November 25th, 2009
Dear Dad,
Dang it, this whole advice-by-mail thing totally sucks. I come home from school after trying to hide my black eye all day, after trying not to talk about it, after getting called a wussy-boy by Mudgett. Then I open a letter from you that says, “Don’t hide your black eye. Tell everyone how you got it.”
Our timing stinks.
I talked to my English teacher, Mrs. Henry, today. I’m not sure she believed me when I told her I got the black eye boxing with my brother. I think half the school figures that Mudgett creamed me in a fight. Heck, he hasn’t even fought me yet and most people already figure I’ve lost.
Mrs. Henry tried not to stare at my eye when we talked, but she failed on that one. She was having a conversation only with that corner of my face. My black eye has its own gravitational pull.
“If you were trying to learn about life aboard a ship, I’d have you read Melville or Jack London,” she said. “If you were trying to learn about, oh, I don’t know, bullfighting, then I suppose Hemingway would be your man. But what you’re talking about, Trevor, is The Other. It’s Heaven and Hell and God territory. There’s only one kind of writer for that—a theologian—which is literally someone who studies God. Unfortunately, very few theologians died, came back from the dead and wrote about it. Lucky for us, some of them were smart enough to speculate. To try to fill in the gaps with both logic and intuition.”
The Other—that’s what Mrs. Henry calls everything religious. She talks about it like it’s science fiction. In The Other, there are laws that control how things happen. And, according to Mrs. Henry, these laws are on a higher level than our regular laws.
“I know space and time don’t matter to God,” said Mrs. Henry. “if they do, he’s not much of a god, is he? When we pray for others, we pray that God will intervene in their lives the next day, or in a different place. We pray to a single God, asking him to insert himself into our lives, knowing that a few other million people around the globe are asking the same of him. God could only answer these requests if space and time do not matter to him. If he lives outside of it. In The Other. And if he does, then past, present, future, are all the same to him. So are heaven, hell and earth.
“Death? Well, that shouldn’t matter either, because God conquered death a few thousand years ago.”
I was going along with Mrs. Henry. And all she said sounded pretty encouraging to me, until she sucked all the air out of my tires with just a couple of sentences.
“Before we go farther down this road, Trevor, we need to be completely clear on something. This is speculation on my part. This is conjecture. I don’t begin to pretend to know what happens when we die. Those who do claim to know are almost certainly wrong.”
I protested. She just got done talking about how clear everything looked. How logically laws operated in The Other. She said that she’d be getting input from the smartest guys who’d ever lived. Then she says that even they don’t know. So what’s the point?
“There are only a few tiny things I know for sure,” Mrs. Henry said. “I can tell you those with utmost certainty. Those are the things that matter. These other things—how was the world made? What happens after we die?—we can only make educated guesses. And that’s OK, Trevor. We don’t have to know everything.”
“I’m not asking to know everything,” I said. “I just want to know about my dad. Can he help me or not?”
“Ahh,” she said.
I hated that “ahh.” Even Mrs. Henry could be annoying sometimes. That “ahh” meant, “I have just figured you out.”
But she hadn’t. Not a chance. I walked out.
By the way, tomorrow is thanksgiving.
Your son,
Trevor
Dear Dad,
Dang it, this whole advice-by-mail thing totally sucks. I come home from school after trying to hide my black eye all day, after trying not to talk about it, after getting called a wussy-boy by Mudgett. Then I open a letter from you that says, “Don’t hide your black eye. Tell everyone how you got it.”
Our timing stinks.
I talked to my English teacher, Mrs. Henry, today. I’m not sure she believed me when I told her I got the black eye boxing with my brother. I think half the school figures that Mudgett creamed me in a fight. Heck, he hasn’t even fought me yet and most people already figure I’ve lost.
Mrs. Henry tried not to stare at my eye when we talked, but she failed on that one. She was having a conversation only with that corner of my face. My black eye has its own gravitational pull.
“If you were trying to learn about life aboard a ship, I’d have you read Melville or Jack London,” she said. “If you were trying to learn about, oh, I don’t know, bullfighting, then I suppose Hemingway would be your man. But what you’re talking about, Trevor, is The Other. It’s Heaven and Hell and God territory. There’s only one kind of writer for that—a theologian—which is literally someone who studies God. Unfortunately, very few theologians died, came back from the dead and wrote about it. Lucky for us, some of them were smart enough to speculate. To try to fill in the gaps with both logic and intuition.”
The Other—that’s what Mrs. Henry calls everything religious. She talks about it like it’s science fiction. In The Other, there are laws that control how things happen. And, according to Mrs. Henry, these laws are on a higher level than our regular laws.
“I know space and time don’t matter to God,” said Mrs. Henry. “if they do, he’s not much of a god, is he? When we pray for others, we pray that God will intervene in their lives the next day, or in a different place. We pray to a single God, asking him to insert himself into our lives, knowing that a few other million people around the globe are asking the same of him. God could only answer these requests if space and time do not matter to him. If he lives outside of it. In The Other. And if he does, then past, present, future, are all the same to him. So are heaven, hell and earth.
“Death? Well, that shouldn’t matter either, because God conquered death a few thousand years ago.”
I was going along with Mrs. Henry. And all she said sounded pretty encouraging to me, until she sucked all the air out of my tires with just a couple of sentences.
“Before we go farther down this road, Trevor, we need to be completely clear on something. This is speculation on my part. This is conjecture. I don’t begin to pretend to know what happens when we die. Those who do claim to know are almost certainly wrong.”
I protested. She just got done talking about how clear everything looked. How logically laws operated in The Other. She said that she’d be getting input from the smartest guys who’d ever lived. Then she says that even they don’t know. So what’s the point?
“There are only a few tiny things I know for sure,” Mrs. Henry said. “I can tell you those with utmost certainty. Those are the things that matter. These other things—how was the world made? What happens after we die?—we can only make educated guesses. And that’s OK, Trevor. We don’t have to know everything.”
“I’m not asking to know everything,” I said. “I just want to know about my dad. Can he help me or not?”
“Ahh,” she said.
I hated that “ahh.” Even Mrs. Henry could be annoying sometimes. That “ahh” meant, “I have just figured you out.”
But she hadn’t. Not a chance. I walked out.
By the way, tomorrow is thanksgiving.
Your son,
Trevor
Filed under Letters from Son | Tags: adolescence, afterlife, death, heaven, hell, junior high school, letter, middle school, purgatory, teacher, theologian | Comment (0)