36 and counting: the sixth sunday of easter

the gospel for this sunday is john 14:15-21. the church knows that forty days after the resurrection jesus ascended to the father, a fact that is celebrated thursday of this week. but she remembers that jesus promised he would not leave us orphans, that he would send, "another comforter, that he may abide with you forever."

for a number of years my favourite read for pentecost (after of course the daily office readings for this season) has been annie dillard's holy the firm. this year i have a new favourite: cormac mcarthy's the road. it profoundly recognizes that we are living in the last days, but it is also a profoundly hopeful book, a pentecostal book in all meanings of that word. in it a loving father takes his son through the wilderness, telling him all along the terror-filled way that they are "some of the good guys," that they "carry the fire," even though the existence of other "good guys" is an act of faith, and the fire is constantly challenged. at last the father dies just as the son meets some of the other good guys: one man, one woman, two children, one boy, one girl.

"the woman when she saw him put her arms around him and held him. oh, she said, i am so glad to see you. she would talk to him sometimes about god. he tried to talk to god but the best thing was to talk to his father and he did talk to him and he didnt forget. the woman said that was all right. she said that the breath of god was his breath yet though it pass from man to man through all time.

"once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. you could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. they smelled of moss in your hand. polished and muscular and torsional. on their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. maps and mazes. of a thing which could not be put back. not be made right again. in the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery." (p. 241)