Honor

"The Problem of Pain."

Enherrian speaks of his dead daughter:

"'Be sure she fought well,' he said. 'She gave God honor.' (Glory? Praise? Adoration? His due?)" (p. 38)

Peter Berg wonders:

"Does he mean she prayed, made her confession, while she drowned?" (ibid.)

Enherrian meant nothing like that. The crux of the story comes when Pete realizes the basic difference between his Christianity and Enherrian's New Faith.

One big difference, although not the main one, emerges when Enherrian is startled at the suggestion that his dead daughter's soul still exists:

"'How could it?' Enherrian snapped. 'Why should it?'" (ibid.)

The set of his feathers indicates that he does not want to discuss these questions further. We have yet to learn that Planha involves not only spoken words but also bodily gestures.

Pete thinks that God would not create souls and let them cease to exist. How do we know what God would do? How could an individual consciousness endure literally forever? After entire cosmic lifetimes, an individual would be able to remember his earliest experiences less and less often until eventually he would lose all sense of identity with his earlier self. There would be no difference between one individual surviving indefinitely and one individual ceasing and another beginning - which is what happens already.