Inside the Vatican Museums stood the double-helix Bramante Staircase, a very famous attraction.
A girl in a blue dress walked down the spiraling stairs.
She said this was the place she had seen while under hypnosis.
The maze made her feel as though she were in danger, as if a monster were chasing her.
Yet even on the Bramante Staircase, her face remained panicked and helpless.
Seeds buried in the soil took root and sprouted. Pain did not truly vanish with the passage of time.
The disciples asked Jesus what the kingdom of heaven was like.
He told them it was like a mustard seed. Smaller than all other seeds, yet once it fell into tilled soil, it grew into a great tree and became a shelter for all the birds of heaven.
No one ever asked about hell, because no one wanted to go to hell after death.
If heaven was a shelter, then hell was a trap that looked like one, disguised as a shelter for all the birds of heaven.
It could turn a beautiful dream into a nightmare in an instant, just like those immigrants chasing the American Dream.
To obtain American citizenship, they went to fight in wars that had originally had nothing to do with them.
Those people had all been brainwashed, just as the Nazis had brainwashed German youth. Even Nazi eugenics had been learned from America.
To become Americans, they had to become butchers, staining their hands with the blood of their own kind. In their original homelands, they would never have had to suffer like this.
Sometimes, you really could not understand what people were thinking. There were people in this world who could find a sense of existence only in war. Aside from lunatics, few remained so belligerent after truly