[Dec. 2] [Supernatural] Evidence of Things Unseen

[sophiap.livejournal.com]

Title: Evidence of Things Unseen
Day/Theme: 2. Failure to communicate
Series: Supernatural
Character/Pairing: Pastor Jim
Rating: PG


The Sunday morning social hour is just as much a ritual as anything involving salt, fire and the Rituale Romanum.

The worship service always ends at eleven o'clock precisely. There's a clock hanging at the back of the church so he doesn't lose track of the time. At ten-fifty on most Sundays, Margery Olsen and Laura Gunnersen quietly slip out the back, head on downstairs, and set up the two huge coffee urns. In November, when hunting season begins, they only need one, and Margery stays upstairs to rest her knees. Today, though, is the first Sunday of the month. That meant the two women leave out at ten-forty to set up the chafing dishes for the casseroles (Jim has yet to learn to call them "hot dishes," even after all these years) that made up the carb-laden back-bone of the monthly potluck.

Two volunteers always help old Mister Tucker down the stairs and get him situated in the one non-folding chair in the fellowship hall. They get him coffee and a chocolate donut or, on First Sundays, a paper plate laden with tater-tot casserole and a scoop of canned green beans.

Jim makes his way through the congregation, coffee in one hand, a plate conspicuously filled with an equal portion of each and every dish brought to the potluck in the other. Some of the older members--the ones who even now referred to him as "that nice young Pastor Murphy"--command his attention for ten minutes apiece, as is their due. He makes note of the various knots of people who stand together, perhaps noticing that the Gunnersens have their backs turned to the booths, or that the choir has split into two groups, each clumped in opposite corners of the room.

He answers questions about the Christmas craft fair, and listens to two opposing views about which families should light the advent wreath this year until concepts of "fairness" and "tradition" are turned upside down and roundabout in his mind.

Such is the life of a man of faith in these days.

The crowd eventually dissipates, families going off to rake leaves, or watch the game. Sometimes, a few people linger to talk about weightier matters. It's rare that any hunters (not the kind interested in deer season) invade the Sunday social hour. Those are more likely to show up at the rectory at two in the morning, and seem to have a preference for picking the lock rather than ringing the bell.

The people who linger after social hour are the kind who have questions that can't be brushed aside by careful diplomacy and the occasional reminder that Jesus would more likely be concerned with the choir's attitude rather than what color robes they should wear going into Advent.

"Is there really a God?"

Pastor Jim has been asked that question more times than he can count. He's heard it over the lunch table in seminary. He's heard it from women who have miscarried for the third time. He's heard it from teenagers for whom the everyday disappointments of life still seem so large compared to the short span of their lives, and who are looking for comfort just as much as they are confirmation that the world sucks as much as they think it does. He's heard it from children who are still reeling from the notion that Santa doesn't fly through the sky in a reindeer-drawn sleigh. He's heard it from people who hate God and everything to do with Him, and mean the question only to hurt.

He's heard it from Bobby Singer as a casual opening salvo in an all-night bull session about theology, demonology and how God-awful badly the Twins were doing that season. He's heard it from all three Winchesters: one in blank despair, one in bitter anger, one in earnest confusion.

He's heard it from people who have seen a revenant go up in flame after Jim has calmly exorcised it. In this case, it's a man whose nagging cough Jim has heard from the pulpit for the past nine months, and who finally got around to seeing a doctor two months too late.

"I believe there is, yes." It's the best answer he can give.

As a pastor, one duly ordained in the Lutheran church, it is part of Jim Murphy's job to believe in the afterlife. Back in his seminary days, this was a matter of faith (the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen). Over the past eighteen years he's seen the kinds of proof in the afterlife that can send some men into the madhouse. As for him, it sends him to his knees. Or it sends him to his arsenal for a pistol and a handful of home-cast silver rounds.

"Do you believe that there's a Heaven?"

That's one of many possible follow-up questions to the first one. Another one would be a demand for proof of the existence of God in the face of the kind of evil that pollutes the world. People who live in misery tend to ask that one. People who live in fear are more likely to ask about Heaven.

"Yes, I do. I can't say for certain what it is like, but..."

People tend to believe Jim when he says this, even though he can't offer much explanation. There's nothing like having seen first-hand evidence of the existence of Hell to make one believe that its opposite must exist. And with the kind of evil he's seen walking and doing its will in this world, he knows there must be some counteracting force or the world would have been long destroyed by now.

He listens to Bill Saffler talking about how he only has six months to live, maybe a year, and how he's not so much afraid of death as he is the dying. In the background, Margery and Laura are clearing away the coffee urns and the flimsy plastic tablecloths, and chattering away about Laura's new grandbaby.

He would like to give Bill some reassurance directly from God, something that doesn't come from a translation of a translation of a translation.

Even if it wouldn't make him look crazy, he can't really share the negative evidence, either.

Jim has seen the inky blackness (a blackness that's more than just a color) of demonic possession color a man's eyes. He's seen ghosts vanish screaming in gouts of flame, burning into nothingness along with their bones. He's recited Latin verses and seen the miasma of evil flowing out of a house like water down a drain.

He wishes he could tell Bill about the one time he exorcised a ghost and thought he saw it disappear into a light that was something other than flame. He believes he's felt God's presence--in people, after a hunt, in a holy place. It's nothing so dramatic as watching a poltergeist flinging shards of glass around a house, and there are times he doubts he felt what he felt. There are other times when it seems like the only reality worth believing in.

Just once, he would like to see a man's eyes burning with holy light rather than sunken with demonic blackness (he suspects this might be the last thing he would see, if he did ever get the chance).

"If you're free tomorrow evening around five-thirty, I could talk to you in more privacy," Jim says over Margery's laughter. The two women are about to disappear into the kitchen to wash up. Once they're gone, he'll fold up the trestle tables and lean them against the wall.

By tomorrow night, he'll have some better answers prepared. On Tuesday, given Bill's permission, he'll pass a quiet word along to certain women in the church who will make sure that Bill's wife has help with the children and frozen home-cooked meals on hand for nights when she doesn't want to leave the hospital.

When Margery and Laura finish the washing-up, they will check the freezer to see what's been left for Mrs. Gruenwald (laid up with the shingles) or old Ben Walker (house-bound and a regular on the ladies' rounds). It's all part of the ritual.

Bill shakes his hand, then doubles over with another round of coughing, left fist pressed to his mouth as he looks at Jim up in misery and apology.

"It'll be all right, Bill," he says. "Everything will be all right."

Not good, perhaps, but "all right." And in days to come, Bill's daughter may come up to him after church and ask why God won't heal her daddy even though she's been praying really, really loud.

He will answer her with the same honesty he always gives John Winchester when John throws a similar question in his face:

"I don't know."

Jim sometimes wishes God would hand him an answer that would explain it all in a way that would make sense to those no longer inclined to believe in Him.

On certain very dark nights, when he has shouted that question at the heavens, he has received only silence as an answer.

It's not the silence of oblivion, he thinks. It is the silence given to someone who has asked a question whose answer should be obvious.

He always feels small and stupid after nights like those. Then there is another demon to banish, or another widow who needs hot meals or a delegation from the youth group to shovel her walkway.

Bill leaves, head bowed, and Margery rushes out of the kitchen to give him a hug. She whispers something in his ear. It takes a few minutes, then Bill nods and walks out. His head is still bowed, but Jim thinks something in the air has lightened.

It's now time to put away the trestle tables, just as he does every Sunday. Afterwards, he'll need to call Caleb back about a possible werewolf that's been spotted outside Hibbing. Then there's that message from John, something curt but frantic about new information regarding that demon he's been hunting since eighty-three. Afterwards, he's off to several rounds of coffee as he tries to mend a rift in the choir. If he's lucky, he won't perish of politeness-induced caffeine poisoning. He has too much work to do for that.

Margery says good-bye with aggressive good cheer, and she calls him by his first name. Laura's farewell is a bit more tentative and blushing, and she only uses his title. Jim thanks them for all of their work and walks them to the door. They talk for a moment about whether the weathermen are right about snow on Tuesday, and then the two women wrap their scarves around their necks and head out to Margery's elderly Buick.

The ritual is complete. There's no flame, there's no epiphany, there's no lifting of an evil presence.

There isn't a missive from Heaven explaining everything to the last detail and to everyone's satisfaction. There is simply a long list of things to be done.

Jim watches the two women drive off. The sky is heavy with snow clouds, and his heart is heavy with the knowledge that Bill Saffler is facing a long, painful death and that a high-ranking demon may once again be poised to tear John Winchester's family to shreds.

But once again, the Sunday ritual has reminded him of everyone he has been set to protect and everything that he is expected to do, everyone who needs to be saved whether or not they deserve or desire it. Maybe, Jim thinks, the best proof he has of God's existence is all the work he has been called to do in His name.

Until the day he meets the Almighty face-to-face, that will have to do.

Notes: Many thanks to Cass, Ailleann, and incandescens for beta help!