I am a man, and men are animals who tell stories.

This is a gift from God, who spoke our species into being, but left the end of our story untold.

That mystery is troubling to us.

How could it be otherwise?

Without the final part, we think, how are we to make sense of all that went before: which is to say, our lives?

So we make stories of our own,

in fevered and envious imitation of our Maker, hoping that we’ll tell, by chance, what God left untold.

And finishing our tale,

come to understand why we were born.