I don’t try convincing them that Christianity is more reasonable or logical than any other belief system; I simply tell them stories that insist on being reckoned with, stories that speak for themselve
Dreams are messages from the deep. Unlike dispatches from the surface world, which tend toward clarity, Paul’s visions are murky; they communicate in a language he has not yet learned to speak.
I emerged from that time weaker, perhaps more prone to letting God off the hook, if only because I’d seen so thoroughly and repeatedly how small I am. How ludicrous it is to try and exert control, whether over knowledge or circumstances—at least, in the ways I’d tried before. Then, too, I’ve begun to consider that perhaps prophecy is a language I’ve only ever half-learned. An ancient tongue, with its own inflections, connotations, and syntaxes, of which I know nothing—grammatical rules to whose logic I must acquiesce,
The weight of those words carried us through that time; inscrutable as they are, they carry us still. Instead of attempting to break them open, I am trying to let them open me: to reach their long, dark tendrils into my ribs and squeeze until I crack open, wide enough to really hear, really see
