Now I Know (33 page)

If God is God, then that is God and that is where God is. Ordinary people must find God among themselves or they won't find her at all. It isn't to one of the many that I want to give all my attention—you, dear Nik, or anyone. But to being one among the many.

What I'm asking is: How do I remain myself, truly and without being crushed or diminished, while being one of the many, no more special and no more privileged, no more
noticeable,
and yet be wholly of God?

That's the question I have to give all my attention to. And at first I have to try and answer it alone.

Perhaps I'll manage, with a little help from my friends.

Hello, friend!

[
Pause
.]

And you'll say: But how do you know?

And I'll say: Because I believe it.

And you'll say: But what is belief?

[
Pause. Laughs
.]

Well, I've given that question some attention lately!

And I've tried to find an answer by playing your game.

Belief. Philip Ruscombe looked the word up in a dictionary, and then both of you gave up attending to the word
itself
! So I went on playing the game.

BE . . . LIEF

Be
, my dictionary says, means:
To have presence in the realm of perceived reality; exist; live.
Which being translated means, I suppose:
To live in the world you accept is truly THERE
.

Lief,
my dictionary says, means:
Gladly, willingly.
And adds that the word is related to the Old English word for
love
.

So
Belief
means: that you
will
to give all your
attention
to
Living with loving gladness in the world you think really does exist
.

Perhaps what you wanted to know was all there in the word itself and you didn't need to look anywhere else. I wonder if that's why St John's Gospel begins: In the beginning was the Word!

Anyway, I do think it is true that if God is to be found by belief, she is to be found by living gladly and with attentive love in the world where we are. Because God is here and now and is all of us and everything.

I don't know how to say it simpler than that.

The kiss of two cones.

‘All right, settle down,' the Director shouted. ‘I can't tell you any more than that. You'll have to ask him yourselves when you see him again. His grandad says he'll be back for Christmas. Now, Michelle has a message from him. I don't know what it is, she wouldn't tell me. You'd better read it out, Michelle.'

‘He sent us this letter,' Michelle said, unfolding a page of computer printout. She cleared her throat and shuffled and brushed her hair from her eyes and cleared her throat and read aloud:

To the film group. This is my last piece of research for you. It contains my conclusions.

From everything I've learned, it seems to me that if Christ returned today:

1. He would be a woman.

Reasons
:

i. The universe is a binary system:

Black holes / White holes; in / out;

male / female; etc.

    Last time God appeared as male;

    next time as female. The system demands it.

ii. The time of the domineering male is over;

    the time of the female has come.

iii. Now the fish is returning to the water.

2. You wouldn't recognize her though, because she is not one but all.

Therefore, to make a film about Christ coming now you should:

One more thing:

Sack the Director. All he wants to be is God. His kind of God doesn't exist any more. You don't need him. Do it yourselves. Together. When you can, Christ has returned.

Cheers.

See you.

As soon as Michelle finished reading everybody started talking at once.

An hour later the meeting broke up in uproar.

STOCKSHOT SOURCES

The Narrator gratefully acknowledges:

    4   ‘The best in this kind . . . imagination amend them.'
William Shakespeare,
A Midsummer Night's Dream,
Vi 210–211, CUP ‘New Shakespeare' edition.

  24   ‘Jesus of Nazareth . . . living faith.'
Donald M. McFarlan,
Bible Readers' Reference Book,
p. 89, Blackie.

  30   ‘And as the mole . . . I shall be.'
James Joyce,
Ulysses,
The Corrected Text, p. 159, Bodley Head.

  42   ‘Canst thou . . . canst thou know?'
The Book of Job
11 7, 8.

  51   ‘Who is there? . . . the Thou and the I.'
Paul Valery quoted in W. H. Auden,
The Dyer's Hand, p.
109, Faber.

  73   ‘. . .  by history . . . are perfected . . .'
Hugh of Rouen.

110   ‘There is only one definition . . . freedoms to exist.'
John Fowles,
The French Lieutenant's Woman,
p. 99, Cape.

116   ‘People like you . . . a word to come.'
C. G. Jung's Letters,
vol 1, Routledge & Kegan Paul, quoted in Michael Tippett,
Moving into Aquarius,
p. 167, Paladin.

211   ‘The eye . . . sees me.'
Angelus Silesius.

214   ‘Now I know . . . hurt so much any more.'

   Nina in Anton Chekhov's
The Seagull,
Act 4, quoted in
Chekhov The Dramatist
by David Magarshack, p. 191, Methuen.

227   ‘The mystery of the Cross . . . in spite of ourselves.' Siân Miles, Editor,
Simone Weil: An Anthology,
p. 263, Virago, from which come the other quotations from Simone Well, to whom Julie's meditation on affliction also owes a debt.

228   ‘Hold to the now . . . plunges to the past.'
James Joyce,
Ulysses,
The Corrected Text, p. 153, Bodley Head.

Mother Julian's words are quoted from
Revelations of Divine Love
translated by Clifton Wolters, Penguin Books.

Two pages of Nik's book to Julie owe their inspiration to the work of Tom Phillips, especially his book
A Humument,
Thames & Hudson.

Footnotes

^*
SHOCK
:   otherwise known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe. This states that one day God was playing about with a lot of nothing in his-her-its laboratory in the middle of nowhere, when he-she-it had a nasty accident.
Bang!
And a few God-minutes later, there everything was, evolving like crazy before his-her-its very eyes. And God thought: Hello, this looks a bit dodgy, and quickly dictated a few commandments to put things back in order, but nobody would obey them. So God tried threatening horrible consequences if they didn't do as they were told but that didn't work because nobody cared less until the consequences actually happened. So God let a few really large-scale calamities occur, but that didn't put a stop to the nonsense either. So finally God decided he-she-it had better pile in as himself and do something about it before the whole business went to pot. But that didn't go too well either, as any fool would know it wouldn't, because, as any fool knows, only nothing can come of nothing, and nothing did. And that's why adherents of the Big Bang theory believe we're all nothing but a load of old rubbish floating around in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do and nowhere to go and do it. Which also explains why Big Bangers are always saying to each other: What the hell, who cares, let's have another big bang.

This is also known as the Cock-up theory of creation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Aidan Chambers lives in Gloucestershire with his American wife, Nancy, who is the editor of
Signal
magazine. He divides his time between his own writing and lecturing which he does extensively in Australia, the USA and Europe. His provocative and challenging novels for teenagers and young adults have won him international acclaim.

By the same author

BREAKTIME

DANCE ON MY GRAVE

THE TOLL BRIDGE

POSTCARDS FROM NO MAN'S LAND

NOW I KNOW
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 409 01337 2

Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children's Publishers UK
A Penguin Random House Company

This ebook edition published 2010

Copyright © Aidan Chambers, 1987

First Published in Great Britain