But the next time God looked down upon the earth, He recoiled with fear. Next to the multitude of joined hands, people had built many Gothic churches, with the result that the hands and the roofs, equally steep and sharp, were pointing up at Him like hostile weapons. God has a different kind of courage. He turned back into His heaven, and when He noticed that the towers and the new prayers were multiplying behind His back, He departed from His heaven by going out the other side, thus withdrawing Himself from the persecution. He Himself was surprised to find on the other side of His radiant dwelling place an incipient darkness that received Him in silence; and with a strange feeling He went ever further into this obscurity, which reminded Him of the hearts of human beings. At that point it occurred to Him for the first time that while the heads of human beings are brightly lit, their hearts are full of a similar darkness, and He was overcome by a longing to dwell in the hearts of human beings and not to have to go into the clear, cold wakefulness of their thoughts anymore. Well, God has continued on His way. The darkness around Him grows ever thicker, and the night through which He is pushing His way has something of the fragrant warmth of fertile clods of earth. And before too long, roots will reach out toward Him with the beautiful old gesture of open prayer. There is nothing wiser than the circle. The God who fled from us into the heavens will come to us again out of the earth. And, who knows, maybe you are the very person who one day will dig open the gate.

“But that’s only a fairy tale,” said the man with the shovel.

“In our way of talking,” I replied softly, “everything becomes a fairy tale, because for that way of talking it can never have happened.”

The man gazed into space for a time. Then, with a gruff gesture, he pulled on his coat and asked, “We can walk together, can’t we?”

I nodded. “I’m going home. I suppose it’s on your way. But don’t you live here?”

He came out of the little fence gate and closed it gently on its wailing hinges. “No,” he replied.