Some Impossible Light

When I floated the idea of a pandemic novel (it’s been many years since I’ve written fiction), many of you were very encouraging. Now halfway through the newly released, The Book of Longings by Sue Monk-Kidd, I am reinspired again at the power of fiction to tell us the truth about God, ourselves, the world, and what hangs in the balance.

So with no guarantees that I’ll carry on or that I’ll post the progress here, I wanted to share with you a bit of a beginning: the seeds of Dr. Harper who’s theological imagination helps remake the world, Liam Macclean whose gentility is nearly his undoing and Stephanie, his mother, who finds in great loss the possibility of herself fully alive.

Would welcome your comments and your thoughts.

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Part I: The Last Illusions

For 5000 years mystics of all stripes have written to us about the wisdom of silence. And yet, for all those same years, up until these last, we have rushed to fill our ears and the world between them with the cacophony. Human beings’ primary contribution to the planet is noise in all its varieties: visual, auditory, chemical, aerosol, and everything in between. We who were commissioned to be caretakers by the I AM have been polluters, viral destroyers of worlds.

And yet, the Earth, our Mother, has recommissioned us. We have been brought to our knees by her powers, just as we were on the brink of slitting her throat. We are called again by a murmur, a tormented hiss through the world that somehow sounds above our noise. The truth is coming to us in a whisper on the wind.

Many among us, myself included, held onto frail hopes that 2020 was the beginning of our waking sight. We had a great wish that millennia of trend could be upturned in a instance. I stood there in Grant Park at the Celebration of Reopening. I stood there as politicians and power brokers promised we had learned our lessons and that “The Great Pause,” as we called it at the time, would reattune our culture to the rhythms from which we were borne.

But we have always loved the rhythmic hum of unnatural sounds: the purr of machines, the pump-pump-pump of progress. Nature’s syncopation, it’s cyclical music, has always called us to a deeper magic, but we have preferred the noise.

As we dawn on the third threat of this kind, as we stare down the promise of thousands more dead among us, as we re-convince ourselves that this time it will be different, the cacophony rises again. The chorus of our self-delusion, the obsessive march of bodies toward the imbalanced loss of the most vulnerable.

Though Sophia whispers in the wind,

Though our Mother speaks in silence,

Though I AM will not be found in the storm,

We whip up the noise again.

I say this will all the love I can, the times will not be different until we are.

Excerpt from “The Cacophony” by Dr. Meredith Bridges-Harper

Published September 23, 2025 in The New Yorker, two days after the outbreak of Covid-25

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Dying is a waltz and living the two-step. Most of us find the two incompatible.

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22 May 2031 - Cedar Rapids

Go to hell, Liam.

“Go to hell, Liam.” Charlotte was in no mood for his silver linings.

He met her contempt with silence, a strategy he had unknowingly been practicing for sometime with reasonable success. He turned away from his device and stared out the window. He’d opened it in the hopes that some early evening breeze would clear out the closeness that had settled into the indoor air, but to no avail. His vintage One Direction T-shirt clinging to his shoulder blades.

Charlotte was no friend of silence, and true to her personality, broke it like a hammer on glass. “You’re pouting.”

“I’m not, actually.” His response was quick but unabrasive.

“You are, stop pretending.”

“I’m neither pretending, nor pouting. ‘Go to hell’ is out of bounds and you know it.”

“I’m sorry,” her voice was smooth and untimbered, leaving lots of space to question its authenticity. Liam let the space linger, knowing it would force her to continue.

“I’m sorry I lashed out at you. I’m sorry I told you to go to hell. Besides hell is where we are.”

“That’s what I’m talking about.” His weariness at her feelings showed. “This doesn’t have to be hell. We’ve been here before. Lots of times.”

“But we weren’t supposed to be here again,” she dove in. This debate was old between them, as old as any debate between two eighteen-year-olds could be.

“Supposed to? By what standard? Which talking head promised you that? I don’t like to think of you as gullible, Charley, but when you talk like this, it’s hard not to think you’re decended from sno-cone buying Eskimos.” Liam spoke with a lyricism that belied his age. His word count went up when Charlotte was fully under his skin.

She chimed back, “I don’t like to think of you as defeatist, but trying to tell me that ‘this is the way things are and we just need to adjust’ isn’t helping your cause.”

“I don’t think being honest about the return to Protocol and trying to make the most of it makes me defeatist. It makes me realistic. I simply don’t understand why you want to dwell on some fantasy. Use that giant beautiful ball of energy you are to adjust and move on.” He knew “beautiful” would difuse her, but only temporarily. It’s effects were more startling than he’d planned.

She started to cry. Hard. Her midnight black curls falling across her face as body started to shake with sobs.

“Don’t, Charley, please, don’t. I can’t handle this. Not right now.” Her tears always threw him off-center, but the inability to embrace her in consolation was more than he could bear. Charlotte Davis was more than just a high school sweetheart to him. She was the anchor to his wandering ship. Despite her idiosyncracies, her verbal explosions, her ability to wish heaven into existence, he needed her in way that felt dangerous and unreconcilable.

His willful optimism aside, the announcement of the return to Protocol due to the spread rate of the latest virus had everyone on edge, including him. Prom was supposed to be next week and graduation three weeks later. He’d never seen a Protocol last less than 30 days, so both of those were out the window. The Class of ‘31 was not the first to miss their graduation, they would be the fifth, but some troubles seem like no big deal until their yours.

“I wish I could hold your hand.”

She turned her face back to her device screen.

“That’s what I’m saying, Liam. Yes, I’m pissed you’ll never see me in my prom dress. Yes, I’m in shock that there’ll be no Senior party, no caps and gowns, no nothing. But I’m scared, too. What if Protocol lasts into the fall? What happens then?

“What happens if this is forever? What happens if year-after-year, winter-after-winter, the Novel-C’s go on forever?”

“Well, then we’ll face it together.”

Charlotte let out a deep sigh. She grabbed a nearby pillowcase and wiped the tears from her eyes. For immesurable minutes they just stared at each other’s titanium-framed faces.

“Liam, Noah, dinner!” Stephanie Macclean’s voice roared up the stairs, calling her sons down at 6pm, as was her fashion.

Charlotte broke into a smile. “You’re mom is unreal. She still holds nightly dinner like she’s Mrs. Cleaver. She is time-warped from another world.”

“She is the way she is, I guess,” Liam responded with his own familiar crooked grin, left dimple sinking in like Grand Canyon itself. “I gotta go.”

“I know. I love you.”

“Me, too.” Liam watched as Charlotte’s finger tapping sent a dozen or so heart emojis to his screen before his smile deepend and he tapped the red phone.

He headed out into the hallway to make his way down the stairs to what would surely be a full-spread meal stretched across the dining room table before he was intercepted by his brother.

Noah Dalton Macclean was 6’4” of solid muscle. A physically imposing figure by any calculation, he was also a certifiable genius. He was among the first graduates of Pepperdine’s pilot Bachel0r-Masters distance learning package, completing it in just 3.5 years. Noah could have walked his December Commencement in Malibu, but opted not to. Given that everything else about his MBA program had been delivered through screens, why fly halfway across the country to shake the hands of people he’d never met and never see again?

Pepperdine’s career development office strongly encouraged graduates to attend the weeklong processional of events and celebrations, claiming the networking benefits for newly minted graduates. One wondered whether it was more to inaugurate them into the University’s alumni (fundraising) programs. Regardless, Noah was immune to sentimentality. He’d acquired a prestigious paid internship at the Transamerica headquarters down the road, and Lord knew that Stephanie and Travis (as he called them) weren’t going to kick him out.

More money to save as far as he saw it. Not that he knew what he’d do with all he’d squirreled away. Noah had inherited his father’s frugality without his generosity, making the young virile man seem miserly by comparison.

Liam saw himself as generally athletic, but he was a frail specimen next to his older brother, a differential Noah was happy to exploit.

“What’s up, bitch?” Noah smirked as they met in the hall. “How’s the beloved Charley?”

“She’s fine,” he stammered. “I mean, I guess as fine as she can be considering the circumstances.”

“Oh, she’s pouting about Protocol?”

“I wouldn’t say, ‘pouting’.” The irony that Noah’s accusation of Charley’s mirrored her accusation of Liam only moments before was not lost on Liam. Emotions were running high again as everyone was readjusting to being caged in. Diverse opinions about whose feelings were well-calibrated to the sitution would ensue.

“I can’t believe she was crying about Prom,” Noah’s taunts continued as they moved down the stairs in single file.

“Who said she was crying about Prom?”

“The walls aren’t that thick, Liam. Use your earbuds next time if you don’t want me to eavesdrop.”

“Or you could get an apartment like a normal person?” Liam taunted carefully, avoiding a physcial altercation was a high prioirty. Not just for his personal safety but because of the rage it would trigger in his mother.

“Why would I do that?” Noah smiled with faux-incredulity. “Not when we’ve got unlimited dining and cleaning services here.”

“I heard that, son. Your mother is neither your cook nor your maid.” Travis sat at the oak dining table with little Mabel Macclean sitting on his lap.

“Daddy says I get to finish Kindergarten at home and Ms. Trolley is going to send me videos to watch. Do you get to finish high school at home, too, Liam?”

Mabel’s interruption had produced a timely topic change for Noah. He had always been cavalier about what was owed him from his parents, but their seasons of Protocol together had only exacerbated his expectations. Stephanie, while a strict disciplinarian, found herself most comfortable in a maternal role more befitting a different century. She didn’t care for her eldest son’s entitlements and her husband cared for them even less, but a battle of wills over dinner was last on her to-do list today.

Liam crossed from the staircase to caress his sister’s pin-straight strawberry blonde lockes. “Yes, Mabe. I’m going to finish high school at home. It’s gonna be great.” He smiled a big toothy grin.

The truth was that each time they’d had to quarantine from school, the district had gotten better and better at delivering the lessons and exams. Of course improvements in technology since Covid-19 and Q20 had helped immensely, but it was more than that. Federal officials had finally acquiesced to education delivery being hybridized between home and instituional delivery. While many legislators were still holding out hope that they’d seen the last Novel-C, such things had not yet come to pass.

Instead, more and more families had opted to full-time homeschool or join neighborhood co-ops. The well-funded disctricts (like Cedar Rapids Unified) had diverse programs to integrate homeschool with state sponsored learning, and families like the Maccleans who still were 100% public schooled were increasingly rare. At least in Liam’s small world.

Travis had always taught them that the most valuable thing in the world was a choice. “Hold on to them like gold,” he said. “And spend them with care.” The Maccleans accumulated options like some families store up memories, and Liam, for all his sensitivities, couldn’t imagine a world where such things were in short supply.

“Alright, alright. Everyone sit, before everything gets cold.” Stephanie had probably completed her afternoon Yoga class downstairs in the gym sometime mid afternoon. She was still wearing her workout gear, her silver streaked hair pulled back into a ponytail.

“Thanks for the enchiladas, Mom.”

“You’re welcome, sweet boy.” She had called him that as long as he could remember. In theory he would one day outgrow it, but he wasn’t in a hurry. “How is Charlotte taking the news?”

“Was everyone eavesdropping on my call?”

“Take it easy, Liam. It’s not hard to recognize voices. No one could hear what you were saying, we just knew you were talking to Charlotte.” His father’s voice, a magical concoction of calm and stern, settled Liam’s nerves, just in time for Noah to reshuffle them.

“That’s not true, Dad. I heard every word.” Noah smugly interrupted.

“For heaven’s sake, Noah, show some respect for your brother. We’re all going to spend more quality time together now again for awhile.”

The room seemed to sigh in resignation.

“Did anybody watch the press conference?” Liam asked. “Any indication of how long they think it will last this time?”

“They’re not making any promises. Not after all the false assurances that came out after Covid-28. Everytime this happens somebody in Washington makes it sounds like they’ve cracked the code on Novel-Cs, and then here we are again,” Travis’ long-term irritation at the federal government was generally prone to sneak into dinner conversation, but the reinstantment of Protocol all but ensured it.

“We’ll make the most of it, I’m sure,” Stephanie chimed in. Her smile was fabricated, as if a marionnette’s strings where holding her cheeks up. Her thin lips stretched into a forced cheer. The thought of one more tremor of disease ripping through the country and potentially the planet cut short her air supply. Feeling as if someone was standing on her chest, the usual worse-case scenarios sprinted through her mind, running laps in a race with no finish line.

“While I appreciate the optimism, I worry that this time it’s different. The Novel-Cs before were always international invasions, but this one, this homegrown abberation, will give the politicians license to lock us down like never before,” Travis brooded.

“I can’t even believe it. A meat packing plant in Minneapolis? Are they really saying that’s the source?” Liam asked.

“That is what they are saying,” Travis replied. “Though I find it hard to believe. Surely an American company would know better than to let this happen.”

Liam returned to his enchiladas. His father’s patriotism had always bordered on xenophobia, but the topic of Novel-Cs always ratcheted it up a notch. He knew better than to debate his father on this topic though the whole thing made his stomach churn.

Whether for five minutes of fifty--Liam lost track--his father and brother continued to banter about their closely-held beliefs about the day’s official recognition of Covid-31 and essential Protocol that went with it. The usual topics ensued: what consistituted esessntial services, whether churches would get their exception this time, and the definition of liberty.

Liam watched his mother’s mind wander off behind her eyes, sure that she was thinking of Nana and the rest of the folks at Walnut Hills Care Center.

He looked at Mabel. So carefree. So immune to the toxicity that another quarantine would surely suck to the surface. As one of the founding members of “Generation Q” as they called them now, his class was the first to finish Kindergarten at home, but they definitely weren’t the last.

If Liam was honest, he wasn’t sure he could stand spending the summer of 2031 locked in a house with the other two male Maccleans. They meant well and all, but they were ursine in their temperament and need to roam. Cage them in and they only inched toward rage. Liam, on the other hand, felt the enclosure differently. He was not capable of demanding from the world all the freedom it could offer. He could not wrestle the future to the ground and will it to submission like his father.

He had listened to Dr. Harper’s podcast that morning. She was leading a meditation on emptying and awakening. Travis hated Dr. Harper and so listening to her inside the walls of the house where his wifi connection could be surveillanced at any moment was always a risk, but something about her soothed him.

“The rhythm of the world is only love,” she had said. He’d written the words down in his sketchbook to ensure they wouldn’t leave him. So many people, people like his brother and his father, believed the rhythm of the world was productivity or success. They believed that its song was strength, and strength alone.

Liam looked down at his narrow hands merging into striated forearms. He had his mother’s slim muscularity and almost feminine flexibility. He had the form of a dancer, but had always lacked the courage to pursue such creative designs.

Liam wanted to dance to the rhythm that Dr. Harper offered. He could feel its gentle melody moving through him. Every time the world stopped the music got louder and more palpable in its pulse. Maybe this time would be different. Maybe this time he would finally make his move.