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After the hurly-burly of the Gorn battle, after confirming that the ship wasn’t going to blow itself up (today,) after holding Marie and sobbing out his relief at her safety, Chris Pike returned to his quarters and had his usual adrenaline crash, complete with vomiting and conking out.
A scant three hours later, he was wide awake again. Insomnia, too, was a usual response to the terror of a bad day. Now, he sat at his counter with a cup of herbal tea, mindlessly skimming through damage reports and boggling at the one inexplicable thing he’d done: he had prayed over Marie in sickbay.
It was not surprising that he’d pray over Marie. He knew he was gone on her, hopeless, probably would’ve proposed marriage before now if she hadn’t told him (once or a thousand times) that she wasn’t the marrying kind. (If only she were open to marriage, that might’ve given him a socially acceptable reason to be on his knees at her bedside. As it was, he’d had to tell her that he was praying for her safety to a God she didn’t believe in, and she’d seemed mildly confused by that.) She’d finally agreed to exclusivity after the Rigel VII misadventure, so if he was praying over anybody, it stood to reason it’d be her.
The surprising part was that he’d prayed. Out loud, no less. Years of not practicing any religion at all, and decades since he’d seen the inside of a church – excepting that one syncretic chapel on New Eden – and now where did this sudden impulse to pray come from?
Chris had seen a lot of life since his days as a dutiful altar boy and catechumen. He’d witnessed visions and miracles and even angels, all of them surrounded with perfectly rational explanations. (Or most of them, anyway. He still wasn’t quite sure what had transpired with that one comet fragment they’d redirected last year.) He’d been thrown into the Tower of Babel by a sentient asteroid. He’d gone to hell at the hands of telepathic zookeepers. He was in a position to believe that Jesus had been incorrect to say “If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into,” because certain Klingon monks had given him the time and the date as well as a compelling reason not to keep watch against it. Heck, he’d even seen how attempting to avoid his fate would lead to a worse outcome, and Jonah’s getting swallowed by a sea monster was somehow more believable than his own experience with a future self from an alternate timeline.
He’d had a whole lot of materialist experiences, in other words, and none that demonstrated the existence of an omnipotent being. He’d convinced himself that he had faith in things like service and sacrifice and teamwork and diversity and the greater good, but none in capital-G God.
So why had he fallen on his knees muttering the Lord’s prayer? Was it possible that he’d somehow kept his faith subconsciously? Or had his strength of character always been grace, bestowed by God and persisting in his soul, despite his efforts to reject the gift? If so, was this a conversion experience a la Paul on the road to Damascus?
Yes, he thought, that’s exactly what it is.
His next thought was, you have no sense of timing, Christopher. You’re 30 years too old, and millions of miles too far, to start attending mass again. You’ve got just a bit more than 6 years to live, and a whole ship to command meanwhile. When are you gonna have time for all the soul-searching that a proper conversion involves? Are you gonna go in for the sacrament of reconciliation and confess to condemning the Talosian race to extinction? To trading away your future to save the world? To violating the Prime Directive, more than once? To frequent and enthusiastic fornication? To participating in galactic-scale cover-ups? That would be foolish. You can’t go to confession unless you’re sorry, and he wasn’t. Clearly, if he had any sense at all, he’d try to forget the whole thing.
With a sharp laugh at his own expense, he set down the PADD he’d been idly scrolling through. Being both surprised and inconvenienced by one’s own faith, that was a classic, for sure. St. Augustine could’ve related – could still relate now, if eternal life were real – though Christopher sure hoped he wasn’t being called to become a saint. He’d already had the call to martyrdom, that was enough pressure for one man. Except apparently it wasn’t enough, because here he was having an old-fashioned conversion experience, the kind where God tells a man “come back to me” and the man finds himself with no idea how to respond.
He finished his tea in a gulp, stretched, and stood up to do some old-fashioned midnight pacing. Usually when he couldn’t sleep he’d compose a log. Captain’s personal log: Turns out I still believe God is real. Nope. Maybe he should catch up on paperwork? Please note the amended religious affiliation in my attached personnel record. I’ve decided to go from ‘agnostic’ to ‘lapsed Catholic’. Starfleet should take no action in response to this update. That didn’t seem quite appropriate, either. Yet he couldn’t just crawl back into his bunk and hope to fall asleep again. He had to do something.
The answer was niggling away at the edge of his mind, and he ignored it for as long as he could, which turned out to equal five and a half laps around the room. He finally admitted to himself that he had to say his prayers. That is, he wanted to say his prayers – more than he’d wanted to in actual decades. The thought gave him pause, and he hesitated in the middle of the living space for longer than he would’ve wanted to admit.
At length, he told himself, there’s no such thing as not being worthy to say your prayers, Christopher. Just do it.
So he went back to his bunk, but instead of getting in, he knelt beside it. And he crossed himself, this time without whispering OK, Dad. It took no effort at all to summon up the words. “Now I lay me down to sleep,” he murmured, “I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” Then he thought about that again and amended it to, “Guide and guard me through the night, and wake me with the morning light.” Originally, those lines were supposed to be the kid-friendly version, not mentioning death. In his case, they were apropos because he knew tonight was not the night he’d die. He moved on to intentions. “God bless the Enterprise crew,” he whispered. Then he hesitated, unsure what else to say. The voice of a long-ago religion teacher echoed in his mind: when in doubt, do your examen.
He opened his mouth to ask the computer for the steps of the examen, only to realize he remembered them. He was full of surprises tonight.
Thanksgiving.
What am I especially grateful for in the past day?
Putting the Gorn to sleep. Spock and Christine saving Marie. Getting the captive crew back. Saving the colonists.
The gift of another day...
Yeah, that’s good too. Even knowing his days were numbered, perhaps especially knowing that, Chris could appreciate having one more.
The love and support I have received...
So many people had to come through in a pinch for this cockamamie plan to work. He was going to file commendations in every single person’s file, he swore it.
The courage I have mustered…
“Make us shine like the sun,” he’d said to that young Scottish lieutenant, and so they had. It had worked. The damage reports on his PADD looked serious but not dire. They really did “turn it off before we blow up,” as he’d suggested.
In a way, being grateful for that was also being grateful that he knew he couldn’t blow up yet. He was destined to be horrifically burned in another 6 years, after being promoted to Fleet Captain, on a completely different ship. Checkmate, destiny.
A voice deep within his mind, the mother hen of the soul, scolded, “Yes, and you’ve weaponized that knowledge against the entire Gorn Hegemony, gambling on impossible odds because you know you can’t die here, damn the consequences of scaring your crew half to death.” Right. He’d have to make that up to them somehow.
An event that took place today…
Then again, they’d saved the entire Federation. That should be enough to make up for one or two scares, shouldn’t it? And that was only the second-best part of his day. The first was when Marie woke up. Despite her attempts to sacrifice herself on the planet, when she found herself alive and him on his knees, she looked at him like he was her hero. Embracing her was even better than killing a hundred thousand Gorn would’ve been.
Petition.
“I am about to review my day; I ask for the light to know God and to know myself as God sees me.” Chris said that part out loud, hoping that would make it feel more real. It felt strange to be asking for the light to know about someone he hadn’t thought he still wanted to know. He hadn’t truly spoken to God or asked for God’s perspective since...he couldn’t remember when.
He paused for a few moments to see if anything changed, now that he’d made a verbal petition. But of course, all he could feel was what he’d already been feeling all night: the warm churning in his chest that he used to associate with going to confession or receiving the Eucharist or participating in an adoration. As a child receiving First Communion, he’d thought that’s what accepting God’s grace felt like. For all he could tell at this moment, maybe 7-year-old Chris had been correct.
Review.
Where have I felt true joy today?
This had been such a long day. Hearing Marie’s voice again was one moment of joy, for sure. And after that, going to check in with everyone else they’d saved, seeing Joseph and La’an and Erica and Sam, alive and whole. Receiving congratulations from Robert for his skillful handling of the Gorn situation was also good, though tinged with some foreboding.
What has troubled me today?
“I created a Gorn-sized problem for someone else to solve later,” he whispered. And he only had the courage to do it because he could nearly guarantee that someone else wouldn’t be him. He’d be silently screaming in a life-support chair by the time the Gorn woke up again, God willing.
What a strange thing to be hoping for.
What has challenged me today?
He truly wasn’t sure what he should do to prepare Starfleet for the next Gorn swarm, or for the resurgence of the Romulans, or any other disasters lurking in their future. He didn’t even know how to prepare himself. He was still working on resigning himself to the fact that two of the cadets would die trying to go back for him after the baffle plate failed. As for the ship, Enterprise, his home and the crowning jewel of his career...he didn’t know where he’d get the strength to turn her over to another commander. The time to figure out all of these things was slipping past, faster every moment.
Where and when did I pause today?
“I didn’t,” he said with a snort. Though that wasn’t quite true. When Una asked him for orders over Parnassus Beta, he paused long enough to check for the exact wording of April’s instructions. On the trail of the Gorn ship, he’d paused long enough to stare at Marie’s vital signs readout on the captain’s chair. He’d been thinking please, please, please during both moments.
Have I noticed God's presence in any of this?
Subconsciously, he must’ve, or else to whom were those pleases addressed?
Response.
In light of my review, what is my response to the God of my life?
Chris pondered that one for a few long moments before saying, “Look, I’m still not even sure if you’re there.” With a deep breath he added, “But apparently I want you to be. So. Assuming you are...thank you for helping me get this far, and please continue to give me strength.”
Look Ahead.
As I look ahead, what comes to mind?
Getting back to starbase, he thought. Debriefings, there would be so many debriefings about the Gorn problem. He was not looking forward to that. Long ago in a particularly tedious post-mission debriefing, a former captain of his had joked, “I envy the dead who were spared this meeting.” Chris had never yet envied the dead, though after the Discovery situation, he had found himself wondering how many times one man can possibly be asked, “Can you walk us through your decision-making process?” Surely there’s an upper limit on cliches, somewhere in the universe.
Of course, here he was asking questions of himself while trying to converse with the author of the universe. That didn’t bode well for the existence of an end to silly questions.
With a slight shake of his head, he forced himself onto the last step of examen.
With what spirit do I want to enter tomorrow?
He asked, “Let me enter tomorrow with hope.” After a beat he amended that to, “Faith, hope, and love.” May as well put in a proper biblical reference when saying his prayers.
He thought back over the past 3 days in wonder. He’d chosen hope and been surprised by faith and found himself both terrified and sustained by love. Which of them was responsible for his sudden reconnection with God after all these years of radio silence, he couldn’t exactly say.
“In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit,” he said as he crossed himself, “Amen.”
Slowly, he got up off his knees. A wave of sleepiness came over him. It was either more aftereffects of adrenaline or deep-seated habit of sleeping after evening prayers. Either way, he got back under his covers. In five minutes he was fast asleep.