By Daniel Hirsch

Oh, bless be Your perfect, divine greatness—that once again failed to notice me.

I sat and watched it all this morning, with Your irresistible graces yet to cloak me in that sacred warmth of rebirth. When do I get to be chosen? When do I get to hear Your voice?

During today’s worship, Abigail Johnson made sure we all knew where she belongs in Your holy heart. She stood clutching the collar of her cape, placed her hand to her brow, and moaned in a manner of a cow needing to be milked. She looked up at Pastor Baldwin and exclaimed that she had been reborn in the Lord’s glory, felt His presence all around her, His tender arms embracing her insides, His magnificence filling up her empty vessel. When she had finished, she smiled placidly, sat back down, and readjusted her black bonnet. The congregation sat enthralled. They cooed and gasped that one of their children should join the select, what a happy day to witness a true conversion they murmured to themselves, as Pastor Baldwin began where he left off in articulating the divine Word. Abigail looked around the room and smiled her wide smile. It made my stomach overturn itself. I had brief remembrances of England and the spectacles of the street scene, of jugglers, bears, and unsavory women.

Yet, who am I to judge true revelation from false, I have yet to be reborn. Abigail Johnson is fifteen, the same age as I. But I, born three months before her, study the Good Book with a voracity that could not be matched by a girl. I am learned and devout, the son of a pious man. I am goodly in games and chores of daily life. Despite all this, I have yet to feel the surge of the Almighty’s very awesomeness and confess my moment of second baptism and transformation into one of His select. Father assures me that it will come in time, that all of the chosen eventually feel the transcendent light. I am bound by covenant to study and write and reflect, the better to read His symbols in the world around me, for it is then that I will truly decipher His meaning. And I am no doubt one of the chosen, but achieving conversion seems easy for my peers. I wonder what makes me different. Of course I am one of the chosen. I am good. My family is good. We are part of this tribe of New Israelites, moving perpetually towards a New Eden, ever so close to God’s wondrous bounty of heaven. I am good. I am good. I am good.

Currently, the sun ebbs from the Lord’s palette of sky and I must put down my pen. The woods around our small village shudder with wind even in the mild evening of mid-springtime. It is no doubt God’s hand rattling those twisted branches. But in the oncoming darkness and stretches of limbs and shadow, I sense a stirring of something other in the murky spaces.

Such foolishness, I write at this late hour. I am but a dumb-knuckled bobbin.

***

“Blessed be the perfection of the Lord, for he has created long days for a glorious seeding time,” Father proclaimed this dictum to my brother John and I in early morning. He handed us two hoes and nodded towards the stretching fields where we were to plant endless rows of barley.

John is seventeen. He confessed his redemption in front of the congregation at fourteen years and eight months. He is forever eating the best slice of Mother’s meat. We share a room and every night I am made to hear the Lord’s gift of John’s most fervent nighttime breathing. But my brother is good.

***

Already in the early hour, when we set out to our father’s acreage my vest was soaked with sweat. New England, unlike real England, has an uncompromising and merciless sun in the warm times. It tests God’s children in this wilderness. I am a constant mess of perspiration!

Our father’s fields are cobbled with large stones and clusters of hard dirt clods. So when I grind my hoe through the ground, it resists my force, and my shoulder is sore with the work of it. After about an hour of such labors my hoe’s pole snapped in half. Splinters flew through the air. John smiled at me and pondered out loud, “Did not Cain’s fields bear less fruit?” His face was bright and merry, his brow dry. I wanted to remind my brother of Abel’s fate in that parable, a brief imagining of the butt of my hoe in good John’s face flashed across my mind. Though I tried to shut it out for surely it is a wicked vision, the replaying of it made me smile as I trudged back to our cottage.

Upon returning, I had to tell Father of this mishap, of his broken property. I received the requisite punishments. Father reminds me that the Almighty punishes those of his flock whom He loves, the better to test their fortitude. Even now at the close of day, the skin of my back stills burns. It gives me solace to envision brother John’s face if thwacked with a piece of hickory. I am put to ease by such imagining. Wicked, I know. May God forgive a weary and aching boy’s fancies.

***

Yesterday after the morning Sabbath service, Father suggested that I might do well with extra study. On this day, Josiah Goodwin –age 13!— confessed he had been tormented by the Devil’s sulfurous hell fire in a dream, through the turmoil he learned to fully love the Lord’s flowing goodness, and so on. He professed for such an extent of time, so much so, that he grew red-faced from lack of breathing. I shall not continue, for to repeat the boy’s ejaculatory prayer would make my hand grow weary. He did go on and on—a blustering clot-pole if ever I have seen one. But yet, he is greater than me, he is now among the fold—however dubious his entry.

I jest.

Father suggested that revelation comes to those who labor, and I might do very well to have a companion in the working over of divine texts. He informed me that Edward Dudley’s son, William, is my age and has been studying scriptures with a dutiful eye and may prove beneficial to my meditations on the Lord. William has yet to confess his moment of spiritual rebirth to the congregation. I know of him. He is a tall boy with wide shoulders and auburn colored hair. We have spoken very little. My father informed me that upon the renewal of the week’s work, I will spend the afternoon hours with William. I have no choice in the matter. But I will do what it takes to better understand the Almighty spirit and His beloved son, and feel communion and the like, for I am a goodly and righteous person.

***

Today, William and I had our first session of study. There was a strained quality to it all. William shook my hand with his rather large one. He held my fingers firmly. I felt very much like a small child. I felt angry at his having this over me, are we not both without divine insight and conversion? Are we not both equals? But I squelched this surge within,  and we sat down for investigation of scripture. William opened his Good Book to the first few chapters of Exodus. “Might not our struggles in this New World be God’s reinvention of the Israelite’s struggle long ago?” he asked after we read several passages aloud. “Of course,” I replied, “That is obvious. Is that not what we are told every blessed Sabbath by our elders?” Immediately, I regretted speaking so sharply. But when I looked at William he smiled and responded, “The Lord has made you a swift minnow, friend.” To my amazement, he laughed.

We spent the rest of the afternoon reading aloud the story of the Hebrews in the toils of servitude—William read through the plagues with a rare zeal, using a comedic voice for Pharaoh, quite like a sacrilegious actor!—and then we parted ways with a firm shake once more. What an odd encounter. How strange the way he said that word, “friend.” I feel no closer to feeling the awesome power of the sovereign ruler of the Universe, but on my walk home, I saw a red hawk circling the heights of Mt. Sugarloaf. Its ruddy feathers cut across the sky, sharp and crisp and soaring. Might not this be some divine message from on high for his humble child to interpret? To decipher the Lord’s signs is a mysterious art. Perhaps, a bird is just a bird.

***

There’s news that East Havermore was raided by local heathens. One family’s house burned to the ground and a young girl was killed. Again, Father reminds us that the Lord takes away those dear to test our resolve. He punishes those He loves. It is His plan. Yet the girl was younger than I, she had no opportunity to experience His majesty and learn the visible traces of His wonder. Her eyes were robbed from her when they smashed in her skull with their most wretched and depraved tomahawks. What of her test, I wonder. How can God give her the opportunity to understand, if He spills her young blood unto His thirsty earth? What of that, I wonder. What of that?

***

My peers are a burst with revelation. Today it was Patience Witherspoon and Ascension Taylor trumpeting their new status as visible saints, as true children of the Almighty. It was a veritable marathon of divine insight. My eyes could not help but wander to William sitting with his parents. While Patience described the specific details of the Lord’s tremendous touch inside of her, William’s eyes looked to the window, and he stared at the brilliant sun shining forth into our humble meeting space. Might he have thoughts like mine own? Might he feel beauty around him, have an inkling of sacred grace and power, but have doubts of its authentic texture? Might there be something at his core that holds him back? Something uncertain and unknown in the pit of him, that draws him in unknown ways?

Unlike me, he is placid in the face of everything around him. There was a faint smile on his face, as Ascension exhorted on the mysteries of God’s probing finger. Could William have been amused by such an ardent display of  spiritual jubilation? The light through the dusty panes of our chapel seemed to shine on him alone in the jittery mass of black-clad brethren. Perchance, there’s meaning in this small phenomenon.

***

William and I worked together to copy passages into our common books today. William has such a keen eye for the plain language of beautiful inspiration. We sat outside as we did so, upon William’s suggestion. Father says that worthy study of the Lord’s text demands quiet, dark interior spaces for utter concentration, but it was beautiful out of doors. The sky of a crystal clarity that I never remembered seeing in England. And the sun was strong, illuminating the great earth of rolling green and forest. Father tells me to be wary of the wonders of the wilderness, within them the Almighty hand hath placed temptation and bestiality. But sitting with William on a small hill overlooking our patch of New England, I thought differently. He knows the name of every tree and shrub in sight. He says his favorite tree is the large White Maple that grows alone at the edge of his father’s field. “So mighty!” he exclaimed to me as we sat. William has whiskers coming in, that much improves his visage.  And he smiles broadly, with a frequency I have not noticed in the countenance of any of our community.

I suggested we turn to the Book of Numbers to continue the discussion Pastor Baldwin had begun during the Sabbath, but William just lay back in the yellow grass of his father’s field, resting his head in his palms. He told me, “I am forever fascinated with the clouds of the sky. They are both things and not things.” I asked him what relevance that had. He said it did not pertain to any part of our previous discussion, but that I should observe the bounteous white mysteries anyways. And so I did, the earth felt warm beneath my back. The clouds were of a thick nature today, pure white and robust. William’s breath rose and fell beside me. I pictured all the souls of those who had passed prior to achieving communion with the Lord, lifting up to the skies and entering these aberrant vapors, caught in the strange place between here and heavenly paradise. Would they stare back down at us, ignorant to the sweetness of God’s kingdom, longing for the simple pleasures of the earth? For days like this in golden fields breathing in sun-soaked air?

I told William that I worry about my soul never finding salvation.

He told me to be still, he was in a reverie and I would be wise to join him.

***

Today Abigail Johnson was promised to dear brother John. We, of course, are all brimming with merriment. John suggested that I best take my studies seriously, lest I never acquire such a fine quality wife. I responded that dear Abigail was “certainly as sturdy as an ox, a fine match to your wit, brother.” He smiled at this, “Thank you kind brother,” he said and strolled away thinking sweet thoughts of himself as is his simple custom.

When I saw William later in the day at our usual meeting spot by his family’s home, I told him of the news, and he offered his congratulations to John and our family. Then he looked into the sun, closed his eyes, and breathed deeply, as he is wont to do. And then said, “Love is more great and terrible than all of God’s creations put together.” After a moment, I replied: “Might not love be especially terrible with Abigail as your wife?” William looked at me. “Come now,”  he said. He closed his eyes and looked back to the sky, face suddenly solemn. In the silence, I sat wondering where he comes up with such things to say, if they approach blasphemy, and what love William has known in his young life. As I write now, these questions hop around my mind as the crackling ambers of our hearth’s dying fire. The hour is late, but sleep will not come.

***

Again I am sleepless.

Today, William suggested we should walk to ruminate on Your glory. “Flowing blood breeds revelation,” William exclaimed. And so, we walked. We walked along the crest of the grassy hill, passing the tall Maple at the edge of William’s father’s plot, and then cut along the road by the woods, at which point William’s meandering feet turned towards the shade of tree’s limbs. He ducked behind a thick bow. “Come,” he called to me, “come.” And I followed, watching his shoulders move through the twisted unseen paths of woods. Twigs snapped beneath our feet, and dry smells of dirt and dusky bark filled our noses. We bobbed under branches,  and William cut through thick screens of the trees’ fingers with his body, and I followed in the path he cleared. And Springtime’s light shone through the netting of canopy above, and speckled the floor of forest with patches of yellow sun. I heard the rattle of a nearby stream. William stopped to listen. He told me there was a “natural marvel” up ahead. We approached the stream, and walked along its rocky embankment. And soon, I was following William uphill along the stream. Its waters pushed hard against the rocks and the immensity of its sound began to grow.

Upon turning a bend in the stream, revealed before us was a rushing falls, water pouring down from granite high above, tremendous roaring noise, and air smelling of autumn morning fog. Mist kissed our faces. William, turned to me; his eyes clear and wide, reveling at the glory of the earth.

I was not thinking of You when we climbed up closer to the pounding force of the falls. And I was not thinking of You when William, held me by the waist so I could reach out to touch the power of the falling water, or when he asked if it was cold as my fingers skimmed the hard jet of white water. And I was not thinking of You, when his feet slipped on the wet rock, and his arms wrapped around me pulling me towards him, and we fell backwards onto steady ground, tumbling and twisting around each other, until we stopped, he on his back and I still holding on. And I was not thinking of You when I remained motionless in William’s warm grasp for that one fleeting moment, my face to his chest, his smells mingling with the clean scent of wet moss. It was when he said “Get off of me,” when I did not move for a moment, when he shouted “Get off of me now,” and when he pushed me so that I fell onto the hard rock besides us, when I felt Your tremendous presence beside me.

We stood and I looked up into William’s confused face. When  he looked back at me, his skin warped and sharp, I saw You staring back from the swirling black hole of William’s angry eyes. When he walked away back down the dark path disappearing instantly into the dusk, to leave me alone, bruised and shaking in the chilly air, I heard You shrieking in my ear—a thousand voices screaming all at once, crumbling earth, and thunder.

It was then, I knew of Your true terror, Your infinitely flawed creation, and the perversity of the trials You put Your meager servants through.

***

I am alone. I am stolen away in the pantry and I write by candlelight. Even the faint scratching of my quill seems to rattle the walls with its hissing. Sleep is dead to me. But it is You that have made me rise, given me these things to write. You have unsettled the sturdy parts of my belly, ripped my heart from its usual rhythms.

In morning prayer, William presented the congregation with an account of his experience entering into the fold and being reborn. He rose before Pastor Baldwin could begin his sermon, and the room fell into a terrible silence. I could not see his face from where I sat. But his voice was steady and plain as he spoke. He said very little, I can hardly recollect what he did say, only the way his head moved when he spoke and the cadence of his once beautiful voice. He told of the true shock of the Lord’s damnation. He knew what it was to feel stirred by reverence and fright at the sovereign power of the Universe. “True love is the love one feels to You,” he said. That now his spirit is joined to the Almighty, in divine, eternal wedlock, that transcends the petty place of the earth, of human relations. He sat back down and only deafening stillness remained.

I sat and watched in my family’s pew. Happy brother John and goodly Abigail grinned next to me and the hard wood of the bench grinded against my spine. I felt something churn within me, but it was not Your Grace, it was something else altogether. And I am alone, with no more words for You.