The
GARGOYLE speaks
The Currency of Hope
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E. Carson Brisson
Class met on Tuesdays and Thursdays; Jessie usually attended one day or the other. At mid-term the college sent “progress reports” home to the parents or guardians of any students who had given written permission for that to be done. Jessie had. Her mom called. I offered some advice on study skills, and I mentioned that coming to class regularly might help. Her mom, as moms tend to do, got it. Our conversation was ending when she asked if I were the “same Carson” who signed the VA benefit forms for students who were dependents of veterans who had died in the line of duty. I responded that I was. Jessie’s mom told me no one could tell her exactly what had happened to Jessie’s father because “the sea loves its secrets.” She told me that whatever happened to him and to his co-pilot seemed to have happened suddenly, and that there was some comfort in that. She recalled that her late husband and Jessie and she had gone to the park the afternoon before he had left, and that there Jessie’s father had carried their daughter on his shoulders beneath a cloudless sky. Some memories have a shelf life of forever. Jessie’s attendance improved a bit after mid-term break. But by Thanksgiving she was back to her former pattern. When she did come to class, she sat on the back row. She usually took notes for about the first half of the period, and then rested her head in her arms on her desk. I could be wrong, as I usually am, but I got the impression that she was not being rude. She simply seemed very, very tired. Most if not all of her classmates did not admire her. That I did get right. The last class meeting before exam week arrived. The lesson focused on the structure and content of chapter 21 of the Apocalypse of John as related to the rest of that book and to the genre of apocalyptic literature. We were at the end of the session and I was about to dismiss the students when, for the first time during the entire semester, Jessie, raising her head off her desk, raised her hand. She did not wait for me to call on her. “That verse,” she said, referring to Revelation 21:4 as she cast furtive glances toward her nearest peers, “that verse about God drying every tear … Does that mean every tear from that time on … or that God will go back into all time and find every tear and dry all of them, too?” A bright and popular student sitting in a front-row desk a bit to my right checked her watch, rolled her eyes, and curled herself into a frown. She had many followers, and a low, validating chortle issued from them and rippled across the classroom. I had not expected a question from Jessie, ever. I certainly had not expected one about the interplay of time, eternity, loss, and hope. Trying to recover from my surprise, I immediately began thinking about the nature and interpretation of texts held as authoritative in various ways within a given tradition. I thought about the literary, historical, and theological contexts of the passage. I thought about its particular structure. I thought about the fact that by definition apocalyptic material resists the assumptions behind linear thinking. Then I thought about the last part of my conversation with Jessie’s mother weeks earlier. Finally, my thoughts turned to the bright student seething with disapproval a mere stone’s throw to my right. After a few moments, perhaps more than a few, I heard a response to Jessie’s question rise out of me and ricochet around the room, mostly searching, it seemed to me, for the exit. The next week I put Jessie’s question on the final exam for extra credit. I spruced it up with some technical literary and historical terms and layers to guide anyone who found it worth a response, but at heart it was her same question. I made it clear that it was for extra credit and didn’t have to be answered. Two students, Jessie and the irritated student from the front-row, were the only class members who tried. For seventeen years I have kept to myself the notes I made of their responses. That’s long enough.
F ALL 2006
Jessie wrote, in part: … The day I asked you this question, only not exactly like you have put it on this exam, you didn’t really answer it. I called my mom and told her my religion professor didn’t really answer the only question I had all semester. I told her it was more like you talked about what you hoped the answer would be. My mom said that for some kinds of questions in life it might count more what you hope the answer is than if you think you have it all figured out. Do you think she is right? You don’t know this, but my father died when I was very young. He did not suffer because it happened so fast. I don’t really remember him, except once in a park he rode me on his shoulders and it felt like flying it was so high. All the other children wanted to be in my place. They wanted to be in my place but my father would never do that … I don’t know the answer to this question professor. I really don’t. But I do know what I hope the answer is. I know what I hope. Is that worth any points? … I think I really need this extra credit to pass this course. I’m transferring to a school closer to home next semester. I need as many classes as possible to transfer. You seemed really tired a lot in class. I hope you get a break this summer. I did not get a break that summer. I got assigned oversight for all three undergraduate summer school terms. Thousands of things went well, but a few did not. The English Department objected to a donor’s design for a new fountain and rose garden in front of the cafeteria, and, showing surprising technological acumen that tended to counterbalance the department’s decision to exercise its prerogative in an area in which it had no prerogative, faxed its well-written concerns to the administration. There was good-news-bad-news from the campus bookstore: Good news: There was no fire in the campus bookstore. Bad news: The sprinkler system in the ceiling of the campus bookstore thought there was a fire. Someone cruelly, yet with fortunate incompetence, attempted to poison the ducks who had made their nest around the college lake since the week after Noah’s ark had been decommissioned. (The English Department faxed in its well-written views on crime and punishment.) And finally, in mid-August, the starter on our family car stopped starting, and our dentist relocated to Hawaii. The answer from the displeased, bright, popular student on the front row dealt with the structure of the Revelation passage itself, its literary and historical contexts, several crucial grammatical and syntactical points, and the character of apocalyptic texts as a genre. Her formal response ended with the colorful and astute observation that such texts “seem to be dipped in a special coating that makes them resistant to simple answers to the kind of question asked by that back-row student on the last day of class … These writings deal not in the currency of verifiable fact, but in the currency of hope.” She also added a confident personal note, and a request: … I know my answer is a good one. You know I don’t need any extra credit … Please consider giving my credit to the student on the back row, the one who slept most of the time and who kept us late the day she asked this question that seemed to shake you so badly. I bet she needs it. I want her to have it. I think maybe so do you. I think I saw what you thought when a lot of us laughed. To this day, I don’t know if Jessie’s transfer to another college the next fall was successful or not. To this day, I don’t know what moved that bright, popular student on the front row from obscenity to compassion. To this day, I don’t know if I made the right decisions about Jessie’s extra credit and her final grade. To this day, I don’t know a perfect answer to questions involving time, eternity, loss, and hope. And to this day, I don’t know if the sea has ever told Jessie and her mother its secrets. But, I do know that I know what I hope. It’s seventeen years later, and perhaps it’s seventeen years late, but Jessie, thank you, and Godspeed. E. Carson Brisson is associate professor of biblical languages and associate dean for academic programs.
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