SUSAN HOWATCH IN HER 1999 NOVEL The High Flyer takes the story of our Western times – the story of corporate corruption, material excess and spiritual opacity – and weaves it along the satisfyingly nuanced lines one has come to expect of her writing, that is if one is a cognoscenti fan and Christian believer and knows the spiritual opportunities inherent in such a topic. The story also as one might expect was dismissed at review time by popular critics as preachy and moralistic, opportunistic even, themselves not unwitting to God-talk but above and beyond all that of course. For those who have ears however, listen!

Out of the power- and success- and money-hungry corporate culture of the 90s, Howatch fashions the atheistic life of her heroine Carter Graham, a high flyer in London’s world of tax law and corporate life, and subjects it to evil and death. Howatch then makes with this stuff of our common humanity a timeless weave of grace and redemption with which to comfort a soul in its darkest hour. Here is a lesson to be remembered (present in all of Howatch’s fiction), namely the Christian hope that as God has done in the past, so again God will do or in different words and more to the point of our topic, using biblical language, God is ever present to redress our imbalances as in “the hungry shall be filled with good things, and the rich shall be sent away empty” . . . though not necessarily in the way literalists, whether of the Western or Eastern stripe, might wish.

A recurrent theme in Howatch's novels (especially the Starbridge series), this mystical turning of God's favor upon all who come to God's altar of opportunity in the midst of "trouble, sorrow, need or any other adversity" satisfies the thoroughly modern spiritual reader yet perplexes even repulses the reactionary fundamentalist. The Howatch twist that catches and causes us to pause and reconsider matters spiritually is this - we are at once ourselves both the rich and the hungry. This is a profound insight worthy of Christian saints throughout the ages, and a message we need repeated often especially in our overheated world of religious argumentation. In the words of that witty 1970 environmentalist cartoon - "We have met the enemy and he is us!"

Toward the novel’s end Howatch tells the story of a father and nine-year old son traveling in the Lake District on holiday –

They see signs pointing to “The Sheepdog Trials” and the son thinks it would be a grand spectacle for them to watch. Following the signs through hill and valley, they finally arrive at the Sheepdog Trials which are in fact what the signs proclaim them to be – a contest of sheepdogs leading a flock of sheep through a series of trials or tests, and being judged for skill and aptitude in their several performances. The boy however is sorely disappointed. He wanted to see a white wigged, black robed judge, stern and foreboding, peering out over a courtroom of jurymen and fellow citizens and especially upon an accused soul standing in a cage. Maybe a murderer to be convicted and sentenced to death by hanging!

How like that boy we are in our elementary school understanding of God’s love and justice, and our desire, anger even to see things resolved in black-and-white. How much more like the sheepdog judges is our God who does not condemn to death those who fail, but only encourages them to try again to do better next time, always against an empowering background of improved instruction and discipline for success. We look for hangings with phenomenal interest and concern for sin and judgment, Old Testament-style, while the Eternal Being in whose image we are made and in Whom nothing is lost that is created, calls us to model love and justice tempered by mercy, New Testament-style.

Remember the One “who died for our sins and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world.” All else bows before this one surpassing grace! How hard is that to get, one asks and then shrugs immediately, realizing very hard indeed especially when looking to the centuries long sectarian foment of the Middle East and the culture wars of our own Anglican Communion.

The spiritual learning for high flying Carter Graham is mostly implied or “out there” beyond the last chapter, leaving her spiritual outcome as it were a work in progress, and that is a good thing come to think of it (except perhaps to dyed-in-the-wool Baptists). Spiritual lessons as universal absolute truths are commanded of all souls in every generation hence, the value of tradition and the practice of religion as keeper of sacred knowledge. It's good to cycle stuff on out into the future (provided we've got the right take on the conversation to begin with). Yet as relative transient experiences each generation is condemned to learn anew these same spiritual lessons again the hard way, one painful lesson after the other, soul by soul. I suppose this is God's way of tempering the truth, making it capable of cutting through the denials and deceits of each age, while leaving room for these same truths to adapt to new realities as yet unknown over time. Both immutable and malleable at the same time.

Evangelicals in general, fundamentalists in particular are strong on the former understanding but weak to the latter. They cannot reconcile their desire for harsh judgment of grievous wrongdoing done by others (readily albeit selectively quoting, "The Bible says . . .") with their own need for loving acceptance of sins done by themselves ("Make me a forgiven sinner!"), sins no less separating them from God than the sins of others. They lack an Anglican tolerance (others might say taste) for ambiguity and paradox and mystery and what the Christian existentialist Camus called "reasonable culpability". They have to separate themselves from those others, as if their objectivization of others as sinners (not forgiven) thereby rejoins them alone as sinners (forgiven) to the Ultimate Other. Yet sin only separates (especially the sin of condemning others); sin cannot join or restore; only living sacrifice can restore to justice what sin has done. All sin separates. Only virtue can repair and heal, and ultimately only Christ's virtue at that.

The meteoric rise and fall of 90s’ corporate star Kenneth Lay, a regular Methodist churchgoer and community philanthropist (with ill-gotten gains) is our most recent poignant example of how awry high flying human aspirations and desires can take us in “scattering the proud in the imagination of their hearts,” as we in the Anglican know of things, would say. Millions were affected adversely by Lay and his fellow corporate conspirators. Yet "there's a wideness in God's mercies" that will embrace Lay and countless others who have done foul deeds unworthy of our forgiveness. That's the good news indeed that is The Good News - we're not the ones doing the judging, thanks be to God. The bottom line is - Christ died for our sins and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world - even those whose sins have caused us immediate and lasting harm, pain and suffering, dammit.

Biblical literalists (including atheistic heroines whose lives are being transformed) don’t quite get how the sheep fold together at day’s end, good and bad alike. Even the canonical gospel writers, inspired as they were, couldn't resist anthropomorphizing the revelation of God's grace, God's love in sacrifice, with their own touch of anger and vengeance. Howatch gets it though and gets it right even if we are not quite sure of what it is.

In the end there is always hope. Although we do not yet know what for, Howatch knows this hope includes the whole of humanity. There is no hope unless it includes the whole of humanity. Billy Graham Ministries and all those descendant community churches scattered around the country in fancy new digs may have sure knowledge of who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, and how we can tell the difference in this world, but for Howatch and the rest of God’s Anglican children, there is always and in all ways grace (and more grace to come) to be considered. Thanks, Susan.