Foxhole theology

Look down upon the earth - a beautiful swirling kaleidoscope of clouds and water and dirt and snow. Come closer - see these masses of land - unchanging save for the top few inches which scroll through an endless progression of colors - green orange brown white green orange brown white. Look closer - see villages rise, grow, die. There is life here - life slowly reshaping this world. Ah! Slow down! Look here! A flash of light - and another and another. All along an ugly scar of dirt the lights flicker and flash. Listen carefully - a sound like endless thunder runs up and down this scar. My how it roars, like a mortally wounded lion. Here, here - let us go all the way down. Here is a building of some sort - made of stone. The entrance is half-buried with dirt from some titanic explosion. A crack, just enough to admit a little light and noise, let us enter - quietly now. Hush - many men are here in the dark, two hunched in the corner. The others laying on the floor in attitudes of supreme indifference.

"What was that? They are coming!"

"Listen you fool - the bombardment is falling all around - front and back. No one is coming. Not yet"

The bombs fall closer. The world of sound dies for a moment, leaving only pain. How long? It roars and roars. The earth shakes - the world is being unmade. More pain. Then sight dies - all that remains is a grey dusty featureless void. Time passes.

"It is moving on - at last"

"This is my first time in a bunker under such an inferno"

"We are lucky - the boche built this dugout well"

"If only they had dug deeper"

A shrug

"You are with the second company?"

"Yes - how did you know?"

"I saw you when our companies ware billeted together at Minervois. I saw you at the old chapel"

"A beautiful place. I found a pew near the niche with the statue of St Domitius where the sounds of the front were almost inaudible. That fat old priest thought me very pious. He mewed endlessly about my devotion. The silly fool. I'll tell you this - in '14 I learned to sleep on the march; last month I learned to sleep on my knees. Still - I found some peace there, if not the peace the priest thought he was doling out."

"Bessette"

"Eh? What's that?"

"The priest - his name is Father Bessette. You shouldn't speak of him so."

"Why!? He's a charlatan and a profiteer - no better than the factory owner that makes shoes which fall apart at the first sign of rain!"

"You've misunderstood him. Father Bessette offers words of life, and hope. These are real treasures, especially in such a place"

The world ends for a moment. Dust and the stench of cordite fill the room.

Choking, the sergeant spits out one word "Hope!"

Dust settles, minutes pass.

"Yes, hope. Here, under bombardment, when the world shrinks to almost nothing - just the pain in your ears and the retching in your stomach and the fear in your heart. Hope remains"

"Hope? You mean some willful ignorance of your chances out here."

"I understand all too well my chances of seeing tomorrow. That's not what I speak of. Call it perspective. Or understanding. An understanding that all this vileness raging around us is just a shadow of what is truely real. When the world disappears like that, you see that everything we've been taught, everything we see, everything we think is so important - all of it is so petty. Just a shade away from illusion"

"See - this is what I was talking about. Your dear father tells you what you want to hear, and you give him a little tithe or tip. He sells false comfort. I am serious - tell me how this is different than the scum selling the government helmets made from pot metal"

"Ah! You only see what you want to see"

"Me! What does your hope buy you? How does your perspective shield you? Does it ward off bullets? Does it keep the shells from bursting over your head? It does nothing but coax men to rush over the top - to death and maiming."

"Look. The point I care about not is not the benefits of hope - of having something firm to grasp onto when life shakes and bucks like some wild horse trying to be rid of you. Look deeper - if anything can be saved from your time in this bunker, it is to take advantage of this time, when we are stripped of everything - everything but God Himself."

"Ach! Here we are, buried under concrete and steel and dirt - half-interred with a room full of dead germans. Outside, these germans' brothers search for us with high-explosive and shrapnel and gas and machine guns. It is madness, is it not?"

"Aye - no ordinary madness"

"Exactly! It is extravagant! What intelligence could act with such callousness?"

"Well, get it out. I mean it - say it"

"You've been out there for some time no doubt. I'm sure you've seen the same things - and done the same things I have. That old book says that God once killed the whole world over for sin."

"The great flood"

"Yes - the very story. Imagine the sin going on all around us. Imagine the sins we each carry about us. Is the cannoneer loading shells that rip and tear any less guilty than I, who have..."

"Brother, I understand"

"No you don't. Not if you retain a shred of self-love. If it were only me, if I were the only villain, if I were just Cain, then perhaps I could forgive God for his carelessness. But it's millions of us. Millions! If there were a god, he'd stop all this - even if it meant killing me. Killing all of us. I've killed Abel. When he sent the flood he killed the innocent to deal with the guilty. Why won't God return the innocent the favor? Why won't God save the innocent from us? From me?"

The two men sit in silence for some time. The barrage has grown quieter

"They will be coming soon"

"Perhaps. I'll dig out this loophole"

"Don't dig too far"

No one comes. The barrage returns. Twelve kilometers away the german gun crews are starting to drop from exhaustion. One gun crew loads a cannon they have nicknamed "Satan".

"Is that all?"

"What's that?"

"Is that all? Will you give up so easily? Are you so embarrassed by your own God you demur to give a defense? I hope you fight for France with more devotion"

"I'm not sure He needs me to defend him."

"Coward! Fine! Then I need you to defend him. I need ... some hope ... some hope I will be saved ... or punished"

"The truth is, I've been in your shoes. The first time I saw men die in a gas attack I hated God - really hated him. Then, I was at Verdun - at the beginning."

"You are a rare specimen then! Not many lived through that bombardment"

"I had a lot of time to think. No - think isn't the right word. Something much deeper, much older that thought."

Satan is ready. The gun commander triggers the rusting device and a shell begins it's ascent.

"I don't have proof of God, not in the way the old theologians tried to make him appear out of a series of arguments and contradictions and proofs - like a specter at a seance. But I have worked out where He is in all of this war and evil. I understand how to love him amidst all the pain"

The shell halts it's climb, perched for a silver moment amongst the clouds. Then it is cast down from the heavens like lightning, a shining terrible foe.

"Consider that infinitesimal plane where the ocean touches the sky. Now, that place is the human soul. Consider the depths of the ocean - my - listen to that shell, this one will be close"

The shell strikes the bunker, strikes deeply. Concrete vaporizes, steel bends, flesh perishes.
The german soldiers are coming soon. They will retake this line of trench. Next week a notice will appear in the French papers about a successful raid on the enemy in the Somme sector. The Germans will rebuild the bunker and eventually hold this line for another nine months. So many little stories up and down this line of trenches, no?.

Let go of time. Let it slide free. See? The war was not so long after all. Look at how the scars of the land heal. Life returns to no-man's land. Peace.