Andrew Klavan: Empire of Lies

My daughter sobbed against my shoulder and shivered in my arms and I held her. And I felt something that had been closed in my mind open again like a child's cupped hands. I felt something fly up out of me and I don't know why but I felt it was my spirit and I was almost visionary. For just a second-just a second or two-I could imagine myself moving above the Earth as it was, above everything, I mean, the mothers and the murderers, the idiots and empires, the spinning patterns and fractals of history developing endlessly out of the few simple equations of the human heart. I imagined myself sailing above and beyond the whole of it until I reached a blazing presence at the source of it all. I felt my spirit yearn toward that unfathomable blaze until it was thrown back at me like a fiery reflection, so that I thought I saw one approaching in the sky like a Son of Man, his arms outstretched over the tear-stained, bloodstained world beneath him as he declared,

Behold: the Kingdom of Heaven, which is Love;

Love-in all its majesty and madness.