That’s the way! Sing! Everybody sing!
Five
Ceremonies of Innocence
Throughout the world the quest for an appropriate response to the event of June 6 continues. No satisfactory interpretation of that day’s happenings has yet been established, though many have been proposed. Meanwhile passions run high; tempers easily give way; a surprising degree of violence has entered the situation. Clearly the temporary slowing of the earth’s axial rotation must have imposed exceptional emotional stress on the entire global population, creating severe strains that have persisted and even intensified in the succeeding weeks. Instances of seemingly motiveless crimes, particularly arson and vandalism, have greatly increased. Government authorities in Brazil, India, the United Arab Republic, and Italy have suggested that clandestine revolutionary or counterrevolutionary groups are behind much of this activity, taking advantage of the widespread mood of uncertainty to stir discontent. No evidence of this has thus far been made public. Much hostility has been directed toward the organized religions, a phenomenon for which there is as yet no generally accepted explanation, although several sociologists have asserted that this pattern of violent anticlerical behavior is a reaction to the failure of most established religious bodies as of this time to provide official interpretations of the so-called miracle of June 6. Reports of the destruction by mob action of houses of worship of various faiths, with accompanying injuries or fatalities suffered by ecclesiastical personnel, have come from Mexico, Denmark, Burma, Puerto Rico, Portugal, Hungary, Ethiopia, the Philippines, and, in the United States, Alabama, Colorado, and New York. Statements are promised shortly by leaders of most major faiths. Meanwhile a tendency has developed in certain ecclesiastical quarters toward supporting a mechanistic or rationalistic causation for the June 6 event; thus on Tuesday the Archbishop of York, stressing that he was speaking as a private citizen and not as a prelate of the Church of England, declared that we should not rule out entirely the possibility of a manipulation of the Earth’s movements by superior beings native to another planet, intent on spreading confusion preparatory to conquest. Modern theologians, the Archbishop said, see no inherent impossibility in the doctrine of a separate act of creation that brought forth an intelligent species on some extraterrestrial or extragalactic planet, nor is it inconceivable, he went on, that it might be the Lord’s ultimate purpose to cause a purging of sinful mankind at the hands of that other species. Thus the slowing of the Earth’s rotation may have been an attempt by these enemies from space to capitalize on the emotions generated by the recent campaign of the so-called prophet Thomas the Proclaimer. A spokesman for the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria, commenting favorably two days later on the Archbishop’s theory, added that in the private view of the Patriarch it seems less implausible that such an alien species should exist than that a divine miracle of the June 6 sort could be invoked by popular demand. A number of other religious leaders, similarly speaking unofficially, have cautioned against too rapid acceptance of the divine origin of the June 6 event, without as yet going so far as to embrace the Archbishop of York’s suggestion. On Friday Dr. Nathan F. Scharf, President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, urgently appealed to American and Israeli scientists to produce a computer-generated mathematical schema capable of demonstrating how a unique but natural conjunction of astronomical forces might have resulted in the June 6 event. The only reply to this appeal thus far has come from Ssu-ma Hsiang, Minister of Science of the People’s Republic of China, who has revealed that a task force of several hundred Chinese astronomers is already at work on such a project. But his Soviet counterpart, Academician N. V. Posilippov, has on the contrary called for a revision of Marxist-Leninist astronomical theory to take into account what he terms “the possibility of intervention by as yet undefined forces, perhaps of supernatural aspect, in the motions of the heavenly bodies.” We may conclude, therefore, that the situation remains in flux. Observers agree that the chief beneficiaries of the June 6 event at this point have been the various recently founded apocalyptic sects, who now regard the so-called Day of the Sign as an indication of the imminent destruction of life on Earth. Undoubtedly much of the current violence and the other irrational behavior can be traced to the increased activity of such groups. A related manifestation is the dramatic expansion in recent weeks of older millenarian sects, notably the Pentecostal churches. The Protestant world in general has experienced a rebirth of the Pentecostal-inspired phenomenon known as glossolalia, or “speaking in tongues,” a technique for penetrating to revelatory or prophetic levels by means of unreined ecstatic outbursts illalum gha ghollim ve illalum ghollim ghaznim kroo! Aiha! Kroo illalum nildaz sitamon ghaznim of seemingly random syllables in no language known to the speaker; the value of this practice has mehigioo camaleelee honistar zam been a matter of controversy in religious circles for many centuries.
Six
The Woman Who Is Sore at Heart Reproaches Thomas
I knew he was in our county and I had to get to see him because he was the one who made all this trouble for me. So I went to his headquarters, the place where the broadcasts were being made that week, and I saw him standing in the middle of a group of his followers. A very handsome man, really, somewhat too dirty and wild-looking for my tastes, but you give him a shave and a haircut and he’d be quite attractive in my estimation. Big and strong he is, and when you see him you want to throw yourself into his arms, though of course I was in no frame of mind to do any such thing just then and in any case I’m not that sort of woman. I went right toward him. There was a tremendous crowd in the street, but I’m not discouraged easily, my husband likes to call me his “little bulldog” sometimes, and I just bulled my way through that mob, a little kicking and some elbowing and I think I bit someone’s arm once and I got through. There was Thomas and next to him that skinny little man who’s always with him, that Saul Kraft, who I guess is his press agent or something. As l I got close, three of his bodyguards looked at me and then at each other, probably saying oh-oh, here comes another crank dame, and they started to surround me and move me away, and Thomas wasn’t even looking at me, and I began to yell, saying I had to talk to Thomas, I had something important to say. And then this Saul Kraft told them to let go of me and bring me forward. They checked me out for concealed weapons and then Thomas asked me what I wanted.
I felt nervous before him. Such a famous man. But I planted my feet flat on the ground and stuck my jaw up the way Dad taught me, and I said, “You did all this. You’ve wrecked me, Thomas. You’ve got me so I don’t know if I’m standing on my head or right side up.”
He gave me a funny sideways smile. “I did?”
“Look,” I said, “I’ll tell you how it was. I went to Mass every week, my whole family, Church of the Redeemer on Wilson Avenue. We put money in the plate, we did everything the fathers told us to do, we tried to live good Christian lives, right? Not that we really thought much about God. Whether He was actually up there listening to me saying my paternoster. I figured He was too busy to worry much about me, and I couldn’t be too concerned about Him, because He surpasses my understanding, you follow? Instead I prayed to the fathers. To me Father McDermott was like God Himself, in a way, not meaning any disrespect. What I’m trying to say is that the average ordinary person, they don’t have a very close relationship with God, you follow? With the church, yes, with the fathers, but not with God. Okay. Now you come along and say the world is in a mess, so let’s pray to God to show Himself like in the olden times. I ask Father McDermott about it and he says it’s all right, it’s permitted even though it isn’t an idea that came from Rome, on such-and-such day we’ll have this world moment of prayer. So I pray, and the sun stands still. June 6, you made the sun stand still.”