When the Reverend Houston was seventy he was retired from the ministry with a pension, paid by the national church organization, that was slightly in excess of the salary he had been receiving for nearly fifty years from his parish at New Babylon, Missouri. There were no strings attached to this pension. He could do with it and with himself, thereafter, practically anything that pleased his rational fancy. Naturally enough, he quit preaching. He had been preaching for nearly fifty years and he was getting just as tired of it as his congregation was. One Sunday morning during the summer of his seventieth year he shook hands with his successor, a vigorous young man who would attract plenty of spinsters to the Sunday-school faculty, walked calmly out of the church and never returned.
“What will poor old Reverend Houston do with himself now that he can’t preach the Gospel anymore?” most of the congregation pityingly wondered. Their anxiety for his future was entirely logical. When a man has been preaching for nearly fifty years or doing anything for nearly fifty years, that thing usually has become the integrating thread of his personality and without it the whole fabric is likely to ravel and collapse upon itself like a bundle of old, discarded rags.
The old cleric himself was undismayed. There was a mysterious contentment shining upon his face which seemed to indicate that there can be no darkness where there has once been light.
First of all, he had a talk with his daughter Dora. She was his only child. Dora was married and had three children. His wife, Amanda, had been in God’s keeping for more than twenty years, so Dora was really the only person with whom he needed to discuss his future.
He said, “Dora, you know that I’m a very old man. All of my life I’ve been a true servant of God, preaching his Gospel in this little Missouri town.... And now I’ve received a divine warning that the time has come for me to prepare myself for the World Beyond. I feel that I can best make these preparations in solitude... away from family and friends... perhaps in some strange city where new ways will be opened. In short, I’ve decided to move to Saint Louis!”
Dora was appropriately shocked: But Father this! But Father that!
When the Reverend Houston was young, people said that he looked like the young Nazarene Himself must have looked. His face was beautiful and calm and infinitely tender. Now he looked more, if you will pardon what is only an apparent blasphemy, like the eldest of the Trinity. He really did look, with his spiritual blue eyes, wavy, white hair, kind but dignified manner, like a physical reflection of the Absolute.
He lifted one hand toward Dora in a way that was beseechingly final.
“No more, please, no more! I have heard His voice!”
When members of an amazed congregation questioned him about this sudden resolution to depart from New Babylon, at a time in life when even the most inveterate wanderers begin to think nostalgically of home, the Reverend Houston merely cleared his throat and raised his eyes significantly above their heads. Dora did the talking. She was more than willing to divulge her father’s secret.
“He has received a call,” she whispered piously. “A call from another parish? But I thought...”
“Oh, no!” she gasped. “A call from... from Above!”
Early in July, on a day when hell itself seemed to be exuding from the streets of New Babylon in the hideous bursting of bombs and crackers, the old clergyman packed up a few of his personal effects, surprisingly few, and departed for the scene of his monastic reclusion. He had kissed Dora and his grandchildren goodbye, of course, but no one else was aware for several days that he had gone, which added much to the mysterious aspect of the hegira and caused everyone who knew him to feel, more keenly than ever before, the strange holiness of the old man’s nature.
When the Reverend Houston arrived in Saint Louis his first impression was somewhat disappointing. Saint Louis was about a hundred miles northeast of New Babylon and he naturally thought it would be a little cooler. When he got off the train he found that Saint Louis was just as hot in July as New Babylon was. In fact, he felt a little hotter. Well, he no longer needed to wear this heavy, clerical garb. As soon as he reached his new home, a small furnished apartment in the west end of town, he would change into something cooler and pack the black suit permanently away. That is, he thought a trifle sadly, against the time of his burial.
He asked a few directions, in his polite, Southern way, and took a streetcar going west. As he rode through the lamp-lighted streets and saw all the strange people moving restlessly around with not one familiar face among them, the old man’s reflections took a less melancholy turn. Here in this strange city he had virtually no social obligations. Undoubtedly there were sick babies and pregnant wives in Saint Louis, but he was acquainted with neither their street addresses nor their telephone numbers, so nobody could sensibly accuse him of indifference for failing to call. This should have made him feel terribly lonely. Somehow it didn’t affect him that way. Perhaps the truth of the matter was that in New Babylon he’d had an overdose.
“Ah, but that’s an unworthy thought!” as Dora would say.
His little apartment was nice. It had been inexpensively but neatly furnished. There was a tiny parlor, bedroom, bath, and kitchenette. It looked like it had already been lived in, as though its tenants had just stepped out the minute before he entered.
Well, really, that picture above the sofa...
He looked at it a long time, wondering vaguely about its propriety, and in the end he decided to let it hang. It was obviously a work of art. But were ministers expected to appreciate such things? It was a highly colorful lithograph of a young girl sitting quite naked on the top of an equally naked hill. It might very well be a picture of Mother Eve, painted while Father Adam is out picking berries, reflected the old man, and it really does brighten things up.
Read more here
No comments:
Post a Comment