When virtually everything you cherish is suddenly swept away, everything that speaks God to you vanishes, and when you realize that you yourself are the reason for its disappearance and that No One has intervened to prevent it from happening, the ‘tiny hints’ that all is not lost which you are given at such moments come to mean everything to you. I will tell you of my three self-created disasters and their subsequent “hints.’”
“When I was your age, I was hopelessly self-absorbed, but God gave me Cecilia Endsrud right here at Christiania. She, so close to Jesus, drew me from death to life. Before long we both knew we were destined to become husband and wife. But I killed her, and almost killed myself, driving a motorcycle recklessly just before Christmas. I can’t describe to you the grief and remorse this plunged me into. But unknown to me she had left me a legacy, an anthem which she had written just for me, setting to music some words of Jesus that meant everything to her. She had played the music for me once on her practice organ, without singing the words, just days before her death. I found out what the words were only the next spring when at the end of their concert the Christiania Choir sang her anthem: “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.” The anthem itself seemed to me—and to many others, I was told—to have come straight down to earth from the heavenly choir. Still recovering from my injuries I received it, in total shock, as my Cecilia’s final farewell to me from Heaven. I was at first confused by her message and didn’t catch on right away to what she was trying to tell me, but then all at once it struck me: she was telling me that I, Stephan Pearson, am that grain of wheat and that the way for me to make her very happy in Heaven was to fall into the ground right here on earth and die, and thus bear much fruit. Taking this message as my marching orders, and desperately needing to repair my guilt, I let myself go. I dove headlong into what I was told by a respected mentor was my ‘ground’ and I died. I surrendered myself completely to the worlds of science and mathematics. They had always held a powerful fascination for me, just as they do for you now. And so it was easy for me to dedicate myself heart and soul to the cause of human progress through the contributions that science was making to create a better life for people and to eradicate evil on earth. I was doing it for my Cecilia, and for Cecilia’s Jesus, in a big way, so how could I go wrong? What further motivation did I need? You can see how the message she left me in that anthem moved me beyond despair, gave me a vision I could live and die for, and set me on my way. It was my first “tiny hint,” and I clung to it for years.
The second disaster I brought upon myself was my direct involvement in the production of the atom bomb during World War II, for the noblest of patriotic motives, of course. Having to face up to the unimaginable suffering it inflicted on all those innocent people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki landed me in an inner hell I can’t begin to describe. Kay was the source of my second ‘tiny hint.’ She brought me out of my long season in hell by convincing me to change my profession and become a teacher so that I could spend my energy inspiring students to use science only to make life better for people. (It also helped that she consented to be my wife!) For some ten years I was very happy doing exactly what she had suggested here at Christiania. Then came our experience on that fateful day at your high school in Reedville which disabused me of the notion that the peacetime uses of science are any less destructive of the human person than its wartime uses are.
And, of course, my most recent self-inflicted disaster was the sudden loss of both Kay and our son. When the baby I had planted in her womb was growing, we had many times placed our hands on that baby and consecrated ourselves and the little one to God whose Goodness and Love at work in people are the only force that can turn the world around and avert disaster. This bright prospect carried us through many trials right up to the day I lost them both. I know their loss would have plunged me instantly into a black hole from which I would never have emerged, except for the third ‘tiny hint’ that blocked that plunge. Kay had regained consciousness and asked for me. When I came to her bedside, she smiled at me weakly and proudly informed me that we had a son. Then she asked me if I was happy. I lied and said through my tears, “Yes, my beloved.” Her face became the face of an angel and she said, looking me straight in the eye, “I am … very happy … too…. Jesus just….” Then her eyes slowly closed and she never opened them again until just before she died. Then she looked straight at me, smiled, and was gone.
Three beautiful promises, three crushing disillusionments, three sparks of hope.
I know there are multitudes of people the world over who have experienced similar disasters to mine. As a result, some have turned to God and some have turned away from God. As for me, I confess I am in a quandary. Sometimes the apparent meaninglessness of it all quite overwhelms me, the cruel heartlessness that can senselessly destroy the finest and best and equally senselessly allow the ugliest and worst to thrive. But then I see Cecilia and I hear her song, or I see Kay’s smile and I hear her whispered words. And in those moments I see a flicker of light in the darkness!
But is it possible, I ask myself, that this light is nothing but a mirage, a delusion?
Yet Kay and Cecilia are the least deluded people I have ever known!
And still I wonder.
This has led me directly into wrestling with a related issue which has become a fourth “hint,” so to speak. In my youth we spoke glibly about “the eradication of evil,” as if it lay in our power to achieve it with a little hard work and dedication. But it dawned on me a few weeks ago in church as we were praying the Lord’s Prayer that from the perspective Jesus gives us in this prayer, we have been terribly guilty of trivializing something He treats very seriously. By placing our whole life squarely between “Our Father who art in Heaven” and the “evil one” from whom we beg to be delivered, is Jesus giving us an indispensable key to a realistic understanding of the world we live in? If so, why are we ignoring it? Jesus presents the evil one to us in this prayer as a powerful enemy, an anti-God, bent on our destruction. And it is “the evil one,” not just “evil,” in German “von dem Boesen,” in French “du malin.” Evil is a wicked superperson, not just a bad thing; an enemy, not a character flaw. Now, Rolph, if this is so, how can we ever be on the right track if we fail to take into account the evil one’s determination to destroy the human race? We usually pray the Lord’s Prayer as if the last line did not exist. That can’t be what Jesus intends. I can see it so clearly now. By failing to take Satan and his wiles as seriously as Jesus does, I may have laid myself open to serving as his instrument for evil when I thought I was serving as God’s instrument for good. If so, it is no wonder that the actual results of my work have been so horribly different from the results I expected. I fear I played right into Satan’s hands by ignoring him. Like a rattlesnake, he kills you quickest when you don’t know he’s there. But we have no excuse. The Lord’s Prayer is Jesus’ continual reminder to us that the evil one IS always there, and that the earth we live and work in is a battlefield between Our Father and the enemy, and we are either on His side by grace or on the enemy’s side by our fallen nature. Yes, Rolph, this world is by definition a battlefield.
Failing to reckon with the evil one is to court disillusionment and defeat from the very start. And I fear that I may well have spent my whole life doing just that.
All I ask of you, Rolph, is not to fall into the same trap I did. I am tempted to believe that Satan wants us to ignore him so that he can get us to give up on God. Then he has us. And I would certainly have given up on God long ago, and again in these last months, but for those two bright lights that I sometimes think He gave me just to pierce my gloom and never leave me in total darkness. Anyone who has had a Cecilia and a Kay in his life cannot ever be in total darkness. At times I have the distinct sense that my two lamps on earth have become my stars in Heaven.
Yet I must admit, I have my days when all truth seem
s to lie on the side of the darkness and everything else is illusion. But I always come back eventually to Cecilia’s Jesus. Somehow, He strikes me as the One, the only One, who has it all together and under control, who sees the big picture, the only One who could have put that smile on Kay’s face and those words on her lips, and the One who asks from me now nothing but my trust, and probably also my true obedience, since for years I thought I was being obedient to Him, but was not.
Your friend,
Dr. Stephan Pearson
XXVIII
Throughout January, February, and March, Dr. Stephan Pearson was little more than a walking shade. He seemed overwhelmed and powerless, like a man slowly dying. And he looked like one too. His cheeks were gaunt, his face was pallid, his stomach hollowed out. Most of his friends saw this as a reaction to his losses, but Mary Thorsheim suspected there was more to it than that.
His overall lethargy is doubtless to blame for the fact that his final illness crept up on him unnoticed. It blended in so well with his perennial disposition that neither he nor anyone else, apart from Mary, detected it. His spiritual nausea merged with his physical nausea and camouflaged it. The constant pain seen in his eyes could just as easily have had its source in a broken heart as in a broken body.
A number of humiliating but essential steps were under consideration by the college authorities. What could they do about their useless old wreck, too venerable to release and too irresponsible to retain? On the one hand, his reputation still attracted students to the college. But on the other hand, several were now threatening to leave on his account. His lectures were dull and disorganized. He always seemed a little lost. He never set foot in the laboratories anymore. The mathematics class he had scheduled himself to teach was in the hands of a member of that department. He ignored his duties as head of the Division of Science and Mathematics. In short, he was now a totally different man.
The administration’s final decision, made in exasperation, was to raise his salary for the following year and strip him of responsibility for everything except the Physics Department. Everyone hoped he would snap out of it soon.
With speechless perplexity, Rolph Eriksen watched the man he revered shrivel up before his eyes.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” he pleaded one day after class.
“I wish there were,” was the answer he got. “Thank you for asking.”
He shrugged off the suggestions of Mary Thorsheim, who continued to visit him twice a week, that he consult a physician. Toward the end of March, she was considering taking steps independently to bring him under medical surveillance. She had prepared a fine dinner of easily digestible foods for him, some of which he had eaten with effort and regurgitated.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Seems like nothing agrees with me these days.”
He himself did not suspect that something was physically wrong with him until a few days into April. The winter of 1959–1960 did not bring the customary drifts of snow and bitter cold to the St. Mark area, and the ground was fairly workable early in the spring. Now and then something like a fresh breath of air or the early morning song of a bird would stir something in Steve and inspire him to get outside. Accordingly one morning he got up early and went out to the garage. He took the spade down from its hook and went to the tiny plot he had tilled the summer before in the corner of the garden.
It took just one strong thrust of his right foot against the spade to double him over in pain. Grasping his abdomen with both arms, he gasped for air. The pain gradually subsided. He concluded that moping around all winter must have left him out of shape. He picked up the spade again and set to work. This time the pain hit him so hard it sent him reeling backwards. He collapsed on the ground clutching his stomach. And the pain hung on. Wheezing and panting and gripping his stomach, he staggered back into the house and fell into the nearest chair.
When he finally caught his wind, he cautiously sat up straight and admitted, “There is something to this.”
As the days passed, the pain recurred at narrower intervals and with less provocation. Fortunately, he thought, it was very sporadic. He learned to avoid certain activities that strained the viscera. After he had experienced a stabbing pain two mornings in succession while walking to work, he drove his car from then on. It was with extreme care that he climbed the stairs to his office.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of April fifteenth, he noticed that he was passing blood. This may have been going on for some time already since he was slow to pick up on such things. Some level of pain was constant now, rising and falling. He pretty well knew what was wrong with him, but he just didn’t care.
On April twenty-third as he was lecturing his Physics 25 class, Section D, he reached up with his right arm to pull down a chart. Before his fingers touched the string, his arm flew to his stomach. Clutching it fiercely, he groped for his desk chair with his left hand. Staggering forward, he slumped down into it. Instantly Rolph Eriksen was at his side. Several students ran to get help. Most remained riveted to their seats.
It took four or five minutes for Dr. Pearson to recover his wind enough to say anything.
“It will pass in a moment. I’m all right.”
He requested that everyone still in the room kindly remain seated while he slowly rose and finished the lecture. The period was almost over. As soon as the dismissal bell rang, he sat down. Bedlam broke loose. Rolph and a handful of other students rushed forward again. Most of the rest of the students funneled out the door, bucking a torrent of Steve’s colleagues who were jostling to get in. When they gathered around him, Rolph anxiously blurted out exactly what had happened.
The little physicist’s condition was no longer a personal matter. In the company of an insistent Professor Amundsen of the Biology Department, he appeared in Dr. Pederson’s clinic that very afternoon. The doctor admitted him to the County Hospital without further discussion. By suppertime half of the faculty had heard that Dr. Stephan Pearson was in the terminal stages of metastatic cancer.
XXIX
Dr. Pederson had driven Steve to the hospital in his own car and had stayed until he had seen him comfortably settled in a private room. He had also phoned Steve’s pastor who showed up about an hour later.
“Would you like to receive Holy Communion, Dr. Pearson?”
“O yes! But I am not sure my stomach can handle the Host.”
“I will dip my finger in the Blood of Jesus and lay it on your tongue.”
Dr. Pearson closed his eyes and nodded gratefully.
At that very moment, Mary Thorsheim appeared in the doorway.
“Come and join us, Mary. Dr. Pearson and I are about to celebrate Holy Communion.”
“Yes. Come, Mary,” Steve insisted, beckoning to her weakly.
And so the three of them celebrated Holy Communion together.
When Communion was over and Steve and Mary had been blessed, the pastor said, “I have one more thing to ask you. Do you remember Dr. Engstrom? He was the college chaplain many years ago when you were a student.”
“Very well.”
“He is now quite elderly, a widower retired in Minneapolis,” the pastor said, packing up his Communion kit. “He drove himself down to St. Mark to attend Kay and your son’s funeral. I met him there afterwards for the first time. He seemed uncommonly concerned about you. He asked me to stay in touch, to let him know how you are managing. And so, of course, I phoned him as soon as I heard from Dr. Pederson. He said, ‘I’ll be there in the morning. I need to have some time with Dr. Pearson, if possible.’ He wondered if you were all right with that.”
“Yes. Of course. Yes.”
“I’ll let him know.”
“Thank you, Pastor.”
And now Mary was alone in the room with Steve. She sat down on a chair near his head. Silence reigned for many minutes until Steve, who had been staring at the ceiling, turned his head toward her and said, “Thank you for coming, Mary. I … I….”
“That’s okay, St
eve. Where would you expect me to be?”
Tears blurred the vision of both of them.
“Steve. You and Harold were such good friends. I have brought you something of his that I think may be of interest to you. It’s his new Bible, the Revised Standard Version. It was published shortly before he died. He had it for only the last two weeks of his life. In those two weeks, he marked some passages that must have jumped out at him. Almost all of them deal with something I think he believed we had not given enough serious thought to. I know he marked them for me, but I have a feeling they might speak to you too. I have put bookmarks in place to help you find those passages, except where he left notes in the margin to guide us to the next passage. I’ll just leave it right here in case you’re interested in having a look at it,” she said, placing it on his bed table.
“You are too kind, Mary.”
Pause.
“I have appreciated everything you’ve done for me, you know, even though I haven’t been very good at showing it.”
“I know,” she said, patting him on the arm. “Good night. God bless you! See you in the morning.”
When Mary had gone, Steve lay there for a very long while inert, as the events of the day slowly seeped into his consciousness. They tried to serve him some Jello for supper, but he took only a little tea.
He was suddenly very weary. But he reached for Harold’s Bible out of sheer loyalty and opened it to the first of several bookmarks.
The secret things belong to the Lord our God; but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever. (Deut. 29:29)
A Grain of Wheat Page 39