One More Sunday.

John D MacDonald.

To the memory of quiet Sunday mornings in South Congregational Church on Genesee Street in Utica, New York, with my grandfather, Edward Odell Dann, my great-aunt, Emily Grace Williams, my mother, Margarite Dann MacDonald, my father, Eugene Andrew MacDonald, and my sister, Doris Jean MacDonald now all at rest in Plot 63, Lot 814 and contiguous Lot 63Z5, in Forest Hill Cemetery in Utica.

I know that a community of God-seekers is a great shelter for man. But directly this grows into an institution it is apt to give ready access to the Devil by its back-door.

--RABINDRANATH TAG ORE.

Letters to a Friend It is becoming more and more obvious that it is not starvation, not microbes, not cancer, but man himself who is marfkind's greatest danger, because he has no adequate protection against psychic epidemics, infinitely more devastating in their effect than the greatest natural catastrophes.

--CARL JUNG.

I believe more and more that God must not be judged on this earth. It is one of his sketches that has turned out badly.

--VINCENT VAN GOGH.

One.

The Reverend Doctor John Tinker Meadows stood silent and motionless at the pulpit of the great Tabernacle of the Eternal Church of the Believer, staring at the stained-glass window at the far end of the building, listening to the murmur and rustle of the enormous congregation as the sounds slowly diminished.

Once again the vast space was filled for an early-morning service, even in the heat of the sun belt in August. The three broad aisles which sloped down toward the altar rail at a slight angle cut the congregation into four equal portions, fifteen worshippers wide, sixty rows deep. Another thousand were over in the University theater, watching him on the big screen in closed-circuit color, and he knew that up in the control booth to the left of the stained glass, high above the entrance doors, the production manager and the director were watching the monitor sets, cueing the camera stations. The sound was being mixed with due regard for whichever camera was being used.

He felt a trickle of sweat on his ribs, under the cassock and surplice, and reacted with familiar exasperation toward the so-called experts who had designed the subterranean air conditioning. It had proven ample for the giant space even in midsummer, but had a built-in low-frequency rumble which made it impossible to use at full throttle when taping. Finn Efflander had someone working on a filter that might keep the rumble off the recording. But even were it working properly, he knew that by the end of the sermon his clothing would be sodden. He perspired heavily whenever and wherever he preached. His face would be wet and shiny in the close ups partially defeating the efforts of makeup to give him the look of a younger Charlton Heston.

He was aware of a slight change of the light off to his left and realized that someone in the control booth had pressed one of the buttons which controlled the movement of the huge translucent, fire-resistant draperies, to move one of them slightly to cut off an edge of morning sun, making the interior light whiter and more luminous.

He heard a smothered giggle forty feet behind him, and he could imagine the stare his sister would direct at the offender.

The choir of fifty young women, the Meadows Angels, was a constant discipline problem. Had they been selected more for voice quality and less for beauty, he guessed the problem would be lessened. But the Reverend Mary Margaret Meadows exerted an iron control which kept disorder at a minimum.

John Tinker Meadows knew that many in the congregation were seeing the service in person for the first time, after years of faithful membership and television viewing. To them the thrill of being in the same space, breathing the same air, as the famous elderly Reverend Matthew Meadows and his two talented children was only slightly dimmed by their being such tiny figures, so far away. And as the service proceeded, they would begin to realize that it was a lot longer than the fifty-minute version edited for broadcast.

It was time. When a child coughed, the church was so silent the small sound could be heard by everyone. He looked then at the congregation, feeling the tension and the expectation. He was a tall slender man with gray-blonde hair worn long at the sides, brushed back.

"O MIGHTY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU TURNED YOUR.

BACK ON THIS GOOD EARTH AND ON YOUR.

PEOPLE?".

The rich and resonant voice inherited from the old man filled the Tabernacle with a ripe and startling sound, perfectly amplified.

"What do we see around us?

"We see a sickness, a cancer, a corruption on every side.

Through the same wondrous technology which allows us to send this service up to the satellite and back to the cable stations and into your homes, filth is being broadcast across the land. Squalid garbage, rated with X's, showing exposed genitalia, scenes of rape and incest and torture. Any child who can reach the dials on the television set can be immersed in this soul-stunting dirt.

"And we see this same seeping corruption in the books on the shelves of our libraries, paid for with public monies, with the tax money they demand from you as your ticket of admission to this wonderful culture around us! Cynical men in universities, in national magazines and newspapers, and on talk shows, praise novels which contain scenes that would gag a hyena.

"Perhaps we should be grateful that our public education system has been so gutted by the bureaucrats and unions, national and local, that the teachers no longer have time to teach reading. They are too busy turning out reports no one ever needs or reads. They are so busy our children can graduate without ever being able to write a sentence in acceptable English, or being able to read anything more difficult than comic books. Rejoice that much of the filth in our libraries is well beyond their abilities to comprehend.

"Perhaps teachers are being paid not to teach in the same way farmers are paid not to farm, able-bodied men paid not to work and politicians paid to pass legislation favoring themselves and the special-interest groups which bribe them.

"Once upon a time our nation was great. Now we sag into despair. The climate changes, the acid rains fall, the great floods and droughts impoverish millions, taking the savings of those who thought they could be provident in these times. We see all our silent factories, all the stacks without smoke, like monuments to a civilization past. Selfish owners refused to spend for modernization. Selfish unions struck for the highest wages in the world.

"We see rapists and murderers and armed robbers turned loose after a short exposure to that prison environment which gratifies all their hungers and teaches them new criminal arts.

"We see an endless tide of blacks and Hispanics entering our green land illegally, taking the bread out of the mouths of those few of us still willing to do hard manual labor.

"We see the abortionists slaying the people of the future.

"We see what little remaining wealth we have, squandered by the huge costs of maintaining lazy and overfed armies in distant lands where they are hated by the populace, and squandered by the Pentagon thieves who waste four dollars out of every five appropriated.

"Our air, rivers, lakes, land, bays and oceans become ever more toxic as the wastes of a plastic culture are dumped into them without authorization or control.

"We are afraid to walk our own streets at night, knowing that our police officers do not dare leave their cars to patrol on foot the shadows where hide the hoodlums, muggers, whores, addicts, drug vendors and maniacs.

"Rich men get richer in businesses which produce nothing tangible or useful only bits of paper. Documents. Bonds and warrants and options and money management accounts.

Mergers and spinoffs and liquidations."

He stopped and let the silence grow. He leaned forward and clasped his hands around the front edge of the lectern on the pulpit. His hands and wrists were outsized, larger than one would expect on a man of such leanness. He glanced down at the script and saw the margin notation indicating an extreme closeup, meaning that at that moment one of the cameramen was slowly zooming in on him using the longest lens on the TK-47 RCA computerized color camera.

"Do you think this is all something new in the world?" John Tinker Meadows asked in a half-whisper that carried to the remote corners of the Tabernacle.

"Do you really think we live in exceptional times?" The sarcasm was clear.

"In Habakkuk's vision, the oracle proclaimed, Outrage and violence, this is all I see, all is contention and discord flourishes. And so the law loses its hold, and justice never shows itself. Yes, the wicked man gets the better of the upright, and so justice seems to be distorted.

"And the oracle said, Trouble is coming to the man who amasses goods that are not his and loads himself with pledges.

And the oracle said, Trouble is coming to the man who grossly exploits others for the sake of his house, to fix his nest on high and so evade the hand of misfortune."

Beginning with the hoarse whisper, he had been slowly increasing the volume and resonance of his voice as he straightened, knowing the long lens was slowly slowly backing away from the extreme closeup.

"Trouble is coming to the man who builds a town with blood and founds a city on crime."I He looked at them from on high, gazing from side to side at the thousands before him. In a striking change he switched to a conversational tone of voice. With a troubled look he said, "So what do we do, my friends? Here we are, decent God-fearing people in a culture, in a world, going right down the tube. Do we pray and hope to inherit the earth? Do we grab guns and head for the hills? Do we tell ourselves things have to get better?"

After a pause he shouted, "NONE OF THE ABOVE!" He saw some of them jump. You could tell if you had them by the way some of them jumped. This was one of the good Sundays.

Sometimes it worked better than other times. He had never achieved the consistency of the old man, who always made it work.

"We do not really live out there amid all that garbage. We live in the great peaceful country of the spirit. We live in the love of God and His only begotten son, and we live in the confidence that beyond that transition we call death there is eternal life for us who BELIEVE!

"You can turn your backs on the feckless, stinking, stubborn garbage of the world, its crimes and passions, its stench of victims and predators. I am not saying you cannot be touched in physical ways. You can. And those dear to you can be victims. I am telling you that you cannot ever be touched in that place where life means the most. This brute world can never touch your spirit, your soul. It can never defeat those who love God. You are weighed down by the burden of fear and apprehension as this physical world goes downhill in a hand basket. You can shrug off that hideous burden. You can live in a state of joy. Come down to the rail. You there, way in the back, you start it. Get up and walk down here. My father and my sister and I will receive you here, into the arms of Jesus Christ. And evil will never touch you. Never!"

He stared back and saw a few beginning to get up, to edge their way out of the long pews.

"That's right! Come down now! Acknowledge your God.

Give Him a chance to heal you. To be saved means to be safe.