Alice Asks the Big Questions

by Laurent Gounelle

  “Do you at least believe in God?”

  The booming voice cut through the peacefulness of the church and echoed in all directions. Stopped dead in her tracks, Alice looked to her left, where the question had come from. She couldn’t single out the man who had asked it. From his voice, he must have been in his sixties. Probably a neighbor who knew her family history of atheism.

  Embarrassed, Alice was trying to find the right words, and the fact that she didn’t reply immediately caused a new wave of whispers in the church.

  She looked up again in the direction of the unknown man.

  “Tell me who God is and I’ll tell you if I believe in him.”

  The sound of buzzing filled the nave again, then silence fell. Everyone had turned to look at the man.

  But no reply came. The man who had been so quick to challenge Alice in her belief in God seemed incapable of saying who he was.

  She took a deep breath and began.

  “For a long time, I considered myself an atheist. Then I discovered the value of Jesus’s words and realized he was a very wise man. I applied his precepts to experience them myself, and I was troubled by what happened to me then. I understood that they were guiding me to free myself from my ego, and the rare times that I actually managed that for a few seconds, I felt something that resembled another reality, a world in which I no longer obsessively sought to exist independently of others, a world in which, on the contrary, I felt connected to others, to the point of merging with them, with the universe, with everything. Perhaps this was catching sight for a second of what Jesus called the ‘kingdom of heaven’? I have no idea. Perhaps it was a connection to that part of divinity that exists within us.

  “In fact, I have often heard that deep within us all there is sin. Today I know that isn’t true: deep within us is the divine. Sin is only what leads us astray. So does God exist? For a long time I laughed at the idea of a bearded man, sitting on a cloud, gifted with exceptional powers. The Jewish people are probably right to refuse to name God. Giving a name puts images in our minds, personifying what is not a person, transforming something that is spiritual into something concrete. The simple word ‘God’ evokes in me a character with a palpable existence, gifted with absolute powers, who rules over everything, from births to deaths, as well as each person’s destiny and the workings of the universe. And that I cannot believe in. On the other hand, there does perhaps exist a creative force, a kind of energy, a consciousness of which we are, without knowing it, an element, a fraction, a link. Just as our bodies are stardust, a fragment of the universe, our consciousness might be a fragment of a universal consciousness, of a creative force we belong to even as we believe we are detached and independent, because we each also enjoy an individual consciousness.”

  She looked around at the assembled believers.

  “Our individual consciousness would make us forget that universal consciousness, and our egos would cut us off from it by pushing us to be disunited, separating us so we stand out as individuals.”

  She paused for a few seconds.

  “And if that impalpable force, that creative force, that universal consciousness is called God, then God is not a powerful being external to ourselves, whom we implore to obtain favors as if we were talking to the master of the universe. Instead, it would be both a cosmic force and a force within us, to which we can connect and through which we could be reborn, as if we were returning to the fold. This would be accomplished by freeing ourselves from our ego, which separates us from that power.

  “In the thirteenth century, Meister Eckhart said: ‘Man must be free in this way, so that he can forget his own self and flow back, with everything he is, into the endless abyss of his origins.’ Even if he never used the term, Jesus continually asked us to free ourselves from our egos. I have personally tried everything to achieve that and have only succeeded for a very limited time. The more we try to free ourselves, the more the ego resists, and that explains the failure, for centuries, of the Christians’ attempt to make us feel shame. The resistance of the ego is undoubtedly illustrated in the Gospels by the great difficulty the apostles had in applying Jesus’s precepts, in awakening the divine that was dormant within themselves. In fact, they hardly ever succeeded, and Jesus lamented this fact all the time, right up until the last evening before his arrest, when he asked them to keep vigil and no one managed it. They all fell asleep, despite their good intentions, which caused Jesus to say: ‘The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ But there is a secret.”

  She paused, and when her voice had stopped echoing throughout the nave, a profound silence filled the entire church.

  “There is a secret, and Jesus himself seems to have discovered it toward the end of his life. He repeats it, going so far as to say, at the end, that if there is only one thing to be remembered, it is that. I have only just come to understand that this secret has the power to help us escape the hell of the ego and lead us to a paradise of life awakened. This secret…is to love. When we love, when we feel love, whether it is for a person, an animal, a flower, or a sunset, we are transported beyond ourselves. Our desires, our fears, and our doubts disappear. Our need for affirmation fades away. We no longer seek to compare ourselves to others, to assert our own existence over theirs. Our souls are lifted as we are filled with that feeling, that surge of our hearts, which naturally reaches out to embrace everyone and everything in life. The philosopher Alain said that love is a wondrous urge to leave ourselves. It is also a wondrous urge to find ourselves again, by merging with the universe, with our origins, in a place where our problems no longer exist and where joy reigns.”

  Alice looked around again at the group of believers. They were listening, but was she truly managing to pass on the message that she knew was essential for happiness and success in life?

  “To love means to start by loving yourself. Loving ourselves gives us the strength not to be wounded by the barbs fired by the egos of other people, and not to allow our own egos to react in kind. To love means loving others by managing to see the person behind an ego that is sometimes unpleasant, and thus seeing that ego disappear. To love means finding the strength to love our enemies and transform them into allies. To love means loving life, despite its troubles and difficult blows, and discovering that those are merely tools that allow us to let go, to evolve, to awaken. Love is the key to everything. It is the secret of the world.”

  Her words echoed throughout the church, beneath the high vaults bathed in sunlight.

  She paused and continued with the Mass.

  Then she performed the baptism.

  31

  Wednesday, the end of the day.

  Jeremy was getting ready to leave the confessional, where he was officiating for the last time in Cluny, when he heard the rustling of the curtains on the other side of the thin wooden partition.

  As the confessor remained silent, Jeremy invited him to speak. But he said nothing.

  “I’m listening,” Jeremy said again. “Speak without fear.”

  He waited patiently, until a woman’s voice spoke faintly, a distinguished voice that he recognized without difficulty despite a certain tension.

  “Father, I have behaved badly.”

  She paused for a few seconds. He could hear her breathing through the grating.

  “I did something bad, and I feel terrible about it.”

  Jeremy sometimes heard confessions made in a rather detached tone of voice, and he would wonder if the person was coming out of habit, superstition, or even a simple need to chat. But this voice revealed a feeling of guilt that seemed caused by true suffering.

  “I criticized someone…and that caused him harm.”

  Jeremy froze. He could feel his heart beating faster, while his mind, usually concentrated on listening, was suddenly troubled by thoughts and emotions. He took a deep breath to get control of himself. Didn’t this woman need compassion, in spite of everything? All repentance deserved absolution.

  “It did serio
us harm to him,” she said.

  He could feel that each word cost her dearly, that she was overwhelmed by remorse.

  “Perhaps…”

  “No, not perhaps. Definitely.”

  Jeremy let out a long sigh. “Who can know?” he whispered. “Epictetus said, ‘You will be harmed the moment when you feel you have been harmed.’ But to judge a situation, it would be necessary to be carried into the future to have a global vision of the event in question, its true consequences, what it brought with it, what it allowed us to avoid, what it taught us. It is only with distance that we can know all of that.”

  She remained silent for a long time.

  “In any case,” she finally blurted out, “I regret the accusations I made. I was unfair and I blame myself.”

  “God forgives you, my child.”

  He heard some stifled sobbing.

  He quietly added:

  “And so do I.”

  * * *

  “A woman? A woman?”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” said the curate, a defeated look on his face.

  “A woman said Mass!”

  The curate sadly closed his eyes and shook his head.

  The bishop fell back into his enormous armchair. “A woman. My God, how horrible.”

  Why had God inflicted such a catastrophe on him? In his own diocese.

  The media were sure to latch onto it. All of France would soon know about it. The Holy See as well. He felt he had no strength left, leaving him with just disgust. Such humiliation…

  He looked up. The curate, who ordinarily stood so upright in his cassock, seemed to droop, as if crumbling under the weight of events.

  “A woman said Mass,” the bishop said again, pensively.

  “My sources described a sermon that was a pantheistic fusion of religions and that was very far from Catholic doctrine,” said the curate in a scornful tone of voice.

  The bishop slowly twisted his amethyst ring around his finger. “And you said she baptized the child?”

  The curate nodded again.

  The bishop sighed.

  He should have reacted sooner to the warnings. Listened to his curate. For months he had been asking for sanctions, and he’d been right. That priest and his muse had been defying the bishop’s authority for all this time.

  He’d waited too long. His patience had prepared the ground for this debacle. His bitterness was all the worse for that.

  He looked at his amethyst ring, which he found rather drab. Farewell to the sapphire and purple of the cardinals.

  His rancor suddenly turned to anger. He quickly stood up.

  “In any case, the baptism is illegal! It is therefore null and void. Strike it from the register and notify the parents. That’s one thing sorted out, at least. That cursed priest and his accomplice won’t have the last word.”

  The curate looked up at him.

  “I took the liberty of acting before you on that matter, Your Grace, and—”

  “You did well.”

  “And I got some information. According to the code of canonical law, you are correct: the baptism is totally illegal.”

  “Excellent!”

  “It is illegal, but…valid.”

  The bishop shot him a terrible look. “What are you talking about?”

  “I called Rome, Your Grace. Even though the baptism is illegal, it cannot be made null and void. Canonical law is clear on this: it stands.”

  * * *

  The young salesman at the Renault dealership was bored stiff that August afternoon. When he heard the soft sound of the automatic door sliding open, he looked up and was surprised to see the Baroness de Sirdegault standing in front of him.

  Her old English racing-green Jaguar was parked just outside. With a bit of luck, the old aristocratic lady perhaps wanted to upgrade from coach and horses.

  He stood up and walked toward her to welcome her. He was a little nervous, all the same. He didn’t have dealings with someone of her rank every day.

  “Welcome to the showroom, Madame de Sirdegault.”

  “Good morning, monsieur,” she replied, looking around at the cars.

  On the enormous TV screen hanging on the wall, the latest commercial was playing in a loop: at the wheel of a Renault Espace, Kevin Spacey looked straight into the eyes of the viewer while saying: “I might even be president of the United States.”

  He saw his client stop to look over the Captur.

  “That car that would be very good for you. It would give you a young, energetic appearance.”

  She frowned. “Clean your glasses, young man. I’m over sixty,” she said with a smile.

  He felt as stupid as a child caught doing something wrong.

  Quick. Get control of yourself. Don’t dwell on a failure.

  “In that case, the Mégane or even the Talisman would reflect your elegant appearance.”

  She didn’t reply right away, still walking around the cars.

  “That’s not what I’m looking for,” she finally retorted.

  He bit his lip. Always the same mistake—he pushed before having the facts. He remembered the advice of the sales trainer: first ask questions, pinpoint the client’s image of themselves, which would be reflected by the car of their dreams.

  “I see. So tell me everything: what are you looking for?”

  She was calmly walking around all the display cars and stopped in front of a used Twingo.

  “A car to get me places.”

  He stood there, dumbstruck. It was the first time someone had told him anything like that. It wasn’t normal. He was sure of it—that answer was not in the list of responses in the sales manual. Something wasn’t right.

  “I need a car,” she added, “that will get me to Mâcon once a month to do my shopping.”

  He had no idea what to say.

  She gave him a probing look. “You don’t think this one would manage that?”

  “Umm…Yes, yes…”

  She decided rather quickly to take the car, and a few minutes later, they were sitting in his office to place the order on his computer.

  “Please remind me how to spell your name, Madame de Sirdegault.”

  “It’s Gross. Josette Gross. Just as it sounds.”

  * * *

  Alice got up before dawn. She quickly got dressed, drank some water, and went outside into the dark. The cool air carried the scent of dew, which formed in droplets on the wisteria leaves in front of the house. Down the entire road, the old streetlamps made of burnished bronze spread their dim golden light in the soft half-darkness.

  Above the rooftops, very high in the sky, the stars were silently fading away, accompanied by the last crescent of moon, as slender as the blade of a scythe.

  At the bottom of the sleepy street, the aroma of bread wafted from the open window of the bakery.

  She turned left on the Rue Mercière, then left on the Rue de la Barre, and arrived at the square in front of the church.

  A car had stopped, its headlights on, in front of the half-open door of the rectory.

  Two clergymen were standing close by, one all in black, the other in purple, his arms crossed. Jeremy’s escort to the airport, without a doubt. She would have preferred to arrive before them.

  As she got closer, her footsteps echoed on the old paving stones, and the clergyman dressed in black nodded slightly in her direction to point her out. The other man looked her up and down without saying a word, but the expression in his eyes revealed his animosity.

  In spite of that, she walked over to them and briefly greeted them as she passed, but got no reply. She reached the door of the church when she saw him.

  On the other side of the courtyard, Jeremy was coming down the front steps of the rectory in his black cassock, carrying a small suitcase, the kind of little suitcase a teenager might have, covered in colored stickers. She immediately recognized it, and her heart broke as she recalled the memories of their class trip to Italy, when they were in high school together.


  He saw her and walked toward her, smiling.

  “You came,” he said.

  She nodded, too choked up to speak.

  They stood for a few seconds, looking at each other without saying a word. Then she took a step toward him and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Take care of yourself,” she whispered.

  He smiled at her reassuringly. Then he started to walk toward the bishop’s car.

  “I almost forgot,” said Alice.

  He turned around.

  “I saw Madame de Sirdegault last night,” she said. “She knew you were going at dawn, and she told me she was leaving a note for you in the sacristy, from someone who couldn’t come to meet with you before you left. She didn’t say who it was from, but she insisted that you get it before you go.”

  “In the sacristy? Why in the sacristy?”

  “No idea.”

  He looked at his watch.

  “We have to hurry,” said the bishop.

  Alice and Jeremy looked at each other.

  “Come with me,” said Jeremy.

  Then to the bishop he added: “I’ll be right back.”

  Alice followed him as they quickly walked down the narrow path around the church. They went straight into the sacristy through a narrow door hidden between the buttresses. The door creaked loudly as it opened. Inside, it was dark, with the slight scent of damp incense. Jeremy switched on the wall light.

  The envelope was sitting on a small tabernacle. He picked it up and took out a card. On it were simply the handwritten words “Thank you.” No signature, no name on the back of the envelope.

  Alice suddenly started as she heard the powerful sound of the church organ.

  Jeremy opened the door that separated the sacristy from the rest of the church. The lights were on. They went in.

  All his faithful flock were there, together, and they stood up when they saw him. The nave was full.

  Bach’s music filled the church with the poignant chords of “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.”