On the mortal divinity of a man I did not know.

My father sent me something, he calls it a book -- something he's written over the course of discussing Russian Orthodox beliefs with a friend, who was dying at the time; the friend died just before Christmas.

I love my father's writing, the realness of it, the humor, the vibrancy. How his friend is very much alive in his writing, alive even as the cancer wore him so thin that that profound inner light he had showed through. His faith, his wholeness. On this hand he is a mortal man, but look at him dichotomising, on this other hand he is divine.

I read this writing, and wonder at this offering to the akhu who is John, this act of profound beauty. I did not know him, but I know him now; I may have met him some times as a child, in the parties where he and my father met, but I did not know him.

I have tears for it, this thing. It will be hard to write back to Dad over this, aside from these brief, strange intellectual comments I make on this writing as things catch me: he has showed me his offerings, and I am awed.

Addendum: I wrote to him. I think I found the words to express what it was he did; I told him he wrote a Querencia. (Querencia is . . . a very real book, and a true one, and I think shamefully out of print. My father buys copies on eBay and the used book sites so he has them to give to people.)