and brimstone. A prohibition on Inquisitions with secu- neY
forces of the conservative Christian Singers. In 1461, the “YOU see, by this time, the Order of Reason had Congregation was able to present a unified face to the firmly established its foothold. We originally had a Council ofNine under the name of the Celestial Chorus. strong influence on humanity. We’d helped in the “This didnot end all divisionwithinthenew Chorus. spread of faith and many views of religion, but it AS the Protestant Reformation grew and more soups devolved into too much fighting, too much bloodshed split away from the Roman Catholic Church, new stresses and dogmatismWe watched for 100 years as Our developed. If it was not for the external threat of the control eroded. The Order of Reason brought in its strengthened Order of Reason and the Nephandi, it is wonderful cosmic machine, its mathematics and scidoubtful that even as charismatic a leader as Valoran ences, trying to logic our God right out of existencecould have held our disparate brethren together. Thus, in “We’d spent so long fighting the other mystics like adversity came new strength. As the Order of Reason the Verbena and the Order of Hermes, and even ourgrew, visions ofadark future were visited upon many seers selves, that we missed out on the threat coming from and visionaries. The main threat was the rejection of behind. We completely missed the people who believed religion in daily life. Fortunately, these things helped to in something that was not a variation on our belief or a bring together the Chorus even more. In 1545 and relation to it, but in something opposite.” continuing into 1563,came theRomanCatholicCounterBrother William paused to sip at his tea. “Woo.
Reformation and the Council of Trent. The sins of the Parching my throat again.” Jeremiah smiled and waited Inquisitions started to come to rwst. The most pernifor him to continue. cious of Inquisitions (the Spanish) was brought to a close “Anyhow. The situation stabilized, but the damage by the Pope, and, while such ecclesiastical events could had been done. We started a slow decline. It seemed that not be disavowed, a gentler Church came out of the fire each century, fewer and fewer people came to the cloth. and brimstone. A prohibition on Inquisitions with secuneY didn’t believe any more, or they didn’t want to. lar supervision was included quietly in the documents of “By the time we reach our century-” the Council, and the Roman Church tried to begin to Jeremiah a bit pensively. urnat happened in between there? That’s, what, five centuries?”
“Well,” Brother William said, shifting in his seat, good religious thinkers, but no bigrevivals, no tremendous Crusades, no great creations of potent Adytums. Like I said, it was slow decline. We weren’t going to give up ground quickly or easily. People just started deserting the churches. Faith became as hollow as those empty buildings. emerge from the ashes of disaster.”
“Following the Catholic counter-reformation, we stabilized a great deal. By this time, the Chorus had very definitely become something other than the original religions that had initially fostered us. Our doctrines of acceptance and of the One placed us firmly in the camps of heresy to those of more conventional faiths.
This became a time of slow decline for the Chorus. lm. L ‘’ *,I , 22 CELESTIAL CHCBRUS much, really. sure, we had “Which brings us to today. We have far-flung contacts across the world and many, many different religions in our organization. We all search out ways to commune with the One, and to put each other in touch with that calling. A noble organization, yes?
“Sadly, we haven’t stopped the fighting. It’ll kill us, oneofthesedays, ifweletit.Yousee, Jeremiah,that’sour big failing. Each one of us is so convinced that he’s got some little handle on the truth that we can never quite agree. And if we can’t agree among ourselves, how can we possibly hope to bring unity to everyone else?”
Jeremiah pursed his lips, troubled. “I’d think that the Chorus would be able to work these problems out.
I mean, come on! People are literally getting killed over this!”
William sighed, “Yes, just like they did 500 years ago. Jeremiah, you’ll find that the more pressing the problem, the harder it becomes to solve. I’m just an old monk. I can see that you want to do some good, but think. There are a dozen more Choristers out there, just like you, full of spark and vigor, all with great ideas for how to make things better, but those ideas are all different from yours.”
“Oh. I see what you mean,” Jeremiah opined, gnawing on his lip.
“Yes. And now you see why we’re so desperate.
We want to show people a better way, but we can’t agree on one. We need more help, but fewer and fewer people come every year. Now we have communications all around the world, with people who can talk to us about anything, with religions that nobody in Europe had even heard of during the Middle Ages, but it also gives us so much more to argue about.
We’ve argued ourselves to a standstill.”
“So how do we fix it?” Jeremiah asked.
William held up his finger and grinned. “Exactly the question to ask. We do it the way we fix anything: one piece at a time. We’re out there every day doing things to make this world a little better for people. We give people hope, my boy, a chance to see the world for the beautifulcreation that it is. Well, we have todo the same thing with our own ranks. We need to remind them that they’re all in it for the same thing, something beautiful and eternal. And that happens one person at a time. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be the one to do it. If you even touch the life of one other member of the Chorus, you might start the ball rolling.
“Simon Pain, he travels the world looking for great truths. Sometimes he finds them. In order to make use of them, though, you have to get people to cam^ CH~RUS . - accept them. He’s not so good at that, you may have noticed.” William’s eyes twinkled.
“Uh, yeah. Say, is this where-”
Jeremiah started.
“-1 tell you about how he came to us? No, that you’ll find out a little later.” William put his hands on his knees and stood up creakily. “Now, it’s time for you to mull things over. We’ll have time for some more questions tomorrow. And then, you pack.”
C W R @Ne %. it was waiting on her.
The drugs no longer stopped the pain.
And behind the face - the dark shadowed, leering Every piece of skin, every hair, every small face - she saw a dot of light. It was barely the size of a tendon and muscle hurt. She no longer gnat, but it was definitely, distinctly there. And part of even had the will to push against the her mind, the part that thought this fate had always shackles that held down her feet or the been coming, said to her, “The light is only a gesture.. . handcuffs that pinned her hands to her a small one.... It is too little, it is too late.” side. When she closed her eyes because the vertigo But in the farthest reaches of her conscious thought, made her want to vomit, she saw only the face. she could hear a voice singing, “The smallest crack will She tried to keep her eyes open, but her vision was break the dam, and all the water will run free.” fading. The white fluorescent light had washed the And the pain became so great that she could no face Out only hours before. Now she couldn’t see the longer think to form words, so she moaned and hoped light at all. She was lost in the darkness, with only a that whatever heard her would understand it as a prayer. face, a shadowed, twisted floating face in front of her.
God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illuminated by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a woruier, the source of which is beyond all reason.
-Dag Hammarskjold C W E R TWQ HCBLY TASKS, SACRED PATHS