Son of the Morning

Excerpt

Whisper unto my soul, I am thy salvation.

You have promised that there shall be time no longer. Yet there is nothing but time in the desolation of my soul. A vast Sahara of time surrounds me, and though the frightful minutes pleat when I manage to slip into unconsciousness, the release is so brief, so teasing, that to wake once more to my life is a horror. Am I a brother to anyone in this agony, I ask myself; is it Your design that I awaken to such a brotherhood . . . ? But I don't want mankind, nor do I want the happiness of the individual without mankind: I want only You.

There shall be time no longer, yet we are deep in time, and of it; and it courses through us like the secret bright unfathomable blood through our bodies, bearing us along despite our childlike ignorance of its power.

Is this a revelation, I ask myself. Or an aspect of my punishment.

Save me, O God, by Thy name, and judge me by Thy strength and not by my weakness. If I have come to life again it is in obedience to the simple laws governing the sun, the moon, and the earth; it is not of my doing. My strength is like that of the mist-green reeds that do nothing but bend, with alacrity and cunning, as the violent winds pass over. Or do I think of the delicate young buds of peaches, or the hair-nests of the smallest of the sparrows. I think of the improbable precision of the eye: the perfection of the iris, the pupil, the mirroring brain. I think of my mother's broken body and of my father's swarthy beauty and of my own soul, which drains away in time, minute after minute, even as I compose my desperate prayer to You.

Epigraph

I will open my mouth in parables;
I will utter things which have
been kept secret from the
foundation of the world.
—Matthew, 13:35

Reviews

• Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 1978, p609
• Publishers Weekly, June 19, 1978, p92
• Village Voice, June 19, 1978, p82
• Booklist, July 15, 1978, p1719-1720
• Library Journal, August 1978, p1532
• New York Times, August 13, 1978, p282-282
• Newsweek, August 14, 1978, p65-66
• Critic, October 15, 1978, p6
• Christian Science Monitor, October 25, 1978, p19
• New York Times Book Review, November 26, 1978, p11
• Washington Post Book World, December 3, 1978, p14
• Choice, January 1979, p1519
• Christian Century, February 21, 1979, p190-191
• Yale Review, Spring 1979, p438
• Theology Today, July 1979, p286-287
• Observer, August 19, 1979, p36
• New Statesman, August 24, 1979, p277
• Listener, August 30, 1979, p286
• Southwest Review, Winter 1979, p93-95
  

Awards

• New York Times Notable Books of the Year

Other Editions