There is a visual suggestion. Not much more than an unexpected movement of the air, a fluttering in the corner of his eye.Perhaps not even that—it was more like a barky whisper as he strode past the old tree on his left, a gentle tap on his shoulder that didn't register for a few more steps: words, it said, words carved here in this bark.At that he stopped and turned. He looked back, then up; took the tree in. An oak it was, old and grand and mum, as if denying having said ...

They say Jesus Kristus was untouched.You learn it in school, you hear it from parents, from grandparents—from them especially—from friends, and from preachers. You read it in the Bible: Jesus Kristus was the first to, and the only one ever to, escape, ascend, transcend, what have you, the Storm. He was the first ever to rise above it unscathed, as they like to put it on the late-night TV preacher-shows, especially now with a new Storm approaching, although unscathed means the same ...

The day before his execution, I saw my dad for the next to last time.I had never seen him this thin, nor this unshaven. In fact, I can't for the life of me ever remember him unshaven. Yet, here in his cell, with only a day to go—less than a day, now, more like twenty hours (not even that) till the blessed event, as he liked to call it—the gray stubble was probably a week old.It had been a while. For months, now, he had refused all visitors, and not even the Warden, apparent...

He sleeps in a small grass hut. Its floor is smooth ground, is hard dry mud trod and trod again by feet coming, going, coming, going, and sometimes staying.The hut contains nothing but empty space and a yellow and green mat of woven grass, still fresh and with a scent of field, serving as his bed. This mat is light and easy to roll up and stow away or to carry. Although it is thin he sleeps well on it and he does not wake sore.This morning was no exception: when he woke he ...

Sussex nights in early July do not stay dark for long, and by four o'clock gray creeps up on you from under bushes and from behind walls and soon you can easily make out shapes and features again. Half an hour later, it's as good as day.We had stayed up talking right on through the night against a shared, and much enjoyed backdrop of Joni Mitchell, Stealers Wheel, Ralph McTell, and even some George Frideric Handel, sustained by deeply held and shared beliefs. It was timeless talk. ...

The new blade, one of a sharp twin pair, slices skin and lets blood out. There's hardly even a sting at first, before the foamy shaving cream turns pink, then red, and here's the sting, for real now, as if let loose by blood. Foam redder still. It's a pretty deep cut."Damn."His right hand passes the razor to his left then dives into a blue box of paper napkins by the basin and brings one—two actually, they tend to cling together—out. He presses them against his skin. Holds ...

Before the beginning of time there was no such thing as surprise.By the way, by the "beginning of time," I mean the beginning of this time, the one that we're now busy living and dying and doing things in, the one we're currently complaining about. There may well have been other times, you understand—there quite likely were, in fact—with their own beginnings and endings and complaints, but our time, the one going on right now and the one we are concerned with here, knows nothing of...

This never happens to plumbers.The plumber's world makes sense. It's all about water and gravity and slanting pipes. You channel the water in, you channel it back out. You slant the pipes earthward a little. Not much, just enough for the water to head in the right direction. Gravity does most of the work.Mine is not a plumber's world and my world makes no sense. Marie is on the floor and my knuckles hurt.The plumber has an easy life. Copper pipes bring water in, cop...

This happened when I was twelve. I was there and I saw it with my own eyes. I know what happened. There's no talking or threatening me out of this.I have kept my silence since, all the way to this day. I have kept my silence all these years in order not to shame my parents, for I ask you: who on earth would have believed me? And for that matter, who will believe me now? My parents would surely have thought me deranged beyond repair and I would have shamed them greatly had I spoken ...

To say that Sam was obsessed with reincarnation would not have been too wide off the mark. His childhood experience pointed in that direction, but how could he be sure? How could anyone be sure?In his search for the truth in this regard, he discovered that early Church Fathers, like Origen, definitely held the immortality of the spirit to be a fact; as did many of the classic (and many more recent) philosophers. But did they know? Or just speculate? Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus. Did...

On April 13, 1996, going on 2:30 in the afternoon, in a sunny clearing by a marsh not half a mile from the small red house (with white corners) where he lived with, and took care of, his aging mother, Ezra Wildmark, precisely fifty-one years and fourteen days old that day, met God—and God, as it happened, turned out to be Eskimo.That is, God was shortish, maybe an inch or two over five feet. He was slim, fit, and relaxed. His face was red leathery skin where dark eyes sat deeply am...

The finer strands sway in the warm, dusky air, perceptible only to the dying. No, perhaps not strands; they are more like the long, dark gossamer tendrils of a celestial man-of-war descending through ether, through the high, indiscernible stone ceiling, through scream-filled air, there to melt into wrists and ankles, chest and hair, and now silently to shift in the poor light, savoring the pain.There are other, coarser strands, though they are not strands either but leather thongs,...