The actuality of the thing

April 17

I do not know—none of us does—what it must have been like to have a dead man materialize through the wall of a meeting room and lay out for public viewing the holes in his hands where his executioners had nailed him to a cross or the rip in his belly where they stabbed him open to hasten his demise. Whatever they felt or experienced, those witnesses to the unspeakable, they knew. They knew what they had seen, and it was enough to persuade them at all costs of the actuality of the thing . . . which is by way of saying that I, too, know what I saw and am persuaded, at all costs, by the actuality of the thing.

I know no more to say or write; but the exercise of having tried has not been entirely wasted. At least I can admit now that I shall never be able to speak of the what-I-don’t-know that lies beyond the what-I-do-know. There is relief in that, as well as comfort and a certain inexpressible pleasure in realizing that someday soon I shall be about the business of greeting again that which I once left with such sweet reluctance.

From “Sweet Reluctance” by Phyllis Tickle, in Heaven, edited by Roger Ferlo. A Seabury Book from Church Publishing. Copyright © 2007. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org

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