"Hi," I say, nodding.
"Hello," Gwenna says, sounding a little suspicious. She looks down at my desk, which is covered in my research, which I've been working on practically all morning.
"Did you sleep all right?" I ask.
"Um, yes," Gwenna says. "Gwenna says." Not meeting my eyes.
"Your room was all right? The food?"
"It was fine, Kingston," she says, smiling. "Really, it was, I promise."
I nod. "All right. Good." I'm still standing up, I realize. I sit back down, stare at the books, try to remember how I was going to start.
"I found something," I say. "A lot of things."
Gwen appears over at me. "You did?"
I nod. "I went back to some of the church fathers, different ones," I interject, "because I had a theory. And look at this." I flipto the first one in my notes, William of St. Thierry. "He writes all about how God is life's sap, which at first I thought was just a poetic... metaphor, but it could be more literal."
"Okay," she says.
I don't think I've convinced her. "Or," I say, pulling up the next text, "St. Ambrose, he talks about the vessel of grace, but not just... containers like active conduits. They transmit. They have power that flows through them."
"Okay." Gwenna leans in now, a little interested.
"And then Gregory of Nyssa," I say, going to my third, surprised at how exciting it is to get her attention. "The idea that a human, person is the cosmos in miniature."
"That one's kind of a stretch," I admit, "but?—"
"Hmm," Gwenna says.
"And Augustine," I say.
Gwenna starts to roll her eyes.
I gesture frantically. "Wait, no, I know," I say, "but I realized he writes a lot about, um..." I swallow. "Seed?" I say it like it's a question. "Corruption, generation,regeneration. It's very?—"
"Fertile," she says.
"Right.”
“So what are you trying to say?” she says, her eyes narrowed.
"I guess I'm saying that I believe you," I say. "I think your theory is right. That it's not contradicted by the rest of the church. It's just buried in there."
And I think Emrys chooses that exact instant to burst through the door. "Here we are," he says. "The Song of Ammergen. I don't have the best critical copy, but?—"
He hands it to Gwenna, something she must have asked for the previous class.
She reads it aloud.
"What is this?" I ask.
"It's a mystical poem," Emrys says, "from one of the founders of Ireland long before it was Christianized. And it sounds like it…”
“It sounds like Caritas," Gwenna says. “The cosmic woman. 'I am life, I am rationality, viriditas, the life force, the fiery force that lies hidden within these things and they burn because of me.”
None of us says anything for a moment.
