Chapter 24Ethiopia, 9th Century
Brother Athanasius made his way up the narrow path that wound around the Church of St. George, which stood like a solitary, red sandstone sentinel amid the expanse of desert shrub. He dared not look down. He had always been afraid of heights, but he knew that action occurred when desire was stronger than fear. In Athanasius’ case, his desire to serve God was stronger than his fear of the rock that seemed to jut straight up into the sky and whose crown held the carved-out church and monastery.
Athanasius did not often stray from that height. Others might find it a prison, indeed had found it so, dying early or mysteriously as it were. Not he. The fiery red rock may have been plain and forbidding from without. But within lay a world of sensory transcendence,
