Elf (Part 3)

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When the phone rang again, she had finally taken on again the habit of answering it -- you can fall out of this habit or fall back in -- and said hello in her tentative voice as if for the first time ever. And a man's voice, not unlike Dave's and certainly not unfamiliar, greeted her like an old friend. You are a friend of Elise's and I am so sorry I missed you when you came to town.

Father Sam. Actually -- actually we may have met -- but on the other hand, perhaps not.

Elise says that you are interested in the church. Tentatively.

Oh I got past that, Father. I'm just a really good pagan, it runs in my blood. I have to go to work now, Father, must hang up, don't think me rude.

And as she came out of the workplace, carrying her little kit bag, there he was. Let's just talk a little bit. It might help me to talk.

Don't want to, she said. Don't want to. And he said, okay, I never press. For me, faith is totally a matter of persuasion, there is no force involved -- except the force whistling through one's own bones, sort of privately, silently, but only you can know anything about that.

No one can describe any of this to you. It's there, you take note of it, or it isn't and you don't.

By this time the two of them sat on a cold stone bench under late transitioning leaves, cracking and falling, poor corpses, circling the dusting of pollen, totally inappropriate, totally out of season, that lay on the shoulder like an unsteady hand -- an the hand and the shoulder both shook a little bit, from cold, from the general lateness of things, from thoughts of some inner chlliness that was refusing to relax and get warm.

Faith is an addiction, Sam said. Not so completely different from, you know, alcoholism or gambling or a man's inability to take his eyes off a naked body -- or even a person's urge to make more money or build a bigger house. I mean, faith is more like that than the professionally faithful seem to realize.

So if you have any weakness or brokenness of that nature, you have not been completely shut out from -- this other possibility you know.

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