Private Rites

by Julia Armfield

Irene finished the wine, accepted a glass of something stronger, and explained that she was writing her thesis on Christianity and silence, on the concept of a God who said nothing. God to me is something remote, a force that speaks through other people, and I think I’m starting to find that really depressing. Jude looked at her, and Irene felt a pleasurable sting of something, a vibration like a fingertip set against a string. Why depressing? Jude asked, and Irene shrugged, touched a knuckle to the rim of her glass, and made a circle. I think I’m just getting bogged down in how lonely it is, or how much I want to be spoken to, or something. In the Old Testament, God’s constantly rabbiting on, you can’t get through two verses without him giving orders to someone or setting up some ridiculous test or going on about himself. But then after the Apocrypha he clams up and you don’t really hear from him again. He retreats into this upper echelon of heaven like when a person gets really famous and it’s impossible to get through to them anymore. It makes everything more the job of an interpreter, and it makes us more reliant on angels and secondhand information and what people think it is God’s saying. I think I’ve started finding that difficult, or sad, or something, I don’t know why. And obviously that’s before you even get onto the more crucial question of what’s the point of further education, end time or no. Jude nodded, looking at her in an even way. So are you very into God...