ABSTRACT
On 12 October 2003 I stood on a rusting steel bridge overlooking the Licking River in Covington, Kentucky, the Cincinnati skyline visible behind me, as cars sped past and the dirty river water flowed lazily forty feet below. My wife Evangeline stood silently beside me as I read the eighty-eighth psalm from my Oxford Annotated Bible, the only time in my life I had used that particular Bible, or any Bible as a matter of fact, for spiritual comfort rather than academic study. At times, presumably when the traffic lights halted oncoming cars, my voice was all that could be heard, save the subtle sounds of water lapping against the river banks. The sky, which had begun the day a sharp, flinty grey, was a brilliantly clear blue. It had taken me two months to decide if I would make the journey to Kentucky, and as I was finally standing on the bridge the moment seemed anti-climactic.
