When I asked him what, if anything, I could do about it, he surprised me by referring me to the director of the hall.

Was I sure, he asked, that I knew what I was applying for??

I asked Rawlins.

`` Why '', he went on, `` when Rob asked me if he could make his dive on this trip, I didn't think twice about it.

I have just asked these questions in the Pentagon, in the White House, in offices of key scientists across the country and aboard the submarines that prowl for months underwater, with neat rows of green launch tubes which contain Polaris missiles and which are affectionately known as `` Sherwood Forest ''.

I asked the same questions inside the launch-control rooms of an Atlas missile base in Wyoming, where officers who wear sidearms are manning the `` commit buttons '' that could start a war -- accidentally or by design -- and in the command centers where other pistol-packing men could give orders to push such buttons.

I asked Wisman what would happen if he broke out the go codes and tried to start transmitting one.

I asked.

How, I asked, could chaos be admitted to chaos??

I asked about the battle between life and death in his plays.

Given a theological lead, I asked what he thinks about those who find a religious significance to his plays.

At a party an English intellectual -- so-called -- asked me why I write always about distress.

I was having lunch not long ago ( apologies to N. V. Peale ) with three distinguished historians ( one specializing in the European Middle Ages, one in American history, and one in the Far East ), and I asked them if they could name instances where the general mores had been radically changed with `` deliberate speed, majestic instancy '' ( Francis Thompson's words for the Hound Of Heaven's Pursuit ) by judicial fiat.

Just as I was about to enlarge upon my discovery of the underside of the leaf of love, memory, displeased at being asked to yield its unsavory secrets, dashed ahead of me, calling back over its shoulder: `` Skip it.

The waspish man stopped me three paces from the bicycle barricade, and asked me in French if I had papers to leave France.

I asked him.

I asked.

One of the girl students, sitting by while I ate the thick soup, asked me if I had a sleeping bag.

I asked him.

Once or twice my father asked me if I wasn't overdoing a bit in my churchgoing.

I don't know what goes on around here, and I don't care.

I was constantly searching for clues around the neighborhood of the hall.

Now turn around so I can see your face ''.

I quickly turned around and began to drink.

She was still hugging the stained coat around her, so I said, `` Relax, let me take your things.

She's been hangin' around me a lot here lately, and I figgered I might as well's try it.

Like the cowboy in Stephen Crane's `` Blue Hotel '', we run around crying, `` Well, I didn't do anything, did I ''??

But Mercer's explanation was simple: `` I made out the check and carried it around a few days unsigned -- in case I lost it ''.

I wouldn't hear from him for a couple of weeks, then he'd come around with the completed lyric ''.

Sighting a line from the bridge to a small field directly to the side, I pitched the tent that evening on the stateless `` line '', digging a small trench around it as best I could with a toy spade donated by a neighborhood child.

After scouring around a bit in the open area, I came across what proved to be tar-soaked logs which crackled and burned brightly, giving off vast rolls of smoke into the ashen sky.

As the field on which my tent was pitched was a favorite natural playground for the kids of the neighborhood, I had made many friends among them, taking part in their after-school games and trying desperately to translate Grimm's Fairy Tales into an understandable French as we gathered around the fire in front of the tent.

As it began raining at around eight o'clock on December 26th, I retired into my tent early, somewhat tired and discouraged, my body reacting sluggishly because of the continued exposure.

I could never forget the gaiety with which, when he was both blind and deaf, he let me lead him around his rooms to look at some of the pictures ; ;

Even apart from the fact that now at the age of 31 my personal life is being totally disrupted for the second time for no very compelling reason -- I cannot help looking around at the black leather jacket brigades standing idly on the street corners and in the taverns of every American city and asking myself if our society has gone mad.

Or: `` I walk around the house a lot ''.

I was stumbling in my undershirt trying to find my way around her damn kitchenette when I smelt that sickish sweet hairtonic smell.

I turned around with the percolator in my hand.

What I did know was that Precious was always around.

As a Christian, I know I do not stand where Beckett stands, but I do see much of what he sees.

I have chosen to use the word `` mimesis '' in its Christian rather than its classic implications and to discover in the concrete forms of both art and myth powers of theological expression which, as in the Christian mind, are the direct consequence of involvement in historical experience, which are not reserved, as in the Greek mind, only to moments of theoretical reflection.

I went to the Christian Endeavor Society and to the evening service of the church.

I was also publicly reprimanded, dragged through the mud by the radical press and made a figure of fun by such leftist publications as The New Republic, The New Yorker, Time and The Christian Science Monitor.

The next day I visited International Christian College which has developed since the war under the leadership of people who were interned and who know Japan well.

`` I think they played Hail To The Chief better than the Marine Corps Band, and we are grateful to them '', President Kennedy remarked after mounting the bandstand and shaking hands with conductor James Christian Pfohl.

If to be a Christian means to say yes where I otherwise say no, or where I do not have the right to say anything at all, then my only choice is to refuse to be a Christian.

The next traditional step then was to accept it as the authoritative textbook of the Christian faith just as one would accept a treatise on any earthly `` science '', and I submitted to its conditions according to Christ's invitation and promise that, `` If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself '' ( John 7: 17 ).

The progressive closing of Afro-Asian ears to the Christian message is epitomized in a conversation I had three years ago while flying from Jerusalem to Cairo.

I had mounted it on velvet and hung it over my desk to remind me always to use the power of the paper in a Christian manner.

`` I didn't say it was Christian.

I don't think you'll find many active Christian salesmen.

* Bertrand Russell, ( 1779 – 2009 ) Why I Am Not a Christian, ISBN 0-671-20323-1

* Why I am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell ( March 6, 1927 ).

* Afonso I of Kongo ( 1456 – 1543 ) the first Christian king of the Kingdom of Kongo

* 966 – After his marriage to the Christian Dobrawa of Bohemia, the pagan ruler of the Polans, Mieszko I, converts to Christianity, an event considered to be the founding of the Polish state.

Dürer wrote of his desire to draw Luther in his diary in 1520: " And God help me that I may go to Dr. Martin Luther ; thus I intend to make a portrait of him with great care and engrave him on a copper plate to create a lasting memorial of the Christian man who helped me overcome so many difficulties.