During the dinner break, he tried to contribute to the discussion at his table. He ate, smiled, nodded, even offered up a relevant comment or two, but underneath it all he was thinking she.
‘Well, you’re the expert, Luke. What do you reckon?’
He pretended his mouth was full, gesturing apologetically, forcing himself to concentrate. They had been talking about inner city youth ministry. Something about reaching out to the unchurched. Graham, the boy who’d asked the question, wanted to take his youth group into the city backstreets, have them preach to the down-and-out on their own turf. Someone else at the table thought that was a mistake because of the biblical injunction to stay away from sin. Aggie he thought. He faked a swallow, took a large sip of water, flicked through his mental database for a relevant scriptural illustration.
‘This discussion makes me think of Peter,’ Luke said and smiled. ‘Remember how he forced himself to sit down and eat with all those unclean gentiles, eating food which hadn’t been prepared according to dietary law? Scripture told him this was wrong, but Peter felt called by God to reach out. He realised that God hadn’t got the old laws written down and then retired. God was – is! – active, involved. He sees what’s going on down here and He knows that some things can’t be solved in the way they would’ve been two thousand years ago. He calls us – calls Graham here – to a new interpretation.’
Graham beamed, the girl sitting next to Luke patted his back, told him she could understand why they’d given the Youth Centre to him. ‘You’re the real deal, Luke Butler,’ she said. ‘God is so alive in you.’
He left the conference early, snuck into the NCYC through the back gate and went straight to his cabin. He needed solitude to think and pray. He found the connection to the Holy Spirit he’d failed to find at the conference and suddenly he was inspired; the true meaning of his new obsession was stunningly apparent.
He leant into the window, weeping into the darkness outside, letting his tears run down his cheeks, onto his throat and then his chest. Lord, I thought I knew you, I thought I understood the way you loved your creation, but my knowledge was incomplete and shallow. But I understand now, I really do. This is how you feel about humanity. This is what it is to adore, to cherish, to love a weak and sinful human being. In loving her, I finally understand how you can love the least of us, love me, and I thank you for this insight, this joy.
Once a month, Luke gave a sermon at the main city church. The idea was to keep his preaching skills alive and, at the same time, reassure the parents of the NCYC kids that the man in charge of them was an honest to goodness, real deal, Christian Revolution minister. He enjoyed leading the service, but was less fond of the hand-shaking and conversation afterward.
On the Sunday night he was to see Aggie, he spoke on the need for Christians to lead the community in tolerance toward ethnic minorities. The sermon bordered on political, and he noted the frown on Pastor Riley’s face, but he also noted the expressions of shock on some of his congregation and the electric way they whispered to each other when he had finished. He knew he had succeeded in piercing their layers of indifference and hubris.
After the sermon, Luke had six invitations to share the evening meal. Five of them were from the families of young women he knew were interested, and the other was from Belinda who gushed about the ‘braveness’ of his sermon and told him it inspired her to go eat at that little Turkish place down the road. Luke turned down all offers with the truth that he had a previous engagement, and deftly avoided further questioning from Belinda by exclaiming his lateness.
Her house was enormous, taking up the entire corner block of her street. It appeared to be three storeys, plus an attic, and the front garden was crowded with red and yellow rose bushes and several varieties of wildflowers that he could not identify. He had never known anyone to live in such an imposing place, and he was unusually nervous as he waited for her to answer the chiming bell. But then she opened the door and his anxiousness dissolved.
She grabbed his hands and dragged him inside, kicking the door closed and talking non-stop as she led him up and down stairs, through low doorways and winding corridors. She told stories about the paintings hanging on the walls and the history of each piece of antique furniture. She was particularly proud of the old claw-foot bath which had once belonged to a convent. ‘You can see the indentation,’ she pointed out, ‘from all those nuns’ heads. They must have been short. My feet hang right over the edge when I lie in it.’
‘You are uncommonly long,’ Luke said. ‘Tall. You’re very tall. Extremely tall.’
‘Yes.’ She laughed. ‘That’s true.’
The walls were lined with paintings in heavy gilt frames. Luke did not know if the art was good or bad, expensive or cheap, but what he did know was that sadness leaked from every picture. A small girl weeping into a bunch of daffodils; a black-cloaked woman leaning over the rail of a suspension bridge, the wind whipping her cloak behind her; a grey soldier, leaning heavily on his bayonet; a series of landscapes, each darker and more desolate than the last. No smiles or sunshine. No fluffy animals or cheerful cottages. And tellingly, no photographs.
He asked her about it and she shrugged. ‘I took them all down after Dad died. It was just too depressing. In every photo the only person who looked happy was him. Mum was always gorgeously sullen and I was always gangly and self-conscious, but Dad was . . . I used to have a wedding photo hanging over my bed, but I trashed it when Kip took off, and then when Simon moved in we had a picture of us together in the living room and a photo of his kids in the study. Matt and I had a lot of photos . . . It seemed pathetic to keep them up after he left.’ She smiled. ‘I suppose not having any photos is even more pathetic, isn’t it? It’s proof that I’m a total Nigel-no-friends.’
‘The only photo I have up is of me at my ordination,’ Luke said.
‘Hurrah! I’m not the saddest almost-thirty-year-old in the world.’
Aggie served dinner on the back deck, overlooking a shimmering pool surrounded by palm trees and mounds of shiny black rocks. Luke didn’t eat a thing. He told her he was not hungry which was only half an explanation. The rest of it was that he was captivated.
She told him about the time she had wrestled a knife off a strung-out junkie in a hospital waiting room, the time she had helped deliver a baby girl in the office of a homeless shelter, the time she chased a mugger through Redfern and not only reclaimed her handbag but talked the guy into signing up to her rehab program. She told Luke about the television and radio interviews she’d done, the newspaper and magazine articles, the teaching and campaigning and lobbying. She had held training camps for social workers, cookouts for homeless people and recreation trips for troubled teenagers. She had walked over hot coals – literally – to demonstrate to a group of heroin addicts how powerful the mind could be.
‘Do you realise how incredible you are, Aggie?’
‘No, I don’t. Please feel free to tell me.’ She laughed, tossing her head back and gulping wine.
By eleven o’clock, when they were sitting in her living room in front of an open fire – she sprawled on a brown velvet couch gulping red wine, he sitting upright in an overstuffed chair sipping lemonade – Luke had figured out that he had long given Satan too much credit. Lust was from God and was just the cleverest thing ever. God wanted him to be tormented with desire, so that his work in saving Aggie’s soul would be conducted with urgency. The sooner she gave herself to the Lord, the sooner Luke could give himself to her. He waited until there was a pause in her machine-gun chatter and then asked her if she’d ever actually been to a church service.
She drained her glass and placed it on the floor before answering. ‘Weddings and funerals only. I can’t stand religious people. Present company excluded, though I have no idea why. I haven’t made a new friend in ten years and here I am hanging out with a fucking minister.’
‘God moves in mysterious ways.’
‘See, that’s the kind of shit I can’
t stand.’ Aggie stretched her legs out in front of her and her arms up in the air. ‘Like when people say, “God healed me” or “God got me out of that burning building” or whatever. I mean, why is God so random? Why do some people pray and die anyway and others boast about their survival, as if what, they prayed harder?’
‘You’re being simplistic.’
‘Your religion is simplistic. It’s do what you’re told just because you were told, which is all fine and dandy, but what about those who weren’t told? What about all those people in Iran or Afghanistan who are doing what they’ve been told? No matter how they have lived, no matter whether they came by their beliefs through study or soul searching or lazy acceptance, they will burn in hell for eternity. Explain that!’
‘If you’re looking for easy answers –’
‘You want to know my theory?’ She rolled onto her side, propping herself up on one elbow. ‘People believe that stuff because they need to feel the world is fair. It’s like how kids who’ve been sexually assaulted end up with really bad self-esteem. It is actually less painful for them to believe that they deserved the abuse, than to believe that bad stuff just happens randomly. So when it’s obvious to people that the world is unfair, that what goes around doesn’t always come around, the concept of justice being served in an afterlife is a comfort.’
‘Just because it’s comforting doesn’t mean it’s not true. And you seem to be ignoring the flip side of that belief – the decidedly uncomfortable realisation that you will be held accountable for your own sins.’
Aggie’s eyes widened. ‘See, that’s another thing: this concept of sin and punishment. Sometimes people do the wrong things for the right reasons. Like a woman might prostitute herself to get money to eat, or a man steals to pay for medicine for his kid. A lot of people are just trying to survive, you know? What kind of God would condemn these struggling, weak human beings for their transgressions?’
Luke sat staring.
‘Huh! You have no answers! None!’ Aggie leant forward and touched his knee, blinked at him, then sank back into her seat. She closed her eyes, opened them, narrowed them, laughed out loud. ‘Okay. Say something.’
‘You’ll only ridicule me.’
‘Oh, no, sweetie. I haven’t meant to ridicule you. Sorry, sorry. Please talk to me.’
Sweetie. It was like a warm hand sliding into his own.
‘Luke?’ Aggie leant forward to touch his knee again; this time she left her hand there and looked into his eyes. ‘I really want to understand. What the hell did any of us ever do to deserve the pain we go through in this life?’
‘You know Jesus was asked almost that exact question? People believed that those who suffered from disease or disability were being punished in some way, that they deserved their affliction, so one day after Jesus had restored the sight of a blind man, his disciples wanted to know why the man had been born blind in the first place, “Who sinned?” they asked. And Jesus told them that no one had sinned. He said that the man had been blinded so that the works of God might be made visible through him.’
‘That’s horrible,’ she said. ‘Like some awful puppet show. Aren’t I wonderful to repair the puppet I deliberately broke!’
‘No, Aggie, you mis–’ He grabbed at the hand she withdrew from his knee. He held it tight. ‘Think of old Joe or the girls working Koloona Street, think of the addicted, the mentally ill. Most people believe of them what the disciples believed of the blind man – that people so afflicted must have done something wrong, that they deserve their pain. But you know that isn’t so and so you help them, and when you do – whether it is obvious to you or not – you are revealing God’s love. You are doing Jesus’ work.’
‘Oh, Luke.’ Her hands pulled free of his. ‘You really don’t understand how stupid you sound, do you?’
He watched her pour and drink more wine. He went to the window and focused on her overgrown garden, lit by spotlights and a nearly full moon.
‘Enough god talk, okay?’ Aggie was at his side.
‘No. Look – the riot of colour that makes up our world. The yellow and crimson, the pinks, the indigo. At least ten different shades of green in this small area alone. When the sun comes up, the sky will be purple, then gold, then a clear pale blue. God could easily have made a grey universe, but He didn’t. And it’s not just the colours. The fragrance of flowers, the scent of freshly mowed grass, of rain, the texture of sand or silk, the warmth of the sun and the cool relief of a summer breeze. All these colours and smells and textures are not necessary for our survival; they’re gifts from a God who loves us.’
Aggie pressed her forehead to the window. ‘You’re scaring me.’
‘It’s awesome, I know, but you don’t need to be afraid.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’ Her face was hidden in shadow. ‘The world is not devoted to human life, Luke. The colours of nature are diverse because getting or avoiding attention helps plants survive in different areas. Same go for fragrance – it’s an attractant or repellent. And the warm sun causes cancer and summer breezes turn into gales which rip houses apart. None of it is there for our convenience or pleasure. Nature has its own rules and we just have to enjoy what we can and shelter from what harms us.’
‘Ah, but we have the senses to enjoy it, don’t we? Since seeing the blush of a rose isn’t necessary for our survival, God could have made us as tigers, able to see only in shades of blue. He gave us the capacity to take pleasure in our surroundings.’
‘You’re killing me here!’ She spun around and took hold of his arms; her grip was inescapable. ‘Our senses have evolved over time to give us the best possible chance of survival. We see colour so we can differentiate between food and poison, our sense of taste confirms whether something’s edible before we swallow it, we have the ability to sniff out food and potential mates, we can hear a predator coming from a distance, and we know from touching if a surface will burn or freeze us, cause us pain or pleasure.’
Luke stepped back two paces, which was as far as the length of her arms allowed. He had to concentrate. ‘Do you really believe,’ he said, ‘that who you are, what you value, your desires – everything about you – is shaped by physiology which in turn is shaped by evolution? Flowers are not truly beautiful; it’s just that your brain evolved to experience pleasure when a certain pattern of light hits your retina. If you feel love for a person you are merely reacting to your programming, selfishly looking to propagate your genes. Is that your view?’
‘Hmmm,’ Aggie said. She released him, returning to her earlier position on the sofa. She drained her wine and poured herself another glass.
‘Aggie?’ Luke sat across from her, willing her to touch his knee so he could brush her hand away.
‘So, okay,’ she said. ‘I want to think that love is more than a selfish response to biological programming, but . . . if not that, then what?’
‘G–’
‘Don’t say God!’ Aggie reached, touched, laughed. ‘Saying God is the same as saying biology. An overpowering, unstoppable force that makes us want what we want and feel how we feel.’
‘But not a morally neutral force like nature.’ Luke touched her hand, but did not move it from his leg. ‘God designed us and knows us better than we can know ourselves. He is the source of all love.’
Aggie pulled away. She took a large gulp of wine; some escaped her mouth and dribbled down her chin. She left the spill alone, giving Luke reason to think she might want him to wipe her face for her. He was still considering this when she spoke again. ‘At the meeting the other night, when Leticia was talking to the kids about charity, she said the most important commandment given by Jesus was to “love one another”, which sounds really nice when you’re talking about being kind to homeless people or the mentally ill, but what about us?’
‘Us?’ he said.
‘Us,’ she repeated, slugging down some more wine, adding to the red trickle on her chin. ‘A couple of independent, opinionated adults who
have no real reason to be friends or even speak to each other outside of a courtroom. Yet we – well, let’s say care for each other. Let me ask you, Pastor Butler, why you care about me enough to spend your free time trying to save my soul? Is it because Jesus told you to?’
‘No, Aggie, it’s –’
‘Because if that’s the only reason, then you should go away. If you’re just following orders from above, then bugger off!’
‘How can you think –’
‘Shit!’ Aggie had missed her mouth and the red wine was working quickly to imitate a stab wound on her chest. ‘Shit, shit, bugger it!’ She pulled at the front of her jumper. She was more than a little drunk. Now she was on her back, writhing around wrestling her jumper off. She hurled it over the back of the lounge saying ‘piss off’. The wine had soaked through to her white T-shirt – which appeared to be a size or two too small – leaving a pale pink wet patch over her left breast.
‘Ahem.’ She cleared her throat, then arched her back and licked her sticky-with-wine-lips. ‘Come over here,’ she said, patting the edge of the sofa. Luke did not move. She repeated the request, slower and with her eyes closed. Luke excused himself to the bathroom where he washed his face with cold water and begged God to give him strength. Within minutes he heard the unholy sound of her snores. He thanked the Lord and snuck out into the night.
9.
When Honey was twelve, Marcus Selden, who was fifteen, told her that if she didn’t swallow a guy’s stuff when she sucked him off, it was like she hadn’t done it at all. When she spat into a tissue, he felt nothing, Marcus said. This made her want to cry. All that spit and energy and neck pain for nothing. All those little ulcers where her teeth cut her gums, the stinging scalp, the grass-stained jeans, for nothing. So after that, Honey always swallowed. After a while, it didn’t bother her. You could get used to anything.
The Gospel According to Luke Page 6