Chapter 1 of A Religious Spirit:  The Vortgern

        Dan Kozak drew his wife aside.
        "Jamie, did you notice that Cora and Hila took off after worship without talking to anybody?"
        Jamie glanced around to make sure no one was close by. Until a few minutes before their large living room had been the scene of a Sunday morning church service, and most of those who had attended were standing around talking in small groups. A few were removing the folding metal chairs, turning the Word Fellowship house church back into a mere house.
        "I wanted to talk to you about that," she said. "When Hila came in, I told her who was speaking this morning, and after she took a look at Dawn, her face got red and she started saying to me that Dawn shouldn't teach here."
        Dan shook his head with a puzzled look. "Why not?"
        "She didn't say, except that she said she'd read Dawn's book. She said Dawn shouldn't teach anywhere."
        "Not anywhere?"
        "No, and Dan, I was watching her while Dawn was teaching, and she looked very stiff."
        "Hila always looks stiff."
        "No, she doesn't. Anyway, stiffer than usual. And then after we were done she and Cora rounded up Eddie and that Beikreider girl that they brought with them and hoofed it out the door. So Cora may have been upset too."
        "Why would Cora be upset about Dawn?" Dan asked. "Hila's new, but Cora has been here before when Dawn's come over from Indianapolis to teach. She's never complained, has she?"
        "No, never."
        Dan picked up his Bible from the pulpit. "Well, I'll ask Dawn if she knows Hila. Sounds like I may be making some phone calls today."
        When Dan approached Dawn Vortgern, she was deeply into conversation with two of the women of the Fellowship, matronly Annie Rubino and twenty-something Red Hood. Actually, Dawn was doing nearly all the talking, turning from one of them to the other with an unblinking stare straight into the eyes.
        "And that's why you need to move on to these deeper truths," she was saying in a gentle whispery voice. "You may be just on the doorstep of the Inner Temple. My own daughter was poised on the doorstep for six months before she finally won through. Since then she's had a continual spiritual victory that I can't begin to describe."
        Annie took this in, nodding, and glanced across the room to a teenage girl. "And her so young!"
        "No, not Denise, I mean my daughter, my daughter Anne."
        "Her that was married last year," Annie said agreeably. "and she and her husband went off to be missionaries."
        "That's my Anne." Dawn smiled and her fifty-ish face looked more hollowed. "I couldn't have allowed her to go if she hadn't overcome. Only the manifest sons of God should go into a third-world battlefield like Thailand. I can tell you that no great thing will be accomplished for the Lord by those who are still in the flesh."
        "How do you know if you're still in the flesh?" Red asked, her young face serious, even troubled.
        "Let me explain by telling you what happened to me," Dawn said. "When I was nineteen I had a vision of the Temple lamp with its seven candlesticks, and the Lord showed me that those flames ascending to the central candlestick are stages of proximity to the perfect enlightenment. The two outermost candles are election and religion. At this stage, which you've attained, some feel the first stirrings toward the greater importations…"
        Dan realized this was going to take some time and, with an unobserved parting nod to the ladies, stepped over to speak to Dawn's husband Paul. Paul and retired post-man Bo Merkison were listening to Jason Burkmeyer, a young man with a shock of black hair and an earring.
        "He just claimed it," Jason was saying, "and he wouldn't let go. The doctors had said he only had a month to live, but he got up out of that hospital bed and went home. That was five years ago, and he's still alive today! Whenever they give him tests, he shows all clear of cancer."
        The other men said that was wonderful.
        "Let me tell you something," said Bo, a white-haired, stoop-shouldered man with a permanent, confidential smile. "I know you believe God can do anything, am I right? Well, there's a man lives over in Brazil¾ I know this man, his name's Josh Rollie¾ who has a glass eye. He lost his eye in some kind of accident on his uncle's farm where he was helping out. Anyway, he went years and years and never thought to pray that God would heal him, because his eye was clean gone. But one Sunday a travelling evangelist came to his church and told him he would be able to see again. As God is my witness, men, he and that evangelist prayed and God gave him the ability to see through that glass eye! See as clear as you or me. He's up in Chicago now and still seeing through it. A lot of people don't believe that, but I can confirm it."
        "The Lord be praised!" Paul said. "But you two, you've heard about the man that was resurrected in Massachusetts, haven't you? You haven't, Jason?"
        The large man finally noticed Dan and interrupted himself.
    "Heya, Danny," he said cheerily. "Jason here hasn't heard about the man that was resurrected in Massachusetts." He paused, giving Dan a chance to say that he, of course, had heard about it. Dan just shrugged his big shoulders, smiling. "You never heard about it? I got it straight from Andrew Morrison, who heads the New Truth East Coast Ministry. This was a few years ago, and there was this very anointed guy living in Boston, and he died. Two men who were members of his church went to the funeral home, and when they were about to go in, they started talking about people being raised from the dead. One of them said, 'Why don't we try it right now? Let's pray that God will raise the dead.' So they got down on their knees in the parking lot and prayed for a resurrection, because the dead man wasn't that old and God could still use him on this earth. Then they went in, and when they went in, the man just suddenly sat up in the casket and then he got out of it. I guess people were fainting everywhere and they had forty passed out on the floor. How about that?"
        Dan, Bo, and Jason said, "Praise the Lord!"
        For his part, Dan wanted to believe this was true, for he made it a rule never to disbelieve anything he heard that was glorifying to God.
        After a few more expressions of wonderment, he changed the subject. "Paul, do you and Dawn know Hila Grant, the blond woman who was sitting in back?"
        "That very pretty girl? No, I've never seen her before. Where is she?"
        "She and her cousin left right away. She's just been with us for a few months. She seems to either know Dawn or has heard of her."
        Paul nodded with a knowing air. "You think she left upset?"
        "Looks that way."
        He patted Dan on the shoulder. "It happens from time to time. Actually, I could feel that something wasn't right while Dawn was speaking. Some people can't handle too much truth."
        "You mean she was getting convicted by the Spirit?"
        Paul nodded and his bifocals slipped down his nose a bit. "That's how it is with some that are hardened. Their flesh just can't abide real holiness preaching, and they get out. I've seen some literally run for the door when Dawn was just starting."
        Dan did not comment that this implied that his own week-to-week preaching as pastor of the Fellowship must be lacking something, for Hila had never run away from his messages.
        "She's shaky, isn't she?" Paul prompted.
        "Well¾ " Dan thought Hila was rather spiritually weak but hesitated to say so.
        "That's what I thought. Don't worry. If she comes back¾ and let's pray her in¾ we'll have some prophecy that'll break through to her heart."

        That Sunday afternoon, Hila Grant lunched at home with her cousin Cora and Cora's thirteen-year-old Eddie, for Hila had lived with them since moving from Indianapolis the previous summer. After lunch she walked several blocks to her parent's house, in the sub-freezing weather of early February, to visit with her brother Bill. A year younger than Hila's twenty-nine, Bill was on disability due to mental illness and spent a lot of time in his room in front of a computer. He turned from the monitor now, looking like a disheveled and somewhat overweight owl.
        "What’s up?"
        By this time Hila had recovered her composure and was showing only her normal image: that is, smart, beautiful, and competent. After brushing some of Bill's clothes off a chair and onto the littered floor, she sat down.
        "Heavy stuff. You remember Dawn Elaine Vortgern, who wrote The Deeper Things of God?"
        "Of course, corrupter of the otherwise spotlessly pure Ollie Fulborne."
        This was humor. Oliver Fulborne was head Elder of River Grove Community Church, the house of worship attended by their parents and until recently by Hila. Ollie had once been accused of being a sexual harasser of young teenage girls, and Hila and Bill were quite sure the charges were true. They also were aware that Ollie had read Dawn's book a few years previously and that he might have been badly influenced by it. The old man appeared to believe privately that he could sin with impunity, which was just the sort of thing the book encouraged. Dawn taught that, for certain exalted Christians such as herself, God would overlook the sins of the body. Only the soul mattered.
        "Yes, that Vortgern and no other," Hila said. "The Vortgern. She showed up as a guest speaker at my house church today. Just popped over from Indianapolis in a great big house trailer, with her husband and adopted daughter. It appears she has an itinerant ministry we weren't aware of. According to Cora, Dawn's husband is rich enough, through owning some business, that he finances them to travel, even to other states, on weekends. He must pay for these too."
        She handed him a flyer. On the cover was a picture of Dawn, looking well-coifed and capable. The large print at the beginning read:

Sanctification Ministry

        It went on, in smaller print, to describe the Vortgern family, pictured within, and to list seminar topics. Phone and address were provided.
        Bill put it down after a quick scan, but knowing him as she did, Hila suspected he had not only digested its content but had recorded it with his photographic memory.
        "So why doesn't she mention the book?" he asked.
        "I hadn't noticed that she didn't. It does seem odd. We know she was promoting it just a few years ago." Hila shook her head slightly as if to dismiss the matter. "What had me spluttering this morning is that Dan and Jamie think Dawn is acceptable, and Cora tells me she's been coming to teach about every six months. Is this believable? I thought this little house church was a stable place where I could recover some from all the problems I had at River Grove."
        Bill leaned back and smiled. "Church, stability. Stability, church. Do these two words go together?"
        "Oh, stow it. And now I've offended Jamie Kozak by telling her she and Dan shouldn't have let the Vortgern speak." Hila compressed her lips briefly. "Why do I have to shoot my mouth off? Fine, if soothing heresies are what the others want to hear, then what should it matter to me if this woman blows in every six months and then out again? Why didn't I leave it alone?"
        "Hila, this is not a problem with any reality for me. I can't relate."
        "Shut up and relate anyway. Should I apologize to Dan and Jamie?"
        "Since when do you apologize to anyone?"
        "Ouch. Just answer."
        "I don't know. But what was she like? Hypnotic?"
        His sister sat silent for a moment. "Hardly. As a matter of fact, I could hardly hear her. She doesn't project. If she hadn't been drawing on a blackboard, I wouldn't even have known what she was getting at; but since I've read her book, I got the general idea. Whether anyone else did, I don't know."
        Bill laughed. "Then what's the big deal about letting her teach?"
        "Well! I don't know. Let her preach solo, huh?¾ so low we can't hear. She must be getting something across though, and if she is then…. What would you do if ¾ well, I don't know if atheists have heretics. Is there some sort of pseudo-atheist that you atheists think might corrupt the flock?"
        "Yeah, agnostics. Half the time they want someone like me to agree with them that the religions can be positive influences. I pummel them pretty hard in the atheist internet chat rooms."
        "Then you can relate."
        "I suppose. Speaking of which, did you know that Eric Donovan is on the University Speakers list this spring?"
        "The famous atheist? No, I didn't know."
        "You want to go hear him?"
        "Me? Of course not, and let's get back to my problem. Or have I solved it?"
        "Right. The Vortgern is inaudible, ergo harmless, so you should apologize to the church people and then turn to consideration of my concerns."
        "Not so fast. I'm still thinking it over. If she doesn't come back till midsum-mer¾ " Hila stood and looked out a window at the quiet city street "¾ then I guess I can pretend I don't care about her peddling her poison. I'm just too tired and too discouraged to take on the establishment at another church, anyway, even a small one. I've had enough of trying to change people who are comfortably addicted to church-ianity." She turned to him. "So what are your concerns today?"
        "You know, wanting you to come hear Donovan with me."
        "Are you still trying to convert me? You know that's against our rules."
        Bill waved this away. "No, I'm playing fair. I just thought you'd find it interest-ing. He'll field questions after the talk. Might be some good debate with Christians."
        "It wearies me to think about it. No, it's not for me."
        She sat down at Bill's other desk and opened a large, flat volume. "Both sides straining for a throttle-hold," she went on, "bending and breaking the rules of proof, of debate, certainly of courtesy. Where were we?" She had come to the last filled page in the book, a page densely covered with handwriting.
        "Oh, you know, we couldn't agree whether Sir Miff and Amelia would actually get married this time."
        "We couldn't? Which side did I take?"
        Since childhood, they had been writing stories of a pretend land called Bafilia (they called this Baffling), and the characters Miff and Amelia were talking mice, long engaged. Two previous attempts at holding their wedding had been foiled by evil enemies.
        "You wanted the wedding to go on because you're invited to it and I'm not."
        The previous year they had tried the experiment of writing themselves in as visiting characters in Bafilia. It was then that the gentle Mouselady Amelia had invited Hila to the wedding.
        "Now I remember. So since I'm already on record, I must argue unyieldingly for a wedding. But actually I'm not sure I should go."
        "I don't see why not."
        "And anyway," she said, reverting without warning to their other topic, "you don't like being in crowds, so you probably won't go yourself¾ to hear Professor Donovan, I mean. Besides, you already know everything he's going to say. Haven't you read all his books?"
        Bill gave her an odd look, as if he had been caught in some misdemeanor or weakness. "Right," he said without energy. "Yeah, I already have heard it all. So we'll see."

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