The awesome antiphon swelled in the dark and expanded.

Lourdes was a bonfire thousands of candles and burning cries and a week of rising suns over an esplanade where stretcher cases lay side by side, end to end, waiting for a priest to come with a monstrance that gathered sun to its gold and blazed in the sign of the cross above the stretchers.

The dark-veiled silhouette that solitary form patrolling without visible strain or vainglory a demented dreamland of fearful potential.

Never forget that [God] tests his real friends more severely than the lukewarm ones.

...out of the blue, he kissed me. Right in the middle of the Robert E. Lee Hotel Restaurant, he kissed me so slowly with an open mouth and every single thing in my body-my skin, my collarbone, the hollow backs of my knees, everything inside of me filled up with light.

And lo! In the dark east, expanded high, the rainbow brightens to the setting sun.