A Stitch In Space

by Christopher Lansdown

  “But God wasn’t done trying to give us life. He started directly entering history with one man named Abraham, forming the Jewish people (the descendants of Abraham). Among these descendants, he himself became one of them. The uncreated God took on a parent, giving the sign of his divinity by being born of a virgin. He grew up in the normal fashion, then when he turned 30, started publicly preaching repentance—turning back to God. That is, he preached life. ‘I came that they might have life, and have it to the full’, he once explained.

  “After a while of preaching loving God and men, he pissed off enough people that they accused him of sedition to the Romans, who were occupying Israel at the time and weren’t very fond of rebellions. The romans then tortured to death he who was perfectly innocent.

  “This has generally—and rightly, but not in modern times very understandably—been described as, ‘he died for the sins of the world’ or ‘he took upon himself the sins of the world and paid the price for us all’. Basically, by suffering unjustly, his suffering balanced out not his sin but instead it balanced out all of the wrong the rest of humanity has done. In the middle ages they liked to talk pretty much exclusively about atoning to God for our sins, but in modern times the part we’ll actually understand is how Christ earned for each person the atonement for his sins against his fellow creatures. (Bear in mind that being God, Christ’s capacity for suffering is infinite, and so his capacity for balancing is likewise infinite.) For anything which anyone has ever done wrong to anyone else, Christ earned on the cross a balance onto which we can all put our tabs, if you’ll allow me the different sense of the world ‘balance’ there.

  “Katie hurt you, and Christ asks you to forgive her because he has already balanced out her injustice with a just correction. Whatever justice you might want from Katie, Christ has already endured. And at the end of time, all people will, through Christ, come to know perfectly all of the things that they’ve done, including the things they’ve done wrong. If they accept the salvation which God is offering, you can call that purgatory; if they refuse it, you can call that hell. Either way, all that you might want from them has already been assured, so all you have left to do is to forgive. That and not despair because of whatever you’ve realized of your own evils. Whatever you’ve done, Christ has assured that it will be put right in the end. In a sense, it has already been put right in the end.

  “Which brings us to his resurrection. This world was made to be perfect, but having screwed up, it will necessarily die. To be saved, it must be remade. The good news is that it will. And Christ is, himself, the resurrection we will all get. Before his death, he told people of how he would be killed and on the third day he would come back. ‘I have the power to lay down my life, and the power to take it up again,’ he said. And so he did. He appeared to his followers, alive, on the third day after his death, and stayed with them for a while before returning to heaven. He commissioned them to go forth and bring the world the good news, and heal its sins.

  “That, in a nutshell, is what Christianity is. Admittedly, a very large nutshell.”

  * * *

  Hannah and Fr. Xris talked for several hours until Hannah reached the end of her ability to absorb new ideas and needed to go digest what she had learned.

  When she left, Fr. Xris said a prayer for her, then a prayer of thanksgiving for the opportunity to be of service to a fellow creature, then went back to sleep.

  Chapter 6

  The next week was mostly uneventful. Hannah was working her way through the gospel of Luke, and had a great many questions for Fr. Xris. She even came to daily mass one day to see what it was like. She also struck up some conversations with Shaka, but though he was very polite and willing to put in the work of conversing, they didn’t share any interests. Growing up in Africa, his life had been very different from hers, so they could not even discuss common experiences. Moreover, while Hannah was more of an intuitive thinker, Shaka tended to be more analytical, and he couldn’t make the imaginative leap. He was a nice guy, but mostly just directed Hannah’s questions to Fr. Xris.

  Fr. Xris and Freia were becoming friends, having shared interests in physics and engineering, and on most nights he would hang out with her during her shift for a bit before going to bed. On one such visit he ran into Katie. It was shortly before they were about to turn around and reverse thrust in order to stop at the slip-stream entry point on Sol’s north pole. (Not literally on the sun’s north pole; considering the orbital plane of the earth to be the ground, the northern entry point is 100 million kilometers up. This allows a reasonable balance between radiation shielding and solar panel efficiency for the space station at the entry point.)

  Fr. Xris had come to the engine room to drop in on Freia when he discovered that she wasn’t alone. Why, he never found out, but Katie had stayed after her shift and was talking with Freia. He was surprised, but stood his ground and stayed.

  “Tired of banging Hannah?” Katie asked, when she saw him.

  “Are you genuinely misinformed, or just trying to be offensive?” Fr. Xris inquired calmly.

  “You didn’t answer the question,” Katie said.

  “I don’t know which question to answer,” Fr. Xris said, “and it would be tedious to answer both.”

  “There was only one question.”

  “Yes, but I can’t tell whether it was ‘are you the hypocrite I think you are’ or ‘will you please fight me’. But if you don’t want to clarify, the answers are, ‘no, I’m a different sort of hypocrite’ and ‘no’, respectively.”

  Freia laughed.

  Katie flashed her an angry look which Freia completely disregarded.

  “You shouldn’t tease her if you’re not going to give her satisfaction,” Freia said.

  Katie and Fr. Xris took that to mean different things, but neither commented on it.

  “So you’re spending all this time with Hannah behind closed doors as innocent as the driven snow?”

  Fr. Xris decided not to comment on the mixed metaphor. After all, snow is innocent. It has no moral culpability for any misdeeds, though neither does slush or, for that matter, mud. From the standpoint of moral philosophy, even muck is innocent, though that’s getting pretty far from the intended point.

  “Of course not,” Fr. Xris said. “I’m vain and like to think that I sound impressive, and of course I gratify my pride in thinking about what a good job I’m doing answering her questions. And if you really want to get meta and be accurate, I’m also proud of how well I ignore the fact that she’s an attractive woman, and am doing no more than I would for an ugly man, which might actually be true, except I have no way to be sure, but on the plus side, this means that if an ugly man comes to me, I’ll make sure to do just as much for him to make sure that I wasn’t working harder because Hannah’s pretty, which means that I’m more likely to do right by this hypothetical man, and it is, after all, the job of natural virtues to support moral virtues.”

  “You’re really good at deflecting questions,” Katie said.

  “That may be true, but unless I’ve missed something, I’ve answered all of your questions directly, including some which you didn’t even spell out.”

  “Actually, he’s right, Katie,” Freia said. “He answered more than you asked.”

  “And neatly shifted the topic away from what he’s doing with Hannah,” Katie said.

  “You’re really eager for me to be doing something with Hannah,” Fr. Xris said. “Why?”

  “What’s the matter?” Katie asked. “Is Hannah not putting out?”

  “I get that you don’t like me,” Fr. Xris said, “but please don’t take it out on Hannah.”

  Suddenly Katie’s expression changed completely. It went from angry to... sultry? It was ambiguous, but almost soft and tender. The rapid transformation had the effect of stunning Fr. Xris for a moment.

  “Is that it?” Katie said, stepping closer. “Does she not realize what she’s missing?”

  Katie took Fr. Xris’s
hand and gently said, “I do,” as she pulled it to her chest. Halfway there, when her other hand pulling down her shirt make it clear what she was doing, he yanked his hand back, and backed away from her a few steps.

  “Not here, Katie,” Freia said. “You know how Belle enforces the regs against sex in public places.”

  “I know,” Katie said disappointedly. “You know where my room is,” she said to Fr. Xris. “And I sleep naked. Come by and I’ll welcome you with open legs.”

  She walked out of the room, pausing to give a seductive look over her shoulder before she walked through the door.

  After a few moments of silence, Fr. Xris said to Freia, “That... I did not expect.”

  “What did I tell you?” Freia said.

  “What, do you actually think that she’s waiting for me?”

  “I would, if I thought you would come.”

  “I know, but you don’t have any emotional attachment to sex whatsoever. Also, you don’t hate me.”

  “I don’t think that she hates you,” Freia said.

  “Really?” Fr. Xris said. “She wants to prove that I’m a hypocrite. There’s nothing friendly in that.”

  “I see your point,” Freia said. “If that’s what she’s doing, but I don’t think that she takes sex as seriously as you do.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Fr. Xris said, “but anyway, I’m pretty sure that she’s acting on the basis of me taking it seriously. Why, otherwise, insist that I’m doing something sexual with Hannah?”

  “Jealousy,” Freia said.

  “Wouldn’t that mean that she takes sex seriously?” Fr. Xris said.

  “You can be jealous about things that don’t matter,” Freia said.

  “Fair enough,” Fr. Xris said.

  “It’s all academic since you’re not going to go to her room,” Freia said.

  Fr. Xris laughed.

  “It’s nice that someone believes me.” He said, then, shaking his head, added, “This is not the end of it.”

  “She’s going to give up eventually,” Freia said.

  “I can hope that you’re right,” Fr. Xris said.

  “I’ll talk to her tomorrow and find out,” Freia said, practically. “And I’ll try to break it to her that she’s not going to get you. That it’s not personal should make it easier to take.”

  “I suppose we’ll find out tomorrow,” Fr. Xris said, “though even if she says that you’re right, I don’t think I’ll believe it. Either way, next time she’s hanging out when I might stop by, warn me? I don’t like this new game that she’s playing.”

  “Fair enough,” Freia said.

  Fr. Xris didn’t get the opportunity to talk with Freia in the morning because of the gravity change from engaging the thrust, so he ended up catching her in the evening.

  “So,” Fr. Xris said, when he came into engineer and found Freia alone, “What have you learned?”

  Freia frowned.

  “I might have been wrong,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “Not about Katie being hot for you,” Freia said. “That she is. But you might be right about her hating you.”

  “What changed your mind?”

  “She was surprised you didn’t come,” Freia said.

  “So?”

  “She doesn’t know you at all. But getting to know you isn’t hard. You’re one of the most open people I’ve met. So she must not have tried. The only reasons for that are indifference and hate. She’s not indifferent to you, so she must hate you.”

  Fr. Xris nodded. It was logical.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “She didn’t tell you?” Fr. Xris asked.

  “I didn’t ask,” Freia said. “It seemed like a sensitive subject.”

  “And I seem tougher?”

  “Tough as ablative shielding.”

  “Why do you think I would know?” Fr. Xris said. “As I understand it from men who aren’t sworn to celibacy, men often anger women without knowing why.”

  “Many do, but you wouldn’t. You’re too considerate. Also too observant.”

  “I’m pretty sure that she hates me for being a Christian priest.”

  “Why would she hate you for that?”

  “She has a bad history with Christians.”

  “That’s an odd reason to hate you. The groups that people are in say something about them, but not everything, and often not even much.”

  “But as a priest, I’m responsible for spreading it.”

  “I suppose,” she said. “But maybe she’s extra angry because it makes you unavailable.”

  “I’d say that you’re obsessed with sex, but I don’t think that you are.”

  “Have you figured that out?” Freia asked.

  “Perhaps,” Fr. Xris said.

  “Anyway,” Freia said, ”there is still the question of what to do about Katie. It’s going to be a long voyage if she’s moping the whole time.”

  “I don’t see that there’s much I can do,” Fr. Xris said.

  “Well, you could do her,” Freia said, and laughed.

  “No I can’t,” he said.

  “I know,” she said. “Though technically you can and just won’t.”

  “The word ‘can’ doesn’t just mean that you’re physically capable of something under any conditions whatsoever. It means that the thing comes under your prudential judgment; and it can fall outside of that either by being physically impossible or simply by being morally impossible. Otherwise you’d have to say things like, ‘I can get to mars for $5, but I’m not willing to spend years learning to be a transvestite hooker then blackmail someone with a private ship’. Yeah, OK, technically true, but so what?”

  “Fair enough,” Freia said. “But, seriously, you could talk with her.”

  “And say what?” Fr. Xris asked. “Please stop hating me?”

  “You could talk about engineering,” Freia said. “It’s hard to hate someone you’re friends with.”

  “Friends is a tall order,” Fr. Xris said. “I don’t mean I’d mind, I just don’t think it’s achievable.”

  “What, are you afraid of a girl?” Freia asked, smiling.

  “Shouldn’t I be?” Fr. Xris replied, returning the smile.

  “Depends on the girl,” Freia said. “I’m not sure you’re wrong about Katie. But then, you’re not a coward, so what does that matter?”

  “Fine,” Fr. Xris said. “If it will make you happy, I’ll do it.”

  “If someone asks you to walk one mile, walk two?” Freia asked.

  Fr. Xris raised an eyebrow.

  “And where did you hear that?” he asked.

  “Matthew,” she said. “You got me curious.”

  “Matthew is interesting, because he was writing to a primarily Jewish audience. On its face Luke might be more appropriate, since he was writing to a primarily pagan audience, but I’m not so sure these days. Even modern paganism isn’t the same as ancient paganism; Christianity has permanently made everything at least a little Jewish.”

  “That’s beyond me,” Freia said. “I’ve never studied ancient paganism or the Jews.”

  “Ancient paganism is not easy to reconstruct,” Fr. Xris said. “The ancients wrote a lot down, but even so, not enough. Every man is normal to himself, so it’s rare for people to write down what makes them weird to everyone else. But as someone once said, the last thing that we know with certainty about the original pagans is that they got baptized.”

  “What is baptism,” Freia asked. “I know it involves water, but what is it? A ritual washing?”

  “Of sorts. It’s a washing with water, but the point is spiritual washing, not physical. It’s a washing, but also a rebirth. It’s what actually makes a man a Christian. It’s not strictly necessary to have water, by the way. My favorite example is the martyrs—Christians who were killed for being Christian. In the second century AD, there was a catechetical manual which talked about how catechumens—people studying to be baptized—need not fear martyrdom befo
re being baptized, as in that case they will be baptized in their own blood. It’s a poetic image, if you remember that the point of killing a man is to destroy him, and baptism is the entrance into eternal life. Murdering a martyr was, therefore, counter-productive. You meant to harm him, but actually you helped him be reborn.

  “And there’s also the baptism of desire—if a man wishes to be baptized but simply lacks water and another person to baptize him, his desire for baptism will itself baptize him. God uses the sacraments, but he’s not limited by them.”

  “Christianity is complicated,” Freia said.

  “In one sense, yes. In another sense, it’s the simplest thing there is.”

  Freia thought about it for a few moments.

  “Anyway, you’ll talk with Katie? It will make life easier for us all.”

  “I will try. I can’t promise you success.”

  “No one can promise that.”

  “It depends on what you’re going to try doing.”

  “I was thinking of worthwhile things.”

  “You can promise to forgive someone. That’s worthwhile and doesn’t depend on anyone else for its success,” Fr. Xris said.

  “Fair enough,” Freia said. “By the way, why are you Christians so obsessed with forgiving people?”

  “Because in the end, people can’t really hurt you. They can kill you, but ultimately even that doesn’t matter, since death has been conquered. So there’s no point in holding on to injuries. It doesn’t do anyone any good. Not even yourself.”

  “You make a lot out of life after death,” Freia said.

  “It changes everything,” said Fr. Xris. “As St. Paul wrote in one of his letters, if Christ is in his grave, then we are of all men the most to be pitied. The resurrection is our one hope to escape the evil of this world. And no one with his eyes open can deny that this world is mired in imperfection. So if there is a way to get out of it to something better, then there’s no sense in playing by this world’s rules. Of course, if we’re wrong, then we’ve got neither this world nor the next. Even so, I’m not so sure that we’re the most to be pitied; in the end, this world doesn’t work very well even if you play by its rules. It’s not like there’s any evidence that the Roman emperors who persecuted the Christians were actually happy. Nero, certainly, did not end well. For that matter, few of the Caesars, or at least the early Caesars, ended well.”