The oak desk was very old and very solid. The persian rugs covered an oak tongue-in-groove floor. The varnish was worn. A floor lamp stood by the desk. There was no room for a small lamp on the desk top. It was covered with books and papers. There was barely room for the coffee mug.

Father Alban looked up and thought about straightening up the mess, then went back to his book. It was something about the power of cosuffering love, by Archbishop Lazar Puhalo.

Fr. Alban was struggling with sorting out and describing the threads of social coercion that were dominating the currents of christian discourse. Much of this he found to be very unchristian, and so he was fascinated by the theme of co-suffering love.

Fr. Alban's draft for his own book was scattered across the desk. He wanted to explore the timelessness of God and how we participate in that timelessness through history. The Church teaches that there are two kinds of time. One is God's time, cairos, and the other is the time we experience that creates history, chronos. All of history and all of the future is present to God. This is in fact "eternity." The great arc of time, of history, has a beginning and an end. This arc is called telos, a greek word.

Fr. Alban had a habit of talking aloud when he was working on an idea. "I work, therefore I help. And when I am too sick or old to work, and others help me, I am helping knit together the whole of mankind. For those who need no one are in hell, and those who love are in heaven."

Marc had been standing quietly by the door. Fr. Alban looked up at him. "Well, I can work on it more later. Come on in, I want to show you something."