Whispers

Chapter One

John Francis sat looking out the window of the rectory, thinking of the roads not taken, the roads he had missed, or the roads that he had not even recognized as roads.

He tried to fight back the bitterness but realized that the bitterness was all that kept him from falling apart completely, kept him from falling ever deeper into the darkness of the rage and self-loathing that was never far from him. How ironic, he thought, that a priest - a supposed man of God - should be filled with such bitterness and anger. Did not Jesus teach that love was Salvation, and that Salvation was love? Why, then, he wondered, had love so rarely come to him in this life. And when it did come (or seemed to come), why did it come at all, if only to explode in his hands? A priest, he thought, should be filled with love and forgiveness. Filled with the beatific beauty of Truth.

At the very least, he should believe in Truth. Not ugliness, nor the emptiness that filled his every waking moment and fouled his heart. True, he did love people - maybe he loved them too well. Sometimes he thought of loving as his art, maybe even his genius. And he could forgive anyone anything. Well, almost anyone, and almost anything. But most of all, he was cursed with the gift of compassion. A gift that had cost him dearly.

There is a price to pay for living in this world, he realized, the price of the fleshy world: messy, rough, brutish, and only sometimes - accidentally - beautiful. As he stood there, it occurred to him that God threw a handgrenade into Being. Why disturb the tranquility of non-existence, Nothingness, he demanded, if all that life consists of is people - with their hopes and dreams, their wants and their desires - speeding through their lives with little or no chance for anything like real, lasting happiness? Could the full horror of existence really be the fault of some ignorant child living blissfully unaware in a garden? He did not believe that. He had never believed that, even when he was a young man, and felt closer to God than he ever would again. He simply could not bear the fact that people passed and tore through each other's lives like shrapnel. We are all Divine shrapnel.

This was John's true gospel. Echoes. Flashes. Intimations and hints. Reflections cast on shattered glass. Mere fragments. Life, he concluded, was surely nothing more than a broken Hallelujah. Yes, he concluded, God threw a handgrenade into Being, and we are - all of us - born to hurt and be hurt.

...This is my body...

John had never liked the imagery of the Body and Blood of Christ. He had tried for so long to master his own body, then, in time, to hide it. Or maybe to hide from it. This pale, puffy body dressed in the sexless black of the Mother Church. It occurred to him, now, that most of his life had been spent denying his body. He rejected his body categorically, convinced that the Bible was right in at least one crucial aspect: it's pathological hatred of the flesh.

The flesh was sticky. The flesh was not neat. Slowly John came upon the realization that his life had essentially consisted of the vain effort to tame the beast, the wild, unmanageable need for love inside him. The need for touch, caresses, for simple human contact, drove him into himself, where he stayed to this day, afraid and unreachable. He realized it was a battle that he would never win. For in truth, the war was long since over, and all that remained were regrets.

And so Father John Francis, a holy sinner who hates because he loves, who cares because he is dead inside, who is haunted unendingly by dreams of what might have been, wills the tears back into his balding head, and tries not to think of her.

"Father?...Father!"

"Hmm? What?"

"Father John, are you alright?"

"Yes...yes, Linda, I'm fine." Fine as I'll ever be, he added to himself, fine as I'll ever be.

"You don't look well. Do you want me to tell Monsignor Hood that you are not in?"

He dismissed the notion with a gentle nod of his head.

"No. Linda, I'll take the call."

Linda Pearson was secretary for the St. Martin's Rectory, and the only thing like a womanly presence in John's life. She stood eyeing him uneasily.

"You wouldn't lie to me, Father, now would you?" She asked with a stern expression. Her small body leaned in towards him.

John slipped on the mask that he has worn for so many years now. His life as a parish priest: John Francis, Tender-of-Broken-Hearts, Soother-of-Lost Souls, Un-Burner-of-Bridges, He-Who-Chases-Away-Fear, Keeper-of-the Keys, Holder-of-Dying-Hands, Shepherd-of-the-Flock, and Joiner-of-Souls.

Yes...Joiner of Souls. He had married many couples, and the pungent irony of the thing had never once left him. Roads not taken.

...Do this in memory of me...

If his secretary and old friend were to realize the poison that his love had become, and understand how the poison informed and colored everything about who he was and who he had become, she would have be inconsolably horrified. For Linda Pearson loved John Francis like a son, and was - in her own way - devoted to him. And, though it shamed him to admit it, this only deepened John's despair.

"I'm fine, Linda. How could I lie to you?"

Unconvinced, she nodded yes, and withdrew from his office silently and without protest.

John Patrick Francis, a 42 year old Catholic priest who long ago stopped believing in the God of Love and Salvation, and who wrestles daily with his growing waistline and a devastating indifference to the life he has chosen, looks down at the receiver sitting on the warm, mahogany desktop.

He stares at the phone for a moment, pauses, then takes a deep, tired breath and closes his eyes.

"This is Father Francis..."