough explanation no doubt, but Luke didn’t buy it. He actually seemed a little insulted by the whole idea. He gestured towards the sea and sky. “So, you’re saying all this is just a fantasy world. Made-up.” He looked at his own hands, then cracked his knuckles and said gruffly, “It seems real enough. I seem real enough.” He gave Bert a stern look, as if daring him to contradict this. The Huns had their own variant of Descartes’ famous formulation. ‘I fight, therefore I am.’”

  Bert shook his head. “No, I thought that then. But I can see for myself now, this place is as real as what I was used to before! I even met Simonus, did some jobs with him, but I couldn’t control him. We think a lot alike, but we had our differences and parted ways. But he exists, as surely as I do. You aren’t contingent. Timnalauren is a real place.” He laughed. “The Guru said something about that too: ‘Some scientists say that space is finite, that the universe is curved and has an end, that they can measure up how much it weighs and how far it stretches. But dig: I figure way out where no scientist has ever been, there’s probably a little more, hiding somewhere. That’s where we must be.’ I think what he was saying was, there’s room for all of us, all possibilities. Since the Universe was created by an infinite God, even if it is finite, it approaches infinity89. Like one of those mathematical thingies: what’s the word, hyperbole? Parabola? Certainly not a parallellogram,” Bert said to himself, sifting. “The stars would get stuck in the corners.”

  “So now you’re saying God created this world. I thought you said you created it.” Sometimes Bert was hard to figure out like that.

  “No,” Bert clarified, “I said we designed it. Discovered it might be a better word. We sat down, used our imagination, and put it on paper. But where was it before that? In our thoughts? In our minds? Listen, if God is omniscient and omnipresent, He knows what’s in our minds before we do. Knows all thoughts, all ideas, all words, deeds and actions--from the moment of creation until its end. So anything we imagine, anything we create, already exists in the mind of God90. So does that minimize what we did? It’s humbling no doubt, but it’s good to be humbled. But I would say that, rather than diminishing us, to realize that all things, all thoughts, begin first with God, gives glory to God! We thought we were creating our own imaginary utopia. Is it disappointing to find that we were merely imagining something that God had already created? Hardly! It’s a high honor! a joy! a fulfillment of that incomparable promise, that we are made in God’s image!”

/>   “So you believe in God, then.” Luke finally had the man on the spot.

  “Obviously. But ‘even the demons believe in God, and tremble’. The more pertinent question is, do I worship and serve Him?” Bert helped out, providing the question for Luke. Then he added the answer too, (somewhat sadly, Luke thought.) “Not so much. I used to, though.”

  “What happened?” Luke wanted to know. He had a sick feeling creeping back into his stomach, terrified to discover this strange new possibility, that even if he finally found what he was looking for he might lose it again anyway.

  Bert’s wary eyes bored into Luke like X-rays, judging him, deciding how much to share. Luke had long since learned that his freewheeling, haphazard, reckless running-mate nevertheless seemed to need to be watchful and in control when it came to releasing his own personal background. The other side of self-contained, Luke supposed. At last Bert shrugged. As long as he was spilling secrets, why not? “My father died. He was too young. Too good. It wasn’t right. In our world there was a poet named e.e. cummings, who wrote one once that said how I felt about my dad too: ‘My father moved through dooms of love, through sames of am, through haves of give. Singing each morning out of each night, my father moved through depths of height...’ You should read the rest if you ever make it to Earth.” A sudden memory made Bert’s face brighten: “Did you know that my father was the first one to teach me how to box?”

  “I don’t know anything about your father,” Luke admitted.

  Bert’s face fell just as suddenly as it had lit. “Neither do I. Not anymore. Nor ever again.” His eyes closed slowly, to banish tears, and Luke looked away and scanned the icy skyline to honor his friend’s pride. He waited, and finally Bert spoke again: “Anyway, it’s not that I blamed God exactly, but I just couldn’t reconcile what had happened with what I thought God was supposed to be like. It just didn’t make sense. And that’s when I stopped praying, praising and worshipping. I just didn’t feel it any more. Maybe some day I will again. But I’m still waiting.”

  Luke had a shiver. “That’s kind of weird. The death of your father made you stop seeking God. The death of my mother made me start. Ironic? Just a little?”

  “Especially since I’m the guy who told you about having a positive attitude!” Bert remembered. Then, more thoughtful, Bert furrowed his brow and tried to puzzle out the incongruity. Perhaps it came down to ‘Practice what you preach’. He felt a sudden sense of his own failure in that respect, but rather than dwell on it, he used the opportunity to teach from it: “See, that’s the flip side of what I said about each day being a new opportunity! It could also hold an opportunity to lose, a chance to falter, the potential to forget. That’s each day’s burden then, brother--the responsibility to keep moving forward, getting better, seeking God. Coz once you start moving away, you keep moving away... If I neglect to pray one day, I’m that much further from God, and that much more likely to forget to pray and worship the next day too!” He paused, laughed a little bitterly. “Backsliding, backslidden, backsludge,” Bert conjugated, with equal parts sarcasm and self-reproach. He paused, and then pronounced sentence: “Each morning we wake to a new self, cannibalizing the old one for parts. Well, I got distracted and left some good stuff behind, I think,” he said gloomily, then shrugged and quipped, “I can’t remember.”

  Luke was sad for his friend’s loss, he could see that Bert was still pretty upset about it. “But what about heaven?” Luke wondered. It seemed a little surprising that a Christian would lose faith over a little thing like death, when the great joy of the gospel was Christ’s victory over death! “Don’t you think that God has a good reward for your father, a merciful plan?”

  Bert gave a slightly bitter laugh. “You know, I felt that way too, when other people died. But my father? We were just too close. I tried to tell myself that, but I had trouble believing it. I kept repeating to myself, ‘Must trust that God is just.’ But that felt kind of insincere, coz what I really felt in my heart was “Why?” and “No!” Somehow that made me question whether I had ever been right about God, or just telling myself stories, deluding myself all along.”

  Luke felt the cold getting to him and hunched his coat tighter. He felt a great need to try to prevent Bert from going down that road. Maybe Bert’s faith was already shaken, but at the very least Luke still wanted to protect his own budding faith from being subverted, or choked by doubt’s tendrils. “Remember what Lawrence said?” (It seemed right to think about him, since they were at sea.) “Don’t let the questions and doubts overwhelm your faith!” Then, though Luke was afraid it was the inappropriate thing to say to a grieving man, Luke decided that loyalty to the living is more useful than loyalty to the dead, and tried to help Bert keep his God-first perspective, reminding him, “Doesn’t the Bible say that ‘he who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me?’ “

  Thankfully, Bert took that remark well. He had read it himself. “That’s probably it,” he acknowledged. “But if that’s the sin that separates me from God, how can I repent of it? You can’t repent of love. Should I love my father less?” he asked, with an uncharacteristic hint of ice.

  “Or love God more,” Luke suggested, completing the equation.

  Bert smiled at a perceived paradox, and countered, “Oh, that I would have gladly done…if only he hadn’t taken away my father.”

  “Aren’t you scared though?” Luke asked. “If even the demons believe and tremble, and you believe... don’t you tremble too? Knowing that you should choose God?”

  Bert, master of the half-truth, the half-smile, and the half-laugh, gave a trademark slight chuckle and a left-side smile, as he saw a chance to dodge again, and tell a lighter story...

  The Story of Death and the Old Maid:

  Once upon a time there was a groovy gracker named Bertralamus J, who was hanging around in a secluded grassland at midnight when wouldn’tcha know it, along came the Angel of Death, wings tucked stylishly beneath a dark cloak, with a black hat and a big bag for the bodies. Bert assumed the Angel of Death (hereinafter referred to simply as Death) had come to do him in. Better put a stop to that right quick now, he thought, and took a small rectangular object from his shirt pocket. Was it a pocket New Testament? Nope; it was a deca-cards. “Behold. Cards,” Bert challenged. “Want to play?” Jacob wrestled with an angel, but Bert knew his limits. Better pick something you can win at. Death shrugged and indicated sure,if-ya-want, and sat down beside him.

  They proceeded to play Old Maid, in a variety of ways. They played in a sneaky way, and the man in the black hat became the old maid. They played in a competitive way, and the man in the black hat became the old maid. They played in a casual way, and the man in the black hat became the old maid. They played in a solemn way, and Bert became the old maid. They played in a wild way, and the man in the black hat became the old maid. They played for fun, and the man in the black hat became the old maid. They played for money, and the man in the black hat became the old maid. They played for keeps, and Bert became the old maid and got a chill up his spine in the bargain! They played in a rough way, and the man in the black hat just barely became the old maid. They played in a friendly way, and the man in the black hat definitely became the old maid. (He still had seven or eight cards left when Bert went out.) Bert decided that his friend Death was destined to be the old maid. Then he revised this attitude, and decided that Death was determined to be the old maid. Then he revised this attitude again, and decided that Death just plain had no tricky (Too predictable after the whole Death-and-Taxes fiasco).

  So they switched to Crazy Eights. In the middle of the game, the Angel of Death asked Bert an extremely odd and personal question, which was cleverly disguised by the context of their sports conversation to appear normal.

  “Speaking of the Colorado Buffaloes…” Death segued smoothly, “there’s a rumor going around that you have cancer. Is this true?” Death wanted to know .

  Bert was kinda surprised, and he wondered who
could have started a weird rumor like that, but he decided to play along. Last chance to play a practical joke on anybody, perhaps. One would hate to waste it. Bert looked Death in the eye and grinned. “Of course I have cancer. Don’t you?

  “No.”

  “Want some?” Bert asked, taking out of his pocket a small, metal figurine of a gnome with a cudgel, and offering it to Death.

  “No thanks,” Death said resolutely.

  “Come on,” Bert coaxed, offering the metal figurine. “It’s okay. Everyone has it. Look at me, I’ve had it since I was twelve and it hasn’t hurt me any. And it makes you feel soooo good!”

  “No thanks,” Death said, less resolutely.

  “Hey man, I thought you were cool. You’re just a big chicken. Do you want all of your friends to say that about you? That you’re chicken?” Bert asked, donating peer pressure. He held the metal figurine out towards Death. “C’mon, buddy. Try a little! Just take it. You’ll love it.”

  The man with the black hat took the metal figurine.

  He and Bert looked at each other for some time, in silence.

  “That ain’t cancer,” said Bert. “That’s pewter.” Death looked at the metal figurine with confusion. There was a long pause, and a great silence broken only by the noise of a cricket and the wind. The man with the black hat hesitantly asked Bert what he meant. Bert explained the subtle difference between cancer and pewter. “Pewter is good. Cancer is bad,” he said with a shrug.

  “What’s your lifespan?” Death countered .

  “I don’t know. Why does it matter?” Bert asked.

  “I am Death,” said the man with the black hat. “I must know these things, so that when it is time for you to die, I will be there to do my duty. I figured I better ask, since you’re not from around here and I didn’t quite know what to make of ya.”

  Bert was relieved that Death had only come for an interview. He perked up and became his regular sneaky ol’ self. “Hey there, Death. Do not fret. I will tell you when it is time for me to die. After all, I’ll know best anyway. Until then, don’t do anything to me. We wouldn’t want you to take me too soon, eh? That would be a pretty serious mistake. You wouldn’t want your Boss to get mad atcha.”

  “Talk about job stress,” Death agreed.

  “And hey,” Bert added, “you better leave off the sickness and the aging, too. Those would set me up for my time of dying, but the time isn’t yet right.”

  “I think I can arrange something,” said Death, passing Bert a business card. “You promise you’ll let me know when though, right?”

  “Ohhh, ab-solutely!”

  “Well that’s a load off my mind,” Death said, relieved.

  “Mine too,” Bert concurred, clapping Death on the shoulder like old buds. They finished their game of Crazy Eights and moved on. Bert headed for Siltanen Shores, on the rainy banks of the Rasanen River, and Death, as always, headed for Detroit.

  “So that’s the ace you have up your sleeve? A deal with death?” Luke sounded dubious. (He wasn’t even sure if Bert had actually had that encounter, was craftily employing enigmatic allegory, or was just plain tellin’ tales. Knowing Bert, none of the three would be a surprise!)

  “It’s worked well enough so far,” Bert said defensively.

  “But you must have read this part, if you used to read the Bible ,” Luke upbraided him, and quoted Isaiah: “ ‘And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand.’ You might cheat death, but you can’t cheat Judgment, Bert. Even if you somehow fooled an angel, you still won’t fool God.”

  “Very good,” Bert complimented him, impressed that Luke was both remembering to use his Bible, and even sounding like he believed it! “But does it not also say that ‘it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, If they fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame’? Scary stuff, huh?” Bert added, as he saw Luke’s countenance fall. “So maybe my tricks won’t save me. But it could be they’re all I have left! If I can’t fool God, at least I can fool myself, no? And thus enjoy my last few days fearlessly... But you see why I wanted you to be sure, before you go making your vows!”

  “Maybe you didn’t do that though,” Luke argued, trying to stay hopeful. He still didn’t like the idea of falling away. “Wouldn’t God’s love hold you fast? Catch you when you fall? Like the stuff you told Shadrach. ‘Nothing can separate us’?”

  “I want to believe that. I do.” Bert had a sudden thought which amused him, and gave a half-laugh: “The gospel according to Belinda Carlisle! ‘True Love Never Dies.’” I’ve always believed that. So maybe you’re right, maybe it hasn’t died. But the other possibility remains: Maybe it was never true...”

  Luke was confused by an ambiguity: “What was never true? Your love for God? Or His love for you?”

  The question caught Bert off guard. “Either or, I guess.”

  For once, Luke showed pretty good logic skills, for a Hun. “Well... if your love was never true, if you never really tasted and knew, like that verse says, then you can’t be the in-big-trouble guy it talks about! All you need to worry about is trying to fall in love now.”

  “Maybe, but what about the other case? If His love for us is a myth, a story, not really true?”

  “That’s a pretty big if,” Luke reminded him. Then made an offer, “So let’s look into it! Together. Keep talking about it, thinking about it...” After a pause he even went so far as to add, “...praying about it.” He wondered whether he should invite Bert to pray about it together, then and there, but hesitated, not sure he was up to that, not sure he knew how to pray well enough yet himself, and not sure whether it was Bert’s place, as the senior somewhat-believer, to make such a suggestion. So they played a kind of ‘spiritual chicken’, and they both lost. Missed the opportunity, and felt bad after the fact--just like in the Garden, and just like leaving New Owen Sound. Luke prayed later that night however: “God, please help me and my friend Bertralamus Jefferson Loreword who sleeps in the top bunk” (to distinguish him from any other Bertralamus Lorewords in the area) “to know more about you, and to believe in what is true. Maybe you could send one of your servants to win him back, like you did for Shadrach! Thank you very much.”

  At the moment however, Bert was tendering his response. “Hmm... Maybe... We could...”

  “Maybe look into it?” That seemed a fairly feeble level of commitment, for such a big important issue like one’s eternal spiritual destiny. Luke gave a little push to try to get a little more. “Maybe is pretty tepid, don’t you think?. If you say Yes, you’re going somewhere. If you say No, at least God can change your mind and make it Yes! But Maybe? That just sounds like you can’t be bothered. I’m afraid this other warning from God might apply now, Bert! ‘I would thou were cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm91, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth.’”

  “True,” Bert acknowledged. “But maybe later I will find my way back. Could be that deal I made with Death will at least buy me a little more time to do that! Besides, I’ve got a feeling God will swish me around for a while before he gives up on me and spits me out! Coz my soul’s got flav-a!” Bert boasted.

  Luke shook his head and smiled in spite of himself. He was about to try to come up with something else serious, to get Bert motivated sooner rather than later, but he wasn’t quick-thinking enough. And then their relief had appeared, their shift had ended, and they were tumbling tiredly into their bunks for some sleep. And when day woke them, they found the ship a bustle of activity… The Admiral had appeared on deck, Chains was lowering the anchor, and they were uncovering the boats, to put ashore on the cold coast of a barren island.