Goodly

“If you take into account—” Anela Corrant began.

“If you take into account they’ve never been introduced to the ideas,” Bernene Bascomb finished.

“Right.”

“If you view the fact that regular, good-natured, All-American people who never got a whiff, never got especially a complete introduction, and a proper one….” Anela pondered.

“But just think of the ones who were immersed in it and the turned away or went to a fraudulent version of it….” Bernene suggested.

The two women walked in the snow to the New Sweden University lecture hall. The snow rapidly melted as the sun seemed warmer and the temperature rose to the sixties.

“I don’t know. I grew up under the belief of the unknown and unknowable. I truly believed it up and down. Swore by it. I sort of understand where they are. If I was still in that life I’d say a contradictory statement,” Anela pointed out.

Bernene sighed. “I must confess…I was in the same mold. I did all of the ‘religious’ things, too. It’s better to say faith. All of it. I really believed in all of it from the beginning to end, I really relied on the Word as my refuge and my strength. I wanted to understand the faith so bad that it pained me when I tore away from it. Before that, there was a period of ambivalence. I wanted this new light but the dying, dimming one felt warmer somehow. I was used to it. I knew it. It was there to comfort and hold me in the midst of my test. I knew I had to practice a set of ideas that would overpower the set of beliefs I was taught since an infant. You were, too. But these ideas…they just torched everything I was taught. They warranted me changing everything about my walk and talk, just like the system of faith had done, and what they always preach. They say to be transformed…caught up in the faith. I can definitely say that I’m reborn…just not the way we’re used to feeling!”

“Now, that’s a powerful testimony. I love using the old language in our new form. A prayer is more like meditation or contemplation. Here we can pour new wine into old casks. They won’t shatter because we’ve fortified the glass. We know better. The signs are on our side in all of this. We’re tied to the ideas thst corresponded to nature and reality. We truly know better now.”

“These are facts you speak,” Bernene said robotically. They both laughed. They trekked into the hall. It was stifling. The heat still blasted despite the outside temperatures. They were bundled up as well, they shed their winter clothes.

“This is going to be…..” Bernene started.

“Enlightening, enticing. exciting!” Anela replied.

The speaker took to the lectern.

“Good afternoon, students. I know you came to hear a lecture in the ideas that we have been discussing these past few months. I’m here to challange all of them.”

The women looked at each other. Their furrowed brows painted a picture of confusion and misunderstanding. Gasps arose around the hall.

The professor made a motion of tamping or simmering down with her hands.

“Now I know a great deal of you have shifted your entire lives based on the words I have spoken up here. Forget them all.”

A few students got up and walked out of the hall, including Bernene and Anela.

“What the hell was that?”

“What the hell was that?” Anela repeated.

“We spend months covering this good material then she turns on us like that?”

“I’m dropping the course.”

“I’m going to DIT.”