Glen struggled through the woods for a mile or more before he began to climb what he thought was a hill.  He figured if he could get some height and if the trees gave him a break he might catch sight of a horse and Sir Duncan riding in the distance.  He climbed for a long time and never topped the rise, but at last he came to a flat area clean of debris and trees.  He found the stones and ash of an old campfire so he figured he was not the first and not likely the last to use that spot for the night. 

            Glen pulled the cloth from his pack which he found hanging on his hip after he got free from Poverty Pit.  He was not sure how it appeared, but he was glad to have it.  He looked at the knife, but left in put away.  He had found some grapes growing on the side of the hill, so he was not entirely starving.  He pulled out the water bottle and sipped.  The bottle was mostly full and that was also a help against the growl of hunger.  He thought about building a fire, but since he was only eight, he was not sure how to do that. 

            Glen pushed himself back to a boulder that stood on the edge of the clearing.  He liked the idea of having something solid at his back.  When he opened his cloth, he found it thicker than he remembered.  He imagined that was good because he thought it might get cold on the hill.  He easily found the opening where he could use the cloth as a sleeping bag, and he crawled in and shut his eyes, hoping to sleep before it got completely dark.  Instead, he listened to his stomach for a while.

            That night was full of dreams.                                                                               

            He saw a white man in an open vehicle, smiling and waving.  He got shot.  He saw a black man in a motel room.  He got shot.  He saw another white man in a hotel lobby.  He got shot.  And a whole generation fell into madness while Asians killed them and killed each other and a black man in Africa ate his own people.  Glen was frightened by the insanity of it all, especially when he saw the offspring of the mad generation. 

            He woke in a sweat even as the sun began to rise.  Glen was afraid of the shadows, and doubly so when he saw a fire burning brightly in a repaired stone circle.  There did not seem to be a person around, and Glen did not know what to do.  He packed everything for a quick getaway, and waited. 

            The first thing Glen saw was a dog, a shepherd but solid white with the insides of the ears, pink.  The dog growled, briefly and then bounded toward Glen.  Glen shrieked and pulled his pack over his face.  He shut his eyes tight and tried not to breathe while the dog sniffed him, everywhere.

            “White Fang!”  It was a woman’s voice, and the dog immediately bounded to its mistress and wagged both its tail and its tongue.  “Are you hungry?  Of course you are.”

            Glen ventured a glimpse.  The woman was tall, dressed all in white, with long hair that fell to her waist and was as white as her dress.  She had sparkling lavender-blue eyes set in a kind face that seemed ageless.  The woman also had some bread and cheese and a bit of red apple for breakfast.  She held out a piece of the apple and Glen was slowly coaxed from his rock.

            “Have you read any Jack London?” the woman asked.  Glen shook his head.

            “Not yet,” he thought to speak as he took the apple and she cut him some bread and cheese.  “Thank you.”  He thought that was the least he could say.

            “You will.”  The woman smiled.  “That is where my puppy got his name.”  Glen looked at the puppy that was lying down and being good.  He could not remember Sally, Dick and Jane having a puppy.  “So where are you from and how did you come to be here, alone?”

            Glen paused, looked down at his pack and then at his shoes.  “I live in the village,” he said and he realized he did not know the name of his village.  And as for being where he was and alone, he did not know how to answer that question at all.

            “I know the village,” the woman said.  “It is a fine place to grow up.”

            “I suppose.”  Glen felt a sudden urgency to get home, and he said so.  “Do you know the way?” he asked.

            The woman lost her cheery smile and looked up the hill.  “I have traveled around the base of this height for a long time,” she began.  “I have often wanted to climb higher, but that is not my way.”  She took a deep breath and let it out in a soft sigh.  “For you, though, the only way back to the village is over the mountain.  I do not know how high it will be for you, but you must go over.  Here.”  She paused and produced a handkerchief.  She wrapped up an apple, a small loaf of bread and a chunk of hard cheese and handed it to him.  Glen did not know what to do, so the woman leaned forward and put it in his bag for him.  Glen gasped.  He was sure her ears were as pointed as an elf.  He was sure he saw drawings of elves in the fairy tales Mother once read

            “You better hurry.”  She interrupted his thoughts.  Glen stood.  She was right.  He felt the urgency.  He turned and immediately began to climb, but turned back after a few steps and waved. 

            “Good-bye.  You, too, White Fang.”  The woman waved back and the dog barked once in response.  Glen looked down to get safely over some rocks but when his feet were on firm ground he looked again and saw no one in the clearing.  What is more, the fire was out and there was not even so much as the smell of smoke.  He climbed and tried very hard not to think the word, ghost.

            Glen stood at the crossroads, not wanted and not welcomed to travel down any road.  But he could not stay there forever, and so he went back to his original idea.  He became determined to head off in the direction that had no road and no sign.  It had to lead somewhere too, and so he pressed his way into the wilderness.

            The bushes defied him, but he pressed on.  The trees sprang up to cause a zigzag path, but he would not turn back.  He found that in places there was a kind of trail, and that was comforting in a way to think that he was not the only one to venture out in that direction.  But then the trail was so overgrown it was hard to imagine that anyone had been that way in a long, long time. 

            Glen traveled for miles before he came to a pit much bigger than the hole in the road.  At least this one did not have warning cones blocking the way.  He wondered what it was, but only briefly as he got distracted by a voice crying out in the wilderness.  It was a man, a black man in an old and worn suit that had holes in the elbows and fringe at the end of the pants legs.  The shoes looked full of mud, but the man did not seem to mind.  He paced back and forth behind a pulpit and railed against the world.  First he praised God and gave all glory to God in the highest, and then he all but cursed God for ignoring the suffering of so many.  It seemed to Glen the man could not make up his mind.  And then the man paused and stared at Glen.

            “Son, what brings a white boy like you out here to the Pit of Poverty.  I would have thought someone like you would be lounging around Prosperity Palace with some ne’er-do-well friends.”

            It was hard to imagine what the man saw through the mud on a boy that just spent hours struggling through the woods, except that maybe Glen was white in his eyes.  “Poverty Pit?”  Glen pointed.  “There was no sign for this direction back at the crossroads.”

            “Of course, child.  The sign itself was so poor it crumbled to dust ages ago.  This is the final destination for the broken, the disheartened, the defeated.  It is for all those who never had a fair opportunity in life and have been crushed under the injustice of a system that is heartless and cruel.”  The man raised his hand and his voice.  “It matters not that there is no sign for this place.  People do not choose to come here.  They are driven here by the winds of a destiny designed by the heartless master of this universe.  How can a loving God be so cruel?  We ask because it appears so in our eyes.  But this life is only for a moment and cannot compare to the greatness of glory that awaits us on the other side.”

            Something stuck in Glen’s mind.  “That’s not true,” he said.  “I chose this direction.  I did not know where it would lead me, but I chose to come this way.”

            The man got out from behind the pulpit and stepped softly to face Glen.  He looked down on the boy and put a hand gently on Glen’s shoulder with the words, “Poor misguided boy.”  Then he stuck out his other hand.  “That will be ten dollars.”

            Glen patted his pockets and shrugged.  He had no money.  The man’s face turned angry and Glen found himself tossed into the pit.  He slid down the steep side and fell again into the mud.

            When he stood and looked around, he found the pit full of people of all ages, though there were not nearly as many people as some suppose.  He went to the first, his mind already telling him he had no intention of staying there in the pit, and he spoke.

            “Mister.”

            The man sat in the mud with his back to the wall.  He was perhaps fifty, gray and wrinkled, though to be sure it was hard to tell how old most of the adults were.  Glen suspected many looked older than they really were.  He spoke again.

            “Mister.”

            The man made no response.  He never looked at Glen, never looked up.  So Glen reached out and tenderly nudged the man.

            “Mister.”

            “No!”  The man shouted and sprang to his feet.  He ran off, looking behind him the whole time like he was being followed even though no one followed him.  He never did look at Glen, but if he had he would have seen a look of incomprehension.

            “Some cannot be helped.  They are not willing.”

            Glen heard the voice and spun all the way around.  “Who is there?”  He saw no one.

            “Do not be afraid,” the voice said, but since no one appeared to be saying it, Glen became very frightened.  He had to find a way out of the pit.  He had to get out of there, and he ran and repeated the same words over and over. 

            “How do I get out of here?  Do you know the way out?” 

            At last he grabbed a woman by the hand and forced her attention.  “Please,” he said.  “How do you get out of here?”  Glen meant, how do I get out of here, but the woman took it like he was speaking to her.

            “Why would I want to get out of here?” the woman asked in return.  “I have everything I need provided for me here and I get to do as I please.”  Glen looked around at the pit and the mud.  There wasn’t anything to do there, but after the first woman spoke, a second woman walked up and added her voice.

            “If you leave this place, the honker big mouths will grab you and make you work for the same things you get here for free.”  Glen hardly knew what to say, but he wondered what was so bad about work.  His father enjoyed his work and Glen thought that sometimes even his homework was interesting.  And he enjoyed learning.  But then a third woman added her thoughts.

            “They make you work like a slave, they do,” the woman said.  The other two nodded and made sounds of agreement.  “And slavery is illegal.  We deserve to get everything for free, we do.”

            “I would rather be poor and free than a rich slave,” the first woman said as the others agreed, “Yes, yes.”  It sounded so high minded and idealistic, but Glen knew it was actually drivel.  He took a step back and watched the women wander off and soon fall back into their own isolated islands of poverty and despair.  No one could like living in the pit.

            “It won’t do any good talking to the grown-ups.  They are too set in their ways.  They have made themselves deaf, dumb and blind.”

            Glen spun around again and was glad that this time there was a person he could identify as the speaker.  He was black and about twelve.  He looked older, but Glen thought he might even be as young as eleven.  “But how do you get out of here?”  He asked what was still on his mind.

            “There are lifelines thrown down into the pit, regularly.  Some of them don’t last long, but all you have to do is grab hold and pull yourself up.”

            Glen paused and stared because the young man appeared to be aging even as he stood there.  “But what is wrong with these people?  Can’t they see it?”  He finally blurted that out.

            The man, and he was a man by then simply laughed.  It was a laugh which reminded Glen of the laugh of his grandfather, Millard.  He found that curious.  He wondered if God arranged that in some way so he would feel comfortable talking to this man.  Then the man spoke again.

            “What I heard is most people are not willing to leave this place, and the older they get, the more stuck in the mud they become.  Some are broken in their mind or body.  Some are too lazy to even pull themselves out.  Most, though, are too afraid.  They don’t believe there is anything better for them.  They have been told all of their lives that they are hopeless and useless and at some point they believe it.  Then there is no helping them.”

            “That is sad,” Glen said, even as the man’s hair began to gray.

            “It is,” the man agreed as a rope came sailing over the side of the pit.  “But here is your chance.  Grab hold while you can.  Are you able to climb the rope?”

            Glen did not wait.  He grabbed on and began to climb, but he paused at the top to take one last look at the man below who was looking at him in turn.  Then he recognized the man.  It was Joe, the janitor from his country club church in the village, and he cried out to the man.  “Come with me.”

            The man shook his head.  “It is too late for me, but you better go before it is too late for you.”  With that word, the rope began to fray and disintegrate.  Glen had to grab hold of the tufts of grass at the lip of the pit to keep from falling back down.  He tried to haul himself up, but the  grass was slippery and the mud was everywhere.  The grass began to pull from the mud and he felt sure he was going to fall when a hand reached down and grabbed his hand.  It pulled him to his feet at the top like he was no more trouble than a baby pulled to her mother’s hip.  Glen shouted.

            “1192!  Sir Duncan!”

            Sir Duncan wrinkled his brow.  “What are you at this point, seven?”

            “Eight.”  Glen lifted his chin to make himself as tall as possible. 

            “Eight, and already falling into pits and traps.”  Sir Duncan was not scolding and he did not sound disappointed.  It honestly sounded like the man was simply teasing him.

            “I take care of myself.  I have to.”

            “Well –“  The Knight did not finish his thought.  He mounted his horse.  “Do your best.  That is all anyone can do.”  He began to ride off.

            “Wait!”  Glen hollered and tried to run after the man but soon lost him in the woods.

            Glen woke up one Christmas night and thought his life on earth was a dream.  He was quite young – in third or fourth grade or roughly eight or nine years old when he found himself resting comfortably on the ground beneath a very strange sign.  He stood and brushed off the seat of his pants and saw that he was at a crossroads.  He could not remember how he got there or what he was doing there, but this was his reality. 

            Life on earth, back in the village, was a dream where Brother Tom got dibs on the Christmas presents that Glen was supposed to share, and Glen got presents he was supposed to put together.  Father put together Mister Machine.  Glen never learned how to put anything together.  So when Glen stood in the morning light and brushed himself off he was curious as to why none of the family was around.  Not that it bothered or surprised him to be alone.

            The crossroads was six points where five roads or paths in the wilderness lead off from the sign at roughly sixty degree angles.  Starting at zero, he followed sixty, one-twenty, one-eighty and two-forty degrees, and immediately realized the three hundred degree sign was missing.  But then, there was no road at three hundred degrees.  It just looked like the woods and the wild.

            So Glen started at the zero point and read the signs.  The first was Prophetic Peak.  No miles were given, but he imagined it was some distance.  Still, to climb into the heights and be able to see a long way fit his idea of prophetic.

            The sixty degree sign was Principle Point.  Glen had no idea what sort of principles that might represent.  He supposed they might be like school principals.  Some might be good, but many more were probably foolish.

            The one-twenty degree sign said Political Plain, and Glen believed it.  At eight or nine years old, politicians all looked the same to him.  And they all seemed like flat-earth thinkers as well, not unlike the village idiot, but what did he know?

            The one-eighty degree sign, opposite Prophetic Peak was Personality Place.  And it occurred to him that the politicians were somewhere between having principles and being personalities without substance.  They did want to get elected – smile and kiss babies, but they were not entirely without an agenda, even if they were not honest about it during the campaign.  Sigh.  Then it also occurred to him that prophetic people were  not often invited to parties, if you know what I mean, being by nature the opposite of those with so-called personality.

            He moved on to two-forty.  That pointed the way to the Performance Plateau.  Glen imagined there might be sports people, and celebrities.  Some that leaned too much in the direction of Personality Place might be the type that you wonder why they are famous.  But to be honest, Glen’s first thought was of artists.  He imagined the great painters, musicians, writers and poets and playwrights with actors and such all climbing up to the plateau.  He was tempted to look down that way and wondered if it might lead him back to the comfort of the cliffs of creativity and the endless sea.

            Then there was the place with no road and no sign.  Glen wondered briefly if there was supposed to be something between performance and the prophetic.  He couldn’t imagine what that might be.  In the end, though, Glen decided that none of the other directions necessarily fit.  It was the three-hundred degrees direction – the wild and wilderness that attracted him most – the chance to get out from under the constant negatives and blaze his own trail. 

            Even as he set himself to journey off into the wild at three hundred degrees from the zero point – toward the place where there was no sign and where there was no road, he suddenly became aware of others moving along the roads.  A man came to the crossroads from  the Performance Plateau.  He had his arm around his son and whispered instructions most of the time.  They went off toward Personality Place and Glen paused to wonder what was going on.

            A woman chose that moment to come out from the road called Principle Point.  She had a young girl by the hand who tugged a little against the tide.  The girl looked up toward Prophetic Peak and appeared to want to go there, but her mother shook a finger and said a firm, “No.”  They skipped over the road to the Political Plain and also headed toward Personality Place.

            And Glen guessed.                                                                                                                

            The children were being educated, gaining those skills and those all important experiences that would stand them well throughout life.  Glen looked at his empty hands.  He had no arm over his shoulder, of course, but he imagined he could do the same on his own, or he could try.

            Glen thought to experiment.  There was something about Performance Plateau that attracted him.  Perhaps it was the slim chance of seeing the artist’s alcove of his youth and stand again between the pillars of imagination and inspiration with his back to whatever that other one was.  So he wandered down that long and winding road for a time, and said hello to people along the way though he hardly got so much as a head-nod in return.  Glen thought, this was easy.  He reached a spot where he could see the village up ahead nestled up to the base of some sort of cliffs, but then he came to a road block.  There appeared to be a section under construction.  There was a big pit in the road.  Glen did not know if he could or at eight-years-old, if he was allowed to go around. 

            He had to think for a minute, and while he did he had quite a shock.  Glen saw a man and his daughter come up to the warning cones and walk right through them as if they were not there.  The man was speaking volumes to his little girl, and they walked right across the pit as if there was no pit, like they were walking on the air.  Glen watched them reach the other side and continue on the road without having noticed a thing; and he thought this was wonderful.

            He backed up.  It took a minute to muster the courage.  After all, he did notice the pit, but he set himself to pretend it was not there and walked straight ahead.  Needless to say, the cones proved a barrier, and after he pushed through them he slid on the mud down into the pit and landed flat on his rump.  That was when he saw a sign.  It was attached to the back of a cone where no one could see it from the road, and Glen wondered if the cone got accidentally turned around.  It said, “Keep out.  You are not welcome or wanted here.”  What could Glen do?

            The pit was much too steep and tall on the other side, and it looked as muddy as where Glen sat so there was no way he could climb out on the village side.  All he could do was scramble back up to the road, to the place where he had fallen in.  He thought to look to either side of the road, but there was a trench there, too.  It was a trench that got bigger and more impossible to cross as Glen came close.  And the conclusion was, there was no going on for Glen in that direction.  The truth is Glen never felt completely comfortable in any sort of performance.  He always felt he got a long way down the road, but never quite arrived. 

            Glen went back to the place of the signs and wiped off as much mud as he could.  He looked down the road toward Principle Point, but he saw the cones put up there, too.  It hardly felt fair.  He thought if he had a grown-up to hold his hand it might be different.  He might be welcomed in those places, but he did not.

            Glen wanted guidance, encouragement and support.  He never got that from his parents, his family, or for various reasons from anyone else either.  He needed to hear that he was good at something, that he might have a future, that someone believed in him.  But all he heard was he was useless and hopeless and always wrong.  He had no one to hold his hand.  He was perpetually alone, the rejected disappointment, the one to be ignored and forgotten.

            Glen thought of his father, but Father worked, even when he was home.  He was a writer and magazine editor, and what time he had he used to encourage Brother Tom in his writing.

            Glen thought of his mother, but she had Sister Carol to take care of.  They made cookies and went shopping and stuff, and Glen suspected his mother did not even know that the crossroads existed.  Sister Carol, of course, was too young to be of help.

            Glen thought of his brother.  He was only fifteen and a half months older, but he lived in an entirely different world.  Instead of Glen and his brother being close all of their lives, Mother felt it was best, perhaps especially because they were so close in age, to keep their lives utterly separated.  Brother Tom had friends and was encouraged with his friends.  Glen was told to go get his own friends, or sometimes simply to just go away.  Glen was not encouraged.  He was treated like the stupid one with his little stupid friends by Brother Tom, though to be sure Brother Tom simply echoed the attitude their parents taught him.

            Glen had no one.  He never did have anyone, really.  And as for instruction, encouragement, support – he was on his own.  He felt like he lived in the Wilderness.  He decided might as well go there.

            When Glen was in the second grade, when he was six and ready to turn seven in November, Mother finally realized that there was no real bond between them. 

            Glen was the youngest and smallest in his class, but stayed on that early track because he seemed able to keep up, academically.  That is, when the subject interested him.  He would be the first to admit that when he was not interested, though he honestly tried, he did not always do his best work.  Then, of course, he would get the verbal whipping, but curiously it did not affect him much. 

            You see, he was never connected to the adults who were his mother and father.  Indeed, his connection to normal life at times was tenuous at best.  So the words of reprimand, and admittedly they were sometimes cruel words, while they went down deep into his heart, they did little to affect an immediate change in his behavior.  Glen could not see any reason to change.  He was already the so-called black sheep of the family.  As far as he could tell, he did everything wrong. He was to blame for everything, and no matter what he did right he was never going to be praised or treated in any positive way.  I suppose the reason he did not change his behavior is because, from his point of view, his behavior was not the behavior that needed to change.

            So there he was in the second grade and Mother started a strange conversation.  It was about his teacher, and what a good teacher she was and what a good friend of Mother’s she was.  Glen supposed she was.  He only had three other teachers at that point, in nursery school, kindergarten and first grade, so what did he know about good and bad teachers?  Then it came out.  The teacher said he was not doing his best work and his parents were concerned.  Glen protested to deaf ears.  He always tried to do his best.  He just found it hard when he was disinterested in the subject. 

            His young heart cried out that a little encouragement, some praise and positive support when he did well would make all the difference.  The problem was he did not know how to verbalize or explain that.  He did not have the words.  But then, he was not sure it would have mattered.  Clearly his parents could not see it.  Everything associated with him by that point was cast in the most negative and critical light, and that was all they could see.

            It was about that same time that Glen came to understand something special about God.   Do be careful what you ask for.

            He was seated in church, the one many in town called the glorified country club, and he listened intently to the sermon.  It must have been a special Sunday because normally children were not allowed to stay in the sanctuary during adult church.  It was probably a stewardship Sunday.

            That sermon was on the leading edge of the thinking of the day:  That we cannot love God as he loved us.  God died for us, but God does not need us to die for him.  Instead, when we give to help our neighbor we show our love for God in return.  Even at six going on seven it sounded like bull to Glen.

            That night Glen prayed.  “God, I know the minister said we cannot love you as you loved us.  I know loving my neighbor is important, but that is loving my neighbor.  If you don’t mind, if it is possible, can I love you as you love me?”  To his surprise, he got a clear answer.

            “Yes.  You can even be crucified after a fashion.”

            I am sure that is not what Glen had in mind; but then it was not six months earlier when he made Mother stand at the foot of his bed and repeat the written bedtime prayer over and over until he had it memorized.

            All the same, his life continued on the same path.  You realize, of course, these are only small examples of the kind of life Glen lived up to this point.  In some ways they sound petty and stupid.  They weren’t to a child.  Granted, no one actually said to his face, “You’re just no good,” but I can see where that might devastate a child and require therapy in later years.  In Glen’s case, there were plenty of similar things said, and regularly enough, but he actually found some comfort in the consistency.  True, at seven he did not yet understand the things he was hiding in his heart.

###

            Glen was in third grade out on the playground minding his own business and this kid who was small like him suddenly took a swing at him for no known reason.  Naturally, Glen defended himself, but when he got home, he had no defense.  His parents found out he had a fight at school and the first thing out of Mother’s mouth was, “What did you do wrong.” 

            “Nothing.”

            “So why did he hit you.  You must have provoked him in some way.”

            “No, I didn’t.  He just started hitting me for no reason.”

            “I am sure he did not hit you for no reason.”

            “I don’t know why.  I didn’t do anything.”

            Glen got the looks of disbelief.  In this case, though, he got the impression that his parents did not believe he was lying to them so much as lying to himself.  It was later confirmed that the other boy, whose parents were getting a divorce, started the hitting so Glen was not asked to leave the school for a couple of days.  But that did not matter.  In his parent’s mind, he was at fault.  He had to have done something, wrong.

            It is a wonder Glen never become suicidal.  I suppose what his father often said may have made a difference.  “I can’t wait to see what is going to happen next.”  Then also there was that eternally unanswered question.  Why did God let him live?  Why was he still here?  Glen imagined he would not be allowed to die until he found some peace with that question.

            Glen’s village was not so small.  They had a market where all sorts of things came in from the countryside, and they had schools for the young and prosperity besides.  They were far enough from the city to not be bothered by big city problems, but close enough to take advantage of all the things a city had to offer.  In many ways, it was an idyllic village, even if it was full of ordinary humans and all of the ordinary problems humans have.  None of the problems Glen faced were necessarily out of the ordinary.  It is just in his case they tended to pile up and not leave much room to breathe.

            Here he was, three-and-a-half, having just gotten over a disease that should have killed him, and Mother decided to put him in the Happy Hill Nursery School.  I know children these days are dumped off at day care almost from birth and by three-and-a-half they are experts; but that was not the way it was done back then in Glen’s village.  He was not so happy on the hill.  Normally, mothers and children did not face separation anxiety until the child was at least four, if not five.  Besides, Glen was technically too young to be in the program by at least two months, but Mother had a voice in the town and excellent networking skills and so she managed to get him in. 

            When Mother dropped him off at nursery school, he undoubtedly felt like most children.  He thought she was getting rid of him and she would never be back.  True, he may have had more reason to think that than most, but he cried like any child.  Well, as I understand it he cried all that first day.  The thing about Glen’s situation, though, was not the dropping off.  It was the picking up.  He basically just got in the wagon for the ride home.  There was not any of the hugging and holding and “Oh, I missed you,” stuff.

            To be honest about the school, Glen was not ready for that kind of social interaction.  With Brother Tom around, he hardly got any attention at home and so he had little experience as to how to act toward others.  He was mostly alone.  Brother Tom, though, was headed for kindergarten, and you would think that might have been a good year for Glen to bond with his mother, if not his parents, but it was not to be.  Mother was pregnant and decided that she needed the time to bond with her new baby, instead.

###

            When Glen was four-and-a-half and in Kindergarten, he got his hands on some clay and thought that was wonderful.  All of the children were to make something in a day and paint it on the next day so it could be cooked in the kiln and put on display in time for the first parent-teacher night.  Glen was excited, but there was a limit on what he could do in a single day.  For some reason unknown to him, he decided to fashion an apple.  It was glorious, egg shaped with little feet on the bottom like a real delicious apple.  It even had a stem.

            “What are you making?”  The boy with the runny nose next to him asked.

            “An apple,” Glen answered as his little hands smoothed the roundness to perfection.

            “Me, too,” the boy said, and Glen looked.  It looked to him more like a ball, but he just smiled.  The poor boy’s so-called apple was full of air pockets.   Glen knew, somehow, when the thing cooked it would collapse and look more like bent over worm guts than an apple, but he smiled all the same.

            “What color are you going to paint it?”

            “Red.”  Glen knew the golden color of the apple he pictured in his mind would not be possible.  Red was the obvious substitute.

            “Me too.”

            On parent-teacher night the family spent the night in Brother Tom’s first grade classroom.  They got to Glen’s kindergarten class when the teacher was packing up, preparing to go home.  Glen went straight to his desk and sat while his parents talked briefly with the teacher.  Then the teacher came up holding red painted bent over worm guts.

            “Glen, what is this so I can tell your parents?”

            “That’s not mine.”

            “But it is the one here.  Of course it is yours.  I thought you said this was an apple.”

            That runny nosed kid stole my apple!  Glen wanted to cry, but some pebble from the cliffs of creativity thunked him on the head.  “It’s a poison apple,” he said.

            “Very clever.”  The teacher smiled and carried it back to Glen’s parents while Glen felt like he had been poisoned.  Sadly there was not time for a proper cry.  The school was closing.

            Mother later said, “Your teacher said it was very clever, calling it a poison apple.”  It went on display with the three or four pieces that were actually very good.  And as happens so often with things schools put on display, Glen never saw it again.  It was just as well.  It wasn’t his apple.  Mister “me too” obviously stole his apple and that was Glen’s one and only serious foray into the world of sculpture.

###

            In that village, in the summer, the children always put on a show, like the traveling shows that came to the big city.  The strong man lifted boxes painted to look like dead weights, and the tightrope walkers navigated a rope that never left the ground, but what the heck.  The parents loved it, and the children collected the price of admission and sold snacks (provided by the mothers) and split the proceeds at the end so everyone had a little spending money in the summer.

            One thing that was always part of the grand finale was the pyramid of acrobats.  Three big kids got on the ground.  Two middle-sized kids got on top. And the one who was generally the smallest got on the very top.  Glen was that kid, one year – both smallest and youngest.

            Glen woke up that morning to quiet in the house.  He wondered where everyone was.  He wandered to the kitchen and got some cereal.  He was old enough to do that much, but he was honestly too young to know what day it was.  He sat around for a while by himself, nothing unusual, and eventually wandered into the den to draw some pictures.  It was an hour at least before Mother, baby Carol in her arms, and Brother Tom came home.  Brother Tom immediately came up to Glen and jingled all the change in his pocket.  Then he dumped it out and counted it in Glen’s face.

###

            Glen walked home from first grade.  People did that in those days.  Glen only lived five houses from the school and on the same side of the street so he walked to and from school, and no one thought anything of it.  When he got home on that day, however, no one was home.  The house was locked up tight.  He had no way into the house and that feeling of being rejected and unwanted washed over him, again.  He tried every door.  He banged on the windows.  He sat down and cried.

            Mother eventually came home with Brother Tom and baby Carol in tow.  She never said she was sorry.  Apparently, she picked up Brother Tom after school, but did not bother to pick up Glen.  She let Glen go ahead and walk home to a house locked up tight.  Maybe it never occurred to her to pick Glen up, too.  Maybe Glen just never came to mind.  All Glen knew was she never explained, never apologized or said she was sorry, and the closest she came to admitting anything was when she admitted, “That took longer than I thought.”

###

            Glen never had animosity toward his brother, even if his brother had his seriously insensitive moments.  If anything, Glen always felt sorry they were kept apart, like with a crow bar.  Being as close as they were in age, there was no reason why they should not have become close, certainly as they got older.  But that was not to be.  Mother made sure of that.  Even so, they shared plenty in their youth.  Like the time they went on vacation, sat in the back seat of the station wagon and sang the ballad of Davey Crocket, or more like shouted it at the top of their lungs.

            Born on a mountain top in Tennessee.  The greatest state in the land of the free.  Raised in the woods so’s he knew every tree.  Killed in a bar when he was only three……. 

            Mother told Brother Tom he was so funny.  I am sure Brother Tom did not exactly hear the compliment.  He was not trying to be funny.  Of course, Glen got no notice at all. 

            Glen died.  It is true.  Glen was three-and-a-half, and he died.  I know that sounds strange, but hear me out.  He had spinal meningitis, the kind without a cure that killed in those days.  The lucky few who survived were permanently, mentally disabled, or to be politically incorrect, they ended up severely retarded.  Since Glen lived, he often thought a mental disability was a great excuse, especially when he messed up real bad; but the truth is he died, however briefly.

            The hospital room will always remain in Glen’s mind.  There was poor, thick glass up between himself and the boy next to him.  It was also up facing the door to protect any visitors, and maybe the nurses as well.  It was kind of like living in an isolation bubble, and that made it hard to get much hugging or holding, something that all three-and-a-half year olds need when they are in pain with a high fever.  On top of that, Father had work, of course.  Brother Tom was not yet five years old so he could not be left off at school and certainly not left home alone, and Mother was pregnant with Glen’s little sister.  They did not want her anywhere near Glen.

            To be sure, the boy next door had some of the same problems.  Even though he got contact with his mother, the time was severely restricted.  He did not get much hugging and holding either, and I think that lack of tender loving care had an effect on his final outcome.  You see, Glen was used to not getting much in the way of attention.  The other boy clearly needed the attention more.

            As it was, the lack of attention Glen got in those first years may have been a blessing when he got sick.  You see, he got even less than normal touching and cuddles – what they now know is vital to the healing process, especially for little children, only Glen did not miss it.  And you can write this down: You can’t miss what you never had.

            I’m afraid Glen’s friend cried a lot more than Glen, and not just from the meningitis.  He and Glen made up for some of the lack of attention by making faces at each other through the glass.  They became friends, though they could not talk through the glass and never shared a single word.  He and Glen would jump on the beds, side by side, and slap their hands against the glass until the nurse came in and yelled at them.  This went on, until the day when both appeared to take a downturn.  By nightfall, it was touch and go.

            Glen got awakened in the middle of the night and dragged off to some room where they put needle after needle in his rear.  He counted seven, though in years later everyone told him he was too young and did not yet know how to count.  That was where he died.  It was not for very long.  He felt a shock which from after knowledge he would call electric, but it could have been something else.  It was certainly a miracle, or at least God’s way of saying he was not supposed to die, yet.  He came back.

            Glen cannot tell you about tunnels, white lights or angels and such.  He kind of wishes he could, but obviously he was too young to remember.  He can say that God let him live again.  It was not his time, and that consideration hovered over his life ever since.  Why did  God let him live?  What did God have in mind for his life?  He is still searching because as far as he can tell, up to this point, his life has been one of a great deal of suffering, disappointment and being neglected, rejected, even manipulated and abused in one way or another and he knows that can’t be right. 

            One thing he can tell you is after that time, though I suppose most would claim it was in his makeup from the beginning, his life felt very disjointed.  It felt like he was not always there in this life or in this world.  He sometimes felt like a person in the wrong place and the wrong time, and often at the wrong point in history.  He sometimes felt like he belonged someplace else, and sometimes felt he was already in that other place and just biding his time in this place.  He very rarely remembered his dreams though the few had a tendency to be both prophetic and profound.  He is not sure he ever had what anyone would call a vision, though he may have since he caught himself (or more often was caught) daydreaming very vivid experiences from time to time.  

            One vivid memory from the hospital came when he got back to his bed, he found the other bed made up with fresh pillows and clean sheets.  Almost certainly the other boy died.  Glen never saw his friend again.

            This, then, is the story of his life.  Glen was born a disappointment, never really abused or even seriously neglected, but certainly ignored like he was not there, rejected after a fashion, treated like an afterthought, subject to negativity and criticism like he was wrong about everything, and he died when he was three-and-a-half.  I would say, “The End” but he is still here.  The only real question is, why?

            Glen was born in a maternity hospital in the capitol city of the kingdom, a hospital which closed a short time later.  There was a good hospital in the town where the family lived, but Mother was in the city most of the day.  She worked at the Great Central Government Library while Father went to work, writing for the print shop he would stay with his whole life.  He could not always be nearby, so Glen’s parents picked a hospital in the city to be safe as a place Mother could get to.  Sadly, shortly after Glen was born the hospital closed down, and there is without a doubt the first great metaphor for his life:  Every time he found something good they discontinue it.

            Glen’s parents were convinced they were going to have a girl.  They already had a son and Mother lived a magical kind of life, without much struggle – somehow things always broke her way.  She was so convinced that Glen would be a girl she neglected to pick out a boy’s name.  The unthinkable would not dare happen, but it did.

            “This can’t be my baby.”  Mother tried to hand the baby back.  “There must be some mistake.”

            “This is your son.  There is no mistake.”  The nurse refused to take the baby back.

            Mother could only frown as she wrapped Glen in his baby blanket – a lovely blanket by the way, covered with little girls in pink dresses holding cute parasols reminiscent of the girl on the Morton Salt packages.  Once she was convinced that this mistake was hers, Mother desperately tried to decide on a boy’s name. 

            Both grandfathers were already off the list.  Neither Millard nor Cecil would have been a wise choice in that time and place, so perhaps Glen should be grateful for some things.  Still, that left a gap, and Mother had already used the only boy’s name she liked for Brother Tom.

            Mother only had one sibling, but that was a sister.  Father also had only one sibling, a younger brother named Glen.  Glen was a good ol’ boy from the Southland, so he spelled the name as any good southern boy would: G-L-E-N.  But Mother was from the Northland and thought of the South like she imagined a foreign country, like Nepal or Mozambique.  What did she know?  She naturally wrote on Glen’s birth certificate: G-L-E-N-N (with two Ns) which is the way any reasonable northlander would spell it.  So while Glen was named after his uncle, in a sense you could say on the day he was born his own mother misspelled his name.  After that, life did not get any easier.

            Just before Glen was born, Brother Tom, who was breast fed, became very colicky.  For the first year of Glen’s bottle fed life, he got fed and put down in the playpen or crib or on the rug.  Years later, Mother admitted how glad she was that Glen was a good baby and did not require much attention, since Brother Tom required so much attention.  That was a matter of opinion.

            All Glen knew was Father had the kind of job where he brought work home and worked at his papers all night.  Father was not the kind to hug and hold in any case.  And with Mother, first being disappointed that Glen was not her girl and then needing to focus so much time and energy on Brother Tom, Glen was easy to ignore.  After a year of that, Brother Tom grew out of the colic.  He began on solid food, but by then the pattern and habits were set.  Glen was the neglected disappointment.

            For Glen, it was not as bad as you might think.  Yes, a baby needs attention.  It is how they learn to bond with their mother and father, and then with siblings and finally with the larger world.  True, Glen has always been stunted in his ability to make connections and form attachments, but it was not a total loss because so very often Glen was not there.  He was wandering and wondering about things like Crusading for Christ.

###

            Glen looked out from the cliffs over the endless sea, and that was enough.  The cliffs were called creativity, and Glen spent considerable time in the grotto between the great pillar stones of inspiration and imagination.  There was a third pillar at his back, but he could never quite grasp its name.  Often, Glen stayed and slept in the cave above, the artist’s alcove, and from there he could look out to where the water met the sky and listen to the waves crash on the beach far below.

            Most often, there was no one around to disturb his tranquility.  In those times he drew pictures in the chalk-stone, not yet having the words.  Sometimes he let the daylight shadows form shapes on the walls and ceiling.  Sometimes he watched the dancing sparkles of light that fell on the pools of water that collected in the grotto during the night.  And at night, he watched the stars sparkle in the same way across the darkened sky.

            Sometimes at night Glen felt like he was riding in a ship between the stars, and not just riding but somehow driving and directing the ship to some unknown destination.  He heard the whispers in the night of people long ago, and the soft words of familiar strangers that lived in some far away future.  At the same time, while he never heard the words, he felt the presence of God with him.  The Lord was never far away, and perhaps that is why his being rejected, neglected and ignored back home did not bother him as it might.  The Lord was never far away.

            Sometimes in the day he would see people.  Some came to fish and others, with children, came to collect sea shells and wade in the water.  Couples came to the grotto to rest in the shade and hold hands.  Old men and old women walked slowly across the sand.  Some saw him, but no one paid him any attention.  They might wave once, but then they ignored him, and it made him wonder more than once if perhaps he was a ghost after all.  He was an outsider looking in at life and wondering what it might be like to be connected to someone or to the world in a way he could not imagine.

            He was in the cliffs of creativity, in the artist’s alcove above the grotto where the three pillars of inspiration, imagination and the unnamed third stood, but some things were hard for him to know.

            Sometimes, he saw boats on the water: canoes, row boats, pleasure boats with big sails and fishing boats, though none ever strayed far from shore.  He once saw a fisherman beach his boat and bring his net to shore, full of fish.  He made a fire there and a bloody mess cleaning and cooking and consuming his catch.  Glen wondered what fish might taste like, but he was content and survived well enough on the fresh water that dripped into the cave from above.  He knew the water was a gift for him, and he was grateful.  No one and nothing else was needed and long as the Lord was near.

            Often, Glen would simply sit, alone, and look out over the water to the islands he saw scattered across the sea.  The view was never the same.  It seemed in the night the islands came unglued and shifted positions.  Some days, he could only see one, very far away on the horizon.  Sometimes he saw bunches of islands close together.  Often they remained beyond his ability to make out details, but sometimes they appeared almost close enough to see the trees, if the island had trees.  Once, he thought he saw a pinnacle with a flag, like a tower of some castle, but he was not sure.  All he could really do was guess at the life those islands surely contained. 

            He considered every form of spiritual creature from the ancient gods to the littlest sprite lived on those islands.  He imagined monsters, like dragons and werewolves, though he preferred to think about unicorns.  He considered that more than one island might have a space port to shoot rockets into the night toward the ceiling of the grand ship in which he rode.  He imagined all of history played out in bits and pieces on those distant lands.  The islands were innumerable, and he could never claim to have seen the same one twice over all his time there.

            And somehow, he too lived on those islands, even if he never left the cave.  There was something of himself alive in those strange and distant places.  It was something he could not quite touch.

            One thing he had trouble seeing on the islands was daily, ordinary life on earth.  He never imagined the happy family full of love and joy in each other’s company.  He never imagined a myriad of friends and fellow travelers.  He never imagined the good times to be had in the simple things of life.  He never imagined such things because he never knew such things.  He was in the creative cliffs, in the cave of artistry, supported by the pillars of imagination and inspiration and the third.  But all he had for sustenance was water from above, and he was gaunt and starving for something, even if he did not know what that something might be.  Still, it was enough just to be.  As long as the Lord was near.  It was still enough when he got sick.  It was still enough when he died.  Yes, he did.

            There is a road in this world.  As the prophet said at Christmas time, make in the wilderness a highway for our God.  We need to bring down the mountains and raise up the valleys and make it straight.  That is not easy to do. 

            There are bends and twists and turns in our personal roads.  Often we cannot see very far ahead.  We cannot know what may be around the next bend.  And there are trees and boulders and more subtle dips and rises that make our walk difficult at times.  There are swamps and marshes to wear us out.  Sometimes there are fantastic growths and jungles to cut through.  The horizon is often hidden from us.  And the wilderness holds many surprises.  There is no telling in advance who or what we might meet or run into.

            Sometimes we must walk this road alone, but often there are others who walk beside us for a time: parents and siblings, spouses and children, friends and sometimes enemies.  But most often their roads turn off here and there.  Sometimes they may join up again further along, or cross over our path from time to time, but it seems that nothing in this world is forever and the road we walk is our own.

            It is intriguing to see where each of us is headed.  All of these roads, trails and paths through the wilderness are certainly going somewhere.  And there are crossroads at times.  Make no mistake about that.  At times we have to choose which turn, which direction to take.  When confronted with a choice, I have noticed that very few have a clear vision as to which way to go.  For most, it seems the choice is only made in hope.  “I hope this is the right way.  I hope this is my way.”  Often, by God’s grace, things work out.  Sometimes they do not and we struggle to reach the next crossroad.

            But the thing is, though we walk, and we cannot help but walk our road, mostly we don’t know where we are going.

            C. S. Lewis said it well.  “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will do.”

            That seems the philosophy of most of us, admit it or not.

            True, we read the road signs and usually we look for the ones that point to success, money, position, power, and vainly keep our eyes open for the road sign that points to happiness.  But where these roads will ultimately take us is not known.  Most don’t think of the end of the road.  Most don’t like to think about it.

            Will it be a nursing home in Florida where we sit in a wheelchair and stare out the window, feeling lost and neglected?  I don’t know.  I know that is not what anyone has in mind.

            Thomas asked Jesus.  “How can we know where you are going?  How can we know the way?”

            Jesus replied, “I am the way.”

            I am only now learning this great lesson.

            This journey is the story of a lost soul.  It is an absolutely personal telling of a life, even if most of it takes place in the second heavens or in the imagination or in dreamland or however you choose to call it.  It is a remarkable reflection of events in the so-called real world, but at the same time it is told with exaggerations, distortions and some things and events and attitudes that are as utterly real as they are utterly wrong. 

            It may be to understand life one must look at it through a Second Heavens perspective where that life gets twisted and distorted as surely as space and time in that place are twisted and distorted.  The old man, the young man and the child can touch each other at any point in a place where time is relative and space folds back on itself.  And who has not woken up at one time or another with a simple thought on their mind:  “How did I get here?”

            I am of the opinion that as surely as God in the Third Heaven impacts us on earth under the First Heavens, so also the Second Heavens leak through to life.  Life on earth seems so linear, so plodding, so straight forward, but is it?   Everyone has touched the sky at one time or another.  In Glen’s case, that leakage was regular.  He was regularly drawn back and forth between the Second Heavens and his earthly life like blood flowing through an open wound.  It was never bad enough or strong enough that he needed to be institutionalized, but the leakage was always more than enough for a storyteller.

            Don’t let the fantastic settings fool you.  It is what happened on the inside in a person’s life that matters most.  It is God’s intention, after all, to transform us from the inside-out.  Thus it is not the outside story that really matters in anyone’s life.  So whether the story takes place in the Second Heavens or on Earth is not the point.  It is the inside story that counts.  And so it is that Glen’s anatomy was unearthed in the days, months and maybe even years after his leap into the void.  Call it, the Anatomy of a Storyteller.  I will try to minimize the blood.

            The man followed Glen’s example and looked around before he nodded.  “Right you are.  This place is not like earth.  Some call this place the Second Heavens.  That is the space squeezed between the first heavens that circle above the earth and the Third Heaven wherein is the throne of God.  It may be.  Some imagine it is purgatory, though I don’t believe that is correct.  I have my own name for it.”  Glen raised his brows and leaned forward in expectation.  “I said it was my own name.”  That ended that discussion.

            After a time of silence while Glen watched the man pull some ground spice out of a pouch and rub it into the pigeon, he spoke again.  “Tough luck on any people living down below if the sea should break through this little ridge we are on.”

            “Eh?”  the man looked up and grinned as he stood.  “I heard it did once.  The Middle Ones had the devil’s own time getting the Endless Sea back in its place.  But that is just what I heard.”

            Glen was not sure he understood.  “Middle Ones?  Endless Sea?”  He mumbled the questions, but by then the man was up and tending to his horse, so he held his tongue.  He did not know what to think.  He did not know what to ask.  It came to him that he was not even sure who he was, and with that he decided his best course would be to watch his tongue or not say anything at all.

            When the pigeon was ready, Glen ate but thought about chicken just as hard as he could.  He ate because he did not want to offend the man, and the tubers were actually quite good.  But after a while, he spoke again to distract his attention from the food.

            “So how long have you been here?”  Glen felt that was a safe conversation since he had already volunteered that he had not been there long.

            The man stopped short in the midst of licking his fingers.  “Congratulations,” he said and looked up at the last bit of red and deepening purple in the western sky.  “It only took you about three hours to ask that question.  The last man I met took all day before he asked, and the man before that never did ask.”  He squinted hard at Glen.  “There must be something female about you.”

            “Female?”

            The man nodded and looked around at the trees before he looked again at Glen.  “Women are less concerned with this place and more with the person.  They usually ask that question in the first five minutes.”

            Glen sat quietly and looked at his hands.  The man – this knight was not inclined to be free with information.  Glen waited, and while he waited, he wondered if the cloth in his pack might provide some warmth in the night.  He pulled it out and saw that it was folded very tight.  There was no telling just from looking at it how big it might actually be, but now that the sun was down, he suspected it might cool off.   Glen looked again at the man who was still looking at him.

            “Well?”

            The man laughed.  “Once upon a time, I was headed for Jerusalem, but I got lost.”  He sighed wistfully before he continued.  “I found myself in this place in the Year of our Lord, 1192.”  Glen must have looked shocked because the man laughed again before he spoke.  “Yes.  I had a small troop out from Ascalon.  Richard sent us to spy out the Mohammedans, but my head tells me they found us first.  My head says I died in an ambush, yet here I am.  I hardly feel like a ghost.  I’ve just shared a nice pigeon and I am ready to take a good rest.  So you see, my body says I am hardly dead.  Besides, I am not inclined to do any of the things ghosts do.  I can’t walk through walls.  I tried.”  He paused to make a show by rubbing his nose. 

            “1192?”

            The man nodded again.  “Yes,” he said before he squinted at Glen again.  “I’ve spent the last several years trying to find my way back.”  He squinted double hard.

            “Several centuries,” Glen corrected before he became unbearably uncomfortable under his scrutiny.  “What?”

            The man shook his head.  “You don’t seem to be all here.  I was wondering if maybe you are the ghost.”

            “Me?”  Glen had not expected that.  “I’m not a ghost.  I have no ghostly inclinations, and I can assure you I can’t walk through walls either, and I don’t have to test my nose to prove it.”

            “I suppose.” 

            “I’m not even dead, at least as far as I know in my head.”

            “Hmm.”  The man paused to think about that.  “There’s a different wrinkle.  All the same, you are not entirely here.  It is like you are in two places, I guess.  I suppose if you are not dead, you may be back on earth asleep or something, do you think?”

            Glen looked around, though by then it was too dark to see anything.  “I don’t know what to think.  I don’t know where I am.  I barely feel I know who I am.  And it is not every day I meet someone who is over eight hundred years old and still looking to go home.”

            The man gave Glen a stern look.  “You’re not going to start on me now with that business about how you can’t go home again, are you?”

            “No, please.”  Glen shook his head.  “That man was an idiot.  I think one of the main drives, the point of life is to find our way home, to our heavenly home, our real home.”  The man grinned again.  “No, I don’t know which heaven.  Maybe the seventh heaven.”  Glen just threw that last thought to the wind.

            “Mohammedan talk,” the man said.  “There are only three heavens, but this second heaven is confusing and might be mistaken for seven or more all by itself.  You see, it is like a fine bit of pastry with many, many ultra thin layers stacked on top of each other and leaking into each other.  You will find that time here is flexible.”

            “Relative,” Glen suggested.

            “Yes.  That Einstein fellow.  I heard about him.”

            “What about space?”  Glen asked.

            The man shrugged.  “Hard to tell.  One man called it unstable.  He said it bends and folds and is never the same twice.  I told him he could spend an eternity walking the place and never cross the same path twice.”

            “Bent and folded.”  Glen made a statement but the man took it as a question.

            “Yes, in the morning you could start down into that lush river valley and find yourself in a desert with no way of telling how you got there.”

            “Sounds confusing.”

            “It is.”  The man nodded once again before he raised his voice.  “Sleep,” he announced and immediately laid down on his side of the fire.  When Glen did not move, the man explained.  “Whenever I get confused in the dark, I opt for sleep.  Things often look clearer in the morning.”

            “Oh.”  Glen got it and found a slot in his thin blanket where he could get in it like a sleeping bag.  As he settled, the man spoke again.

            “Of course, it is not always safe to sleep in the dark.”  That was all he said, and Glen thought, thanks.  Now he was sure to have a nightmare.

            Actually, Glen slept well and woke rested only to find the man already up, packed and ready to leave.  Glen hurried to fold his cloth which all but folded itself.  “Hey,” he called to attract the man’s attention.  “What’s your name?”

            The man grinned.  “You were a bit slow on that one.  Maybe there is only a little female in you.”  He looked ready to stop speaking, but Glen stared at him until he gave it up.  “Duncan will do.”

            “Glen.”  Glen gave the name to suggest some Scottish connection.

            “Ah, yes.  A name I will remember.  I knew I would like you.”  Sir Duncan mounted his horse in a swift, fluid motion.  “You will have to walk down from here, and maybe get a bit of your youth back in the process.”  He was ready to go.

            “Hey.”  Glen made him pause again.  “If your head says you are dead and your body says you are alive, what does your heart say?”  This time Glen felt he got a genuine smile out of the man. 

            “There’s the rub, and a good woman’s question.”  He squinted again.  “No, definitely not all here.”  And as he turned and rode off, he sang some ancient tune which Glen surmised was probably a drinking song.

            But that is the problem, Glen thought.  I’ve spent my whole life not quite being here.  Glen picked up his pack and made sure the fire was out.  He found a bit of bread left by the knight, and thanked the air in lieu of thanking the man.  Then he looked up and saw the sun rising over the sea in the very same place it had set the evening before.  He shook his head.  Wherever he was, it was not earth.

            A Crusader for Christ?  Glen paused to think about that.  He thought he could do that, as long as he did not have to hurt anybody.

            After that, he began to walk down hill toward the river and as he walked he could feel himself getting younger.  Somehow, he felt he had done that before, and he imagined in this place, a person’s age was more flexible than on earth.  He wondered how young he might get.  It seemed to him last time he got young enough to be born again.

            When Glen awoke the second time, he kept his eyes closed for a minute because something felt all screwed up.  He was not sure if this was the same night as his vision of the Tree of Life.  He was older than he had been before so he thought maybe it was some time after the vision.  He was fifty-eight.  He felt more like eighty something in his knees. 

            Glen paused.  He thought this might be earlier that his vision of the Tree of Life, though that made no sense.  It was curious to think this experience might come after the vision and before the vision at the same time, but that was how it felt.  Glen was older, but at the same time, somewhere in creation he was younger than six.  He saw himself as a three and a half year old, suffering.  He felt the electric shock.  It felt like death, but it was not, yet.  He was sure of that.  What he was not sure of was where he was and why.  He was confused, so he decided to wait and see.  He would let his outsides define his reality even if he knew that was not always the best advice.

            Glen’s back remained against a tree, his eyes closed.  He thought to listen again for the sound of that glorious music.  He had hope, but all he heard was some sort of rumble and normal birdsong.  When he sniffed, he smelled normal forest and a bit of salt that he could not place at first.  He opened his eyes at last.  The tree was just a regular, old oak and he was disappointed but felt relieved at the same time.  Glen felt sure he was back on earth, though mysteriously he was not sure he wanted to be.

            He was at the top of a hill or ridge with a great river valley spread out below.  He wondered how he came to be in that place and if maybe there was some place he needed to go or something he needed to do in that place.  The thunder was still in his ears, so he stood and walked once around the tree to take in the scenery.  He stopped half-way around, and stared.

            Not a hundred yards from where he stood, there was a golden, sandy beach.  Beyond the sand, the ocean stretched out to the horizon, dark and full of a soft but steady wind that rolled the waves gently up the shore before they pulled back into the sea.  It was a strange, but lovely sight.  It looked idyllic, like he was standing on the edge of a beach resort.  Glen took a deep breath of salty, sea air and smiled until he realized something and felt confused. 

            He spun around again and saw the river valley far below.  It suddenly seemed to him to be a death valley, being so far below sea level.  One breach in that sandy beach and the ocean would go crashing down into that place and drown everything in its path.  It was frightening to think about, but then he was distracted by the river which he could clearly see winding its way across the land.  He wondered how it could reach the sea.  Something in his mind said it raced uphill at some point and rushed into the sea, but another thought said that could not be true.  Water did not run uphill.

            He contemplated the whole scene while his hand fell into the bag he carried on his hip.  He briefly considered standing on his head to make the scene look right, but he knew that would not work.  That would not raise the valley, and it would put the ocean in the sky – a frightening prospect.  He chose not to second-guess the reality he found himself in and wondered instead what his hand had found.

            The bag contained a big knife, sheathed forever as far as he was concerned, unless he came across some jungle he needed to hack through.  A water bottle took up a good bit of the bottom of the bag.  Then there was a box with a blinking light.  Something in the back of his mind said he should not touch that just yet.  There was also a good bit of folded up cloth, and it was a strange enough cloth to the touch.  He caught the hint of morning dew and maybe spider webs in that fabric.  The last item was an apple – a golden apple that had several slices missing.  He was glad despite the missing slices because he was starving, so he pulled it out and became more curious than ever.

            Clearly the apple had been in his bag for some time, yet it was not brown at all.  It was golden on the outside and the flesh was just as sweet and juicy as if it was fresh picked. Glen knew that was odd.  He understood that some land could be below sea level, though the river bothered him.  He also understood that a tree could grow up to the edge of the sea, though he suspected normally it would be stunted and shaped a bit by all the salt in the air.  But he knew an apple exposed to the air should brown in short order.  He had no way of knowing how long he was there before he woke, but this apple was not brown at all. 

            He shrugged.  He was hungry, and he enjoyed it.  And then he made a little hole some distance from the oak and planted the core with the thought that if a tree grew it would provide that much more protection for the lowland against the sea.

            “Ho there.”  The words echoed from the trees down the beach.  “What ho, stranger.”  Glen saw yet another strange sight as a man on a strong white horse came trotting out from the trees, waving.  He had the lance of a knight tied to the side of his saddle.  He had the sword and other accoutrements of a knight as well.  The horse blanket, which was also white and long, and decorated with red crosses looked worn from years of cushioning the saddle.  But it looked serviceable and it sported the finest lace and tatting all along the edges.

            “What ho.”  The man waved again as he trotted up.  He stopped and dismounted several yards away, and he let the horse wander as he stepped in Glen’s direction.

            “Friend, where are you headed?”  Glen asked.  It was the only thing that came to his mind.

            “Here and there,” the man responded with a smile.  Glen detected a bit of the Scottish sound about his words, but said no more as he examined this strange sight.  Glen was not sure of the man’s age.  The man had a gray beard, but appeared younger than the gray.  This man’s long tunic covered some kind of leather and chain, and it was as white as his horse, and sported a single big red cross in the very center.  Glen could only imagine a crusader.

            “Welcome,” Glen said at last.

            “Well met,” the man responded.  “But you haven’t a fire.”  It sounded like a scolding.

            “I haven’t been here long,” Glen responded, and the man nodded his head and set about building a fire.  Glen helped, at least enough to fetch some wood.  Once the flames were up, the man asked if Glen had eaten.

            “An apple.”

            “Only an apple?”  He chided before he laughed and proceeded to catch a pigeon which he killed, gutted and plucked in almost no time.  He put it on a stick over the fire, and wrapped some roots in leaves and threw them into the fire as well before he took a seat.  “You must be new to this place,” the man said.  Glen nodded.  His tongue felt shy.  “You will get used to it.”

            “Where are we, exactly?”  Glen wondered. 

            “Where do you think you are?”

            Glen looked around once more.  The sun was getting ready to set over the sea at his back.  “This is some place different,” he suggested.  “Not like any place I know on earth.”