“The people cast themselves down by the fuming boardswhile servants cut the roast, mixed jars of wine and water,and all the gods flew past like the night-breaths of spring.The chattering female flocks sat down by farther tables,their fresh prismatic garments gleaming in the moonas though a crowd of haughty peacocks played in moonlight.The queen’s throne softly spread with white furs of foxgaped desolate and bare, for Penelope felt ashamed to come before her guests after so much murder.Though all the guests were ravenous, they still refrained,turning their eyes upon their silent watchful lordtill he should spill wine in libation for the Immortals.The king then filled a brimming cup, stood up and raisedit high till in the moon the embossed adornments gleamed:Athena, dwarfed and slender, wrought in purest gold,pursued around the cup with double-pointed speardark lowering herds of angry gods and hairy demons;she smiled and the sad tenderness of her lean face,and her embittered fearless glance, seemed almost human.Star-eyed Odysseus raised Athena’s goblet highand greeted all, but spoke in a beclouded mood:“In all my wandering voyages and torturous strife,the earth, the seas, the winds fought me with frenzied rage;I was in danger often, both through joy and grief,of losing priceless goodness, man’s most worthy face.I raised my arms to the high heavens and cried for help,but on my head gods hurled their lightning bolts, and laughed.I then clasped Mother Earth, but she changed many shapes,and whether as earthquake, beast, or woman, rushed to eat me; then like a child I gave my hopes to the sea in trust,piled on my ship my stubbornness, my cares, my virtues,the poor remaining plunder of god-fighting man,and then set sail; but suddenly a wild storm burst,and when I raised my eyes, the sea was strewn with wreckage.As I swam on, alone between sea and sky,with but my crooked heart for dog and company,I heard my mind, upon the crumpling battlementsabout my head, yelling with flailing crimson spear.Earth, sea, and sky rushed backward; I remained alonewith a horned bow slung down my shoulder, shorn of godsand hopes, a free man standing in the wilderness.Old comrades, O young men, my island’s newest sprouts,I drink not to the gods but to man’s dauntless mind.”All shuddered, for the daring toast seemed sacrilege,and suddenly the hungry people shrank in spirit;They did not fully understand the impious wordsbut saw flames lick like red curls about his savage head.The smell of roast was overpowering, choice meats steamed,and his bold speech was soon forgotten in hunger’s pangs;all fell to eating ravenously till their brains reeled.Under his lowering eyebrows Odysseus watched them sharply:"This is my people, a mess of bellies and stinking breath!These are my own minds, hands, and thighs, my loins and necks!"He muttered in his thorny beard, held back his hungerfar from the feast and licked none of the steaming food.”

“...I spent the whole morning coiled up in front of the fire, with my hands over it, eating nothing, motionless, just listening to the first rain of the season, softly falling. I was thinking of nothing. Rolled up in a ball, like a mole in damp soil, my brain was resting. I could hear the slight movements, murmurings and nibblings of the earth, and the rain falling and the seeds swelling. I could feel the sky and the earth copulating as in primitive times when they mated like a man and woman and had children. I could hear the sea before me, all along the shore, roaring like a wild beast and lapping with its tongue to slake its thirst.”

“All my life one of my greatest desires has been to travel-to see and touch unknown countries, to swim in unknown seas, to circle the globe, observing new lands, seas, people, and ideas with insatiable appetite, to see everything for the first time and for the last time, casting a slow, prolonged glance, then to close my eyes and feel the riches deposit themselves inside me calmly or stormily according to their pleasure, until time passes them at last through its fine sieve, straining the quintessence out of all the joys and sorrows.”

“With the passage of days in this godly isolation [desert], my heart grew calm. It seemed to fill with answers. I did not ask questions any more; I was certain. Everything - where we came from, where we are going, what our purpose is on earth - struck me as extremely sure and simple in this God-trodden isolation. Little by little my blood took on the godly rhythm. Matins, Divine Liturgy, vespers, psalmodies, the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening, the constellations suspended like chandeliers each night over the monastery: all came and went, came and went in obedience to eternal laws, and drew the blood of man into the same placid rhythm. I saw the world as a tree, a gigantic poplar, and myself as a green leaf clinging to a branch with my slender stalk. When God's wind blew, I hopped and danced, together with the entire tree.”

“It is possible that God is the way Annie Payne used to lean her old head against my shoulder...Drew's arms holding me...Ron Dunham walking out of the woods hand in hand with a child lost, then found. It is possible that God is my neighbor with her pan of brownies standing on my doorstep. It is entirely possible, that is, that the God I serve and worship with all my body, all my mind, all my soul, and all my spirit is love...It's enough. It's all the God I need.”

“I turned around slowly, and looked up at him. He stiffened and sucked in a shallow breath. After a moment, he touched my cheek."Such naked pain," he whispered.I turned my face into his palm and closed my eyes. His fingers threaded into my hair, cupped my head, and brushed the brand. It heated at his touch. His hand tightened at the base of my skull and squeezed, and he raised me slowly to my tiptoes. I opened my eyes and it was my turn to inhale sharply. Not human. Oh, no, not this man."Never show it to me again." His face was cold, hard, his voice colder.”

“Water matted his black hair into spikes and peppered his skin with a fresh sheen. If I shut my eyes I could still see the one who bound me, his smile bright as the white sun as he emerged from our latest dip in the sea. I fought the sudden urge to bury my face in his chest and run my fingers through that hair.”