THE THREE LIVES OF CHRISTINA THE ASTONISHING (#16)

As Told by the Holy Woman in Her Own Words
A Hundred or So Years after the End of the World

How I whirled like a dervish in the ladies’ religious house and sang at midnight

I found myself in the biggest room I had ever seen in my life. The vaulted ceiling was three stories high. The walls were covered with murals of a beautiful shining city full of happy people. Was it the city outside this building, in the days before the Great Miasma?
In the center of the room seven women in headdresses and white tunics knelt at a deep stone font full of turquoise water, chanting a prayer.
The Official Orthodox Holy Giver House of Kingdom Francisco was not the world of Light and Love, but at that moment it felt like the next best thing.
Home at last, I thought. It was the very first place on earth that made me feel that way.

Joy—a tidal wave of joy—rose inside me. I had to express it somehow, so I began to twirl. I twirled and I twirled and I twirled until the kneeling women, who had not looked up when I came in, turned around to watch. I kept on twirling, so fast I thought my feet would bore like a drill straight through the tiled mosaic floor. Finally I fell into a kind of trance and remember nothing more.

(to be continued tomorrow)