“I know what it feels like. To feel lost. Ever since I left the Sudan, I’ve often felt adrift myself. Unsure of where I was, what I was doing. It’s been . . . hard,” he said vaguely. “And now this . . .” He managed a half smile. “Just to confuse me even more.” He waved his ramblings away and focused on her.
She studied him, then leaned closer. “Up on that roof,” she asked. “What did it feel like?” She remembered his mystified look, when the sign was just there, over him, suspended in midair. “Did you have any control over what was happening?”
He shook his head softly. “It feels as strange to me as it does to you and to everyone else,” he said. “There’s only one thing that’s clear to me.”
“What’s that?”
“If I’ve been fortunate enough to be chosen, then I must overcome my doubts and accept God’s grace and his trust. I mustn’t shy away from it or deny it. It’s happening for a reason. It has to be.” He eyed her reaction, then asked, “What do you think is happening?”
“I don’t know. But it’s just weird,” she explained, “to be living it. To be there, watching it happen, to see it going out live, on TV, around the world. To actually have documented proof of this unexplained phenomenon, this miracle I guess, not just some,” she hesitated at which words to use, then went with “questionable writings from a couple of thousand years ago.”
Father Jerome’s brow furrowed with curiosity as he tilted his head slightly to one side. “ ‘ Questionable’ ? ”
Gracie glanced away before her eyes came back to Father Jerome. “I have to be honest with you, Father. I don’t believe in God. And I’m not just talking about the Bible or about the church,” she added, somewhat defensively, as if that made it potentially less offensive to him, “although I never bought into that either.”
He didn’t seem offended or perturbed at all. “Why not?”
“I guess I got that from my parents. They didn’t buy into it, so I never had it drummed into me when I was a kid. Which is where it usually comes from, isn’t it?”
He nodded.
“The thing is—again, no offense, Father—on the few occasions I did go to church, I never met a preacher I felt I could trust. I never felt they were in it for the right reasons, and none of the ones I met could ever give me an honest, intelligent, or convincing answer to the simplest questions I put to them.”
“Like what?”
“How much time have you got?” she joked. He smiled back, inviting her to continue. “Anyway, once I was old enough to think for myself, I agreed with my parents and their take on the whole thing. I mean, again, no offense, Father, but historically? It doesn’t stand up, does it? Let’s be honest here. All those stories, from the Garden of Eden to the Resurrection . . . they’re myths. Archetypal, clever, resonant—but still myths. I mean, I tried. I wanted to believe. I wanted that comfort, that crutch. But the more I read, the more I researched it, the more I saw what a primitive masquerade it all was, the more I realized that the faith I saw all around me was really nothing more than a bunch of old tales cobbled together a couple of thousand years ago by some very savvy guys to try and turn a superstitious world into a better place—and one they could control better. We’re talking about a seriously primitive bunch of people here. One and a half thousand years later, people were still burning witches. So, to believe in it back then . . . that’s one thing. But today? With everything we know? When we’ve mapped the human genome and sent space probes out to the very edge of our solar system?” She sighed, then added, “And then this happens and suddenly I’m not so sure anymore.” She looked at him with a sheepish, defeated expression.
Father Jerome nodded studiously, allowing her words to sink in more thoroughly. “Not to believe in one religion or another, that’s entirely understandable,” he told her. “Especially for a well-educated woman like you. 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.”