The Signature of All Things

botanist deity give us the fetterbush and the privet, for instance, to kill off our horses and cows? Where is the hidden revelation there?”
    “But why should our Lord not be a botanist?” Ambrose asked. “What occupation would you prefer your deity to have?”
    Alma considered the question seriously. “Perhaps a mathematician,” she decided. “Scratching and erasing at things, you know. Adding and subtracting. Multiplying and dividing. Toying with theories and new calculations. Discarding earlier mistakes. It appears a more sensible idea to me.”
    “But the mathematicians I have met, Alma, are not particularly compassionate souls, nor do they nourish life.”
    “Precisely,” said Alma. “This would go a long way toward explaining the suffering of mankind and the random nature of our fates—as God adds and subtracts us, divides and erases us.”
    “What a grim view! I wish you did not consider our lives so bleakly. On the whole of things, Alma, I still see more wonder in the world than suffering.”
    “I know you do,” said Alma, “and that is why I worry for you. You are an idealist, which means that you are destined to be disappointed, and perhaps even wounded. You seek a gospel of benevolence and miracle, which leaves no room for the sorrows of existence. You are like William Paley, arguing that the perfection of every design in the universe is proof of God’s love for us. Do you recall Paley’s claim that the mechanism of the human wrist—so exquisitely suited to gathering food and creating works of artistic beauty—is the very imprint of the Lord’s affection toward man? But the human wrist is also perfectly suited to swinging a murderous ax at one’s neighbor. What proof of love, therein? Moreover, you make me feel like a horrid little marplot, because I sit here making such dull arguments and because I cannot live in the same shining city upon the hill that you inhabit.”
    They sat quietly for a spell, then Ambrose asked, “Are we arguing, Alma?”
    Alma considered the question. “Perhaps.”
    “But why must we quarrel?”
    “Forgive me, Ambrose. I am weary.”
    “You are weary because you have been sitting in this library every night, asking questions of men who have been dead for hundreds of years.”
    “I have spent most of my life conversing with such men, Ambrose. Older ones, as well.”
    “Yet because they do not answer questions to your liking, you now assail me. How can I offer you satisfactory answers, Alma, if far superior minds than my own have already disappointed you?”
    Alma put her head in her hands. She felt strained.
    Ambrose continued, but now in a more tender voice. “Only imagine what we could learn, Alma, if we could unshackle ourselves from argument.”
    She looked up at him again. “I cannot unshackle myself from argument, Ambrose. Recall that I am Henry Whittaker’s daughter. I was born into argument. Argument was my first nursemaid. Argument is my lifelong bedfellow. What’s more, I believe in argument and I even love it. Argument is our most steadfast pathway toward truth, for it is the only proven arbalest against superstitious thinking, or lackadaisical axioms.”
    “But if the end result is only to drown in words, and never to hear . . .” Ambrose trailed off.
    “To hear what ?”
    “Each other, perhaps. Not each other’s words, but each other’s thoughts.Each other’s spirit. If you ask me what I believe, I shall tell you this: the whole sphere of air that surrounds us, Alma, is alive with invisible attractions—electric, magnetic, fiery and thoughtful. There is a universal sympathy all around us. There is a hidden means of knowing. I am certain of this, for I have witnessed it myself. When I swung myself into the fire as a young man, I saw that the storehouses of the human mind are rarely ever fully opened. When we open them, nothing remains unrevealed. When we cease all argument and debate—both internal and external—our true questions can be heard and answered. That is the powerful mover. That is the book of nature, written neither in Greek nor in Latin. That is the gathering of magic, and it is a gathering that, I have always believed and wished, can be shared.”
    “You speak in riddles,” Alma said.
    “ And you speak too much ,” Ambrose replied.
    She could find no reply to this. Not without speaking more . Offended, confused, she felt her eyes sting with tears.
    “Take me someplace where we can be silent together,