"The Old Parson" A Short Story

I set out on a drive one evening after dinner, it was early September. I had no idea where I was planning to drive to that evening. I traveled under the overpass and down past the Pleasant Valley hillside taking note of where my father told me that my Grandfather had once had his farmstead when he was a child. I continued on from there traveling further along down the old rural country road.  

Rounding a turn near the Lafarge Cement Plant, which was next to the nearby Shorts Lake, I kept following the twisty road.  I soon had left my home village behind, which was an unpopulated little community. Soon I was driving into South Maitland, an even more remote place. 

South Maitland was a  community in the Municipal District of East Hants, Hants County, a place here in the province of Nova Scotia. I had heard that the area had been the site of a number of nineteenth century shipyards. Now the village was best known for an historic bridge built over the challenging tidal waters that crossed the Shubenacadie River. 

As I crossed over the large bridge I looked down and off into the distance waters with their distinctive mud color as I admired the distant views. I was leaving most signs of civilization behind me now the further I drove. 

I thought I knew that by continuing on now I’d be crossing into the interior spaces of the province. I noticed how I was surrounded by mostly rural farmland beside me. The interconnecting lonely roads interlacing the provinces interior were isolated roads traveling beside places that offered occasionally beautiful scenery and views. I traveled past farms, pasturelands and an occasional house dotting this lonely countryside around me.

Windsor and The Annapolis Valley lay on the rout ahead of me while other alternative routs connected to other roads and places with names like: The Rawdon Hills, Maitland and Elmsdale. The gentle warm breeze that evening came through the windows that were wide open in the car.   

Suddenly and very impulsively I decided to go off the beaten trail with a turn of the steering wheel. The lane I turned unto was paved but weather-beaten with ruts and warps in the aged pavement ahead. After a picturesque few miles driving then appearing there on my right, on the quiet road, I came upon an old abandoned Church sitting beside the road. I slowed down now out of curiosity to appreciate the old building. The grounds before the church were strewn with sticks and an overgrowth of entangled grass and weeds.  

I decided for an unknown reason to pull the car over there and shut off the engine. Sitting there in the silence I listened as birds sounded around me. The only  sound I heard other then bird song was the gentle wind coming in breezes that periodically picked up intensity with occasional gusts. I decided after a few minutes sitting in the quiet that I should get out and walk over toward the front of the old Church building.  

When I approached the church I could see that the woodwork of the building was old and rotting and that the doors were left to bang open and shut in the wind.  I marveled at the sight of this old place. I was in some almost nameless and unheard of place, well away from civilization, and here was this wonderful old church that I was able to picture as being a once vibrant place full of people.

 

I looked upward now as I pictured in my mind what once had been there. I noticed that the old bell tower was cracking in the old building while the rusty old bell had no rope. There was no way to call the flock to church now I guess I considered reflecting on history. I looked inside through the doors past the cobwebs strung between the doorjamb casing. The seats inside the Church were broken and splintered. The floorboards were soggy, sunken and rotten looking. The timber inside was all mildewed. With holes in the seats you couldn’t sit down or you’d fall through them.

 

Impulsively I walked inside through the front doors. Solemnly and very slowly I passed the bench seating while looking around the interior of the old church. A back door was also open to the elements leading to the grounds behind the building. Walking slowly across the room I stood and looked through the back door out unto a church graveyard. The old cemetery there was overgrown and perhaps long ago deserted from use. Beyond the graves was a river with clear blue water cascading over polished riverbed stones with the water gently moving downstream.

 

It occurred to me that the minister of the church himself may be sleeping there in that yard. Putting it more bluntly to myself I thought again that he may be dead and laying in one of those burial plots rotting.  The thought passed through my mind again several times as I stood there contemplating what might have been that old churches history.

 

As I looked about the church and wondered what to do next I noticed a beam of sunlight that shone through a window where it’s pane was jaggedly broken off with the splintered glass laying around the window ledge. My thinking was quiet now, not busy, as I stood there in the silence watching the sunlight fade.  I thought, while contemplating my life reflectively, that God had been kind to me as I considered my life before now standing there in the old church.

 

Then looking once again through the back door, I saw again the rivers almost tranquil waters rippling further down stream over some green moss covered stones.  I decided to step out the back door of the dusty old Church stepping now into the graveyard. While standing there the sound of the wind came gently blowing through the trees around me. I felt the warm wind meet my face pleasantly.  This was a place for peace and reflection I considered now looking at the gravestones. A leaf went by moving downstream on a journey down the river, floating, moving, down it went, across green mossy rocks. I thought to myself now that nature can be a great place to watch the world go by.

 

A strange thought occurred to me now which I thought was due probably to too much television watching. The inappropriate thought was that wild shrieks have never before issued from any of this worlds hallowed tombs. I thought to myself imaginatively that dead men have never come back again and walked about in the history of the world. Instead, I thought, the great bell had never tolled for them again, it had went unrung and untouched by men who can’t talk or can’t think anymore. The livings curfew was up signaling the end of our parting days.

 

I noticed now a local farmer and ploughman headed homeward nearby the churchyard plodding his way wearily home on a distant hill. Here in the cemetery, I thought seeing him in the distance and glancing at a few tombstones, buried here are several other farmers. They had already left the world to join the darkness and take their chances on the other side. Yet the living barely came here now to this place I accepted. Few ever tread over the grass to visit and read these almost ancient gravestones now with their long forgotten names. Today was different, today the graveyard drew me I thought, a member of the living. Yet still the graveyard never again drew anymore of the dead I considered again as I asked the question why.

 

“Are we the only members of the living who ever bother to visit here?” Came an unexpected voice abruptly sounding behind me. It was an aged voice spoken to me from behind where I stood. The voice startled me causing me great alarm at first. I jumped, very startled, and turned around to see an elderly figure dressed in black, with a grey beard, a big hat, and large spectacles.

 

“We’ve both come to read the stones for now and then we’ll go away when it comes our turn.” The old man said now solemnly. “Tomorrow or the day after that it will come when we’re both dead. Perhaps we'll both come here to stay? Well our time will come soon enough my friend even for you too, though you’re younger. Time has a way slipping by however!”

 

“How is it that no one dead ever seems to come to us from the grave and say hello.” I asked the old man.

 

“Speak for yourself friend! I’ve talked to people from my memories on many a lonely night and received reassurances from them and God about the fate of those loved ones and friends.” He said this and then said in a more friendly voice. “What is it that we are shrinking from anyway when it comes to dying? Don’t you think It would be clever of us if we told the gravestones that men now hate to die and have decided to stop dying forever. I think the gravestones would believe the lie don’t you?”

 

The old man told me now he had been a Parson. He walked over and shook my hand and then he walked to an old bench beside the Church where he sat down. I walked over and sat down on the other end of the bench where we sat with our backs to the old wooden church. Me and the old religious man then engaged in a discussion. At first we discussed only light subjects.

 

We were there for quite some time talking with the evenings darkness closing in on us fast. To look at the old man he appeared almost ghost like, like a figure from some bygone age, from another century even, with his solemn looks, and with his old grey beard. This parson and I sat there by this dilapidated old church with him talking to me like a long lost relative.

 

The longer we talked there the more detailed his views became. Gradually our interest level increased and our  engagement intensified. Because we had this mutual interest in what one another had to say there developed now a competition for good ideas leading into a spirited debate. Looking across the moss covered gravestones we talked like this enthusiastically for an hour. The later part of the day passed as the twilight set in.

 

The  parson decided to quote to me a scripture verse impulsively amidst a debate we were having.  Looking over at me, his wild eyes peering at mine through his big awful looking spectacles, he lowered his eyes and looked downward to the open page of a Bible that he had produced from his coat pocket. He read to me from the ancient Book.

 

“Let every soul be subject to the higher powers...the powers that be are ordained by God.”

 

The parson read me this passage in an almost thunderous preachers voice. The intensity of his deep voice seemed to be almost hallowed by it’s use. He seemed to be trying to convert the wild flowers or the croaking frogs chirping in the long marsh grasses on the opposite bank of the river, if indeed they needed converting which I seriously doubted. Then looking up at me from the page the parson set down his old Bible.

 

“What do you think about this verse?” He asked me now curiously.

 

I thought there about the passage he had read thinking to myself in the quiet. The passage from scripture he quoted I knew was from St Paul. I thought about it for quite some time. I understood the verse, it was a familiar doctrine asking that every soul be subject to the higher powers because they were chosen, or put in place, or justified, by God.  I knew from the words “Let every soul be subject to the higher powers” that the idea of the verse was meant to mean by it’s context that whatever power rules over you that it is supposed to be obeyed because it is “ordained by God.” The Bible verse therefore demanded that all Christians subject themselves willingly to earthly authority whoever it happens to be ruling over them.

 

The parson had given me some time to comment and I hadn’t as yet found an answer to give him. The absence of my voice left only the silence of the evening with the sound of nature around us. As I thought there further in silence, with the faded half hidden moon visible in the darkening blue sky, the old parson decided to continue on with what he had been saying.

 

“I will tell you the truth my friend.” He said wanting to discuss his theological views with me. “I have a problem with absolute instructions like this one. Scripture or no scripture I will explain why I am leery of absolutes. Several hundred years ago, before our time, an underground current of thought existed in England. This thought was millenarian, anarchistic, and utopian and it was advocating for something different then Paul's text. The thought called instead for anarchy in the overthrowing of the state itself. This thought was radical and was calling for a return to what these radicals called ‘A sinless Eden.’”

 

I asked the old parson curiously “What was a sinless Eden Mr. Parson?”

 

“You must understand first before I tell you the answer”  the old parson continued with enthusiasm. “The idea of a sinless Eden was an idea born during the aftermath of a vicious Civil War during the Commonwealth in England. In these times such radical ideas had broken to the surface. A sinless Eden was an idea that was seen to be  half-religious, and half-secular as an aspiration. A sinless Eden, to those who wanted it, would be instantly attainable in the act of rejecting ones own government and rejecting all religious authority and it’s doctrines.”

 

I listened to the history and nodded that I understood now.

 

“The radicals believed” he continued on “that the guilt of sin was constructed only as a way to control the people. They saw religion, and also government, as something that was being imposed on them from above and they wanted to be free from it. The Church and secular power were seen to be oppressive forces keeping people in subjection by guilt and power. This sinless Eden that they envisioned would offer a new found freedom liberating them after the government and the Church and the doctrine of sin was removed.”

 

I thought about the belief there and said. “They predicted that what would develop afterward would be a perfect functioning society?” I asked him.

 

“Yes and I must say that the idea that religious doctrine was something invented to control the masses was an idea that I found worthy of serious consideration for many years.” The parson admitted this reluctantly to me now looking at my reaction.

 

I considered the the possibility of A Sinless Eden developing but I was dubious about the idea of it working and I asked the parson now.

 

“With no way of managing the ideas of the people and no way of deciding judgments in affairs that effected change and order in society then wouldn’t these people and their communities then slip into a kind of chaos by this anarchy?” I asked him.

 

“Of course It would not have become any better for them after anarchy and yes we know it would have lead only to chaos. We know that in our privileged time now. My point is that these people believed by such ideas that life would get better by using anarchy as the path to achieve results. They envisioned the action of rebellion as bringing about a perfect form of order.”

 

There was quiet now for a minute as we both sat in the dusk thinking about Paul’s teaching and the anarchists of England. Then the parson continued.

 

“The people were weary about anarchy returning after England had recently struggled through a bloody civil war. The civil war had ravaged the countryside. The last thing citizens wanted was more unrest and more horrific bloodshed. The citizen's of England wanted stability so instead of anarchy they chose to cling to the rule of the state. Preachers used eloquence to support this cause of course giving justification by scripture to the rulers authority.  The justification for power came from  both the divine right of Kings and Paul’s scripture.”

 

“The Bible was used  to  justify and strengthen the kings claim to legitimate rule?” I asked.

 

“Yes it was and the apostle Paul’s words were used to reinforce absolute obedience to the king. The scripture has been continually used like this everywhere throughout history to justify whoever has the power. What do you suppose life might have been like in Rome though my friend as Christianity was growing and being threatened by the continually changing emperors? These new Emperors would be constantly challenging and threatening the new religions right to exist.”

 

“Life for early Christians must have been full of great peril and uncertainty.” I said. As the parson asked me this question it occurred to me that he seemed like a thinking person deeply concerned with these kind of questions. I thought I was seeing in him now a man who had likely searched throughout his entire life for answers into these mysteries. He was a man with a mind, it now seemed to me, that had wrestled with the truth of God amid a life path that involved a serious study of history too. He obviously knew that history without apologizing for any knowledge he discovered or believed. It seemed that he had followed that knowledge wherever it took him in the pursuit of histories most honest revelations. He had followed that inquiry wherever and however much that knowledge challenged his faith.

 

“Would Christianity's authors have been pressured in the introduction of what content they wrote down in creating the New Testament?” He asked and quickly continued. “Would those authors have feared those secular Roman emperors of the time that were clearly deciding the fate of all Christians? How would the faith have been allowed to grow and flourish under these secular powers if anarchy was part of the religious canons message?”He looked over at me with a grim expression as we thought upon these questions.

 

The parson then added solemnly. “Wouldn’t the severe hand of the state have wiped out the entire new faith if some kind of instruction wasn’t written into the scripture ensuring that Christians would not be a threat to the secular emperor?” The parson asked me this now with a curios look.

 

“Are you suggesting that the Bible was written by ordinary men? Are you saying it was written by a human strategy  so that it allowed for it to endure under the secular powers of the state?” I asked him this now curiously and in a slightly startled voice looking up at him as the sun was setting over the trees above us. Shadows were forming on the grave yard grasses around us now.

 

“I SUGGEST ONLY WHAT’S REASONABLE TO SUGGEST!” he shouted out now with great anger and defiance. “MAN OR GOD, SOMEONE KNEW WHAT HAD TO HAVE BEEN SAID AND WRITTEN DOWN! GOD OR MAN KNEW THE NEED TO ALLOW THE RELIGION TO SOMEHOW CONTINUE. SO YOU CHOOSE WHO CREATED WHAT AND WHY!” He snapped this at me in a raised voice. He spoke with such energy and passion spit gathered on the edge of the old parsons lips. He took a hanky out of his pocket and wiped the spit away now.

 

“Listen to me!” He continued now in a calm low voice just as a pack of nearby coyotes sounded eerily from the surrounding hills. ”A hundred years after the anarchists there was a very different revolution in France to consider. This revolution in France violently overturned the old regime and the monarchy. Now the same kind of loyal theologians that were obedient to the teaching of Paul back in England were now faced with a brand new obligation in France. They now had to take the revolutionary oath under the new dictator Napoleon.“

 

“But how can anyone be truly loyal to a dictator?” I asked him while considering the demands of obeying Paul’s scripture.

 

“Nonviolently, obediently, by praying for him, by following his directions dutifully, according to the clergy anyway!” As the old parson spoke these words he seemed to scoff at the idea. “But things got allot worse for obedient churchmen in France after the royal trappings of loyalty dropped away and the principle was then revealed for what it meant in it’s honestly!” The parson said now looking at the sky and then back to me frowning and then continuing. “Now the churchmen came to realize that a new oppressive government had to be obeyed and it was a bitter pill now to swallow for them!”

 

The old parson relaxed and smiled solemnly now and then reached over and patted my shoulder and then speaking quietly he said.

 

“How bitter it must have been for the German and Russian Christians to accept this text of Paul's with the call for obedience under the rule of Hitler and Stalin!”

 

“The Bible has been used then to justify obedience to these evil forms of government in power? The scripture was interpreted to even mean that Christians should support the Nazi regime?” I asked now in horror while thinking about the implications of the old parsons words.

 

“Many injustices have been justified in the name of our Lord my friend in the interpretation of scripture. Have you heard of how men used the Bible to justify slavery?”

 

The parson said this to me and then stood up and walked to the third headstone away from where I sat. He reached out now and ran his hand lovingly over an inscription there. Finally he said in a choked up voice.

 

“Can you believe that I’m ninety-six years of age?” I looked at him with understanding as he continued to speak. “God has been good to me my friend. Will you stay here a while longer and we’ll look up at the stars together?” He asked me this now with hopeful eyes.

 

“Sure.” I said. “I have nowhere to be.”

 

The parson asked me now.

 

“What do you think when you look up at the Heavens above friend?”

 

“When I look up at the Heavens I believe” I started to say but hesitated. I then finally responded to him after some time spent thinking there. “ I believe that here on this ancient object.”

 

“The Earth.” The parson interjected. 

 

I gave him a nod. “Yes” I said then and continued. “ I believe on this Earth that when I look at the Heavens above that here we are completely surrounded by the unknown. We don’t know what’s below us or what’s above us in any direction. Mr.. Parson this makes the details of what is out there unspeakable. Nonetheless that something real and discoverable is actually out there is as real as I am or you are sir. The unknown we are yet unable to conceive of because those mysteries are not yet encountered by any of us but that they are out there we should not doubt for a second. Nor should we doubt that those wonders transcend our imaginations in the creativity they entail!”

 

I considered my words now with care and said very passionately to him. “We live haunted by the unknown everywhere around us in the sky. We’re also haunted with the uncertainty of what happened before us behind our own times.  I believe we only have a partial understanding of the history that proceeded us and as of yet no real solid understanding as to the size and details of life’s larger mysteries around us.”

 

I realized now in answering the old man that I had called the preacher Mr. Parson several times and it occurred to me now that I didn’t know his real name although he knew mine. He didn’t seem to mind but instead looked to be interested in my ideas and so I decided to continue.

 

“I am encouraged though Mr. Parson that we are willing to look about us at the empty abyss of the sky at night and that we want to try and fathom it nonetheless. We wonder about us looking out into that infinite intergalactic space with such big questions asked from here about where we are in our lonely coordinates. Wherever this really is amid everything else then somehow, some day, an intelligence itself will no doubt enable someone to map out for us our very location. Amid the vast unknown some intelligence will offer us some actual awareness of our surroundings and where we are. That intelligence will detail for us our mysteries existence by describing to us the grand picture in it’s completeness or will partially offer some enticing  piece of the unceasing and continues puzzle of our aliveness. The answer to existence itself exists however Mr. Parson and one day it will explain to us exactly what we’re apart of here in the immense and mind-bogglingly large experience of  existence.“

 

The old parson looked over at me as the last signs of daylight evaporated. With the ending of day gone it left now only the bright moon on our face and more then a handful of evening stars lighting up the darkness enveloping about us.

 

“You see where that star above us shines almost cold and dispassionate almost with a smile?” The parson asked me now in the darkness. “If in a flash, my friend, I could travel there then how many, many miles I’d go!” He elaborated now. “If  only I could travel with my soul now!” The old parson beat his chest now feverishly almost with violence.”When my soul is unprisoned from this earthly bond then time will not be able to count my markless flight beyond those stars. BEYOND I SAY!” He shouted  out these last words very loudly now.

 

The Parson said this to me in a voice so deep that it seemed to go sweeping invisibly in the darkness across the hills. Quietly now he added very calmly.

 

“A bit of poetry I picked up somewhere along the way.”

 

Me and the parson sat quietly in the darkness looking at the brilliant universe around us. After a while he said to me  interrupting the quiet..

 

“When I am really weary, and I am really old now so that kind of weariness is approaching fast, and a day comes friend where I am unable to find any delight at all. When I am totally spent from this life. If then, like a bird that tries to use its wings too long,  I can’t use those wings anymore. I like that bird then will nest awhile instead of taking flight. I will rest amid the grasses and instead of flying I’ll sing there.  I will drop right down in that grass entirely at last leaving any wonderment that I had if it all must be.  I will find there rest In the timelessness and space of the earth amid the soil, where the wind, and the sunshine, and the planets motion continues moving on around me. I will stay there with the little things that are the grass and the flowers.”

 

“However Donald!” Said the Parson now with great seriousness and unflinching conviction. “If I’m instead with my God, which Is where I know myself to be going. If I’m in flight with Him then my wings will  beat until I’ve gone so far,  far from the kind grass, even that grass which is so cool and deep. I will be poised instead among the winds on high. From there I will sing to God as I move from star to star and as I pierce the sunshine itself. I will keep a song always as I meet Jesus amid the farthest sky of HEAVEN ITSELF!”

He thundered out these last words with his voice almost echoing into the night air.

We sat awhile longer together there. Not long after our discussion had ended we began making our way through the darkness to the car. I then drove the old parson to his house nearby and helped him find his way into his kitchen after finding him an outdoor light switch. After a few directions from him and a heartfelt handshake we said our goodbyes me and the old parson for now. I then drove out of his yard and met the Rawdon hills. Soon I was in Milford and turning unto the 102 highway and I was making my way back home to Brookfield.