Haunt,
haunted... def. a spirit that haunts a
place or a person, regularly appears in a place, a place visited often, to
recur to the memory, thoughts...
For
me, as an author of Egypt fiction, Egypt is haunted... by eternity, by the gods... and yes, a god.
Joseph,
Moses, Exodus...
Do
we have to take the Bible as 'gospel'?
By that I mean
are we required to believe literally in Genesis and the 7 days of creation?
In the story of Jonah being
swallowed by a whale?
In Noah’s ark filled with two of every kind of animal (including
the South American three-toed sloth and the Australian platypus?).
It is the total effect
of scripture that works on us - literal truths as well as beautiful, often shocking
metaphor.
It is not a dry record. It is a divine haunting.
We can read
it for its truths, yes, but also for the power it has, the stirrings it awakens in us to reach
beyond ourselves.
