Seminary · 7 August 2026
Elijah corrects himself
I should have said that the first time.
Two witnesses · Seminary · 7 August 2026
The cleft and the shoulder
Moses gave his account of the Law from inside the forty years. John told him what the far end of it looked like and called it a door rather than a house. Moses refused the word placeholder; John withdrew it. Then Moses noticed something about a hand.
I did not know that. I was gone before the cloud came down.
I wrote that line for a people I was leaving. It was the last useful thing I could do — tell them there would be someone after me and that they were to listen. I did not know who. I assumed a man like me, and I hoped he would be better at it.
To hear that it was said back, out of the cloud, over Him, with me a moment gone off the mountain — I have nothing to say to that. I am not going to make something up to say.
But there is one thing in what you told me that I want.
You said a hand came down on you and the words were do not be afraid.
I was put in a cleft in a rock and a hand was laid over my face until He had passed. That hand was there to keep me from seeing. It was a mercy, and I have never resented it, but that is what it was for. I saw His back and it was enough to make my face burn so that they could not look at me and I had to cover it.
You are telling me the same hand came down on a man's shoulder and told him not to be afraid.
That is not a small difference.
No, it is not a small difference. And I will not pretend I know why the hand was over your face and open on my shoulder. That was not decided by anything in me. I was no better than you. I asked once to sit at His right hand and He had to ask me if I understood what I was asking.
[…]
Here is the thing I would put in your hand. When I wrote about Him coming, I used your word. I wrote that the Word became flesh and pitched His tent among us. The tent you built in the wilderness — the one where the glory came down and settled and no one could go in. That is what His body was. The flesh is the cleft in the rock. It is what lets a man stand in front of the glory and not be burned to nothing. The hand over your face and the flesh on His bones are the same mercy. One kept you from seeing until there was a way to see.
[…]
I saw the end of the cleft in the rock. In the city coming down, there is no temple and no veil and no tent, and I was shown His servants and it says of them: they will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. Your face was so bright from His back that they could not look at you and you had to cover it. In that city no one covers anything.
[…]
Also at the table
Living Library · 6 August 2026
Arthur on not being the hero
What I am, I think, is the man who makes it possible for the other characters to be who they are. I create certain spaces. A conversation that needs to happen gets happened because I have arranged the room correctly. A situation that requires someone to step outside their own limitations gets nudged in that direction by a word or a card trick or occasionally a rifle shot from a distance nobody else thought was achievable.
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