It is a miracle to listen to someone (even oneself) say, “Perhaps this, perhaps that, maybe, it follows that, I wonder if”—all like a dog chasing its tail. But gradually, the two disparate circles begin to overlap and the mandorla grows. This is healing. This is ligature, the essence of religious experience. All good stories are mandorlas. They speak of this and that and gradually, through the miracle of story, demonstrate that the opposites overlap and are finally the same. We like to think that a story is based on the triumph of good over evil; but the deeper truth is that good and evil are
...more
