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.
After the wedding, he continued to attend church, only more regularly than before . . . it got  to the point where he was attending virtually every Sunday. Then one Sunday something just snapped, and he saw that it was supposed to be a lighthouse, not a sailing boat for pity’s sake. John Mitchell had gotten to the text about bringing every thought to the “obedience of Christ,” and Brian felt like he had been watching a blurry out-of-focus movie for an hour and a half, and then someone had adjusted the focus for him with fifteen minutes left in the film. Everything made sense. Absolutely everything, even the first part of the movie, which he would have to watch over again in his head. Brian talked to John after the service, told him what had happened during the sermon, and asked about baptism.

John told Brian to take care that he not go off and buy a fifty pound Bible in order to go home and tell Michelle he’d been saved. Keep your mouth shut unless she asks. Okay, why? John explained why. “We’ll set up the baptism for you. You should invite her to that, but I bet she asks you what happened before you have to bring it up. Trust me.”

* * *

Chad Lester was living a crumpled up little life in his condo on the south side. He didn’t go out much. He had money to live on, but not enough to do anything in the grand style, and not enough to undertake any monumental projects. He didn’t feel like any monumental projects. He had fired all his attorneys, and rearranged his remaining affairs somewhat lethargically, so that he would continue to have something to do. After three months or so, he gave his book agent an exhortation about doing “something.” The Walking With Christ Through Divorce book had been pulled by the publisher after a raucous board meeting, at which meeting some of the PR people had passed around copies of the Trolling for Chicks With Christ Through Divorce, a web site for “struggling pastors” who needed to learn how to “score.”

“Is this for real?” one of the elderly board members asked, a fellow who didn’t get out much.

“No, it is not for real, Mr. Gerahty,” said someone from marketing. “It is a satiric web site. Legal department said there is nothing we can do, except not publish the book. Which they recommend, by the way. The kill fee is a lot less than what we would likely have to pay in new and interesting ways if we go ahead.”

That was the eventual decision, with the remarkable thing being that it took so long. Chad Lester had received the news with apathy, and was in no frame of mind to fight them over it. But after a few months, his mind began to turn toward other book projects, just for something to do, and hence the exhortation to his agent. His agent was working on a project for him, but said that he couldn’t do much until he had a hook or something. “You losing your faith? Recovering it? In between? I gotta know who to call, Chad.”

But Chad would mostly sit, try to write, watch television, and go to the grocery store once a week. There was an occasional woman overnight, but he didn’t have the star power he used to, and for some reason he didn’t have all the same compulsions he used to have. These women—three of them actually—were alumni who thought that he probably still had a lot of money, which he didn’t. He was just plain bored. He also started going to a neighborhood Episcopal church once a week as well. The vicarette there was a radical lesbo-priestess, but she still did the early service right out of the Book of Common Prayer, nobody being exactly sure why. Chad didn’t listen to her homilies—he was too good a smoke-blower himself not to see right through what she was doing.

So he just sat, not paying attention to much of anything. But occasionally a phrase from the prayer book would create a little spiritual thruppa-da-da, much like what happens when you forget to put the lawn mower in the garage for the winter, and try to get it started in the spring. Nothing much there, but occasionally there might be a noise that might indicate that at some point in the indefinite future there might be something there. Every three weeks or so, the Rev. Jane Hutchens, for that was her name, would read something profound that Thomas Cranmer had written in the sixteenth century, Lord knows why anymore, and Chad would shift in his seat. Thruppa-da-da.

He didn’t think about it much though. He would just go home afterwards, and sit. Then read a bit. Then channel surf. Then he would try to write. But mostly the lawn mower just sat there, and no grass actually got cut.

* * *

It had taken Michelle a week and a half to ask Brian what had happened to him. She had noticed after a day and a half, but waited to see if he was going to say something. When he didn’t, she finally got up the nerve to ask. “Brian, what happened? You have been . . . so pleasant.”

He laughed. “Was I that unpleasant?”

“No, no. You were fine. I just don’t know what else to call it.”

So he told her, and said that his baptism was two weeks away. “I would like to invite you and the girls to come . . . but I don’t want to pressure you . . . I want to honor our deal.”

“Oh, no . . . I would be glad to come for your baptism.” Michelle was actually glad for a face-saving reason to break the ice and attend Grace Reformed. She had been growing increasingly curious, but out of pride had not wanted to ask. And this was just plain weird. She had felt a little guilty about marrying someone without a testimony, but this seemed very different from the testimonies she was used to. But at least it was some kind of a testimony, she told herself.

The service upended her. She had never heard or seen anything like it. At the conclusion of the service, the congregation sang a few hymns while John and Brian were getting ready in the back. After the songs, a little maroon curtain, behind the place where the choir usually stood, came open with two or three herky-jerky motions. Michelle’s first impulse was to laugh because the little rectangle with two people in it looked like one of those old Punch and Judy shows. But when she saw the expression on Brian’s face, she swallowed hard, teared up, not knowing why.

The girls had come also, and acted like that one service was all they needed. But what had really happened is that they saw their counselor in the foyer after the service, and were really pleased to see him, but also thought that they should act like they were really weirded out by it. At least for the time being.

But Michelle, without saying anything, just began attending with Brian. He was pleased, but decided not to press his luck by asking her about it. After a month or two of that, the same thing happened to her that had happened to Brian. When the idea of repenting had first begun occurring to her, she had thought it would involve a few outstanding big ticket items. Her divorce, her adultery, and maybe the money she had sneeveled away from Chad. But when it finally happened to her, the whole thing was far more illuminating than she had thought it would be, and went all the way back to her girlhood. Vanity, selfishness, conceit, superficiality, covetousness, ambition . . . all of them just tumbled off the top bookshelf of her mind, and were just lying there on the floor, waiting for someone to pick them all up and throw them away.

Brian saw right away what had happened to her, and urged her to make an appointment with John Mitchell to ask him what she should do. In the aftermath one of the first things she had brought up with Brian was Chad’s money, and he said “you need to ask John.” All her prejudices against John had vanished by this point, as had all his concern about her, an old flame from afar, being in his congregation. This wasn’t junior high, and Cindi had made friends with Michelle right away.

She made the appointment, and one of the first things she did was throw John a major league sinker, starting high and inside and ending just above the knees. She explained about the money, and said, “You know, the money is really not important. I think that I ought to return a bunch of it to him, and I have no problem with that, but that is not what bothers me. What bothers me is that I will have to talk to him. Sometimes I think I have forgiven him, and other times the thought of talking to him without fighting just creeps me out. I don’t know how to talk to that man without being angry. I haven’t done it for years.”

John just sat there for a moment, scratching his beard, trying to look judicious and wise. You and me both, sister he was thinking. But pastors don’t have the option of saying things like, “This particular sin has me by the throat too. Nothing whatever can be done about it. Go away.” And so he told her what he had told many others—all about the nature and practice of forgiveness. But this was a unique sort of forgiveness—a kind of Chad-forgiveness—that he had never had to deal with before. Still, the teaching he laid out made sense, at least to Michelle, and it appeared to be a great help to her. “Okay, I’ll do it,” she said, and got up to go. “Thank you so much,” she said, and disappeared.

John just sat, staring at the wall. The only way, as I see it, John, he said to himself, to avoid a charge of thundering hypocrisy is for you to go do the same thing. You need to square things with him on a number of levels. The black eye, believing Cherie’s story, hating him in a high righteous dudgeon for years, sheesh. In his mind, John went over the passages he had shown to Michelle. Nope. No way out. Don’t want to do it, though. Still don’t want to do it. What could I do to make a living if I left the pastorate?

* * *

Three days later, Michelle pulled up and parked in the street outside Chad’s condo. She looked in her purse. The sizable check was still there. She swallowed hard, prayed, and got out. She rang the doorbell, and hoped that Chad was not going to be there. She could always do this tomorrow. But Chad was there, as evidenced by him opening the door and standing there startled.

“Hello,” Michelle said.

“Uh, hello,” Chad said.

“Do you have a minute to talk?”

“Um, yeah, sure. Come in.”

She did, and sat down on an offered chair. Chad gestured helplessly. “To what do I owe this . . . um, visit?” he said.

The first thing she did was hand him the check, like Jacob driving his flocks toward Esau, not that either of them were thinking about this exactly. He looked at the check in genuine surprise. “What . . . what?” he said.

“Well,” she said, “I had a change of heart over what I did in the divorce.” She was over the hump. “Not a change of mind, a change of heart. Our marriage was a mess, and I am not here to talk about anything that you did in it. I . . . I just need to seek your forgiveness for . . .” She was trying to find the Bible word, and realized there probably wasn’t one. “. . . for being such a bitch. When your dad died. There was a bunch of other stuff too, and I am so sorry for all of it. Please forgive me.”

Chad was unstrung and could play no tune. “Okay,” he said. He didn’t say anything like me, I’m sorry too for being ten times worse, but she could see that it was just because he was so surprised. If he had been able to put his feelings into words, it would have been something like, “What happened to you?” But he wasn’t, and he didn’t.

“Well, that’s it,” she said. “Thanks for talking with me.”

He showed her to the door, and then walked back to his living room, looking at the check, and scratching his head. He sat down on the sofa. There was something funny going on here. He resolved to pay closer attention to the prayer book readings next Sunday. Maybe God was trying to tell him something. He just sat there for about twenty minutes, and was then startled to hear someone else at the door. When he opened it, there was John Mitchell.

* * *

Just after Michelle’s car turned the corner at the end of Chad’s street, John Mitchell’s car pulled up, and parked in front of Chad’s condo, in Michelle’s old parking spot. He had followed computer directions to get there, which is why he had not arrived in the middle of Michelle’s visit. So he was already mildly annoyed, but it was not because he had gotten slightly lost. It was because he was going to talk to Chad, and he was looking for other reasons to be annoyed.

He pulled into the parking spot, and pulled on the emergency brake, a little too hard. Again, it came off in his hand. He stared at it with malice. Here was an inanimate object that he could be angry with safely. He had taken the car into the shop after he had broken the emergency brake the last time, that night at Cherie’s apartment, and they had clearly pretended to fix it. Sixty-dollars worth of fixing was sitting there in his hand, and was staring back up at him insolently. Do you do well to be angry? came into his head, but he was not sure why.

“Yes, I do,” he shouted at the parking brake handle. A lady walking by with a double stroller looked at him with alarm. He tried to grin at her through the windshield. Sorry, lady. She hastened her step and disappeared down the sidewalk. Two little kids, John thought. Who don’t know their right hand from their left, he added to himself. And then he began to laugh uncontrollably, longer than it seemed. Another couple passers-by glanced into the car with concern, but John didn’t care anymore. He laughed until he was done, and when he was done, he was at peace. All done with that, he thought, and got out of the car, and ran up the stairs two at a time to Chad’s front door.