The church was everything Charlie would have expected it to be, a long double row of dark wooden pews that stretched to the far end where a pulpit sat empty. To the left sat a series of small levels with chairs for a choir to sing. On a long path between the door and the rear was a strip of red carpet over the hardwood floor, and colored patterns every dozen feet or so from the stained glass windows that had various saints on display.

Charlie closed his eyes and took a deep breath, “Okay. You’re doing this.” He told himself and began to walk in, the building appeared empty, though there was a door that led to the back beside a table with a series of candles, their light danced on, reflecting off of a large cross that appeared golden in the light but was in fact likely just bronze.

The beams of light that shone through the windows of the otherwise dimly lit building illuminated the many little motes of dust that floated in the light. It made Charlie think of something one of his few idols once said. ‘That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines. Every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar”, every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there, -on a mote dust suspended in a sunbeam.’

As Charlie passed through the beam of light and the dust scattered with the force of his passing, he put his hand out, the little motes of dust were there, orbiting around his hand, over his palm, responding to every tremor of his body. The light cast through the window warmed his skin, and the warmth traveled up the length of his arm beneath his sleeves. ‘Is there any point to even asking?’ Charlie wondered, and then asked himself, ‘Is there any point to ‘not’ asking?’

He broke away from the beam of sunlight that shone through, ignoring the shadow his body cast on the floor, and went to his knees in front of the cross.

“I didn’t mean to do it. I swear. I beg you, don’t make Josef, or anyone else, pay for my mistakes. I never wanted to be the villain… I never wanted to be the bad guy. I just… I saw a chance to learn what nobody ever had… I had to take it. I didn’t know anyone would get hurt because of me! That’s not fair! He shouted at the cross, it hung there in silence, his own face reflected back at him from where he knelt. “Aren’t you supposed to be just?! Can’t you stop this?! Do something?! Give me a sign that it’ll be alright! Talk to me!” He clasped his hands and kept staring up at the silent cross on the wall.

“Is this how I’m being punished for not believing?! Is this what you want?! I’m down on my knees asking for your help… I’ll do anything to make this right again! I’ll never drink again! I’ll get a job again and donate everything I have to helping the poor! I’ll… I’ll come to church every week! I’ll become a minister like my great grandfather! I’ll… I’ll do anything! Just please… save my friends… save my world… Maybe we are just a mote of dust caught in a sunbeam in a Universe too vast for our minds to even comprehend… but this is my mote of dust! I don’t want anything to happen to it!”

Still, he saw only his own reflection cast back at him from the polished cross, and heard no words but his own within the sacred place of worship.

He saw no lips move but his own, no care but his own. The cross was silent, the room was silent.

“Please… tell me something… tell me it’ll be alright…” Charlie said and sniffled, he broke the prayer posture to wipe his nose, and caught the feel of tears on the back of his hand which he hadn’t even noticed shedding.

“I’m a man of science… I never believed in much of anything… and I never believed in you, no more than I believed in Thor or Allah or anything else… but I can’t do anything now, and I’m desperate. Will you hear the prayers of an apostate? Or am I already dead to you? A man once told me… ‘God doesn’t love you’ when I told him I didn’t believe, and… I could see why. I’m not a perfect man, but I’m not that bad either. I care for my friends, my family, my neighbors… I want this world to endure beyond my lifetime and I don’t want anyone to get hurt. If I have the power to help… I’ll do it. So fine, if you don’t love me… don’t. If you won’t hear my prayer for my sake, hear it for theirs!”

Charlie turned his eyes from the cross when a noise at his back caught his ears.

Flapping wings. A bird flew through the open door. ‘Didn’t that shut?’ Charlie wondered as he tried to recall.

The bird continued to flutter around, landing on a beam that went across the high ceiling. It looked down at him with seeming curiosity, cocking its head, bobbing up and down, strutting around occasionally.

“Alright, let’s look at the logic. You create everything, and then make me… at some point, and decide I should be the one to destroy it all? If this is part of some divine plan… I don’t like it. What about what we want? You gave us free will didn’t you?! Aren’t you letting me take away everybody’s free will! They want to live out their lives! Shouldn’t they matter more than the will of one apostate! How can you be called just if you let injustice pass! How can you be merciful if you let me get everybody hurt without stopping it?! Please… do something. I need a miracle… we need a miracle. Tell me what to do… I don’t know. I’m lost, utterly lost…” Charlie said, his hands clasped together again the way he’d been taught as a child.

But there was only silence from the bronze cross, and no voice was in the air but Charlie’s own, no sound but the prayers that became desperate mutterings.

Then word by word, they faded away until, from down on his knees, he rocked back and forth without using any real words. Charlie’s hands remained so tightly clasped, that his knuckles turned white and his fingers ached. His words had long since become mere noises, and as he knelt there in prayer before the altar he hadn’t seen since childhood, the hours began to slip past.

Behind him, people came and went, some sitting in pews and hanging their heads, their own prayers sometimes whispered loud enough that he could hear them. ‘...Find a job…’

‘...Come back to me…’

‘...Save my marriage…’

‘...Don’t let it be cancer…’

‘...Let me have this promotion…’

‘...I could do a lot of good if you’d just let me win the lottery…’

It went on, and on, and on, and on, and on.

Sometimes people came to pray beside him, it wasn’t hard to realize they were the most desperate, an old woman knelt down, her face an oval, and crisscrossed with lines of age, Charlie noticed her because she took so long to get down to her knees, she wore a shawl of blue and white over her head, and had a striking presence that might have meant she was quite the looker when she was young. She gave Charlie a little smile, which let him notice that she was missing most of her teeth, and when the light from the window caught her, he noticed she was far from the cleanest.

“Something bad… huh?” She asked as she clasped her hands together.

“Yeah… yeah it is. I did… I did something awful, it was an accident, but that doesn’t change that it was awful.” Charlie paused his prayers to answer.

“Well you came to the right place… I always feel better. He’s always listening, you know.” She said in her creaky, weary voice.

“I don’t know… but I’ll try anything.” Charlie replied, then, about to resume, he stopped to ask her instead, “Why are you here?”

Her stomach rumbled. “Asking for help… shelter ran out today, and with the weather raining a lot, people don’t stop like they sometimes do… so… I come here.”

“Oh.” Charlie answered, “The church helps you? I don’t know if the priest or anyone who works here is around…”

The old woman cracked a smile and pointed up, “He works here, he always works here…”

Charlie shifted his weight a little with discomfort where he knelt, and silence passed between them.

How much time passed by, Charlie didn’t know, but when he saw the old woman start to move, he stood up and held out a hand to her. Her spindly hand went reflexively to his, and he put a hand on her back and helped her to stand up again as gently as he could.

If the divine had chosen to answer Charlie’s prayer, Charlie couldn’t tell. The warning of his father and mother rang in his head, ‘Sometimes the answer is no.’

He ignored the memory, but couldn’t ignore the silence. If it had been a whisper, the whisper too soft to hear, if it had been a sign, he didn’t see it. “Th-Thank you, young man.” She said when she pulled up the long faded blue and white dress she wore and brushed her hands over the dirty old thing to smooth it out a little.

“N-No problem, you’re welcome.” Charlie answered, “Listen, I have a little time,” he gave her an uncomfortable little trace of a smile, ‘That’s a lie,’ he told himself, ‘I have lots of time right now.’ he thought, but continued on to say, “why don’t you walk with me for a little ways, I’ll get you a sandwich or something by the Get-n-Go. The guy who runs it is a friend of mine, I can get you a gift card good for a few meals to use whenever the shelter runs short.”

“That’s… nice of you, thank you.” She said, and they began to walk back toward the entrance.

Charlie heard the flapping wings again, and saw the bird struggling against a low window, unable to comprehend the curious forcefield humans had erected, it battered itself against the glass in a struggle it could never win. “Just one second.” Charlie said, and moving around the pews, sliding slowly between them, he waited until the bird was in a low corner of the window, and then he darted forward and snatched it up, closing both his hands around the sparrow.

He carried the bird in front of him with both hands while the old woman watched with a cockeyed look in her brown eyes. “I’m a lot older than you can probably guess, young man, and I’ve never seen somebody snatch up a bird on the wing that way.”

Charlie shrugged as he came closer. “A sparrow beats its wings about fifteen times per second, and flies about thirty miles an hour, that means it can move one mile in two minutes or two thousand six hundred and forty feet in one minute, or forty-four feet per second if it gets a chance to take off. All I had to do was catch it in a corner going in the wrong direction to avoid me, and I cut that advantage down to a fraction of itself. I’m not as athletic as I used to be, but a basketball is typically shot at about eighteen miles per hour and I can intercept that, or could. Or… can, I guess.” Charlie grinned as she began to look befuddled.

“You’re one of those smart types, eh?” She asked with a laugh.

Charlie gave a sheepish red flushed expression, “I guess about that too, yeah.”

“My son is smart too.” She said with pride that briefly seemed to restore something of her youth.

“That’s nice, what does he do?” Charlie asked as they left the church. He stepped aside to ensure the bird wouldn’t fly back inside again, and then holding his hands up overhead, he released the sparrow and watched it fly away until it was far out of sight. ‘I’ll have to wash my hands after that.’ He made a mental note as they watched the bird become a dot and then disappear.

“Oh, he was a doctor… but I’m afraid he passed away, he was murdered by a patient.” She said, her head hung, and Charlie impulsively put an arm around her shoulder and hugged her against his side.

“I’m sorry…” Charlie said, “I didn’t know.”

She gave a weak smile up toward him, “No, you wouldn’t, but don’t apologize, I’ve learned to live with it.” She said before her stomach rumbled again.

“Is that so…” Charlie asked, “Well, I’m still sorry, now, how about that sandwich?”

“I’d like that,” the old woman said, and let Charlie help her down the stairs and across the street.

By reflex, Charlie looked toward the alley, the bum he gave the fifty to was sitting down in the shadowy part between two buildings, his lips wrapped around something in a brown paper bag.

They went the other way, leaving both the church and the homeless man behind.