NaNoWriMo 2022

Quiet Time

American Kingdom 14.2

Previous scene:

If there was one thing I’d learnt during my Ranger days, it was that one shouldn’t drink too much when the next day promised to be one of movement, challenges, and loud noises.

A rule sometimes broken, but not tonight. For one thing, there was the possibility that Nathan might want to come visit me in my lonely room, and while I was not averse to the possibilities in due course, I didn’t want to be too much of a pushover and the best way to handle that was to have my wits about me so that other portions of my being didn’t seize control.

For another, we’d been promised a day on the range, light equipment, ammo pouches and so on, ensure we filled all our waterbottles etc. Loud noises, for sure.

I kept my ears open to talk around the table. Annie was keen to meet Prince Jeff — as was I, I guess — and wasn’t given a firm date. “He’ll be here for your graduation ceremony.”

“Oh, and when’s that?”

“When we think you’re ready.”

Huh. Mark that on your calendar, I told myself.

But definitely a range day tomorrow.

“Unless it’s raining, and then we’ll go anyway,” the purportedly lovely Sergeant Payne said with a chuckle.

As it turned out, it wasn’t Nathan who crept into my room but Hazel.

“Molly? You awake?”

Dark, and no, I wasn’t. I said so.

“Didn’t you hear the chime? It’s morning quiet.”

Quiet frankly I could have used another half hour more sleep and I wondered about the wisdom of giving recruits free control over half-hour slots at reveille.

“Just collecting my thoughts,” I said, as if I’d be believed.

“Good, we can maybe read together? I like to read a verse each alternately and then discuss the meaning when we hit a pause.”

“Matthew 25,” I said, because I wanted to see what other eyes, another mind, made of the end.

The foolish virgins

And so we sat there, sharing a reading light, alternating verses:

“At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom,” Hazel said.

“Five of them were foolish and five were wise,” I replied.

“Hazel, what does that mean?” I asked, when we had gotten to the end and the five wise virgins had lit their lamps, greeted the bridegroom arriving at midnight, and been admitted to the wedding feast while the five foolish virgins had been turned away when they finally came up with their oil. Hell of a way to run a wedding banquet, I thought to myself.

“It is like it says,” Hazel replied. “The bridegroom is the King, and we are the virgins…”

“Speak for yourself,” I said.

“Oh you, be serious. It doesn’t matter if they are virgins or grandmothers. They must be prepared. at any time, for the return of the King. When He comes, it is too late to go off and learn about Christianity and find your faith. You must be ready and because we don’t know when, we must be always ready.”

“Maybe,” I said, thinking about this, “all of the ten virgins were in the same position, they were Christians, they had their faith that the Lord would arrive, they knew what was coming but they were not ready in some other important way? Their lamps are empty; what are we supposed to put in our lamps to ensure we are admitted to the feast?”

“Let us read on,” she said. “I don’t know what we should put in our lamps, if it isn’t faith and knowledge.”

The talents

“Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them,” I read.

“To one he gave five bags of gold, to another two bags, and to another one bag, each according to his ability,” she responded.

When we had got to the end of that story, where the man returns from his journey to find that the first two servants have put the money to work and doubled its value, and been rewarded, while the third merely hid the entrusted money away and returned the man’s property unchanged and intact — and been rebuked for his lack of action, Hazel asked me what it meant.

“My pastor says that this means that we should use our God-given talents and skills and energy in His service until he returns.”

“But you don’t?” asked Hazel, seeing the doubt in my heart.

“I don’t see the King as being like an absentee landlord, making money for doing nothing. And what use will he have of gold or talents or wealth of any kind?”

“Some see this parable as one that requires us to make money and become rich until the King returns. Should we not work hard in His service?”

“But why?” I said. “Again, what does the King need with rich men? He says it will be hard for rich men to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Why encourage them to make the task even more impossible?”

“Well then, perhaps it means that we should spread the word about the King’s return. The more people who are ready when the time comes, the better, whereas if we do nothing and say, ‘I heard your call and I thought only of myself’ that’s not going to be good enough.”

That made sense to me. If we all brought one person into the flock and that person did the same, before long everyone would hear the message and be ready, and there would be no excuse that they hadn’t got the word.

The sheep and goats

“OK, one more in the chapter.”

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne,” Hazel read.

“All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats,” I responded.

At the judgement, those on one side, who had done good works, went to their glorious reward, while those who hadn‘t done anything for others, were damned to eternal torture. If they had done something nice for the least of their fellows, Jesus had said, they had done it for him. If they had done nothing for the needy, they had done nothing for him and would be punished.

“So these all hang together, maybe,” Hazel said. “We should be ready, full of faith and knowledge of Christianity, we should spread the word to those who are not, and we should do good things for others.”

“Our lamps should be full of good works, so that we may let them shine and declare our love for the King, even when he is not here.”

“Sometimes,” Hazel said, “a new pastor at a church will arrive for the service on the Sunday before he is due to start and dress in old clothes, presenting as a beggar, just to see who is full of grace and love for the least among them, and who is not.”

“If the Lord is watching over us but has not yet returned, then he knows all these things already. We need to have these in our lamps. We do not need to hold them up or display them, for the contents are already known.”

“He knows what is in our hearts. Right now, and always,” Hazel responded. “At the Day of Judgement — and that could be today, right now — He knows our thoughts all the way back to when we were born. We don’t need to stand up before the King and all His angels to testify all that. He knows.”

“We cannot deceive Him. If we had a naughty thought way back in high school, like when Mr Harris got a boner and I asked why French was such a hard subject, then God already knows what mischief was in our hearts all those years ago.”

Hazel giggled. “Oh you naughty! When I was in high school I thought they were like that all the time. All the ones I got to see were, anyway. I walked into the wrong room at the swimming pool once and there was Ross Wilkins getting changed and I just blurted out, ‘Oh what happened, Ross, it’s so tiny!’”

Someone rapped on the wall and we could hear Annie’s voice, “Hey, you two. It’s quiet time!”

Oh, right.

I dropped my voice to a more restrained level. “But it can’t be just thoughts, surely? It must be actions. What if I think that it would be a good idea to give some money to a beggar and I reach into my bag but I’ve left my purse at home? I’ve had the good thought but nothing has come of it.”

“Well, what about when a rich man has a good thought to give some food to a homeless person and tells his cook to prepare a basket of food for them? He hasn’t actually done the deed, so who gets into Heaven, the rich man or the cook? And, Molly, what if he doesn’t tell the cook directly but orders his butler to tell the cook; does the butler get a free pass even though he didn’t have the good thought or do a nice thing for the homeless?”

“What about,” I said, wondering if God was picking up on the mischief in my thoughts, “if one day I give a beggar some money and the next day I don’t because I’ve already used up my budget for good deeds? Does God toss a coin?”

“If it comes down to it, “I went on,” then is it one good deed in a lifetime of evil is a ticket to Paradise, or is it one bad deed in a saintly lifetime enough to damn you?”

“I think,” Hazel said slowly — and quietly, “that the Heavenly King looks into your heart and sees what is truly there. He is not going to send Adolf Hitler to Heaven because he was kind to his mother and he is not going to send you to Hell because you once swore at another driver. Repentance and forgiveness must come into it.”

I wanted to nail this down. “So if I had an improper thought about Nathan last night and I’m sorry for it now, am I good with the Lord?”

“Oooh, Molly, you’re going straight to Hades for that.”

Next scene:

The whole story (work in progress)

Notes

This was originally the content for the next scene — Rangering Shots, link above — but I got too caught up in the biblical bit to move on to the recruits actually doing military stuff.

In other news, I passed the halfway mark in NaNoWriMo with this story. That means I’m probably about a third of the way through, maybe less, going on the pacing.

I want to go back and add a few sensual sentences — no, not what you’re thinking! — of description, imagery, sensation. Immerse the reader in the experience. That will add length but I’m not going to do that for some time unless I suddenly develop 48-hour days for the rest of November.

I’ll keep the story moving forward, see how it goes. Don’t go looking to me for hints as to what’s coming; I don’t know!

The three parables above, two of them are almost certainly added in long after Jesus died, when his nascent cult of Christianity had to deal with the fact that he had died and was no longer able to be present in the regular way. Visions, prayers, that sort of thing. If Jesus was to fulfil his own prophecies then he would have to return as the Son of Man descending from above with angels etc. and so we get these tales of kings going away and returning unexpectedly to remind the faithful that they had best be good people during their lifetimes because there was no chance of redemption after they had died, as had many of the Apostles by that time.

The third I find way more interesting. It is different in structure and nature from the preceding two. There is no talk of departure and return. It does not talk of symbolic elements such as oil or bags of gold. It describes specific good works, acts of kindness and charity towards those in need. The principal figure is not some un-named bridegroom or rich man, it is the Son of Man, the divine Messianic figure with which Jesus came to identify himself. Faith in the divinity and resurrection of Jesus is not required, merely the need to follow his teaching. This almost certainly came from Jesus himself and frankly describes a very different way of entering Heaven than that taught by the developing Christian Church.

I had a little bit of fun here with the two women discussing naughty thoughts and so on.

Molly