I was in communication with God.
I put one foot in front of the other, following James under the milky moonlight and deep shadows thrown across the path by forest trees. The sensation I was having was unlike anything I’d felt before.
It was as if I were passing through the trees and they were also passing through me. I was insubstantial, and yet I was breathing, in the flesh and the moment, hearing James’s voice as we climbed up a wooded path.
James said, “Brigid, take my hand. This part of the walk is tricky.”
I took his hand, and I felt his solid grip. And at the same time, my fingers closed on my own palm. I thought, Dear Lord, what does this mean?
The air seemed to swirl around James and me.
God. Tell me, please. What is happening?
The sounds of the wind and the night birds and the crackling of sticks underfoot and God’s voice were all as one.
Be with James.
“Be with James”?
I remembered a time when I was speaking with God, and He said to me, Be with Colin. And I had gone to Colin within that vision and spoken with him, and he had spoken with me-even though Colin had already died.
James was alive.
I was in that place deep inside my mind where somehow, I could hear God, and I asked Him, Do you mean, be with James in the moment?
James was saying, “See that hump over there? That rocky outcropping? That’s where we’re going. Okay?”
The sense of God’s presence left me. I heard James’s voice clearly, and when he squeezed my hand, my fingers wrapped around his.
“Cool,” I said, in a voice that wasn’t quite my own.
James showed me footholds and held my hand until we were seated on top of the smooth hillock of stone.
“I feel very close to God right here,” he said.
I nodded. But I couldn’t speak.
“Boston is that way,” James said, pointing through a cleft in the woods. “Tell me about your job, how it’s going for you. I want to hear it all.”
“Will you hear my confession?” I asked him.
“Your confession, Brigid? Well. Not as your priest. I’m just James. And you can tell me anything.”
“As James, then,” I said. “It’s been many years since my last confession. I don’t actually remember the last time.”
“Just talk to me, Brigid,” James said. “I’m here.”
Be with James.
Chapter 85
I WAS sitting close to James on that mound of stone, feeling the pressure of his body against mine. The breeze was faint but entirely worldly. An owl hooted. Two deer, twigs snapping under their feet, bolted across the path below the outcropping.
“I once killed a man,” I said.
I credit James for not saying, You did what?
“Can you tell me what happened?” he asked me.
I didn’t want to look back to that killing field in South Sudan, but I had to do it. I had never told James anything about Colin, the hospital, the last day, when Colin insisted that I stay in the camp. But I told him all of it now.
“I defied him,” I told James. “And in doing so, I took a life and also became instrumental in Colin’s death.”
James said, “Brigid. Oh, my God. Poor Brigid. Go on.”
I told him about the injured boy I had been trying to protect and that an enemy soldier had rushed us.
“I shot him, James. I shot him dead. I never thought in my life that I would kill anyone. I have never killed a chicken or a fly, but this man was going to shoot. I swear to you. I swear to God.”
James put his arm around me and pulled me to him, and I pulled away.
“There’s more,” I said.
“Keep going,” he said. “I’m here.”
I told him about begging Colin to help me get the wounded boy off the field when a second helicopter had come in, firing down on us, and that bullets had gone through Colin’s chest. That he had died trying to speak, and that I had never-ending guilt about his death.
“Good God, Brigid. Of course you feel guilt. You loved him.”
“I did.”
As the moon floated ever higher into the sky, I told James about flashes of anger that I have had toward Karl for Tre’s death. “I know it wasn’t his fault,” I said.
James squeezed my hand, and I kept going. I told him about seeing my “father” the very day that I had met James for the first time. “He told me that he wasn’t my father and that he never loved me.
“I hate him,” I said. “He’s no one to me, and that’s the truth. But why am I still attached to him? I don’t need him, and I don’t want him, and I can’t forgive him for what he’s done.”
“He was your father, even if he was not your biological father. Isn’t that right, Brigid?”
I nodded, but I couldn’t look at James anymore.
Had I shocked him? Had I told him too much? Or not enough? I was still holding back. I forced myself to look into his beautiful face, and I said, “James, I have spoken with God.”
“Of course. Of course you have.”
“No, not just in my prayers. He has given me visions. He comes into my mind and conveys thoughts and words. I swear to you, it’s not a mental trick. I know this sounds crazy, but these-these thoughts that appear in my mind did not come from me. They came from God.”
“Brigid. The day I first saw you huddled in the front pew at St. Paul’s, hugging yourself, I knew there was something very”-he searched for a word-“godly about you,” he said. “I believe you hear from God. It has happened before to others who believe in Him. Tell me more.”
I told James about my God-given visions of the killing field and of Father Delahanty, about the multitude of birds and about the burning sea. But I didn’t tell him that only moments ago, God had put three words into my mind: Be with James.
I said, “He has told me to live my life to the full extent of it. That He can’t watch out for all of us all of the time. We have to take responsibility…”
My voice trailed off, and then James was saying, “How many lives did you save in that emergency room in South Sudan, Brigid? How many lives in Germany?”
“I never counted.”
“In your heart, have you done your best for the people you’ve touched?”
“I don’t know. Yes. I believe I have.”
“God has forgiven you-if there was ever anything to forgive. Can you forgive yourself? Can you love yourself as God loves you?”
I blurted, “I have feelings for you, James. And you’re a priest.”
He said, “Oh.”
He enfolded me in his arms, and I hugged him fiercely back, pressing my face to his jacket, not daring to lift my eyes and my lips to him. He held me for a long time before saying, “Do you trust me to get us safely out of these woods?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’ve never made this trip in the dark before. With the help of God and a little moonlight, let’s give it a try.”
Chapter 86
I SHOWERED while James prepared dinner, and as I stood under the tepid spray, I thought about my vision while walking through the woods.
I had been passing through the trees and the trees had been passing through me, which seemed to mean that I was part of the woods, and maybe the world, as they were part of me. Moving through the living forest spoke to me of my passage through time and perhaps eternal passage and unity with all things.
I washed my hair and meditated on Be with James, which God had said in the same way I remembered him saying Be with Colin when Colin was dead. And still, in that vision, Colin had spoken to me.
I wondered now if Be with Colin and Be with James were ways of saying Be.