Code Name: Lise

by Larry Loftis

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. —ERNEST HEMINGWAY

“Be regular and orderly in your life,” Flaubert had said, “that you may be violent and original in your work.”

Odette heeded the instruction and, as Hemingway put it, became strong in the broken places.

“Direct-minded and courageous. God help the Nazis if we can get her near them.”

Life sometimes plays it back—mostly the beautiful—lest one forget the blessings, fleeting though they are.

I am only responsible to my own conscience.”

Without instruction, Peter realized, Father Paul was teaching and the first lesson was that the battle of faith required many scars before it was won.

He who has not eaten his bread in tears, He who has not sat up weeping upon his bed throughout the night of despair, He knows you not, Oh Heavenly Father.

“Poetic knowledge,” the ancients called it; truths that are grasped intuitively, such as another’s love, or a mother’s intuition that something awful had happened to a child far away.