Wuthering Dormice (aka Bike) Part 739 by Angharad

We’d eaten and I was loading the dishwasher when the phone rang. I called to Stella to answer it but she had her hands full with Puddin’ and so Trish took the call.

“I’ll see if she can come to the phone, hold on please.” I’d just pressed the switch when she said to me, “That lady we saw this morning, is on the phone. She’d like to talk to you.”

“Okay, thank you, sweetheart,” I took the phone. “Hello, Cathy Watts.”

“Hello, Cathy, I’m glad you all got back in one piece.”

“Thanks for that, how’s Pattie?”

“That was what I wanted to talk about.”

A sudden chill swept through me, she wasn’t marked again or worse, was she? “Oh, please, carry on.”

“You left so suddenly, I didn’t get a chance to thank you.”

“I did nothing.”

“So you keep saying. I know it was God’s work…”

“I’m not convinced of that either.”

“So you keep saying, as wel.l”

“Sorry to sound repetitive but it’s what I believe – science not superstition.”

“I’m a scientist too, if you remember, but I can’t explain what has happened in scientific terms. So I use those of my faith, and to my mind that means I have to describe it in terms of a minor miracle. I’d have preferred you had healed my two parishioners, but you gave me the sign that I so badly needed and Pattie is overjoyed.”

“I don’t believe in miracles either, Marguerite, they’re just natural events we can’t explain.”

“So how do you suggest I describe my child losing a facial mark which has tormented her all her life, and which current medical science couldn’t remove?”

“I can’t tell how it worked, why it worked or where it worked. I don’t know, but I don’t think any gods were involved any more than I believe I can actually control it. I seem to act like an aerial for it and it happens around me.”

“So you channel it?”

“That implies some element of control or more mumbo-jumbo, I don’t channel anything, I’m just a conduction device, the energy seems to recognise what it has to do and does it. It’s almost self-focusing.”

“That’s the hand of God directing it?”

“I can’t accept that, as you well know, why couldn’t it just be an energy gradient thing, it works for some things?”

“Are you trying to tell me that it sought my daughter out because she had a low energy store?”

“Why not?”

“Why did it come to her and not to the elderly couple?”

“I don’t know, you wanted a sign, maybe it came through your focus, not mine?”

“How could I have done that?”

“I don’t know if you did or not, but it works as well as your God theory.”

“I don’t accept that, Cathy. My faith shows me a mechanism which would work perfectly every time.”

“If that was the case, why do bad things happen? Where’s your God then? Where was he when my mother died or my father had his stroke? He isn’t there, Marguerite and nothing you say is likely to convince me otherwise. Unless of course we get a real miracle like the US Republican party voting for healthcare reform or Nato and the Taliban in peace talks about developing an infrastructure in Afghanistan. Now that would make me reassess things.”

“God can’t be everywhere…”

“Oh, sorry, I thought he was ubiquitous and omnipotent in your model.”

“He showed himself as vulnerable in Jesus.”

“He’d have a got a lot more followers if he’d zapped the Romans a couple of times.”

“He gave us free will, and His only Son as a sacrifice for our sins.”

“Please, Marguerite, you know as well as I do that there is no evidence to support any of that.”

“It’s written in the Holy Scriptures.”

“So is Sara conceiving when she was about seventy and going full term without any problems.”

“Women of that age conceive nowadays and deliver babies.”

“Only with in vitro assistance and professional help with the delivery.”

“They had midwives and physicians in those days.”

“Most of whom believed in magic and superstition.”

“Do you have evidence of that?” she challenged me; miffed I suppose from my challenge on her earlier.

“Yes, the Egyptian Book of the Dead and various other magical books they’ve found and translated.”

“They’ve found ancient texts describing the resurrection as well.”

“Funny that half of them don’t get into the Bible, isn’t it. Gospel of Thomas, Mary Magdalene, Book of Enoch…”

“They were left out by the Early Christian Fathers, with good reason.”

“What they didn’t meet their political view of Christianity, what about Hypatia, the philosopher and teacher in Alexandria who was killed by a Christian mob?”

“Isn’t the evidence there, a bit sticky?”

“No more than the Bible, and we know she existed from contemporary accounts. There aren’t any for Jesus, are there?”

“I’m sure there are, we just haven’t found them.”

“Sure. Look I’m sorry Marguerite, I’m not trying to undermine your beliefs, but I suspect our opinions are irreconcilable.”

“It would look that way. Does this mean you no longer want me to marry you?”

“Not necessarily, but I suspect you might not want to on account of my unbeliever status.”

“Oh might I, now? If that was the case, I’d marry very few people.”

“Don’t most of them keep it quiet and pretend at least until they’ve signed the register.”

“Usually yes, that’s where you’re so refreshing, Cathy, you’re honest to a fault. Whilst I know you’d hate to be described as Christian, in behaviour, you are one of the most Christian people I know.”

“I think you’re mixing me up with someone else – I have to go, the girls are calling me for something. Bye” I put the phone down before she could elaborate on my character – my refutation could have upset her, and I might still want to be wed in that church.

“Mummy, come quickly Livvie’s fallen off her bike…”