A Grain of Wheat

by Joseph Jacobson

  At length a picture began to form slowly in his benumbed mind, or rather several pictures. They were of his Cecilia back in Meadowville at Thanksgiving.

  “But you were already doing it, my love. You were already falling and dying, and bearing much fruit. You were doing it right here. You didn’t have to leave me to do it! You were always falling into the hearts of your friends, of anyone you met. You were always dying to yourself so that you could be alive for them. I could see with my own eyes all the fruit you were bringing forth in them. You were! My heart broke for love of you when I saw you creating all that love. You were just being you! I couldn’t help it! I’d fallen in love with an angel, and by some miracle she’d fallen in love with me. God only knows why! You told me I would love all your friends. You made it impossible for me not to! I guess that’s what happens when you are loved by an angel….

  “Somehow, when you fell into my heart, it was different from all the other hearts you fell into. My heart was already a wide open cavern with a space hollowed out in advance just for you. Just for you…. You must have known this somehow, because you fell into my heart just as hard as I had already fallen into yours, and we filled each other’s hearts to overflowing. You fell into my heart and died. You were willing to give me, the frog, everything you are. Everything! You held nothing back. Not a thing! You thought I was asleep under the tree when you told Jesus you would do anything for me. You said ‘anything’! I heard you say that, drowsy as I was. I heard every word of it. Right there you were offering to fall into the ground of my poor heart, dear angel, and to die there for the love of clueless me! But for sure you had to be thinking of dying for me by living with me over the course of a lifetime together here on earth, right? That was what you meant by saying you would do ‘anything’ for me, wasn’t it? You didn’t mean…….”

  Once again Steve slumped over his crutches and broke into sobs for the umpteenth time since he’d regained consciousness in the hospital and was told by his parents what had happened two weeks earlier.

  Teetering there in the cold, with the words of Cecilia’s “surprise” for him still running through his head, a slender shaft of light pierced the darkness, as he later described it, and alighted on him. It came in the form of a voice in his head, her voice:

  “Fall where you are and die there, Steve, my love, and you will not abide alone. I know you want to die and come to be with me. But if you stay where you are and fall and die, I will come to be with you. That is what I want. You will make me very happy, my love, if you fall and die and bring forth much fruit right where you are. You will make me very happy and I will come to you. I will!”

  Silence.

  The slender shaft of light suddenly brightened into a floodlight.

  “You will? And it will make you very happy?” he almost shouted into the night. “I’ll do it, then! I’ll do it! I’ll fall and die here. Just show me how, my love! I’ll do it! Just show me what I can do to make you very happy with me!”

  Silence.

  The floodlight was now almost blinding him.

  All at once Stephan shouted to the skies, “I get it! You want me to become the fruit you died to bring forth!”

  He could hardly breathe.

  Gathering all his strength he stood up straight and cried out, “O my God, if that’s what she wants, if that’s what my Cecilia really wants, You show me how to do it and I’ll do it! I will do it! I don’t care what it costs. I will do it for the angel You sent me from Heaven and I sent back to You in Heaven! I will give everything I have, everything I am, to become the fruit of her falling and her dying. So help me God, I will!…

  “Only show me the ground, Cecilia’s Jesus! Show me the ground that You want me to fall into and I’ll fall into it all the way. I’ll fall into it hard, and I will die there. So help me, I will die there! For her I will die there! Just show me the ground!”

  Steve pulled himself together and went up to his room. Ted was asleep. In the dim light of his desk lamp he opened the top drawer of his desk and took out a plain envelope with his name on it. Opening the envelope, he carefully unfolded the single sheet of stationery it contained and read it yet again.

  Dear Steve,

  The Monday after Cecilia’s funeral we boarded the train and came here to be with you. You have not regained consciousness, but your doctor says your vital signs are improving every day. We are so very thankful for this. We love you and pray for your full recovery.

  We have to leave now to get back to Meadowville for Christmas services. We want you to know that we do not blame you for what happened. We know how much you love Cecilia and how much she loves you. We don’t understand why Our Lord has allowed this to happen, but we trust that He means for something very good to come out of what seems to us such a senseless tragedy.

  It has been good for us to meet your parents here at your bedside and to share with them many tears, but also our hope and our faith.

  You have two homes now, Steve—your parents’ home in North Dakota and our home in Meadowville. You will always be a son to us.

  We know our Cecilia would have been a wonderful life’s partner for you, and you for her. But instead God has given her to you to be your angel to go with you wherever you go, to intercede for you every day before the Throne of Grace, and to welcome you to your heavenly Home when that day arrives.

  Please accept this portrait photo of Cecilia which we had her sit for at the time of her graduation from high school. She didn’t do anything the photographer asked her to do to look glamorous, and so she looks like herself, don’t you think?

  God bless you, dear Steve! Steve, our son!

  Love, Irv and Ellie

  Returning the letter to the envelope, Steve whispered, “Cecilia’s Jesus, You are too good! You’re just too good!”

  II

  There was one man on campus to whom Stephan Pearson felt he could turn for help in understanding Cecilia’s message to him, the Rev. Dr. John Engstrom, the college chaplain and a professor of religion. Although not yet forty years of age, he had earned three academic degrees and been honored with a fourth in acknowledgement of two groundbreaking books he had written in the new discipline of pastoral psychology. His classes were popular with the students and his chapel talks were brief and to the point, leaving you both challenged and inspired. Steve appreciated the way in which Dr. Engstrom never failed to effect an appealing tension and rapport between the everyday life of a student and life’s deeper meaning in the will and purpose of God. The very next day Steve approached Dr. Engstrom after chapel and secured an appointment with him for the afternoon of the following day.

  Dr. Engstrom had visited Steve several times in the hospital. He had witnessed Steve’s incredulous stupor at what had happened and had suffered with him through the denial and turmoil it detonated in his mind and heart. He was aware that the doctors had released him sooner than usual for fear that lying longer in the hospital would break altogether his will to live. That same day he met both with the dean of women to learn as much as she could tell him about Cecilia and with Dr. Brockhaus, Steve’s advisor, who left him in no doubt about Steve’s towering intellect. He even made a special effort to call me into his office that evening to glean every insight he could from me about Steve and Cecilia’s relationship. I have to say that he was deeply moved by what I shared with him from my perspective.

  The next day Steve was punctual in keeping his appointment. His eagerness to plunge ahead with his midnight promise to Cecilia and to God was written all over his face. Still shaky on his crutches he appeared in the doorway. The pastor greeted him and beckoned him to come in.

  Dr. Engstrom, aware that sitting was awkward for Steve, led him over to a high windowsill overlooking the campus and the countryside beyond. Beneath the sill was a bookshelf just the right height for Steve to lean on. Steve stood there for a few moments, not knowing exactly how to start the conversation. A faint hint of desperation passed over his face. Dr. Engstrom picked up on it and came t
o his rescue.

  “I have a little confession to make, Steve. Yesterday I took the liberty of speaking with the dean of women and with Dr. Brockhaus and with Cecilia’s cousin, Paul. I think I have a pretty good idea of what you and Cecilia meant to each other.”

  Steve’s face relaxed and his eyes glistened. Gazing out the window, he remained silent long enough for a certain calmness to still his heart and cool his mind before he spoke. At length he turned to the pastor and asked, “Were you at the concert night before last?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you remember the last song, the one called, ‘Verily’?”

  “Yes. How could I forget it?”

  “‘Verily, verily I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone. But if it die it bringeth forth much fruit.”

  “Yes, of course. I was very moved by it. Everybody else seemed to be too.”

  “Well … well … Cecilia wrote that song. The program said Susan Dahl. But that was my Cecilia. She wrote it for me.”

  Dr. Engstrom looked straight into Steve’s eyes in extreme surprise. Then he closed his swelling eyes and lowered his head.

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  With that, the whole story came tumbling out, starting with his search for peace the previous summer and everything that had happened to him in his paradise, and especially the intervention of his Spectre Maiden. As detail after detail unfolded, right up to the accident, the good pastor’s heart rose and fell with Steve’s. They shared smiles and they shared tears.

  “Pastor, she left me her life in that piece of music. It was the key to her happiness, and I now know that she wrote it to unlock mine. It would be so easy for me to fall into despair, and to stay there, over what I did to my angel. But that’s not what she wants. She wants me to be the fruit of her death, to become what I would never have become without it, inconceivable as that may seem. That’s the only thing I have left to live for. I have to find a way to fall into the right ground and die so that I can bear much fruit. It won’t be the same as her way of doing it. But it has to have the same effect. It has to bring forth life and love and goodness in people. It has to bear fruit. Pastor, first I need to know what ground I am called to fall and die on, and then I need to throw myself down onto it full force, with everything I’ve got. I am here to ask for your help. What ground does God want me, Stephan Pearson, to fall and die on? How can I do what it will take to make my Cecilia happy so that she will smile down at me from Heaven?”

  Steve choked up.

  The pastor took a deep breath and stroked his chin for a few moments.

  “Steve, you have well grasped the secret of Cecilia’s life, what made her so beautiful and so deeply happy. And you have seen that Jesus is telling us in the words of the song that this is the key not only to her happiness but to the happiness of every other person too. Of all of us! Grasping this truth is already a first fruit of her death…. But you are challenging me to help you identify which specific ground God is calling you to fall and die on so that you can bring forth much fruit. I think I know the answer. Yes, I think I know….”

  Dr. Engstrom folded his hands behind his back, paced to the other side of the room, and returned to the windowsill beside Steve. He fixed his gaze on the frosty Minnesota countryside. Then he turned and fixed it on Steve.

  “Steve. Do you see that journal on my desk over there? It is called The Christian Century, as you can see. The best theologians of our time are telling us that we are living in the most promising era yet in human history. The Great War has rid us of political systems that have brought the world so much bloodshed and anguish in the past, while at the same time teaching us lessons we shall never forget about the futility of solving anything by war. Our best minds are sensing that the Gospel of Jesus is about to take root everywhere, leading the whole human race into an era of unprecedented peace in which entire peoples are lifted out of grinding poverty. Modern science is giving us ways to free people everywhere from drudgery and oppression, so that the human spirit can rise to embrace its full God-given potential. Sacred Scripture holds up for us a vision of the Peaceable Kingdom of God in which each man can sit under his vine and fig tree, secure and happy and productive.

  “You ask me into which ground you are to fall, where it is that you are called to die to yourself and bring forth much fruit for others. I will tell you plainly what I think. Find the fertile field that beckons to you most irresistibly, the field that for you holds the most promise of yielding fruitful results for mankind in the era now on our doorstep. And then plunge in. Don’t look back.

  “Do you catch a vision, Steve, of what you can do? Let me sketch out for you our divine calling and see where that takes you. We are called to redeem our times, to strive for the sake of the race to advance significantly in every area of honorable human achievement, to conquer disease and ignorance, to grow in knowledge and especially in wisdom, to bring out the best in people and to eradicate evil from the face of the earth, to develop the full untapped potential of the minds God has given us. We are called to foster all that is good and godly in the human soul. The task of religion is to inspire man’s devotion to the cause of peace and true progress as the noblest manifestations of the Divine Will here on earth. The task of education is to enlighten man for intelligently managing the opportunities afforded by democracy and liberty. The task of science is to be on the front lines, to break through our ignorance and uncover new and vastly more effective ways of eradicating evil and suffering from among men.

  “And Steve, it is my firm conviction that you belong on the front lines. What do you think?”

  Halfway through the pastor’s fervent appeal Steve closed his eyes, dropped his head to his chest, and nearly suspended breathing. The pastor’s words took on color, form, and action in his roiling mind. To use the resources of science to offer the destitute and suffering of the world a chance for a better life! Here was a vision of fruitfulness that fit him perfectly and would surely bring joy to Cecilia! A shiver ran through him at the very thought of it. He could hardly wait to get at it! Before him lay the broad and fertile fields of science. Here he could throw himself down and die and be consumed by the very work that attracted him most. He could bury himself in it, and his work would surely bring forth fruit, maybe even much fruit. And she would be so happy with him. Yes, there would be times when he would miss her terribly. But there would also be many times when he would know she was close to him, so close he could almost feel her.

  Steve didn’t have to say anything. Dr. Engstrom read Steve’s reaction to his challenge all over his face.

  All around Steve at this very moment could feel his Cecilia, and she was smiling at him through her tears. But this time it was so different from the first vision he had had of her in his night dream where he couldn’t move. This time she was there waiting for him, and he was coming.

  Minutes passed. The pastor could almost feel Steve’s pulse throbbing in the air. He knew what was going through the young man’s mind. He lowered his voice to a fervent rumble and said, “Plunge in, Steve. Plunge in!”

  Steve smiled at him broadly and nodded abruptly.

  “Even before I throw away these crutches.”

  Then Steve, flushed with grave and joyous enthusiasm, took the pastor’s hand and shook it vigorously.

  “Thank you, Pastor. I was sure you could show me my ground. Now I’d better get started or I’ll keep somebody waiting.”

  So saying, he swung around and disappeared through the door.

  Dr. Engstrom paced about in his office for several minutes, enjoying the afterglow, a thankful warmth in his heart. But the longer he paced, the cooler his heart grew. At length he said out loud in slight annoyance, “You might have clarified the issue for him a bit better…. Ah well, you can only do so much in one day.”

  Then he sat down at his desk and turned his attention toward tomorrow’s chapel talk.

  III

  Stephan Pearson lost n
o time in falling into his ground once he had identified it. Actually, he took Dr. Engstrom at his word and plunged into it, relieved to have found a way to redeem his guilt, at least in part. Mathematics and physics had always exerted a powerful attraction on him, and now that he was armed with a worthy and impelling motive for it, he allowed their powerful magnetic field to draw him deeply into them. His genius was unleashed.

  Even before his transformation in Dr. Engstrom’s office that day, Professors Brockhaus and Larson had already been astounded at the facility with which his mind grasped the relationship and broad unity of concepts normally dealt with in isolation from each other. For all his outward nonchalance, his mind had never been an attic collection of miscellaneous data. For him, details fell into a picture already in place or else created a picture in which they made beautiful sense. They never stood alone. If pieces were missing in a picture, he postulated what they might be and then sought for them until he found them and inserted them where they belonged. His mind would often construct a pattern out of known data with a few blank spots in it which left him the fascinating challenge of locating the missing pieces. The professors’ back-row student had caught their attention almost from the first day without even trying and had held it just by being himself.

  Now, however, he suddenly moved figuratively from the back row to the front row for the simple reason that all of this mattered to him now. It was no longer just a game. Their delight in him was exquisite as they watched him come alive to his vocation. With a compelling goal ahead of him, fascinating mental challenges all around him, impelling memories behind him, and a holy motive within him, he was at long last striking a unique interior balance that even I had to admit was nothing less than a miracle.

  Although his legs and rib cage bothered him for the next two-and-a-half years of his undergraduate career at Christiania, he did not let this prevent him from taking those long leisurely walks in the country which had become second nature to him from his childhood. I was grateful that he maintained his contact with me on a regular basis, bursting into my room from time to time and sharing with me something he found too exciting to keep to himself even though I often had no idea what he was talking about. I am also aware that he returned to Meadowville the following Thanksgiving to be with Irv and Ellie and a few of Cecilia’s special friends, to inform them personally of everything that had happened to him after Cecilia’s death, that is, of how constantly present she was to him in his own falling and dying. He told Irv and Ellie how much their love meant to him and he begged them to pray that he might become a worthy fruit of their daughter’s death. After that, they never saw him again, as far as I know, but they never stopped loving him and praying for him.