This charming collection of slice-of-life stories about the Rev. David Battles and life in a mythical Midwest town caused a sensation when it was first released. With over 55,000 copies in print and a review in the New York Times , it remains a favorite for Christian readers. The Good News from North Haven By Michael L. Lindvall The Crossroad Publishing Company Copyright © 2002 Michael L. Lindvall All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8245-2012-0 Contents Acknowledgments, Introduction: North Haven, 1. The Christmas Pageant, 2. The Little Things, 3. Merciful Snow, 4. The Ocarina Band, 5. The Affair, 6. Motorcycle, 7. Learning to Dance, 8. A Strange Providence, 9. Reunion, 10. Lamont Wilcox's Boat, 11. Sherry Moves Home for a While, 12. Air-Conditioning, 13. The Treasure Hunt, 14. The Dreadful Omniscience of God, 15. The Jefferson Street Leaf War, 16. Hunting, 17. Rapture, 18. Christmas Baptism, About the Author, CHAPTER 1 The Christmas Pageant The Christmas pageant is over. It was, in the end, wonderful, and now that it is past, my blood pressure and, in fact, the church's communal blood pressure have dropped about twenty points. We got through it again without schism and with no divorces. None of the kids got grounded this year, but it was close. The whole saga of the Christmas Pageant really began precisely forty-seven Christmases ago when Alvina Johnson first directed Second Presbyterian's "Children's Christmas Pageant," something that she continued to do through ten pastors, nine U.S. presidents, three wars, and who knows how many Christian Education Committees, for the next forty-six years, but not this year, and that's the story. International alliances came and went; wars were fought and peace made; ministers were called and then called away — but Alvina Johnson directing the Children's Christmas Pageant was like a great rock in a turbulent sea. Alvina is "Mrs. Johnson," although there is no "Mr. Johnson." There was a Mr. Johnson for only three and a half weeks, forty-nine years ago. A few days shy of their month's wedding anniversary, Mr. Johnson (nobody remembers his first name) left, although Alvina never puts it that way. She prefers to say, "He just ran off to Minneapolis," with the accent on Minneapolis, as if it were that notorious place and Mr. Johnson's morally feeble nature that lured him away from wife and home rather than anything having to do with Alvina. Nobody here ever talks about why he left. They all know, just as they know why rain falls down and grass grows up. One might call Alvina "stubborn," but that word isn't quite enough. Alvina is intractable, intransigent, unmovable. This, everybody assumes, Mr. Johnson easily discovered in the space of three and a half weeks. When folks around here get put out with Alvina, who is disguised as a sweet and demure seventy-year-old lady, they refer to her, under their breath of course, as "the iron butterfly." But Alvina does what she says, always, exactly, and forever. Forty-seven years ago somebody asked her to do the Christmas Pageant. She said yes. They didn't say, "Would you do the Christmas Pageant this year?" so Alvina, who is a literalist in all things, assumed that they meant forever, and she is a woman of her word. Alvina's Pageants always had precisely nine characters: one Mary, one Joseph, three Wise Men, two Shepherds, one Angel, and one Narrator. The script was simply the Christmas story out of the King James Bible, which meant that two six-year-old shepherds had to learn to say, "Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us." Auditions for the nine parts were held the last Sunday afternoon in October for forty-six years. Rehearsals for the nine lucky winners were held for the next five Sunday afternoons. Alvina's goal was nothing less than perfection in Christmas pageantry: perfect lines, perfect pacing, blocking, enunciation, perfect everything, which is not easily achieved with little children, even nine carefully selected ones. Critics said that Alvina would have much preferred working with nine midget actors, if she could have gotten away with it. Time and again people tried to get Alvina to open things up so that every kid who wanted a part could have one. "Alvina," they would say, "Scripture says that there was a heavenly host, not just one lonely angel. Alvina, why not a few more shepherds, then everybody could be in the Pageant?" or "Alvina, if there were shepherds, there had to be sheep, right? We'll make some cute little woolly sheep outfits for the three- and four-year-olds." "Nope," she'd answer, "too many youngsters, too many problems." Early in the fall, however, something happened that deflected the inertia of nearly half a century of always doing it the way it had always been done. The Christian Education Committee included the three young mothers of last year's rejected Mary, Joseph, and Wise