Numinous

By Jeffrey C McAndrew

This is a novel about a minister’s struggle with his own faith. It’s also a story about the battle within all of us to maintain consistency and integrity of character during life’s toughest times. In the book, Pastor Nathan Simone becomes increasingly more skeptical of the strict rules of organized religion and questions “why he is playing this game.” He enjoys helping others but feels more and more caught in the grips of a troubling ethical crisis fueled by church politics. To help him through his journey he sees visions, the spirits representing the battle between love and truth. The pastor believes that the inspiring visions come directly from God. God teaches him that our current conceptions of reality are far off from what really exists and that one needs to be infinitely humble and retain a vibrant wonder about life “like a young child gazing at the stars in the night sky.” It slowly dawns on our main character that religion may be less divinely inspired and more of a creation of mankind. The story also contains a surprise conclusion that the reader may not expect.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781532074295

Jeffrey C McAndrew

Jeffrey McAndrew is an award-winning author of three books, one work of non-fiction and two works of fiction. His first book, “Our Brown-Eyed Boy”(2003), helped many families of special needs children, closely examining Jeff’s family’s unique struggle with the poignant challenges created by having an autistic son. Jeff’s second book “A Conscientious Life”, is a work of fiction and focusses on politics, religion and autism. Jeffrey is a former award-winning broadcast journalist who worked for several radio stations in the midwest during a 19-year career. Jeff also won the 2005 “Oshkosh North High School Hall of Fame Award” for his accomplishments as an author and broadcaster. He is a singer/songwriter with one published CD of original songs entitled “The Miracle Is Ours” (2014). Jeff currently resides in North Fond du Lac, Wisconsin with his wife Debbie.

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Copyright © 2018 Jeffrey C. McAndrew.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. [Biblica]

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-7428-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-7429-5 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 05/10/2019

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1     The Pastor’s Private Thoughts

Chapter 2     The Immense Weight of the World

Chapter 3     The Challenge

Chapter 4     Repentance

Chapter 5     The First Ghost

Chapter 6     The First Sermon

Chapter 7     The Second Ghost

Chapter 8     The Trial

Chapter 9     Nathan’s Moment of Truth

Chapter 10   It Happened Again at The Mars

Coffee Shop

Chapter 11   The Unitarians

Chapter 12   Ingathering Sunday

Chapter 13   Peace Of Mind

Epilogue

Book Club Study Questions

INTRODUCTION

This book represents a brand-new direction for me as an author. It is a deep exploration of a man’s quest for a more liberal faith and it’s my modest attempt to explain, through a novel, the confusion at the heart of any belief system. Through my main character, a conflicted minister, many philosophical questions are deeply pondered. I believe spirituality can be sought and manifested in many different and creative ways, ways not always conforming to conventional definitions and requirements.

I believe this shows through clearly in the book. How one organizes one’s own faith foundation can be an arduous and almost unbearable challenge. I believe there are many ways to have faith and hope and that there are many different directions we can take for the answers to the big questions in our own lives.

One of my favorite authors, Dan Brown, once remembered that when he was a child, he was very perplexed with the contradictions arising from science and religion. He had a very inquisitive mind and once asked a priest about which story is truer, The Big Bang or Adam and Eve, and the priest responded, Nice boys don’t ask those kinds of questions. That made him want to question more. Brown also stated in a recent interview that he tried to make his books taste like ice cream but have the nutrition of vegetables.

It may soon become apparent that I don’t have the writing skills of Dan Brown and people may get a significant quantity of vegetables from me. Eat your peas! My book may not be something that grabs your attention but rather grows on you very slowly. I admit that this is a very different kind of book. There are heavy themes of freethinking and spiritual uncertainty carefully integrated into the book, but I want to emphasize strongly that I have great respect for anyone who has reverence for a creator or a God and I don’t think it is anyone’s business to intentionally disturb anyone else’s stable spiritual world view.

With the onset of almost exponential technological change and information sharing in this modern world of ours, the ways in which we practice faith will have to change. Artificial intelligence and technology, for example, will create profound challenges for the faith community in the not-so-distant future.

It is my hope that we can make these needed transitions in the most humane and compassionate ways possible, always remembering the greatest commandment of Jesus, Love one another. Faith will always exist, and should exist, even in radically different forms.

I am as concerned as the Christian author C.S. Lewis was, that a world of pure materialism could lead to a dangerous sense of determinism. Lewis was very worried about reducing world views to actions, emotions and perceptions to pre-existing physical causes all the way back to The Big Bang. Lewis found this to be a narrow and frightening world view, one that does not have to appeal to a supernatural source. God would not be required to explain or define origin, meaning, ethics or diversity.

I am deeply concerned about this bottom dropping out phenomenon with technological change happening at breakneck speed. There is a real danger that this important sense of moreness would be lost with a purely mechanistic or reductionistic view of the world. I believe appreciation for the infinite value of life must always be paramount. I strongly feel that we must save our connection with the spiritual at all costs, otherwise we are doomed.

Numinous represents a new direction in writing for me, different than the theme of autism which dominated my first two books. Author Phillip Roth once told an audience, You write differently in each book. It may appear to be similar to readers, but you’re a different writer in each book because you haven’t approached that subject before. And every subject brings out a different prose strain in you. Fundamentally, yes, you’re contained as one writer. But you have various voices.

I hope that my novel will spur new and important questions about faith, truth, beauty and love. Roth also reveals this kind of open mindedness when he says that it is important to be freed from a narrow perspective on life and to be lured into imaginative sympathy with a fully developed narrative of view not my own.

In his book To Love and To Be Loved, author and philosopher Sam Keen told us the quality of our lives can be judged by the questions we ask. He instructed us to trust what moves us most deeply. The science versus religion debate moves me deeply and this passion, I believe, is reflected in my book. There are so many awe-inspiring questions to ponder in this amazing world of ours. I believe it is immensely important to always retain a powerful sense of wonder about life.

The late Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Updike once told Charlie Rose that the foundation of a great writer is the strong belief that one has something important to say. I believe Numinous has something important to say. My best hope for this book is that it takes on a positively poignant, vivid and bright significance, that it will be story that will get people to think in new and creative ways about spirituality. I also hope the book carries with it a sense of timelessness.

Love is like infinity: You can’t have more or less infinity, and you can’t compare two things to see if they’re equally infinite. Infinity just is, and that’s the way I think love is, too.

Fred Rogers

CHAPTER ONE

THE PASTOR’S PRIVATE THOUGHTS

There was soft glowing light coming from the window, as the sun was seeking a place below the horizon. The illumination of twilight is now reflecting off the pastor’s solemn unshaven face.

The minister sat at his desk quietly, chastising himself for some of the things that he had said, meant to say or did or didn’t follow through with. He knows intimately that the world is full of contradictions and folks not achieving their true potential.

The pastor is thinking that he doesn’t want to be impure like the world. Confused by his own tears, he knows he is, as the Bible says, looking through a glass darkly. Tears are falling onto his desk one by one. It is what he doesn’t know which troubles him most deeply. There are people saying things and meaning another, politicians promising things in campaigns and never following through, childhood idols turning corrupt, loved ones with hidden agendas.

There were the Greens who left church, apparently because of one Facebook comment they thought that the pastor had endorsed. Pastor often thinks about these things and how he fits in. He thinks about the meaning of his church friendships and how petty people can be. Was he merely like the world, with all the awful contradictions and imperfections? He is worried about how imperfect humanity really is. Was there a reason why he was suddenly weighted down with severe doubts about his job and his purpose? Was this his true calling?

Questions plagued the pastor’s mind. Words from a popular song flooded his consciousness. That’s me in the spotlight, losing my religion. Trying to keep up with you. He felt like he was being constantly assaulted by an avalanche of doubt. He couldn’t stop the pain. Had his entire life been a lie? Pastor Nathan Simone put his head in his hands and sobbed more intensely.

Our story starts in a church, within the city limits of a place called Winston, Wisconsin. Winston owns a unique political history. About 100 years ago, a major and quite brutal labor struggle resulted in a confrontation between police and labor leaders and 11 people were killed. The example of Winston’s Cranston Mill tragedy is still used in the speeches of many labor advocates to underline the profound importance of worker’s rights and the inalienable rights of all citizens.

Winston is also unique when it comes to faith communities. The town has the most Lutherans and Unitarians per capita in the country, and an astounding percentage of the city of 59,000 attends a church of some kind. Elections have been interesting in the town because there are so many extreme conservatives and extreme liberals with vastly different world views casting ballots. A smattering of Catholics and Methodists make up the rest of the town’s church goers.

Why the strangely large number of Unitarians? William James Sealy brought hundreds of Unitarians with him after a huge faith march and demonstrations with Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s. He also was the leader of a nationally-known camp for children of Unitarian families in rural Winston for dozens of years.

He and his followers built Winston Unitarian Society along a beautiful riverbank on the edge of town. A statue of Sealy still stands at the city/county government center. Sealy was also a great philanthropist.

Winston has four Lutheran churches, two out of the four being the conservative Wisconsin Synod. A humble preacher of the Missouri Synod sits with growing agitation at his desk at Christ Lutheran Church. He contemplates the meaning of his life and what his church experience means to him. He is 53 years old.

Father Simone also experiences a poignant sense of aloneness in his office, as he is currently most frustrated by a profoundly looming lack of connection with the people of his church. Lately, he has had trouble connecting people on the political left with people on the political right, struggling to bridge this growing divide between the two sides.

Pastor Nathan reaches for a steaming cup of coffee. He’s been reading this book, where the author makes a case that the poet and the scientist can be united to make the world a better place. The minister was thinking deeply about the assertion. The themes were heavy, but some seemed like forbidden thoughts.

Nathan was beginning to see Christ Lutheran reflecting Winston’s increasing liberal/conservative split. There was such political division in the world and in his church. Our pastor sometimes has trouble picking up on social cues that some other people catch onto much more quickly. That could be part of the problem, he thought. It was something he could not explain. This existential aloneness was difficult to articulate. He was trying to figure out how love and truth could save the world.

Could the answer be found in glassy-eyed idealism or cold realism? This strange emptiness within him could be from a need for redemption and grace in his life or perhaps a need for something far deeper. He didn’t really know, but sometimes the loneliness was very intense.

There was not a sound except for the whirring of an antiquated ventilation system in the building. Nathan sat quietly as he replayed the highlights of a recent sermon in his mind. Intimate with these innermost thoughts, the pastor sometimes felt a bit imprisoned by them. There were weekly worries about the need for a new church organ Ms. Bombeck had been badgering him about for a couple of years.

There was the intense psychological toll of empathizing with personal tragedies from many, including 35-year-old Stanley Kogwell’s cancer, a young church member killed in the war in the Middle East and Mr. and Mrs.Dancer’s divorce after 47 years of marriage. They were both in his office crying uncontrollably. It was almost unbearable. The church gossipers could stir up quite a whirlwind of trouble sometimes, including Ms. Ford and Ms. Pinchion who both felt that Nathan’s gestures looked more like a TV preacher, and we don’t need any of that around here.

There was Ms. Branbee, who seemed to enjoy sharing intimate details of the love lives of the more colorful members of the church congregation. Sometimes the pastor thought of himself as the ringleader of a large circus full of offbeat characters.

The pastor did get somewhat over-animated with his sermons sometimes and he would ad-lib a few lines here and there. He was also complimented on many occasions about how genuine people thought he was, that he was actually speaking from his heart, and not reading from a script.

The purpose of life type questions produced the most anxiety right now. Nathan wondered if what he was saying was resonating with the flock or whether he was just playing a game of some kind. Was the Bible truly where all the answers could be found?

The most recent sermon was entitled: Knowing Jesus in Our Life. During his latest talk, he saw a lot of nodding heads and affirming glances. The pastor observed that kind of body language every Sunday, but were the people truly being helped in their lives? He felt significant warmth coming from the people in attendance, but were some people merely going through the motions because they thought they were supposed to? Were the people sensing this Agape and deep acceptance of Jesus they were supposed to feel? Did he as a pastor intimately know the prince of peace or was he just playing a part in a play?

Shakespeare claimed that all the world was only a stage we were merely players upon it. Sometimes Nathan began to doubt that he was this magic medium to the Lord. Was this just a delusion? Nathan was full of questions. An unexamined life is not worth living. Someone famous said that.

A lot of well-meaning and decent people attended every Sunday at Christ Lutheran Church. Mrs. Irma Gladstein had approached the pastor many times after his sermon sharing about how she was so inspired by positive words like hope, love and faith. Irma was a gentle person and lived her life with a quiet confidence, certain that there was a good God out there looking after her. Her world view was very comforting. Irma had been a secretary at Agoras Manufacturing for 47 years and was a very reliable employee. She would also bring the pastor blueberry or chocolate muffins every Tuesday and Irma and the pastor would have warm conversations mostly about family and love.

The pastor was certain many of the elderly people in the congregation were very fond of him, but he knew he had to keep his sermons fresh, especially to retain the younger ones in the church. He must keep his topics timely but also remain within the strict confines of the Missouri Synod rules, to agree to teach in harmony with the Book of Concord because it teaches and faithfully