A story of Flannery O’Connor’s often included in textbooks of English Lit is “Everything that Rises Must Converge,” the title piece in a collection of short stories that she wrote before her death in 1963.
The title comes from the French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who wrote, “Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge.”
I thought of both O’Connor’s short story and Teilhard de Chardin when I read the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ ascension into heaven.
Matthew merely says that the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them, and there Jesus declared, “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”
Mark adds that after Jesus spoke to the disciples, “he was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God.”
Luke writes that Jesus blessed the disciples and as he did this “he parted from them and was taken up to heaven.”
In the Acts of the Apostles, we read that the disciples saw Jesus being lifted up “and a cloud took them from their sight.”
And that is how Rembrandt van Rijn depicts the Ascension—Christ rising on a cloud as the disciples follow him with their eyes.
O’Connor’s story is about Mrs. Chestny, a widow, and her son Julian, who just finished college. It was in the early 1960s in the recently desegregated American South. On the bus the blacks could now ride with the whites, which Mrs. Chestny dreaded, and she would bring Julian along on her trips to her weekly weight-loss class at the YMCA—one of her “few pleasures” and a therapy for her hypertension.
Julian hated his mother’s patronizing attitude towards Negroes. They now lived in a dilapidated neighborhood, but his mother kept telling him of the plantation that her grandfather once owned, which had 200 slaves, and her black nurse Caroline, whom she called an “old darky” and remembered with fondness (“there was no better person in the world”). Mrs. Chestny felt that blacks should rise “but on their own side of the fence.” Julian saw that his mother lived in a world of false kindness. He wanted to spite her by sitting next to a black person on the bus or by bringing black guests or even a black spouse to their home.
When they got on the bus, Mrs. Chestny, who wore a hat that Julian found hideous, remarked with relief that there were only white people on board. Eventually, however, a grim-faced black woman and her little boy joined them. And she happened to wear the same garish hat as Julian’s mother.
The boy found a place next to Mrs. Chestny, while his mother sat beside Julian. Mrs. Chestny smiled at the boy. The black woman noticed and angrily called her son, Carver, and pulled him towards her. Julian’s mother tried to play peek-a-boo with Carver, but the black woman ignored her and scolded the boy.
They disembarked at the same place. And as they got down Julian’s worst fear happened. His mother gave a coin to Carver. The black woman exploded with rage and shouted, “He don’t take nobody’s pennies!” She swung her big bag at Mrs. Chestny and sent her reeling to the ground. Julian rebuked his mother as he helped her up. His mother seemed lost. Julian continued to lecture as he reached out for her. But he noticed an odd expression on her face. She told him to call her grandfather and Caroline and collapsed. She had suffered a heart attack.
For Teilhard de Chardin, the ascent is made through love. At the summit we unite with all the others who have themselves soared through their compassion.
Julian loved in theory but not in practice. He commiserated with the blacks in general but not with his flesh and blood, his own mother, who if truth be told was just a child of her time and culture, who still had to grow in her consciousness of true racial equality and living together. In a sense, the ones who “converged” in the story were just Julian’s mother and the boy Carver, who as between them shared a prelapsarian innocence.
Jesus ascended to his Father, to God, Love itself. If we, too, rise, buoyed up by the cloud of compassion, charity for one and all, may we not then achieve union with each other and with God? If indeed everything that rises must converge.