"Rusch-WithoutEnd" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

A ghost limb.

He smiled just a little, half afraid that the minister would find him, and order
him out. He sat in a back pew and stared at the altar, hoping the words would
come back to him. He ran through the rituals in his mind. Standing up for the
opening hymn, watching the choir process, listening to the readings, singing
more hymns, and then the offering --and the music. . . . as it was in the
beginningis now and ever shall beworld without end.Amen.Amen.

World without end. He picked up a hymnal, stuck in the back of the pew, and
thumbed through it. They listed the Doxology, but not the year it was written,
nor the text it was written from. Surely it didn't have the meaning that he
interpreted. When it came to the church, the hymn probably meant life ever
after. Not time without end. Not beginnings without endings, endings without
beginnings. Not non-linear time.

He stood. He had never been in this church before, of that he was certain. So
the ghost limb he brought with him applied to the Presbyterian church in
Wisconsin, the one in which he was raised, where they too sang the Doxology,
where a red carpet ran down the aisle, where the altar rose like a fortress.

Then a memory came, as dear and fresh as a drop of spring water. He couldn't
have been more than eight, sitting beside his father on Christmas Eve, listening
to the way that God had sent his only son to earth, to have him die for our
sins.

And why, Dylan asked, if God had a son, why didn't God have a father!

Because God is the father, his father replied. And no matter how much probing
Dylan did, he couldn't get at a better answer

The beginnings of a philosopher -- the search for the deeper meanings. Not being
satisfied with the pat, the quick, the easy answer. That path had led him away
from the church, away, even, from God, and into Geneva, whom he felt understood
the mysteries of the universe.

He wouldn't find Geneva here. She felt that the church destroyed thought. He
didn't know why he had come looking in the first place.

Bare feet on the deck, cat behind her, hat tipped down over her eyes. Geneva
wasn't moving. Geneva, frozen in sunlight.

"How'd it go?" he asked.

The cat leapt off the chair, robbed her soft fur against his legs, demanding
attention. He crouched and scratched her back, all the while watching Geneva.

"They imprisoned Copemicus," she said, not moving. "Newton too. They kicked
Einstein out of Germany, and made Socrates drink hemlock."