Enlightenment

by Sarah Perry

Keep it in mind,” he said, “perhaps that’s the best any of us can do: to never be so ashamed we must hide our faces not only from each other, but from God. How, I have no idea. You must work that out for yourself, either in the pew or out of it!”

Then the roving sunlight struck the disks of yellow glass fixed in the windows by the pulpit, and refracting down at the ordained degree lit the surface of the water in the baptistery. So Grace Macaulay, turning with unmet hope toward the closing door, entered the shining pool not with the look of falling but of something headed for the sun, and the body of the sinner was lost to unmerited light.

“Then what do you believe now?” She laughed, and saw his responding gleam, and was grateful. “If I wake up convinced there’s no God,” she said, “I’ll find him by lunchtime. But if I go to bed and pray for the salvation of my soul, I’ll know I’ve got no soul to save by breakfast.”