Afterlives of the Saints

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Colin Dickey. Afterlives of the Saints

Afterlives of the Saints

Prologue: The Earth's Rejects

Part One: The Labyrinth of the Word

Part Two: Visions of Torture and Longing

Part Three: An Indelicate Eros

Part Four: Demons of Belief

Part Five: The Uncanonized

Note on Source

Acknowledgments

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On May 21, 2011, the entertainer Hezi Dean was hoisted to the top of a specially constructed ten-story pillar in the middle of Rabin Square in Tel Aviv. His goal was to stay there for the next thirty-five hours, in order to outlast the magician David Blaine, who had accomplished a similar feat in Central Park nine years earlier. Dean met his goal, beating Blaine's time and then jumping, as Blaine had done, onto a waiting pile of cardboard. Afterward, Dean told reporters, "It was very hard. I want to tell you only one important sentence: Nothing stands in front of the will."

Though Dean outlasted Blaine, he could hardly be said to be the record holder when it came to standing on tall pillars for long periods of time. That record, it turns out, has been unbroken for over a thousand years, and neither Blaine nor Dean came even close to touching it, for in the early fifth century, a saint named Simeon walked out into the Syrian desert, found an abandoned pillar, and climbed to the top of it. He stayed there not for thirty-five days but for thirty-seven years.

.....

O Jesus, if thou wilt not save my soul,

Who may be saved? who is it may be saved?

.....