First pew, right side, as close to Marjorie and her keyboard as I can get without being up on the stand.  That’s where I sit each week in the Luganville, Vanuatu Branch.  Marjorie usually begins her prelude music five minutes before the meeting is to begin, and is still playing 20 or more minutes later.  I have plenty of time for contemplation.

My attention focuses on a small pile of glass fragments up on the floor of the stand.  Some small object was dropped, and shattered into a hundred squarish pieces.  What might it have been?

A six-year-old girl, the bored daughter of the district president, comes by and notices the pile, too.  She gets down on the floor to examine the pieces.  She then begins to brush the whole collection toward the three steps to the stand, a distance of six feet.  I perceive the child’s intent.  She wants to pick up the pile of shiny fragments, and has chosen the best way to do it.  She brushes the pile with the side of her hand, being careful to not let a single shard escape.  It’s an involved process as she herds the pieces across the tiled floor.

Sure enough, as the pile reaches the brink of the first step, the girl places one hand below the lip of the step to catch the shards, and with the other hand she brushes the pieces into it.  What a good girl!  She has noticed a problem with the cleanliness of the meetinghouse, and is fixing it.

Not a shard is lost.  It’s a perfect clean-up job.  The girl examines her handful of shiny shards—then throws them back from whence they came.  They scatter widely, and largely disappear.  The girl runs off, and I sit and wonder.

I wonder about our thought processes.  I wonder about the thought processes of a six-year-old.  I wonder about the thought processes of the worm-like centipede that is making its way across the same area just vacated by the girl and the glass pieces.  I know from experience that these creatures are harmless.  No one notices them but me.  They’re everywhere.  They come into buildings from outside, crawl around until they desiccate, and then die in a curled-up spiral.  The chapel was swept yesterday, but if it was swept again today, one could easily collect a hundred dead worms.

This worm follows a somewhat straight course as he heads for the single step that holds the choir seats.  When he bumps into that barricade, he rears up and examines it.  Can he see?  Will he climb it?  I know that he can if he wants to because several dozen are curled up on my 12-foot-high veranda every morning.

This worm decides to turn left and to follow the step.  What is he looking for?  Food?  Water?  Companionship?

After searching for six feet in that direction he again rears up to examine the vertical cliff beside him, decides he’s been going the wrong way, and reverses direction.  When he reaches the bend in the stair he strikes off across the floor and is soon back at his point of beginning.  He crawls out of sight, but soon reappears and repeats his previous exploration.  During the course of the meeting he goes through the whole routine three times.

I wonder about the worm.  I wonder about people who aimlessly pursue their journey knowing that life is going to end somewhere in a desiccated, curled-up ball after they’ve traversed the same fruitless ground innumerable times.

The meeting began midway through the worm’s journey.  I’m having a difficult time following the Bislama.  My concentration is interrupted by the distressed yelping of a dog.  I turn my head to the right and peer through the open louvers beside me.  The church’s chain-link fence is five feet from the side of the building.  The fence separates the meetinghouse from the yard of the Chinese man who lives next door.  I’m looking at the back of his house.  He has three fine-looking big, red dogs that have the run of the whole fenced-in yard.  I’ve seen him up town with them.

But he has another dog, less handsome, that is kept chained behind the house.  It’s this dog that’s doing the yelping.  I’d be yelping, too.  The man has a big, long stick, and he’s beating the dog mercilessly.  He doesn’t temper the blows a bit.  The dog wildly runs to the end of the chain to avoid the next blow, but the man follows and hits the dog again and again.

Does the man know that he’s interrupting a church meeting?  Does he know that he’s being watched?  Does he care?

“Protect yourself!” I find myself mentally telling the dog.  “Bite him!  It’s your only hope.

I have no idea what the dog did to deserve the beating, but he got a good one.  He took perhaps 15 bone-breaking blows, and then submissively wagged his tail at the beast to say that he was sorry.

I longed to be able to turn the tables on the Satanic creature that administered the beating.  I imagined him chained and unable to escape the club that kept coming and coming and coming.  Would he be more merciful if he could experience the receiving end?  Is this what is meant by the chains of hell?  I’ve just witnessed Satan at work.

I didn’t understand the Bislama sermons today, but I went home with much to think about.