Eric Ortlund

“The spectral light inside sang like slow thunder. Already it had grown into a worm that twisted, a bird that fluttered, a snake that slid through my intestines. As it moved, it was hard to tell where my viscera ended and the invader began. The being’s presence receded from my mind and the light disappeared. I stood in perfect darkness for a moment before the jail cell became visible again.”
― Eric Ortlund, I Am the Doorway

“I stared at it for a while. Then something happened to me which hadn’t happened for a long time. Once as a boy my parents took me to the beach. I didn’t build sand castles or play in the waves. I just stared at the horizon the whole time. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. My father asked me what I was looking at, and I told him I wanted to get in a boat and sail out there and keep sailing. When I went to Greece with Sarah and we looked out over the crystal blue Mediterranean, the same sweetness pulled at me. I cannot tell you where it came from or what I wanted, but I never forgot it. And it was happening again, in that lonely, quiet place Malachi had brought me to, because … what was that, above the thin curtain of reality? Past the furthest horizon, unseen, outside, silent? I could not make it out, but from my great depth, I was sure there was something, the way stars become visible in daylight from the bottom of a well. It pulled at me.”
― Eric Ortlund, I Am the Doorway