A clergyman spends a great deal of his life bound within the pages of books. The libraries of the ages are available for us to study, to take instruction and erect the scaffold of our senses. Sometimes a book will be forthright in its wickedness, so much so that its words might march right up to you and slap you right in your reading face. It can peel your eyelids back until they sting with fear and horror. In other books, that which slides and slithers between the pretty lines can fester in our souls, feeding us a truth like a slow growing tumour.
When I was a boy, barely a teen, I would rummage through my grandfather’s books. He was long dead but the scatterings of his belongings could be found in old desk drawers or boxes in the attic. He had books on every conceivable subject: science, crime, history, religion. There was a stack of Bibles whose pages I would explore on a whim, whatever verse they might fall open on. One of them fell open on a page where a slip of old paper, pocked with age, hid within. It was a page from a periodical, filled with poems, invited and published. My grandfather’s name nestled beneath one of the verses, a pastoral effort, praising nature. I found more. Loose scribbled pages, complete magazines, newspaper sections faded to parchment. He had enough poems for me to transcribe into a tidy chapbook. I wanted to add my piece to his rhymes of flowers, sunlight and natural beauty. I drew an illustration to go with each, photocopied them, bound them and shared copies with my parents, aunts and uncles. Many years later, long gone from the seminary and moving belongings from my parent’s house, I found one of my childish little publications, a bit squashed and creased but still intact. I opened it. The words were the same but I could read between the lines now. I had seen enough of the world at this stage to recognise what he was really saying. I could smell a lie. The page of the Bible I had first found his poem tucked into should have given me a clue but I was young and blind back then.
John 5:19 “We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.”
My illustrations had learned, though. Rammed into that book for so many years, they grew to understand what he was telling between his lines of pretty rhymes. The tall, yellow daffodils and daisies I had drawn now hung low, as dark slugs sucked holes from their petals. My woodland creatures stared through bloodshot eyes at their own deformed bodies and the bodies of others they had clawed to shreds. I was becoming one of them too, pressed between the bitter pages of the world.