Good-bye and Amen by Beth Gutcheon Page B

collisions; these are meaningless in celestial terms. Here they are gradually unlearned. And all those bodily aspects that shape the spirit: beauty, ugliness, health or wealth or their lack, all those worldly accidents. What happens when the marks they made are sloughed off? Something slightly different for every soul, and every single variation forms part of the endlessly re-forming universe.
    The celestial kaleidoscope. An infinite pattern in which every fleck contains a whole life, and that life is made up of infinite previous lives, a pattern made in dimensions for which there are no words. Eternally absorbing, we understand. In Heaven they watch the celestial kaleidoscope. Here we watch the separate lives.
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    Lindsay Tautsch Father Faithful rarely sang the mass, which was one of the problems at Good Shepherd. Not the only one or even the most important, but he didn’t take it seriously that people minded. They did mind in the choir loft, and on the altar guild. The liturgy committee. Another was that Norman chose the hymns. He entertained requests, but he rarely responded to them. He said that if you’re six feet five you don’t have to.
    It’s a big rich parish, Good Shepherd Episcopal in Sweetwater, Pennsylvania. For many priests it would be a plum, a career-topper. But for Norman, it was a consolation prize. He’d expected to be a bishop. He has no idea why he isn’t. He has a list of published books to his credit. He had his own TV show in Colorado. He’s probably the only priest in the communion who contributed a chapter to a textbook on torts.
    You can still see the lawyer in him. He loves argument. The clash of battle, the thrill of being cornered, enjoying the mess of fighting his way out of it. He certainly doesn’t turn the other cheek to anyone. He did keep a picture of Martin Luther King on the wall in his office, though.
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    George Kersey When we were in Missouri at the start of our careers, we belonged to a curates’ group. We’d meet for supper once a month and tell war stories. I was in a big parish with two curates and a seminarian, but Norman was in a small parish serving a rector who was way past his prime.
    A parish can’t fire a rector, he has to be removed for cause by his bishop, but the bishop and Norman’s rectorwere old golf buddies, so that wasn’t happening. Father Tom was dug in at St. Gregory’s with the wagons circled and the loyal church secretary had taken on the role of Rin Tin Tin. Norman and Monica were the Apaches howling outside the stockade with their recruited army of New People while Father Tom huddled in his chair, but Mrs. Snelling could trot in and out among the enemy, swift to sniff out predatory markings and able to carry the bad news back into the fort. When she went home in the evenings she took the print ball from the typewriter with her. Norman still had to type up the order of service and the announcements for the bulletin insert. He had to get his own print ball.
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    Monica Faithful I loved our parish in Missouri. There was a small college nearby, and Norman started recruiting on campus. There had been no Protestant outreach there at all, though there was a Catholic youth group. Norman would talk to the students about civil rights, he’d tell the stories of Jesus against the Establishment, turning over the tables of the moneylenders in the temple, that kind of thing.
    Father Tom was semi-horrified when all these young people started showing up at St. Gregory’s on Sunday morning. They’d sit there in their tie-dyed T-shirts expecting Norman to preach. Some of them were black. It was after a couple of boys tried to turn over the army recruiter’s table on campus that Mrs. Snelling started taking home the print ball from the Selectric. To try to sideline Norman, Father Tom made him take the children’s service, knowing that Norman didn’t believe in that, he believed the children