One of my readers admonished me to paint a picture of eternal life. It seems a reasonable request, now that I have had the last two weeks to offer a Biblical perspective on the subject. Fortunately for me I have already painted such a picture in one of my short stories found in my recent collection, Seven Stories. Thus, to honor my reader's request, I will post the story here in two parts. It is definitely the most philosophical/theological of my stories, so hopefully you will find it both thought-provoking and entertaining.
A Lesson in Time
“You know what kind of a state I was in. I was tired.
The world was tired; I was tired of having to explain why the world was
tired. I know it sounds self-important
for me to say that. You probably thought
so then; maybe you still do.”
I should, at this point, insert a footnote to
this conversation that ensued after completion of my experiment, which I am
recording herein in its entirety. As it stood at the time, despite the fact
that I loved my friend, I felt he might have been losing his grip. It wasn’t that he wasn’t a caring person,
because he was and is—certainly one of the most caring people I have
known. Although he was a scientist, he
had begun to court religion. He saw this
huge mountain standing between humanity and true peace; and he was growing more
and more dubious of the ability of science to break down this mountain. Certainly peace is a noble ambition, and I
could hardly fault him for searching for it; but I could not help but think
zeal such as his came perilously close to becoming pathological. I thought my friend had managed to maintain
equilibrium, but sometimes I feared for him—that he might crumble under the
pressure of all the troubles of our race.
At the end of the experiment he returned in a
state of serenity quite atypical of him.
I worried that the stress of the experiment had been too much, and I was
witnessing the euphoria of madness. I
was wrong.
“I didn’t mean to sound that way. I know I’m
no better than anyone else. It seemed
like everywhere I turned, though, people were saying two plus two equals five.
I would insist that two plus two equals four.
And immediately the burden would be on me to prove it. I would try my best to do so, and the
response I would invariably hear would be, ‘You’re too narrow.’ Or ‘Yeah,
but--’ Or ‘You’re too idealistic.’ Or ‘You have your values and I have mine.’
Or ‘Ah, but I’ve found the way to make it equal to five,’ and every other
excuse one might expect to find from people desperate for something they could
not put their finger on. I was fed up
with it. Everyone wants a free ride to
paradise. I’m telling you; I felt like
Elijah sitting beneath the tree whimpering to God, ‘Woe is me, there is no one
left who would follow you. I’m the only one and I just want to die.’ Pathetic? Yes. Heartfelt? I think so. True? No. Elijah was tired, too.”
“Fatigue definitely clouds one’s
perspectives,” I said, not entirely sure of what he was talking about.
“Yes, but rest wasn’t cutting it for me
anymore. If anything it made matters
worse. I needed to get away. So when you told me of your time machine--”
“Portal,” I interrupted.
“When you told me of your time portal, I was
intrigued. People just had to change
eventually. Somewhere up ahead the
madness had to stop and people would come to their senses. And if they didn’t, then I’d know for sure
that I’m the delusional one, after all. I figured if your experiment worked it
didn’t matter what I might find out. The way I saw it, in any event, I could
stop all the ruminating and finally get a decent night’s sleep.”
“And my experiment worked!” I said.
“Yes, my friend, it worked beautifully.”
“So tell me.” I sat forward in my chair. “What
happened? What did you discover?”
“A total mystery, I might as well have been an
alien from another planet. Virtually everything I first saw there was
unrecognizable. Well, that’s not quite true. I did know what everything was,
but they made no sense in context. It was like the time my brother showed me an
advanced math text of his. I read the
first paragraph and I knew the meaning of absolutely every word, yet the
paragraph made no sense—pure gibberish, leastwise to me. The future world you had sent me was just
like that.”
“Had things changed that much in a century?” I
asked.
“You know how stories usually depict the
future. Either they import their own
cultural setting into the new world and then touch it up a bit with a little
imagined advanced technology, or they paint the future in a kind of a stark
geometric austerity--you know--with the cold colorless lines of perfected efficiency—the
author’s vision of idealistic order, which always seems to be soulless; it’s a
curious thing. But in the real future,
the world where you had sent me, neither prognosis proved even remotely
correct.
“Somewhere during the passing of that blip of
time, human culture had diverged at a ninety degree angle from either the reaction
or progression portrayed in our mythologies.
It almost seems pointless for me to try and describe it to you—such as
when I asked my father to tell me about the war and he said he wouldn’t attempt
it, because I couldn’t understand. I’m
afraid you won’t understand; I fear I may have too few reference points by
which to guide you. Then again, perhaps
what I saw will explain itself. In any event, what it looked like is not all
that important. What I need you to grasp
is what it meant.”
“Go on,” I said.
“I must have stuck out like a sore thumb, yet
no one seemed to care I was there. Fact
was they seemed oblivious to each other.
Everyone walked around everyone else, but no one walked together. Each person seemed locked in his or her own
intent and space without ever intersecting another’s personal bubble. In one
sense their movement seemed random; yet clearly there was purpose in it. From time to time a person would stop and a
tinted plane would appear, pass in front of the person and both would dissolve
away. Another person might, moments
later, pass over the very same space and simply move on. As near as I could tell, however, everyone
eventually came to a spot from which they would then disappear as I
described. For this reason, I surmised
there was nothing of what we would call vehicles. Everyone of that seemingly detached populace
only walked—some appearing, some vanishing in the manner I have already
related. I watched all those comings and
goings while I was resting beneath a tree that stood in one square of a vast
crystalline grid.”
“Grid?” I asked.
“Yes, that’s exactly what it was. And the flat checkered plane appeared to
extend out indefinitely—every so often spotted, however, with various plant
specimens from our old world, such as the tree I sat under. I saw no sun. I guessed I was inside a huge
dome of some kind. The vivid blue sky,
or ceiling, somehow illumined the entire plane.
There were no buildings, or benches, or fountains, or statuary, or any
manufactured thing that I could see--only, as I said, periodic intrusions of
nature. And the light shining on the
plants, even though sparsely laid out—leastwise, it appeared so to me—turned
the entire crystalline field into a veritable garden of color and forms,
without hindering anybody’s movement or obscuring the squares everyone
apparently needed to move around on. The
effect had so much depth that I’m still not sure if in reality it wasn’t a vast
dense garden.
“I didn’t know what to do. I had hoped to find some answers, optimistic—as
I said—for a better world, and if not, at least resignation. I was fairly certain I would feel out of
place. But I never expected it to be
like some kind of an out-of-body experience.
In frustration I said to no one, ‘good grief.’ I said it out loud, just as I am saying it to
you now—quiet, more of a sigh than anything else. Yet, one of the persons stopped and looked at
me. It was a beautiful woman—perfect in form and stature, like an artist might
create on a canvas. The ideal female.
“Her eyes were filled with compassion. I heard, ‘Are you sad?’
“Mind you, I didn’t exactly hear this because
the sound sort of formed within my head, rather than received audibly through
my ears. And her words didn’t form
emotionless like some automated voice, either, but were filled with warmth and
genuine concern. I didn’t at all get the
impression that she was only curious or just trying to be sociable.
I answered her verbally, ‘Not sad, just
frustrated.’ Not totally honest.
“She said—that is, telepathed--if that is a verb--‘That’s
sadness.’
“‘I suppose it is,’ I told her. ‘I’m too tired to argue the point.’
“So she says, ‘Sadness has many forms. Sadness is despair, it is loss and
frustration, fear and want, hopelessness, loneliness, sickness--’
“‘I get it,’ I interrupted. ‘You are quite right. I am sad.’
“To which she replied, ‘You are a stranger,
here, then.’ Notice she wasn’t asking
but telling me this.
“‘Well, of course, isn’t it obvious?” I
retorted.
“She replied by saying, ‘Yes, your sadness
tells me you are.’
“’Pointing out our attire, I said, ‘I mean,
look at you and look at me.’
“But she said, ‘Yes, I am happy and you are
sad.
’
“‘No, no,’ I said. “Our appearance—our
dress—is different.’
“‘I only see your heart.’ She said this
tenderly: ‘I only see your heart.’—just like that. And then she added, ‘You are your heart.’
“So I asked her, ‘And your heart is happy?’
“Her reply was, ‘Yes, every heart here is
happy. Look!’ She turned and swept her hand before the
teaming populace moving to and fro and in and out upon the vast grid. All I could see was what I described before:
a sea of moving dispassionate humanity.
“‘I don’t understand,’ I blurted. ‘Can this be happiness? You say they are happy. But why should I believe you? Look at our race—leastwise, I think you are
human.’
“And she says, ‘You are right in saying so.’
“I would then make my point. I said, ‘Human
beings, the humans of which I count myself, are social creatures. They are persons. They touch, they caress, they talk, they
laugh, they cry and, yes, they push and pull and argue and fight—they confront
and they turn away. What has happened to
us? What has possessed us? How can you call this bleak existence of
yours, happiness? I’ve come all this
way, hoping to find that things would be different, that, I supposed, there
would at last be happiness, only to find out that if this is happiness, then
only a fool would want to be happy.’
“All she would say to that was, ‘You are sad.’
“So I told her, ‘At least it’s an honest
emotion, not this anesthetized state.
Can’t you see how everyone here is disenfranchised? There is no passion, no warmth that I can see. How can you call this happiness? Have you been drugged?’
“She answered by explaining, ‘You are sad
because you don’t understand. You speak
as a mere man, we speak as authentic humans.
We know who we are and what we are and why we are. Each of us knows the other the same way--happiness.’
“‘But no one talks to each other,’ I
complained.
“Her response to that was, ‘It only appears so
because we are one.’
“So I asked her, ‘In what way are you one?’
“She answered, ‘Many purposes make up a single
purpose. Many meanings are one
meaning. Does your foot talk with your
eyes, or your hands with your nose? Yet
they all understand each other and each responds to the needs of the other, for
each one has its own name. And together
the purpose of the body is done. This is
one meaning from all those separate meanings—one purpose in many.’
“But I said, ‘Where I come from, to be a mere cog
in a machine is demeaning.’
“So she says, ‘You are sad because you want
both society and solitude at the same time.’
“I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said,
‘No, I must have my own name or I can’t be happy.’
“‘Your meaning is your name,’ she says. ‘You
want a name. We have two names.’
“I argued that they still cannot be unique
because many must have the same meaning.
I reminded her that she had so much as said so.
“She then explained to me that we have been
built into a tower not unlike the one spoken of in the Shepherd of Hermas. Each of us is a stone. Some stones are for the walls, others for the
foundation, some for the windows, some for the floors, some are decorative, and
others are hidden. But each has been
perfectly hewn for its place, and each place is necessary. You can see that
many stones may have the same function.
Regardless, each stone is unique.
The decorative stones might be mottled, or veined with quartz, others
might be precious stones, and some might be granite. Structural stones might serve the foundation,
others the walls, and some the roof.
Each is as highly valued as the next for the perfection of the house.
And all priceless because each has a name. She said that was the first meaning
she spoke of. And that we each have a
unique name for this meaning. And
everyone knows that name.”
“Shepherd of Hermas?” I asked.
“Beats me.
I asked her, ‘You spoke of two names.
Does that mean there is another purpose?’
“She said, ‘Each of us has a meaning known
only to us and God. The name He has
given each of us for this purpose is a secret name known only to the bearer and
the Creator. And this meaning was in the
mind of Him when only He is.’
“Naturally, I asked her to tell me about this
meaning and purpose.
“But she said, ‘I cannot, except to say that
it is an eternal purpose ordained by God for Him in each creature, who knows
God, for the pleasure of God. When we
know our names and He calls us by our name, only then are we happy. Do you understand?’
“By
this point my head was swimming, so I asked her, ‘If we are one with Him and,
if I follow you, each other, can we really possess a unique name? For that matter, if I am united with you and
all these people, can I or you or any one of them be distinct?’
“Listen
and tell me if what she said next doesn’t change your perspective forever. Her
answer shot through me like a round from a high powered rifle. Listen to what
she said. She said, ‘Unity doesn’t dissolve distinction. Unity creates distinction. Without unity, everything is the same.’”
He sat back and stared at me. “What did I tell
you?”
True, I hadn’t thought of it before then. The idea that we only discover our true self
when we relinquish it for the purpose of a god and others was certainly an
alien idea to me. And we are only true
individuals—that is, distinct—when we know and act according to our true self
in the context of some collective purpose.
Her proposition was earth-shatteringly simple and, at the same time,
very elusive.
For a long moment I fidgeted with my pen while
he stared at me as if I were a computer and he could watch the binary code
processing. I finally looked him in his
eyes when I believed I had grasped her proposition that when we each pursue our
own purpose, we destroy unity with each other and we all become carbon copies
of each other. I suppose this was meant
to account for the fact we are frantic, angry, directionless, grasping,
possessive, isolated beings—people in a crowd, yet completely alone.
I thought about how monochromatic our world is
in all its self-interest. And for the
first time, I actually felt something like grief for my race. But what I told my friend was, “I don’t
know. To suggest that transcending self
is the only way of finding self seems way too simple. It’s not the way it
works.”
I struggled with my friend’s report. What he had discovered was unexpected;
another empire had not suddenly burst on the scene; a new political system
hadn’t imposed itself on the world; it wasn’t communism; it wasn’t a one world
government; it wasn’t a system of any kind.
It was a state of being. It was, for the lack of a better term, heaven. But how could that be? Heaven isn’t rational. It couldn’t be an evolved state; a hundred
years wasn’t long enough for that.
Science couldn’t accommodate the facts; yet I was confronted with the
inerrancy of my own science. It was my
invention, carefully constructed and tested over many years of painstaking
experimentation. What it revealed was
the future, as it will be. This was
fact; there could be no doubt about it.
I didn’t want to believe the results, but I had no choice but to believe
them.
“Was there color in this world of hers? Was
what you had seen there vibrant beyond anything you have ever seen before? Tell me. I must know.”
“I cannot even begin to tell you,” he
said. “Are you okay, my friend?”
“If it’s true, then my life has been a sham.”
“Exactly my thought. And I tried to tell her this. I told her, ‘I’ve been wrong to think I could
find happiness by distinguishing myself from others. I see that now. I suspect it is why I’m so tired. Why I just
want to stop running.’
“She answered me with a voice full of mercy,
‘Yes, you are sad because you don’t know your names.’
“I asked her, ‘And these names are my
purposes?’
“She told me, ‘Each name is the meaning for
which you have your existence. You are
right in what you say.’
“‘Where can I find them?’ I asked.
“She replied, ‘You find them in God not in
yourself. There is the meaning for all
of our existence—the first meaning I spoke of. Meaning unique to you or me or
to each person who knows God—that secret purpose. And the meaning uniting them
all.’
“Of course, I asked her if I could know this
third meaning.”
“And did she tell you?” I asked impatiently.
“She said, ‘Come, take my hand and we shall
see.’
"She extended her hand and we
walked onto the grid. Her touch was
soft, gentle, and warm. I thought of my
dear wife and how much I missed her.
Suddenly we were surrounded by space.
No, it was more like we were suspended in space. Not black space, but--for lack of a better
way to describe it—a dimensionless region of light bursting and dissipating,
forming and un-forming in a show of brilliant colors and shapes and vapors
and—how can I explain it to you, my dear friend, how can I have you comprehend
the beauty of it? Except to say that it
was far greater than you could hope or imagine.
Any attempt to create it in your mind will fall hopelessly short. With that I am certain.
“In the next instant we stood together in a
lush meadow that was super-real in every respect to the most beautiful place I ever
experienced on earth—you know what I mean, earth prior to its future. Everywhere I turned, my eyes were dazzled by
the color and purity of the grass, trees, plants, animals, the crystalline
water of a lake that lapped up onto a narrow beach near our feet, the mountains
that loomed in the distance, and the sky—that vibrant sunless blue sky that
lighted it all. All of it took my breath away, and so serene—such a gentle
quietness, I have never felt such peace.
“The entire scene seemed to resonate—not just
visually, but sonically, as well. I wish
you could hear such melodies, my friend.
The strange and wonderful yet ephemeral strains of that music awakened
and nourished my soul like nothing ever has.
“I saw some people sitting amongst some
Siberian tigers. One cuddled a little
cub in his arms while another was wrestling playfully with the mother. I marveled at the gentleness of the powerful
creatures and the obvious intimacy between them and their human
caretakers. I also saw other people
picking fruit from trees that sagged under the weight of their produce, large
and succulent and plentiful.
“A small and colorful bird flitted around my
hostess before perching on her wrist, where it began feeding on some grain in
the palm of her hand while she was gently stroking its tiny head. Don’t ask me where the grain came from
because I couldn’t say. I will tell you
that I observed no fear or timidity in the frail animal. The tender moment
brought tears to my eyes.
“I turned and watched others herding some elk
into the high country. My hostess seemed
to sense in my eyes the question forming in my mind and explained that those
creatures thrive through their regular pilgrimages up to the high meadows to
graze and back again to the valley.
“‘The grass is good either here or there, but
their life is perfected through the ritual,’ she explained.
“I asked her if this is the meaning she spoke
of.
“She smiled sweetly and answered, ‘Come, I
have one more place for you to know.’
“The scene morphed into a bright light. And as
my eyes adjusted to that intense light, a thunderous song filled my ears:
‘Holy, Holy, Holy
Is God, Lord
Almighty,
Who is and was
and is to come.
Glory, Glory,
Glory
To the Lamb that
was slain
The Word that is
From everlasting
to everlasting!’
Majesty, honor,
praise
To the Great
Testimony
Who is a lamp to
Mankind
Power to live without
end.
Holy, Holy, Holy
To the Father,
Lord of all.
By Whom all that
was not
Lives and has its
being.
Glory, Glory,
Glory
To the Great I AM
Who is One in
Three
And Three in One
God of gods
Lord of lords
King of kings
Hallowed be His
Name
Both now and
forever.’
“Those words sang from the mouths of masses of
people all around me. The number of
which was beyond counting. And their
individual forms appeared to shimmer in the light and sound—distinguishable one
moment and obscured the next. Some have talked about quantum-senses. Do you think it possible?”
“Well,” I stammered.
“Believe me it is. At least I have no other way of explaining
what I had felt there. I heard the
light, smelled the colors and saw the sounds at the same time as sensing all of
those things in the usual manner. What
should have been chaos and a cacophony of stimuli all converged into perfect
harmony. What should have been a sensory overload was pure serenity. My eyes shouldn’t have been able to stand the
brightness of the light of that place, like many suns. Instead, the light soothed my eyes. There was no need to shut them or even
squint. Nor did I want to for fear of
missing even a second of the splendor going on around me. The din should have shattered my eardrums, but
the sound fell gently on my ears like the choruses of those clear summer nights
I remember so well growing up in Northern Canada.
“The scene or vision was full of
contradictions like these. But what I
cannot explain at all was the deep sense of freedom that had washed over me
like the warm surf of the south pacific.
I had felt liberated not only from the obvious burdens we all talk
about, such as mortality or worry or fear; but freed in remote parts of my
being that, up until then, I didn’t even know existed, let alone needed
liberating. It was like the doors of
hidden vaults deep within my soul had been opened and this black tar oozed
out. What I can only describe as a chronic
ache that has been throbbing throughout my life, which I must have from the
beginning subconsciously repressed, briefly flared like a shrieking demon and
then vanished.
“I looked down to see if I was standing on
ground because I became overwhelmed by a sense of weightlessness. Now, don’t misunderstand me. I don’t think what I am trying to convey was
in any way physical, but I can’t explain it in any other terms. No, what I then came to realize was how
heavy, dull, clumsy and trapped my life has always been. I thought of the best day of my life--”
“You mean when you won the prize?” I asked.
“Yes, you remember the time. My wife and I were in perfect health then and
we had no more financial burdens. Our
life had reached that pinnacle of human achievement. We had scaled the mountain of the American
dream and had planted our flag squarely on its summit. ‘It doesn’t get any better than this!’ I
think we boasted at the time. But it was
such a lie. Because what came after
that? Did I know? I ask you; do you know what will come after this great
invention of yours? Let me tell you. I don’t think I had blinked twice before I
asked myself, what next? That single query betrayed the absurdity of
it all. And I had never seen it until I
stood there enveloped by all the Glory of this place beyond your portal.
“I finally understood the meaning of true
completeness—what I can only call, because language fails me, free freedom. By
that I don't mean the Bohemian freedom of Rousseau and his ilk, but freedom in
which all one's moral obligations are satisfied because one is inherently perfect
without thinking about it. For, as you
know, if you have to think about it, you aren't perfect, and you're not freely
free. But there I was freely free, my
friend; there I was...or at least I sensed what it must be like.
“Mind you, my hostess explained none of this
to me. She didn’t have to. All that I am trying desperately to relate to
you about the meaning of what I experienced there was totally self-evident. I suddenly realized that an invisible tutor
had been teaching me the whole time.”
“Who?” I asked.
“I don’t know….It must have been God. Who else could it have been? Whoever it was, neither my tutor nor my
hostess had answered my question. I still didn’t know what this third meaning
was. I had this sickening feeling that
the answer was all around me, but I was just too dense to see it.
“‘I still don’t understand,’ I told her,
pleading. ‘Perhaps if you showed me more, I will see what this third meaning
is.’
“‘She answered, ‘These sights are all you can
understand now, but there are infinite more to experience and infinite time to
experience them. You and I and all of
these,’--she again swept her hand before the multitude--‘are beings. Do you
understand?’
“‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘We have all been created
by Him whom we worship.’
“She said, ‘You are right in saying so. But only God is absolute being. It is for and by this third meaning that we
live on and on into everlasting and everlasting--that we would move ever closer
to absolute being, without, of course, ever reaching it. This is eternal life. And in it the three purposes are achieved.’
“‘I think I understand,’ I said. ‘Please tell me. What is this third meaning?’
“She refused to tell me. Instead she says, ‘This is not yet your
time. You have been given a rare gift,
but you must go back.’
“For the first time I understood what Samuel
must have felt after being ushered back into the world by the witch of
Endor. I didn’t want to go back. But I had no choice.”
“I thought it strange that you backed your way
through the portal,” I said. “Did she
force you in some way?”
“No, it was more as if I was dragged. Anyway, she didn’t push me. How much time do you think transpires, you
know, actual time---either there or here--how much time actually passes when
someone steps through your portal?”
“You probably couldn’t measure it. Essentially zero time. I don’t think it is really a proper question,
anyway. Why do you ask?”
“They say a dream only lasts a few
seconds. Yet so much actually happens in
a dream that it appears it has lasted the whole night.”
“Yes, that is the conventional thinking on the
subject,” I said.
“Well, as I passed through the portal back to
the present I was assailed by voices—voices of doubt. They all seemed to be saying, in one way or
another, ‘Don’t believe it! It’s all been
an illusion created by your mind.’
“I started to argue with the voices. ‘You’re
wrong!’ I said. ‘I know my own mind. I know the difference between reality and
fiction—sleep and consciousness.’
“But they rejoined, ‘You’re waking up now!
It’s only been a dream—a silly sentimental dream—the imaginings of
children. Be a man! Don’t be a fool. Progress has only ever been made because men
have asserted themselves over others.
Nothing is ever accomplished by considering first the needs of others.’
“‘No, no, no!’ I shouted. ‘So little has ever
been accomplished because everyone strives for themselves. I know this now. I won’t listen to your lies any longer. You lie, you lie!’
“Then with even greater venom the voices
struck back, ‘You delude yourself, for there is no example of what you describe
in the history of the world. No such
force operates in the universe. You
lie! And it’s the worst of lies because
you deceive yourself!’
“I shouted, if not screamed--perhaps more to
drown out my own feelings of doubt than from a solid conviction--‘It does
exist! It does exist! I know that it does.
It must or nothing makes any sense.
Christ’s alive! There is a third meaning. The third meaning has always
been operating. We’ve been blind to it.
I’ve been blind to it, but it is there.
It is working! I say it again,
Christ’s alive!’ I don’t even know why I
said ‘Christ’s alive’. The words just
came out.
“The voices hissed, ‘You don’t know what you
are talking about. There is no third
meaning. Nothing exists without a name.
And it has no name or it would have been given you! It’s all weakness. The only strength in the universe is Self!
The I’s have it. The I’s have it. The
I’s have it.’ The voices would not
relent. They kept on chanting louder and
louder, ‘The I’s have it!’”
“But you seemed so calm when you came through
the portal,” I interrupted. “I didn’t
notice any agitation in you, none whatsoever—no terror. How could that be? I would have been an absolute wreck if I were
you.”
“I heard her voice.”
“You mean the person you visited?”
“Yes, I heard her voice. Over all that vicious taunting, her voice
rose up. It was sweet just as it had
been before. And it wasn’t threatened. That’s what intrigued me about it. You might predict she should cry out something
in worried tones, as if she didn’t intervene quickly, I would succumb. There were no frantic or desperate overtones
to her voice. Her words were those of a
person who need not defend them. It was
that confidence, the likes of which I have never known, that convinced me of
their truth. She told me what it
is. She told me the name of the third
meaning. And when I heard it, all the
shouting ceased. That’s why I was and
still am so calm.”
“So tell me, man, what is it? What is the third meaning?” I implored.
[To be continued next week.......]
