[h3][color=0054a6][u][b]The Archbishop – The Anglican Communion – London[/b][/u][/color][/h3]


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Faith.

For the love of it or the lack of it. 

Faith was what had driven Humanity towards greater and more terrible things over the long march of time. Faith in something, a god, gods or no god or gods. And pressing tobacco into a pipe between his fingers, the Archbishop looked up at the great midnight sky above and considered what it was to have faith in his day and age. That had, after all, been what the debate on the BBC had just been all about. Britain Believes, or something along those lines, a new flagship late hour program intended to round out Tuesday’s programming by asking religious experts for their answers on some subject or another. What ungodly soul had decided on an hour-long debate show from 11pm on a Tuesday night was the question the Archbishop had hoped would be asked.

But what else could be asked than what had been asked? What was faith in the age of the visitation?

Drawing a matchbook from inside his cassock, the Archbishop sticks pipe in betwixt lips and teeth, cracks match onto, along and off sandpaper, covers the spark and the flame with tired flesh and brings the heat and the light into his pipe. Soon, in no time at all, he feels the warmth and smell of the smoke in his mouth and the air around him, shaking out the match, he flicks the charcoal ended remnant into the nearby bin and considers the question.

What was faith in the age of the visitation?

Well, what had it been what it had occurred? When souls from beyond this cradle called earth had graced or cursed their little blue orb with their presence and touch? How could he explain his night in the woods staring up in horror at the burning skies above that convulsed in the aurora of a million pinpricks of colour? Waves of magnetic fire coursing over the world as the atmosphere had shifted and shivered as strange beings had strode across the surface of the earth. His chapel in the trees turned upside down, inverted in the air with twisting staircase where one could walk feet in the clouds and head to the ground. Tombstones lingering and hanging like thrown pebbles over a skimming pond, the skeletons of the dead reaching out through the once-bottoms of the graves in morbid greeting and farewell to the strangeness before them.

It had been a challenge to whatever faith you had.

Around him in that forest others had dropped to their knees and prayed, to their old god or to the new gods they saw before them. God or Gods. Faith in a higher power, but belief in which? The old order or the new order? He had remained standing, lost in and losing his mind and clinging onto the teetering scars of his faith, a subject of a photo that had graced a number of publications since then. And looking up at the hanging light above like he had all those years before, the constant reminder of the visitation in night and day. Before he can think any further, the door to the balcony opens behind him, bathing him in a wall of heat and sound, and illuminating a figure to him.

“Rabbi Weinberg. Can I offer you a light? I don’t drink.”

The Rabbi, one of the other religious leaders on the panel, shakes his head and joins him by the balcony after shutting the door behind him.

“I was just about to say the same in reverse Archbishop. One small sin we each allow ourselves I suppose?”

The Archbishop nods, before turning to lean on the railing and look back up at the twin orbs above them. The Rabbi leans too, taking a sip on what, from the Archbishop can smell, is a heavy glass of whiskey. The Archbishop pauses, before gesturing at the sight before them.

“I wondered once, what my mother would have thought of all this. She was a spiritualist, lost her father and brothers in the Great War. She died in an air raid in the Second, in the middle of a group tarot reading of all things. Anyway, she always said that one day the spirits would avail themselves to us one day in some shape or form. I suppose she’d say she was right. I know she’d say that. But that question, what is faith now? Well, I can’t say what it is yet, perhaps I never will, but the question, what is faith now? That aches within me for some reason.”

The Rabbi eyes him, before shrugging, more to himself and launches into an old tale.

“My old rabbi had a story when I once asked a question. In ancient Israel, during the age of King Solomon, a shepherd loses his flock to a wolf, his house and lazy son are burned together when his son falls asleep whilst tending the fire and his wife leaves him for another man who has everything that he does not after all this. So, the shepherd in his grief goes to the village rabbi. Why? He asks, why does the almighty allow such things to occur? Well, my old rabbi would say then, what would you say?”

The Archbishop nods, hums, before replying.

“I would say the lord works in mysterious ways, though I have never found that to go down well when said. I would say that ours is not to question the will of the lord, but they would then ask why they should worship such a being. So, in the end, I would say that we can ask, we will always ask, and perhaps you may be answered, but until that time comes, to do good, to abide by the word and to do unto others as you would have others do unto you. I would then offer to help the shepherd, to provide him with a new flock and house and restore harmony to his life. What the lord will do, the lord will do, but until he chooses to tell us why, all we can do, is to carry on as best we can.”

Weinberg chuckles.

“Certainly a better answer than mine. I tried to quote a full passage of the Torah, but my Rabbi shook his head, and told me to go and clean the corridor until I thought of a better answer, because the corridor needed cleaning and time would bring me clarity. Eventually, I learned the lesson. So, what is faith now?”

The Archbishop takes a long drag on his cigarette, taps the ashes onto the pavement a few floors below.

“Faith is faith. The lord works in mysterious ways. Who are we to question him?  Not the answers people want to be hearing. No wonder attendance rates are falling across the board. And no wonder the number of visitation cults are increasing across the world either. Such is the state of the world entire, undergoing change. Turning from peace to war, from love to hate, from the old to the new, as it always has been, as it always will be. And what can the old faiths offer the new world?”

The Rabbi eyes him for a few more moments, before taking another swig of his whiskey, emptying the glass and looks into it, pensive and a little sad.

“The world is much changed. And we will just have to learn to live with it. We will tend to our flocks, and shepherd them from harm as best we can.”

The Archbishop nods, murmurs his agreements, and motions his thanks for the Rabbi’s company when the man leaves. They agree to keep in touch, plan some cross-communal events to help those in need and then, the Archbishop finds himself alone on the balcony, cigarette burned down to a stub of ash that drops from his fingertips and leaves them smudged in tar and dust. So, with nothing else to do, he turns, leans on the railing, looks up at the old earth moon and the new earth oracle and considers everything past, present and future in a single question. What is faith worth now?

Faith.

For the love of it or the lack of it.