Mr. Pym

A sermon in Christ Chapel delivered by the Rev. Dr. Alan P.R. Gregory, Associate Professor of Church History

I do not know if I believe in ghosts, but I think that one night, on a dark street in the city of York, I felt, suddenly pressed in mine, the hand of a child -- it was very cold.

Oh! Mr. Pym, what's in that sack
Hanging so heavy upon your back?
Some woeful waif, that had no home
Has left this world with scarce a moan.

Early in the 19th century, the worthy governors of the city of York determined to build a workhouse for indigent children, for the orphans of the poor. It was situated in what is now a airy street of red-brick offices. Then, it was a dark tangle of squalid alleys and the orphanage a blank, sad-faced building with deep-set windows like the eyes of starving men. No sun ever lightened the sparse and wretched rooms. In the winter, the freezing fog spread through the broken shutters, slipped along bare corridors, down the rickety stairs, and pooled in the hall where frightened children straightened nails, holding hammers in icy fingers. The city fathers appointed George Pym to manage this miserable affair. The terms were quite agreeable, a sum for each child, Pym's salary being whatever remained after expenses. It was an invitation to wickedness. And Mr. Pym was a very wicked man.

With practice and parsimonious care, one may draw out the life of a child to a thread. Small, as it were, trainee ghosts hunched on the benches, the shadows more palpable then they. There was, however, a generous supply of work, sustained on gray and greasy soup, the economics of a neglect that trembled on the brink of murder. Of course, one doesn't get that good, that quickly. Mr. Pym made mistakes, some unregimented excess, and the chills of late summer carried off this child and that, posing a thorny problem. A sick child, a frozen child, a half-starved and fully frightened child is nothing. A dead child, however, that is a loss of income. In death, each child thieved the sum appointed by the city, took it to the grave. Unless, as Mr. Pym quickly realized, unless, no one found out.

So, well after midnight, with the moon muffled in cloud and the streets empty in the plague of darkness, Mr. Pym, torch in hand, sack over shoulder, shuffled to a sorry piece of wasteland a few streets away. There he put down the sack, rolled out the little corpse, and buried it in a shallow grave. For weeks it was a model solution. No longer did death hold its terrors for Mr. Pym. No one knew, no one asked, no one bothered, and the money kept coming. That winter, though, was a hard and unforgiving one, icy talons hung from every sill and gutter, the very breath froze in the lungs, the river was dull glass, and not a patch of ground but was set like rock. One night, the little burials stopped. Mr. Pym pressed all his weight on the spade and it broke. The earth would have his dead no longer.

"Today in the city of David a deliverer has been born to you -- the Messiah, the Lord. And this is your sign: you will find a baby lying wrapped in his swaddling clothes, in a manger. All at once, there was... a great company of the heavenly host, singing the praises of God."

Carefully, like they'd just recovered from a fall, they scrambled over the broken wall and started across a field, covered in virgin snow. The moon touching the trees with a purple glaze and spreading its light over the field, set their two perfectly, uninterruptedly bald heads glowing. From a distance, the white boiler suits they wore so merged with the snow that one could hardly pick out these two somewhat portly figures, tramping along, their heads bobbing like lanterns. One of them slowed a little, "what I hate," he said, "is the way the closer you get the colder it is. We nip through all those aeons, slip across goodness how many spheres, give the bird to the astral demons -- I love the way that annoys the hell out of them -- and, then, one planetary orbit after another, the temperature keep dropping and, just as you think it can't get any worse, you hit this stuff." He pointed at the snow. "Why? I ask you, why? It's cold, it's wet, it gets down the back of your neck every time you go under a tree, and it completely covers the road. Which, as you well know, we lost about an hour ago. What a planet -- and they think they're the center of the universe."

Suddenly, he stopped, grabbed his companion by the shoulders, and looked in his face. Millennia of pleasurably bewildered amazement stared back at him. "You know, you haven't said a word for at least the last two hundred thousand years. And, if I remember rightly, all you managed then was "Wow!" I mean, I know heaven's amazing and all that but, really, "wow!" -- it's not exactly poetic." The other smiled, still smitten with wonderment. They trudged on, the prints spreading huge around their feet. An icy wind spun across their bald heads which glowed back, fiercely. At the end of the field, the ground rose to a ridge from which they could see a village outlined in soft shadow. "Snow on snow on snow," he muttered, "ice in the buckets, gales through the windows, frozen lips, frozen feet, cold thoughts, and frosty blankets." He turned to his friend, "welcome to Bethlehem."

Oh Mr. Pym, your end is near,
Those tidy plans are breeding fear,
In all the house there's not one room,
But feels like a chill and choking tomb.

The thinnest whispers of life being held to quite the thinnest of bodies by the absolute thinnest of soups, it was hardly surprising that in the briefest time, another child died. Saving honest reporting and the consequent horrors of income loss, the matter of burial had, once again, to be addressed. It was a problem for the most ingenious of engineers or for a demon of implacable malice, but Mr. Pym was equal to both. At the top of the building there was a room colder, if it was possible in that house of ice, for any room to be colder than another, a room so cold that the very floorboards had cracked and loosened in the relentless freeze. Winter had its favorites after all. Mr. Pym prized up two of the boards, slipped the little body into the gap, replaced the wood, and smiled. It was hardly over though, furious cold day after day; the snow spat through holes, piled up even inside the house; outside, the wind cut harder than a bird's beak.

Every few days, Mr. Pym would visit that dreadful room, pull up more boards, and entomb another body. Soon, the space under the floor was close to full. It was then that the whispers began. At first, like he'd heard his name called from a distance, "Mr. Pym. Mr. Pym." Then louder, like leaves, scratching, brushed by the wind along empty paths. Finally, they were everywhere, accusing, pleading, questioning, teasing. They were there, behind his pillows, when he opened his eyes; there, in the kitchen when he drank his tea; there, in the stairwell, the gray fog opening and closing like so many mouths, and, there, deafening, where the last children waited for their chilled and greasy soup.

It was at least three weeks and towards the end of that dreadful winter, when they broke down the door of the workhouse. Mr. Pym had twice failed to collect his allowance; he had dismissed his cook, terrifying her with stories of the whispering dead. A clerk from the City Hall had called but without result. Eventually, a parochial officer had the door breached. The cold hit them like a wall. Nothing in the workroom, nothing in the kitchen, nothing on the stairs, along the corridors, nothing in the chill rooms where the children slept. Then, in that last and coldest room, with his throat slashed wide, sat Mr. Pym, surrounded by fourteen small and frozen bodies.

Oh Mr. Pym what have you done?
Now they come out, one by one.
Wee icy ghosts that cannot sleep.
Fright'ning the neighbors, to make them weep.

The village streets were narrow, the houses close, in the shadows, they looked hunched up as if braced for the cold. The two angels trudged on, their boots crunching the snow. Turning into a small square, the talkative one noticed the echo on the sharp air in the still night. "Oi!, Celestial visitation!" he yelled. His voice bounced along the walls. "Stop mucking about," someone hissed back. Another figure, also bald-headed and in white overalls, stepped out of the shadows. "That's enough," he said, "you're late." "Ah, Gabe, sorry, we missed the, how you say, 'designated landing site'." "You missed it? How could you miss it?" the archangel Gabriel looked perplexed. "Well, it's a small planet!" the angel tried to look pathetic, "we've walked miles. You know how it is, once you land, it's hard to get off again. Bit of a bugger -- gravity." "Oh come along!" the archangel gave up the argument. "I've sent the rest of the lads over there," he pointed at some hills beyond the village. In the sky, there were vivid, careering dots of brightness, dozens of bald heads flashing like starbursts. "That's the best bit of celestial neon since the creation," Gabriel shook his head, "all for a bunch of shepherds, hardly the quality is it? And now I'm stuck with you two. Come on -- and do try and look holy."

They followed him round the back of a squat, crumbling house, through the shadows, and, slipping slightly on the ice, squeezed themselves through a gap in a fence and into the back of a small stable. A man and a woman were slumped against a bale of hay. They huddled together, a blanket stretched thinly over their shoulders. In the women's arms, tight against her breast was a child. Unheard, invisible, the angels stamped their feet, shaking off the snow. "When I get back up top, I going to stuff a cherub up me shirt." "That'll be popular," said Gabriel. "Well, what good are they, anyway. Fluttering about, basking in the glory while we're down here freezing our... " he stopped. "I suppose we are meant to be here?" "We're here because he is, " said Gabriel, pointing to the child. The angel blew another halo of freezing air, and looked over at the child, snuggling on the breast. "So," he thought, "heaven's fire falls this far." The mother held the child's feet, rubbing away the cold. He wriggled and a jet of warm milk squirted on his cheek. The father bent over the little head, breathing on the small crown. "This is the way the world's warmed," thought the angel, "blood to blood, breast to mouth, love to longing." And it seemed to him that the man, and the girl, and the child, glowed like an orb of fire, turning the dull straw golden, and reddening the drab shelter. Outside, he could hear the ice, cracking.

"There is One coming ... [who] will baptize you with Holy Spirit and with fire."

The last Ice Age drew to its close about 20,000 years ago. It had covered much of the earth in a crust of cold, in places, 2 miles deep. The end was very slow. In this part of the world, the Wisconsinian ice sheet only began to melt after a further 10,000 years, drawing back, slowly, foot by foot, with a truly glacial reluctance. Human beings -- homo sapiens, at least -- came out of the cold as the ice melted, moving southwards in Africa and, now in greater numbers, following their prey from Asia into Europe. They multiplied and journeyed, spreading further, extending their skills, improving the precarious comforts of poor shelter for their short lives. As the Spirit of God warmed the spaces from the retreating ice, it was clear that humanity was here to stay, that we would have our dominion. We are creatures of the fourth interglacial period. We exist only in the retreat of ice. Of course, one day, long into the future, it will freeze again. This much is certain, one day the sun will grow dim and the cold will be irreversible. In the meantime, the question of humanity remains an issue of fire.

From the beginning, there's been a strangeness in fire, an element half-here, half stretching to heaven, something mysterious: offering, with the authority of a bright god, a way out of the cold. The heat reaches into your bones, cradles you in your chills and sickness, transforms your food, shapes tools, works metal. Dangerous, too, fire scorches, gets out of hand, fierce, uncontrollable, it rages. And always, with the cold put outside like a dog, men and women have stared into the flames, and seen visions. It has kindled desire, as if from another world. Which is why it is a metaphor of the Most High, who draws near in the blazing tree, and who says "I will baptize you in fire, I will have you in flames."

Ten percent of the earth is still under the ice. In the landscape of the human spirit, the percentage is rather more. We have never fully come out of the cold. Our longing, warmed in the fire, our desire, enkindled in the struggles for life, is still all too chilly, a sluggish desire, half-frozen. We make peace with the cold, our love warms the world only enough to make a warmth worth hoarding. We turn others into fuel and our desire, ablaze with private satisfactions, builds a frosty kingdom. We are only a little way out of the ice and, therefore, only a little way from hell. Truth is, it's been a cold day in hell from the beginning: folk fixed in frozen gestures, fists raised, envious glares stuck fast in faces, frosted scowls, bodies shivering in tongues of ice as sharp as razors. That's the fate of love chilled around our own selves.

There is a different way, however. There is also the way of fire which is the way of the baby wrapped tight, clutching at the breast, the girl rubbing his small feet, and the man warming with his breath, the child's face. Here, in this stable, is the gift of fire. The gentleness of God calling out warm affection, the encircling arms, milk and breath, the blood pumping faster in delight, desire aching, forgetting everything but that this child must live. And we, at Christmas, turned by imagination and the season, gaze at this catching flame, this hearth of God, and we wonder and long. Our worship is the desire, the reckless and incendiary love that the Spirit lights in us as we crowd round this heavenly fire with shepherds and kings and a whole communion of saints. Thus, we are baptized with fire, with a longing in which our self-concern, our narrow and timid satisfactions, our anxious common sense, is slowly burned away. Thus, we are baptized with fire, a love that has no horizon save the eternity of God. We begin sputtering into life, our ending is to be all flame.

I do not know if I believe in ghosts, but I think that one night, on a dark street in the city of York, I felt the hand of a child, suddenly pressed in mine, clutching it -- begging fire.

Amen.