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The Spiritual Life

November 1999

Re-Creation

By Rev. Michael Lee Burgess

I went on four whole days of vacation. Four in a row in fact., over a weekend too. And some people wonder what happens when I go out of town, so I thought I would share with you my time away. I went to the Mile Hi Science Fiction Convention 31 in Denver Colorado, where I have been their Art Auctioneer for 18+ years (I can't quite remember that far back). For the last two years I have also provided a Communion Service on Sunday morning for people at the convention. It is a challenge, because I never know who is coming or their background. Many who come have never attended Christian worship, or at least a United Methodist version of it. But this year I had help. The author guest of honor of the convention was Lois McMaster Bujold who I have loved for years, and her Shards Of Honor was the perfect canvas to illuminate this weeks scripture from Matthew 22:37, 39 "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind... ...You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'" How do you love all the time? How do you keep that same mind that was in Jesus active in yourself? It is an attitude, a focus, a mindset of compassion toward everyone around you and yourself. I found it acted out by Cordelia Naismith and Aral Vorkosigan, heroine and hero of Shards of Honor in a most difficult situation, in the middle of a culture frozen in war. It is that attitude that makes possible the redemption of a people lost chasing dreams of glory, a returning of true honor to a people who have forgotten its meaning. People much like our own, but in a different place and setting. Ms. Bujold said that as she was writing her last novel she finally discovered the difference between plot and theme. The theme running through all her Vorkosigan novels is redemption (healing love acted out). A wonderful example is at the end of Shards Of Honor in the "Aftermaths". A medtech and a pilot are recovering the dead for burial or shipment home after the battle (and now quoting from pages 205-208, Test of Honor with Ms. Bujold's understanding).

"She took the processing one step further, by cleaning the Barrayaran's clothes and carefully re-dressing him, before bagging him and returning him to the freeze.

"The Barrayarans are all so army-mad," she explained. "I always like to put them back in their uniforms. They mean so much to them, I'm sure they're more comfortable with them on."

Ferrell frowned uneasily. "I still think he ought to be dumped with the rest of the garbage."

"Not at all," said the medtech. "Think of all the work he represents on somebody's part. Nine months of pregnancy, childbirth, two years of diapering, and that's just the beginning. Tens of thousands of meals, thousands of bedtimes stories, years of school. Dozens of teachers. And all that military training, too. A lot of people went into making him."

She smoothed a strand of the corpse's hair into place. "That head held the universe, once. He had a good rank for his age," she added, rechecking her monitor. "Thirty-two. Commander Aristede Vorkalloner. It has a kind of nice ethnic ring. Very Barrrayaranish, that name. Vor, too, one of those warrior-class fellows."

"Homicidal-class loonies. Or worse," Ferrel said automatically. But his vehemence had lost momentum, somehow.

Boni shrugged. "Well, he's joined the great democracy now. And he had nice pockets."

Three full days went by with no further alarms but a rare scattering of mechanical debris. Ferrell began to hope the Barrayaran was the last pick-up they would have to make. They were nearing the end of their search pattern. Besides, he thought resentfully, this duty was sabotaging the efficiency of his sleep cycle. But the medtech made a request.

"If you don't mind, Falco," she said, "I'd greatly appreciate it if we could run the (search) pattern out just a few extra turns. The original orders are based on this average estimated trajectory speed, you see, and if someone just happened to get a bit of extra kick when the ship split, they could well be beyond it by now."

Ferrel was less than thrilled, but the prospect of an extra day of piloting had its attractions, and he gave a grudging consent. Her reasoning proved itself; before the day was half done, they turned up another gruesome relic.

"Oh," muttered Ferrell, when they got a close look. It had been a female officer. Boni reeled her in with enormous tenderness. He didn't really want to watch, this time, but he medtech seemed to have come to expect him.

"I - don't really want to look at a woman blown up," he tried to excuse himself.

"Mm," said Tersa. "Is it fair, though, to reject a person just because they're dead? You wouldn't have minded her body a bit when she was alive."

He laughed a little macabrely. "Equal rights for the dead?"

Her smile twisted. "Why not? Some of my best friends are corpses."

He snorted.

She grew more serious. "I'd - sort of like the company, on this one." So he took up his usual station by the door.

The medtech laid the thing that had been a woman upon her table, undressed, inventoried, washed, and straightened it. When she finished she kissed the dead lips.

"Oh, God," cried Ferrell, shocked and nauseated. "You are crazy! You're a damn, damn necrophiliac! A lesbian necrophiliac, at that!" He turned to go.

"Is that what it looks like, to you?" Her voice was soft, and still unoffended. It stopped him, and he looked over his shoulder. She was looking at him as gently as if he had been one of her precious corpses. "What a strange world you must live in, inside your head."

She opened a suitcase, and shook out a dress, fine underwear, and a pair of white embroidered slippers. A wedding dress, Ferrell realized. This woman was a bona fide psychopath...

She dressed the corpse, and arranged its soft dark hair with great delicacy, before bagging it.

"I believe I shall place her next to the nice tall Barrayaran," she said. "I think they would have liked each other very well, if they could have met in another place and time....

She completed the label. Ferrell's battered mind was sending him little subliminal messages; he struggled to overcome his shock and bemusement, and pay attention. It tumbled into the open day of his consciousness with a start.

She had not run an identification check on this one.

Out the door, he told himself, is the way you want to walk. I guarantee it. Instead, timorously, he went over to the corpse and checked the label.

Ensign Sylva Boni, it said. Age twenty. His own age...

He was trembling, as if with cold. It was cold, in that room. Tersa Boni finished packing up the suitcase, and turned back with the float pallet.

"Daughter?" he asked. It was all he could ask.

She pursed her lips, and nodded.

"It's - a helluva coincidence."

"No coincidence at all. I asked for this sector."

"Oh." He swallowed, turned away, turned back, face flaming. "I'm sorry I said-"

She smiled her slow sad smile, "Never mind."

They found yet one more bit of mechanical debris, so agreed to run another cycle of the search spiral, to be sure that all possible trajectories had been outdistanced. And yes, they found another; a nasty one, spinning fiercely, guts split open from some great blow and hanging out in a frozen cascade.

The acolyte of death did her dirty work without once so much as wrinkling her nose. When it came to the washing, the least technical of the tasks, Ferrell said suddenly, "May I help?"

"Certainly," said the medtech, moving aside. "An honor is not diminished for being shared."

And so he did, as shy as an apprentice saint washing his first leper.

"Don't be afraid," she said. "The dead cannot hurt you. They give you no pain, except that of seeing your own death in their faces. And one can face that, I find."

Yes, he thought, the good face pain. But the great - they embrace it."

You shall love the Lord your God... yes we can face pain and death, for the love that is God, the mind of Christ, can be in us now and in the life to come. God is all around us. Redemption is calling with aching tenderness for us to come into that love, that our worlds might be the same as God's, inside our minds where we live.

This was my vacation, my re-creation, I hope you enjoyed sharing it with me,

Your brother-in-Christ, Reverend Michael Lee Burgess

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