Russell Banks - Cloudsplitter

At last, the Reverend Hall stepped to the lectern set before the spare, New England-style altar and announced in his high, watery voice, “Today our neighbor Mister Brown will address us.” Then he stood down and turned the meeting over to Father.

It was a sermon that I had heard by then numerous times and listened to often enough afterwards, and I can hear the Old Man’s voice today, these many years later, as clearly as I did that cold, gray morning in North Elba. I see him standing there, straight as a tree, screw-faced and tense, his wet, fox-red hair sticking up, and I listen to him begin his first sentence, and as I write, my mouth seems to open, as if I am to speak his entire sermon for him, word for word.

“Good morning, neighbors” the Old Man said.

“Though outside these walls the rain falls, and the mountains be all hid in clouds, and though the chilled wind today blows out of the northwest, we here inside our small sanctuary are dry and warm together, are we not?

“We are comfortable, friends and neighbors, and we are safe, and we sing praises to the Lord, our heavenly Father, and we offer Him our prayers of thanksgiving, so as to signify our pleasure and our heartfelt gratitude to Him who, at His pleasure, hath granted that comfort and that safety to us. Do we not?

“Comfort and safety which has been granted to us — we who clear the forests, we who till the fields, we who raise our livestock. Little people of the valley between the mountains, that is what we are, friends. Men, women, and children struggling merely to survive and if possible to prosper in a hard place in a hard time. Are we not?

“Comfort and safety granted to us — who deserve nothing. Who deserve neither comfort nor safety, certainly, but who deserve neither discomfort nor danger, either. Understand me — granted to us, who deserve nothing! Not even to exist. Is this not the case, friends?

“I speak of everyone in the community, all of us — the blackest and the poorest among us, and the whitest and the richest. The most innocent, and the most foully corrupted. The most pious, and the least pious. The young, and the old. For we do not, not a one of us, deserve to live. It is not something the Lord owes us! Can you argue with that, friends?

“So that, if there is a debt, neighbors, if there is something that is owed someone, then it runs the other way, does it not?

“For who among us asked to be born? Who among us made such a request? No, white or black, rich or poor, not a one of us had such a right or even the means to make that request. And now, having been born, having been granted air to breathe and a place to stand upon, having been shown a firmament set between the firmaments, having been wakened from the dreamless sleep of nothingness, now, who among us can say, This was owed me, this was long owed me? Or even, This, Lord, did I request of Thee?

“The Lord giveth, neighbors, and the Lord taketh away. And does He not do so at His pleasure, friends? Not ours! No, it is only at the Lord’s own pleasure that we exist, is it not?

“We cannot cajole Him, we cannot argue our case, as if He were an Elizabethtown judge and we a plaintiff’s attorney. We cannot even beg. No, all we poor people can do, having come to an awareness of our lives, is give thanks. Give thanks, and then live out our lives according to that high, holy purpose, the purpose of continuing to give thanks, over and over again, amen.

“Contemplate the alternative, neighbors. Briefly, just briefly, is all — for to contemplate that alternative is truly painful. Nothingness is the alternative! A blasted absence! Contemplate nothingness for a few short seconds, neighbors, and you will turn away in horror, and then you will give thanks unto the Lord. Then you will sing His praises. And you will leap and dance with joy! Not for the pleasure of being alive, for life is all too often no pleasure whatsoever, but you will leap and dance with joy and thanksgiving for having had the opportunity to exist at all!

“I am thinking, this rainy, cold morning, neighbors, of old Job. A farmer and stockman, like many of us here. I am thinking of a pious man with a large, loving family who, like us, lived in a broad valley surrounded by mountains, where there were wolves and lions and bears, where the cold winds blew in winter, and where, beyond the mountains, there were enemies lurking who coveted his fields and crops and envied the peacefulness and the fruitfulness of his life. Can you imagine Job as a man very like us? Can you?

“Against these enemies, and against the wolves and lions and bears, against the cold winds of winter and the drought of summer, against sickness and plague, old Job and his loving family and neighbors nonetheless prospered and thrived, and they and their livestock multiplied in their numbers, until they had become a community in that ancient wilderness, a community much like ours here in our modern, American wilderness.

“And these good folks, old Job and his family and friends, they did everything right. They did it just so. In this they were perhaps superior even to us here in North Elba. For we are sometimes slack and slothful, are we not? And some of us keep not the usual observances in religion, and from time to time we mistreat one another in our families, or we fall to quarreling with each other, do we not? But Job and his family and friends, they were, one and all, a consistently upright people. Especially Job, the Bible tells us. Especially Job. He was a man who, even in that fine a community, was outstanding and much admired. Admired for his piety, his judgement, and his decorum, admired for his kindness and generosity, for his integrity, and for his willingness to keep all God’s commandments. Do you remember the story?

“If we ourselves here today could be like any man in the Holy Bible, neighbors, we would be like Job. Am I right? Not for his wealth, naturally — although he had plenty of that, and we wouldn’t turn it away. And not simply for the respect and admiration that he obtained from his family and neighbors, although none of us would scorn those. And not for his wisdom and clarity of mind, either.

“No, we would want to be like Job because of his simple goodness, his straightforward decency, and his charitableness. Recall the story. Job was a man who rested easy with himself, the Bible says. We have all known one or two men like that, and we might have envied them, but for the fact that in envying them we would have become less like them than before, for one of their main virtues was that they envied no man. And so we have tried strictly to love such men and to emulate them, have we not?

“Well, old Job was an easy man to love. Even God, who loves all men equally, regarded Job as especially admirable, and thus, when Satan sat down on a rock to criticize these poor, forked creatures that were so beloved of God, the Lord singled out Job for special praise. In this story, friends, the key to Satan’s motives is that he did not comprehend God’s love of mankind, not even of Job, the best of mankind, the champion human being of us all back in those ancient Biblical days. And so Satan spoke to God of mankind as if we were not worthy of God’s love, and he said that, therefore, God should withdraw His love. ‘Take it off from them,’ Satan said.

“You remember the story, neighbors. Satan argued with the Lord that the only reason we humans were in the slightest obedient to the Lord’s commandments was because we expected and often received large rewards for it. For it was true, and it remaineth so, that we are far more likely to prosper when we keep His commandments than when we do not keep them.

“But Satan insinuated that we were a shrewdly calculating lot. That we were hypocrites. And thus we were not worthy of God’s love. And if we were not worthy of God’s love, Satan reasoned, then we were not worthy of the existence that He had granted us even without our asking.