An End of Speaking

An End of Speaking offers readers 9 short stories all connected by their biblical origins. The first five stories are drawn from the Hebrew Bible (or the Old Testament as it is sometimes known) and the last four are inspired by the characters and historical flow of the New Testament. Jesus comes on the scene. The first five stories focus on God as Yahweh, the wily rascally trickster God of dust and dirt that we see in the Hebrew Bible. Here we see Yahweh with Moses, his first leader, in the title story "An End of Speaking" - the moment when Yahweh leaves his friend outside to die alone as Yahweh walks with His people into the Promised Land. We also watch as Yahweh plays with his first family and we hear him banish one of his first grandkids, Cain, to meet the Mayor of Nod. The Mayor is his own story, to be sure. We observe through the eyes of Eyman as Yahweh conducts his business affairs on the daily with the other gods of the other worlds. In "Roll a Great Stone to Me Today" a brave enough reader is given a searing allegory of why men love kings, and do not - how unbalanced are the walls of our wants. How true that god did not speak, god speaks, as Emerson once wrote. The author of this book quite clearly believes this is truth. The second half of the book allows Jesus to be as human as he seemed to believe he was. We see Jesus with the woman at the well and he sees her as a woman and she sees him as a man, and everyone is nervous because everyone believes they want to be pure. In "Acts on an Old Saw" the book waves at itself, living forwards and understanding backwards, in the form of a play that takes place in the 3rd heaven, which also might be a clever way to say it takes place in the mind of the Son of the Ancient of Days. An End of Speaking leaves us on the island of Patmos with John of the Apocalypse. John is alone, heat struck, and losing grip with what is and what was and what is to come. Are not we all? And after traveling the paths of th