Unsettle the mind; destroy the balance. Destroy the balance; obliterate the man.

The silence inside was familiar from all the years of mourning, a large house with parts of its soul carved away.

We can live with doubts,” Jessop said “It’s the knowing that breaks us.

But the sin of Adam and Eve brought about a new kind of work as part of the punishment for sin. Work was now more difficult, painful, and less productive than it should have been. It brought sweat, fatigue, and toil never intended for us by our Creator.

Where Johnny chose to see cause and effect, Jack saw the hand of God, and of the devil himself. That wasn’t hyperbole or false belief; he knew it like he knew his bones: that the world ran shadowed and deep, that evil was real and had a face. Because of that, Jack sought order, solidity, control.

But childhood was not all good, nor were its lessons. Good came with the bad, as dark did with light and weakness with strength. Nothing was simple or pure; everyone had secrets. What.

I’m sixty-nine years old, and I have no plans to run for reelection. Do you think I give a damn?

Jack laughed, and the sound frightened him because there was no rationality in it. It sounded broken and wild, and that’s exactly how childhood with Johnny had ended, not in quietness and time, but in a sudden rush of secrets and death and superstitious dread.

The gray light was unforgiving, and the road in was a hard, fast slide to the bottom rung of the human experience.

It is in suffering that we are withdrawn from the sway of time and mere things, and find ourselves in the presence of profounder truth.