The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [135]
"I’ll keep it in mind," Anne said, breathless now herself with laughter, but she couldn’t help saying, "So celibacy is optional."
"Well, in some sense, it mighta been for Marc, early on. Came a time when he mended his ways. But, now, look here! This illustrates my point about Emilio," D.W. said emphatically. "For Emilio, the separation between natural and supernatural is basic. God is not everywhere. God is not immanent. God is out there somewhere, to be reached for and yearned after. And you’re gonna have to trust me on this, but celibacy is part of the deal for Emilio. It’s a way of concentrating, of focusing a life on one thing. And I happen to think it’s worked for him. I don’t know whether it’s he found God, or God come and got him ..."
They could see the hampiy shelter again now, sunlight like molten copper streaming in from the west. Askama was still in Emilio’s lap, asleep apparently. Sofia’s head was bent over her computer tablet. Emilio noticed them and raised a hand. They waved back. "Okay. Okay, I see your point," Anne said. "I’ll keep out of it. Maybe it will all work out."
"I hope so. Lots at stake here, for both of ’em. For all of us." He pressed a hand into his belly and made a face. "Damn."
"You okay?"
"Oh, sure. Nerves. I react to everything with my belly. I knew you knew but sayin’ something’s different."
"What’s your theology like, D.W.?" Anne asked, pausing at the top of the path that led down the cliff.
"Oh, hell. On my best days? I try to keep my mind stretched around both experiences of God: the transcendent, the intimate. And then," he said, grinning briefly, "there are the days when I think that underneath it all, God has got to be a cosmic comedian." Anne looked at him, brows up. "Anne, the Good Lord decided to make D. W. Yarbrough a Catholic, a liberal, ugly and gay and a fair poet, and then had him born in Waco, Texas. Now I ask you, is that the work of a serious Deity?" And, laughing, they turned down the steps toward the cut-stone apartment they now called home.
THE OBJECT OF this conversation was unaware of the extent to which the exalted state of his soul was drawing notice. Emilio Sandoz was sweating buckets with Askama curled up on his lap, radiating heat like a fourth sun in the late afternoon. If, instead of assuming that he was meditating on the glory of God or synthesizing some new and closely reasoned model of Ruanja grammar, anyone had asked him directly what he was thinking about, he would have said, without hesitation, "I was thinking that I could really use a beer."
A beer and a ball game on the radio to listen to with half an ear as he worked, that would have been perfection. But even lacking those two elements of bliss, he was and knew himself to be completely happy.
The past weeks had been suffused with revelation. At home and in the Sudan and the Arctic, he had seen acts of great generosity, of selflessness and abundance of soul, and felt close to knowing God at those moments. Why, he had once wondered, would a perfect God create the universe? To be generous with it, he believed now. For the pleasure of seeing pure gifts appreciated. Maybe that’s what it meant to find God: to see what you have been given, to know divine generosity, to appreciate the large things and the small ...
The sense of being engulfed—saturated and entranced—had inevitably passed. No one exists like that for long. He was still staggered by the memory of it, could feel sometimes the tidal pull in some deep stratum of his soul. There had been times when he could not finish any prayer—could hardly begin, the words too much for him. But the days had passed and become more ordinary, and even that he felt to be a gift. He had everything here. Work, friends, real joy. He was swept sometimes