i am sitting in a downtown café, after, thinking. i havejust spent most of an afternoon with him. our encountersalways leave me weary of the glum contentment thatcharacterizes my life. what were those words he used thatstruck me? ah, yes: "dry, yeastless factuality", "the betterstory". i take pen and paper out and write:

words of divine consciousness: moral exaltation; ‘ lastingfeelings of elevation, elation, joy; a quickening of the moralsense, which strikes one as more important than anintellectual understanding of things; an alignment of theuniverse along moral lines, not intellectual ones; arealization that the founding principle of existence is whatwe call love, which works itself out sometimes not clearly,not cleanly, not immediately, nonetheless ineluctably.

i pause. what of god's silence? i think it over. i add:

an intellect confounded yet a trusting sense of presenceand of ultimate purpose.