“Did I tell you how much I liked your sermon on Sunday?”
“You did not, or I would have remembered it.”
“Well, it was glorious. You were very bold, I thought, to preach on sin. Hardly anyone wants to hear sin preached.”
“Mainstream Christianity glosses over the fact that it isn’t just a question of giving up sin, but of doing something far more difficult—giving up our right to ourselves.”
He made the turn onto the busy highway toward Wesley, which always, somehow, seemed a shock to his senses. “The sin life in us must be transformed into the spiritual life.”
“How?”
“Through sacrifice and obedience.”
She smiled ironically. “How do you think that will be received by those of us who come to sit in a comfortable pew and find a hot seat instead?
“They’ll just have to go across the street until I’ve finished preaching on that particular subject.”
She laughed with delight. “You’re different these days.”
He laughed with her. “I pray so,” he said.
“Timothy!” Stuart Cullen came down the steps with his arms outstretched.
“Stuart, old friend!” said the rector, as they embraced.
“You’ve come a long way, and relief is on the table,” the bishop assured him. “And who is this beautiful woman?”
Cynthia took his outstretched hand.
“This is my neighbor, Cynthia Coppersmith. Cynthia, Bishop Cullen, my seminary confidant, esteemed friend, and—thanks be to God—my bishop.”
Cynthia curtsied a little. “Oops, I’m sorry. That was involuntary.”
He laughed. “You’re a century or so off, Cynthia, but I appreciate it, nonetheless.” Still holding her hand, he drew her toward the front door.
The rector saw that Stuart’s sandy hair was beginning to mingle more freely with gray, and there were furrows in his brow that he hadn’t noticed when they met some months ago. Even so, he was still surprisingly trim and boyish, with an unaffected charm that never seemed to diminish. He felt a great warmth toward this man who had been an ongoing part of his life.
“Come inside, please. We’ve laid on the family silver, and Martha’s rolls are just coming out of the oven. Your timing has always been excellent, Timothy.”
As they entered the foyer, the rector saw something he hadn’t been able to see as Cynthia sat on the passenger side. It was one of those infernal pink curlers, bobbing jauntily behind her right ear, as she greeted the bishop’s wife.
During lunch, he did everything he could think of to apprise her of the curler, to no avail.
He decided he wasn’t very good at sending nonverbal signals, and gave up halfway through the veal chops. He remembered his father had been made responsible for telling his mother whether her slip was showing before they set out for church. Any runs in her stockings? Too much rouge? Any labels protruding in unsightly places?
He recalled that his father had taken this job rather seriously, and seemed to enjoy it, though he had no earthly idea why.
In the study, Stuart Cullen sat in a leather wing chair and looked at the rector with his warmly direct gaze.
“Tell me everything, Timothy.”
“I’ve tried to organize my thinking, so I could spare your time.”
“Please. Let that be my concern. I’ve set all else aside until a meeting in my office at six.”
“Well, then. Things haven’t changed dramatically since my letter more than a year and a half ago. I seem to be paralyzed at times with such fits of exhaustion that I end up merely plodding on, and my sermons reflect it. I should say my spirit reflects it, and it’s carried out into my preaching.
“I’m reminded of the time the vestry was invited to the home of a new parishioner, someone fairly wealthy, by most standards.
“Most of us were pretty excited about the banquet that would likely be spread.” He laughed. “Well, we sat around till nine in the evening eating stale crackers and a cheddar so hard it broke the cheese knife.”
When the bishop smiled, fine lines crept around his eyes.
“I feel that’s what I’m serving. On every side, God’s people look for—and deserve—a banquet, but they’re getting thin rations. ‘Feed my sheep,’ he said. That’s a direct commission.
“The love of the people at Lord’s Chapel is clearly there for me. The church is growing, our obligations are settled on time, and soon we’ll build one of the finest nursing homes anywhere. Looking at it from the outside, it seems everything is all right.”
He was silent for a moment. “I think what I want to say, Stuart, is that I want it to be more than all right. It must be more than just . . . all right. That’s where I am. And I don’t know where to go from here.”
“Cynthia seems to think your sermon on Sunday was a great deal more than thin rations. Even on first meeting, I trust her judgment. She appears to have a lively faith.”
“Yes, well . . .”
“Surely you don’t expect your sermons to be preached from the mountain every time? You know as well as I that we must also preach from the valley.”
“I do know that. But the times on the mountain have been too few. I have, in many ways, disappointed myself, and if that’s so, then surely I’m disappointing others. It’s hard to put it clearly, Stuart, but I feel . . . flat.”
“That’s putting it clearly.”
“Somehow, things seem to have taken a turn about the time of the diabetes.”
“Diabetes? You never told me you have diabetes.”
“Oh, well,” he said, shrugging, “it’s the non-insulin-dependent variety, nothing to worry about. I didn’t want to trouble you with something unimportant.”
“Martha’s sister is diabetic. And, believe me, it’s not unimportant. It’s a critical dysfunction.”
“Oh, but nothing that diet and exercise can’t address. Martha’s sister is probably insulin dependent.”
“She is now,” Stuart said, “but she was once precisely where you are. It erupted suddenly into something far more serious. This concerns me.”
The last thing he wanted to do was give his bishop any grave concern. That was not why he had come.
“Are you completely fastidious about taking your medication, about your exercise and diet?”
He couldn’t tell a lie. “No. I’m not.”
“Timothy. For God’s sake.”
“I’m feeling as miserably guilty as I should, and I want to promise you that I’ll become fastidious again—at once. What I don’t want to do is let us confuse this issue with the deeper issue.”
“I’m not convinced that this issue isn’t part of the deeper issue. Bodily fatigue, which nearly always accompanies this hateful malady, can wear down the spirit. And how can the Holy Spirit work with a vessel that’s leaking as fast as he can fill it?
“If I know you,” the bishop continued, kindly, “you are not resting. You are not recreating. You haven’t been on vacation in a very long time, as I recall.”
“Yes. That’s right.”
“What have you been facing recently? Let’s look at the last few months.”
“A boy, I’ve been given a boy, he’s nearly twelve. Dooley.” He missed Dooley, he realized suddenly. “That’s been . . .”
“Rough.”
“Yes. For an old bachelor like me. Then, the jewels, of course. All that was morbidly unnerving, though the results, as I told you on the phone, were glorious.
“And Barnabas—my dog—was snatched from me on the street, and a man has been shot over the whole affair.”
"I’m sorry . . .”
“Not to mention a parishioner and friend who’s just had a heart transplant against some very dire odds.”
“So. No recreation of any sort, and a series of stressful circumstances superimposed over your usual round of duties and the symptoms of diabetes. Has sleeping been a problem?”
“The worst.”
“Seen your doctor lately?”
“Not lately. He’s been very caught up with the transplant logistics.”
“Lousy excuse. No good! See your doctor immediately.”
He nodded. “You have my word.”
“Now, I want to exercise my authority as your bishop and ask you to do something else. I want you to go away for two months.”
“But there’s the boy, and—”
“I’m not interested in the boy, or in any other condition or circumstance that presently exists in your life. That sounds cold and hard, but it’s neither. You are my interest, not because you’re my friend, but because you’re exceedingly valuable to this diocese, and I very much want to keep it that way.
“You’ve always known how to take care of everybody and everything but yourself. I can say that freely because I’m afflicted with the identical weakness, and, trust me, it is a weakness. I’m blessed with a wife who monitors me, but you have no monitor. If you’re going to extend your life in the body of Christ, Timothy, you must act at once to restore, to revive, to refresh your energies.
“You tell me you’ve gone stale, but the sound health of your parish disproves it. ‘Wherefore, by their fruits ye shall know them,’ Christ said. That’s how I know you, my friend, by your fruits. You haven’t let Him down, you haven’t let me down, and you haven’t let your parish down. But you’ve been letting yourself down—shamefully.”
He was suddenly chilled and peevish. He wished he had never come. Why hadn’t he kept his own counsel, made his own determinations? To be scolded like a child was a rude shock, and he felt his skin grow damp with a disagreeable sweat.
“Do you think I like to speak to you this way?” Stuart asked. “I do not. But it must be done. If you need money to go away, that will be taken care of at once.”
“It isn’t money.”
“I recall that your mother left you a considerable sum, if you haven’t given it all away.”
“Not all,” he said, coloring.
The bishop waited a moment. “Tell me . . . what about Cynthia? Does she mean something to you?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“You seem uncertain.”
“I’m not uncertain about whether she means something to me; I’m uncertain about what that implies.”
“You mean whether it could imply marriage?”
“Yes. And if so, is that what would be right and good at this stage of my life, and good for her . . .”
“I think she feels tenderly toward you.”
He realized it felt better to discuss Cynthia than to hammer away at his backsliding. “She asked me to . . .” he cleared his throat, “to go steady.”
Stuart laughed heartily. “Why, that’s wonderful! That’s terrific!”
He waited impatiently for the laughter to stop. Blast! Why had he brought it up?
“That must have taken some courage on her behalf.”
“She said as much.”
“What was your answer?”
“She asked me to think about it—and I’m still thinking.”
Stuart eyes shone with happy amusement. “When you’ve thought it through, I hope you’ll let me know the outcome. I like her, she’s tonic. And that is, after all, what you seem to be needing.”
They had veered off course, and it was clearly up to him to veer back. “Are you suggesting that I carry on? That I take a break and carry on?”
“I am. Since your letter a few months ago, you haven’t done anything differently. It’s time to do something differently, to rest, to seek God’s heart on this matter with a fresh mind. I’d like to see you settle your affairs quickly, and be off. We can put Father John in your pulpit, if that’s agreeable. He’d be like a hand slipping into a glove, and you can trust him not to turn the place upside down in your absence.”
“Very well,” he said, smiling. “You’ve pushed me to the brink once again.”
The bishop chuckled as the two men stood and embraced. “But I only do it once every thirty-five years!”
So it had been thirty-five years since his friend had helped him make the decision about Peggy Cramer.
“Stuart,” he said, as they stood for a moment at the door of the study, “I’d like to do something rather unorthodox.”
“I trust your orthodoxy enough to trust your unorthodoxy.”
“I’d like to put an old Baptist preacher in my pulpit now and again. He has a lot to say to us, I believe, and I trust him. He’s self-taught and has pastored several country churches for many years. His theology is sound as a dollar, and his spirit is fervent in the Lord. I believe the very oddity of it would cause many to listen who haven’t had ears to hear.”
“Do it, then.”
"Thank you. Now, where do you and Martha want the corn?”
He was relieved that Cynthia didn’t look at him but at the dashboard of the car, which she addressed with great feeling. “I cannot—no matter how hard I try—believe that you did not tell me that stupid curler was banging around back there. I could have died when I found it! There we sat, civilized as you please, and that stupid curler sticking in there. What’s worse, it was on the side next to the bishop!”
“It was only Stuart,” he said, mildly.
“But why didn’t you say something?” wailed Cynthia.
“I tried to. I did! I kept pointing to my head, I thought that might . . .”
“I thought you were scratching your ear, for heaven’s sake!”
“I have never been fluent in body language.”
“When you were in the study, Martha just reached over and said, ‘Do you know, that’s exactly where I always forget and leave one, myself,’ which was the most dreadful lie, since she’s never rolled her hair in her life, it’s straight as a stick!”
If he dared even glance at her from the corner of his eye, he would howl with laughter.
“Timothy, you’re laughing at me, I can tell! Your stomach is jiggling! Why not come right out with it, and laugh your head off, then? Go on, you’re most cordially invited!”
He cleared his throat, unable to speak.
“I mean, what if your fly had been open?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Well, think about it! If your fly was standing open in broad daylight, don’t you think I’d have informed you?”
He had to admit that was a sobering thought. “Cynthia,” he said, still looking attentively at the road, “I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry. I did try to tell you. Forgive me.”