If I were to imagine to myself a
day - laborer and the mightiest emperor that ever lived, and were to imagine that this mighty Emperor took a notion to send for the poor man, who never had
dreamed, «neither had it entered into his heart to believe,» that the Emperor knew of his existence, and who
therefore would think himself indescribably fortunate if merely he was permitted once to see the Emperor, and would recount it to his children and children's children as the most important event of his life — but suppose the Emperor sent for him and informed him that he wished to have him for his son - in - law... what then?
«The supermarket heavens of my new neighbors,» Jan writes from his suburban apartment in Washington, D.C., «which draw a veil over suffering and
therefore make no sense of it or of anything else, take me back to those beautiful, terrible
days, when our dear city turned in its sleep and its
dreams were
dreams of a crucified God.»