A shame about the Church. Father Sullivan and most of the women had been in a panic when it dissolved before their eyes this morning. They’d all waited around, huddled in the bare spot of earth where the nave used to be, but nothing else happened—no thunder, no lightning, no openings in the earth spewing forth demons. So they’d all gone home.
He wondered if life would ever get back to normal again—whatever normal was. But at least one thing was sure: Blaney’s still stood. Sure now if the pub ever vanished into thin air, there would be a tragedy. Time for him to head down there for a pint. But first he decided he’d take a look at the side lawn and see how it was coming along. He strolled around the corner of the house and admired the grass. Without the constant trampling of the crowds, it was filling in smooth and green again. As he turned to go, he glanced up at his grandfather Danny’s painting of the Blessed Mother and froze.
The painting was changing. He watched, rooted to the ground by terror, as her skin tones darkened while her features ran and rearranged themselves into a different face.
When she smiled at him, Seamus uprooted himself and ran shouting for his wife.
‡
Everywhere...
Gridlock on the streets of Manhattan. The ever-swirling schools of cars, trucks, taxies, and buses screech to a halt as a face appears in their side- and rearview mirrors. It is seen dimly on the surface of every windowpane and brightly in every puddle. It is the same across the country, in the towns, in the cities, in the fields, in schools, barrooms, and on the computer screens of corporate offices.
And across the world, in Sydney, Nara, Beijing, Angkor, Luzon, New Delhi, Mumbai, Baghdad, Tunis, Mecca, Johannesburg, Jerusalem, Bosnia, Quito, Paris, London, and Rome, it is the same. Every surface capable of reflecting an image is filled with the same face.
For a moment a fascinated world stops, gathers together, and watches.
As she begins to speak, the billions of watchers, even the deaf, even the comatose hear her words and understand.
‡
“I bring you word from our Creator. The words I say are His, not mine, and He wishes all of you to listen. I shall call Him ‘He’ simply because that is how we traditionally think of the Creator, but He is neither ‘He’ nor ‘She.’ What can those words mean when there is only one? And He is the One. Whether you call him Yahweh or Allah or Vishnu, He cares not, for He has no name. Whether you visualize him as a man, or a woman, or a feathered serpent, He cares not, for he is pure Being, without shape.
“I was one of you, and for a short time, He was part of me. We have touched, and for that reason I am allowed to be His voice. Listen welclass="underline"
“More than two thousand years ago the Creator allowed an infinitesimal fragment of Himself to gestate in my womb and become human. He dwelt among a subjugated people who believed in a single God and He planted there his message of kinship between all humans.
“He said He would return and now He has, but He is not pleased with the way His message has been distorted and manipulated and prostituted and profiteered during the intervening millennia. You all have the same Parent, therefore you are all kin. He did not create you so that you would divide into warring factions. Yet you have done just that.
“You, His children, have warred incessantly, with one part or another of your world engaging in slaughter, blind to the glorious future that is yours if you can but learn to see past the walls that divide you. There is no peace between nations, but a nation is a fabrication. There must be peace between people. One to one. You must learn to recognize the walls that divide you and break them down. One by one.
“Tear down your walls, children, and find Harmony.
“You have become masters of your world. You have struggled to the apex of your corner of Creation. You rule it now. But with mastery comes obligation. The rulers of Creation are also responsible for it.
“Remember this: Every living thing, animal, reptile, vegetable, contains a spark of the Creator. You hold within yourselves the brightest spark, but not the only spark. It is arrogant of you to think that all other living things were put here merely to be disposed of at your whim. They were not. A balance must be struck. It is a law of Creation that one thing must die that another may live, a law that holds true for all things, for the plants as well as the animals. But you fail in your responsibility when you wantonly lay waste to the land. You dim the spark within when you kill for sport and not for sustenance, when you kill for mere vanity to steal another creature’s beauty to wear as your own, or cause a creature pain to test the paints and scents you daub on your bodies. All life has value. Yes, there is a hierarchy in that value, but nothing that lives is without it.
“And if you must respect the place of the lower life forms in the world around you, certainly you must cherish the life-right of your fellow humans a thousand-fold more. You must not diminish, must not damage, must not shorten the lives around you, for in doing so you also smother His spark within yourself. And nothing dims that spark, nothing hardens the human heart to the value of human life more than the ghastly slaughter of war. You must halt all war, children, including the unseen war: Never shall there be true peace around you while you wage war on the unborn lives within you.
“Respect all life, children, and find Harmony.
“Abolish your ceremonies, your communions, your sacrifices, real and symbolic; discard your dietary laws, cast off your clerical vestments, disband your sects, cease calling yourselves Catholic or Christian or Jew or Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist, for these customs, these identifications, these sects, these labels serve only to set you apart from your kin.
“Stop your worship. Cease your kneeling, your bowing, your prostrating, your fasts, self-denials, and self-inflicted injuries. You demean not only yourselves but your Creator when you believe that such obeisance pleases Him. He did not create you for that. You insult Him by thinking that He requires worship. What worship could the Creator of all that is possibly need or take pleasure in?
“Put down your weapons, you murderous, wild-eyed defenders of faith and God. What sort of God would need defenders, especially such puny and misguided warriors as you? He is quite capable of defending Himself.
“Silence your prayers. He will not answer because He will not listen while you call out from within walls that separate you from your kin. Harmony is the only prayer He heeds.
“Abandon your rituals, children, and find Harmony.
“Do not look to Him for guidance or relief; look instead to each other.
“Your churches, your temples, your mosques have been removed, for these are the most tangible and obvious walls between you. Gather now instead in the streets and parks and squares where there are no walls. Try to reach Him by reaching each other.
“Discard your Bible, your Koran, your Torah, for each is only partly true, and al lead you into the belief that you have found the One True Path to God, or the One True Voice that will catch His ear. You have not. And that delusion raises another wall, a wall of exclusivity. He did not create you to be divided.
“Forsake your dogma children, and find Harmony.
“I say again, use your own lives well, and respect each life around you. You are all kin. Touch one another. You are all living this life together. And so you must all work together toward creating Heaven. It is possible. You have the power. You need only use it.
“If you do not, if you continue along the same path you have trod these thousands of years, you will create a Hell for yourselves and your children.
“Look not for a Third Coming. And act not in fear of eternal reward or punishment. Your reward or punishment is here. This is your world, these are your lives. He has given them to you. Use them well, make the most of them, make them mean something, make them count. For this is your Heaven or Hell. You have the power to make it either. The choice is yours.