Immaculate

by Anna McGahan

I am not sure I could ever forgive Lucas for loving the Bible more than me and Neve. And that’s the difference, isn’t it? If he had loved God more than Scripture, perhaps it would have all flowed on. Maybe I could have tasted his tenderness and sacrifice, accessed his vulnerability and strength. Maybe I could have loved him, and he could have loved me. But instead we dutifully loved the same old collection of poems and stories and diary entries and receipts, bound together and called ‘biblical law’, and assumed that this shared love meant marriage. The Bible gave me the boundaries I wanted, and it gave him the purpose he lacked, as if somehow the scrunched-up notes of floundering humans might translate to the infallible blueprint of life. It showed us the truth about a handful of lives, no doubt about it – but that truth is ugly. That truth states that life is absurdly difficult and death is inevitable – even for God. That we will look for God everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, except exactly where we are. And wherever we hurt most, is the place that God will be. If God were to exist, of course.