“The Devil's Martyr's”

Recently someone gave me a copy of Rabbi Harold Kushner's classic When Bad Things Happen To Good People. I had never read it and, though it is not that I think anything so terrible has happened in my life, I found reading it a comfort and an affirmation of much of what I personally believe: That Life happens --- and that God is not about altering the vicissitudes of life but rather about giving us strength and courage in facing them.

In the book Rabbi Kushner mentions what he calls “The Devil's Martyrs” --- people whose loss causes their loved ones to become angry and bitter and rail against God and ask “what kind of a God would do this to someone?” Seems there are a lot of folks around these days who turn their dead into Devil's Martyrs. And one of the things Rabbi Kushner says is, “The facts of life and death are neutral. We, by our response, give suffering either a positive or a negative meaning.” And he goes on to say that we, as the living can either make some one a Devil's Martyr or we can make them witnesses for God and for Life. He says, “The dead depend on us for their redemption and their immortality.”

I found this not only comforting but reassuring. Particularly because I have been so obsessed with Mark's book. He was so proud of that book and the thought of it dying with him is terrible to me. The book has its flaws as all human endeavors do. But it also has great beauty. And as I was reading Rabbi Kushner's words this morning I remembered a beautiful passage in the final chapter of Mark's book. He believes he is about to die and he is remembering things that happened in his life. He is begging God not to let him drown and he begins to think about something he was a part of as a young man. I'll post those paragraphs here and let Mark tell you in his own words what thoughts were in his mind as he was facing death. I hope they stayed with him in those moments of his life that really were final:

(Photo at left: Mark back in his lifeguard days.)

But a long time ago, when I was young and dumb, I actually saw Him. Yeah, that’s right. I saw God. Of course, I didn’t know it at the time but it was definitely Him—the apparition of God on Earth in human form.

Toward the end of summer lifeguards everywhere have spent too many days in the sun. After a week long stretch of sunshine we would do rain dances or call up people who seed clouds—anything to get a rainy day. It was finally a cloudy day on Wingaersheek Beach. There were four of us guards on duty. Only a few people were on the beach. Three of us played poker and the fourth guard patrolled the beach paying special attention to those parts hidden from the guard shack by the rocks.

The tide was out and, with the gradual incline of the beach, it was ten times as big at low tide as it was at high. Wingaersheek is one big beach at low tide. The current from the Annisquam River scoured out a pool behind one of the largest rocks. The pool was a good thirty feet in diameter and dropped off gradually to about six feet in the middle. It was there that I was to see God.

I had just drawn a third queen to the two I already had when we heard yelling. We were all up and looking for its source. The roving guard emerged from behind another rock at a dead run, headed toward the tidal pool, blasting on his whistle, dropping his white safari hat and hurling his red jacket high in the air—all signs that something was terribly wrong.

Hats and jackets were airborne in a heartbeat. Three of us headed right at the pool. I was ahead of the other two, about twenty yards from the pool, when the rover hit the water. As I closed on the pool I could see an unrecognizable object seeming to float in the middle. I slid to a halt at the edge and there He was—God. All that was visible of Him were His hands and arms. He was holding his little sister above the water’s surface. He was totally submerged—drowning. Even though he was about to die he still held his baby sister above the water. I hit the water swimming, head up, eyes locked on the victim as I’d been taught. Just as Guard #1 reached her, the arms collapsed. The girl fell into the water, screaming. Guard #1 grabbed her as the arms disappeared from sight. He pointed down as he treaded water holding the girl. I grabbed her brother on the first dive. As I surfaced with him the two reinforcements arrived. We swam the boy to the beach. He was breathing on his own before we had him out of the water. He said his sister stepped in over her head and began drowning and he went after her. The catch was, he couldn’t swim a stroke but nothing was going to hurt his baby sister, he told me. All he could do was stand on the bottom and hold his sister out of the water. He had no idea we were on the way. Four lifeguards were awed by his audacity.

In three years as a commercial diver and almost twenty as a Gloucester fisherman, it is not that I have never seen such a display of selflessness and courage. It is that I’ve never heard of one without wondering if maybe God appears on earth from time to time and manifests Himself in this manner to show us that He really does exist. All it takes is some brilliant bastard like myself, who only took twenty years to figure out exactly what it was he witnessed that day and pass it on. Maybe it’s just that simple. It don’t take religion, it don’t take education, it don’t take philosophy or a strong belief in the hereafter. It sure don’t take using the word “God” five times in every sentence. Maybe it just takes the good luck to be a witness to, or the courage to be a part of, someone willing to die to save someone else. Someone willing to “lay down his life for his brother”. Perhaps every time one of these instances occurs the human race takes a little step farther on the evolutionary plane to wherever we are supposed to be evolving to. - Mark S. Williams

Thanks for reading.