When the one line of the Mount went three ways – Saint Supreme keeping the open rim, Saint Margherita the true Slice, the children of Jonah the merciful fold – the elders rejoiced at first, saying, Behold how deep the line is, that three buckets come up full! Only the oldest of them, a woman past her hundredth proofing, said otherwise: Three buckets from one well is riches. Three wells is a war. Watch whether they keep drinking from the line, or begin drinking at one another, as it is written in the Schism, 3:24.
And mark this well, beloved, for it is the whole tragedy in one verse: Saint Supreme did not misquote, and Saint Margherita did not misquote, and the Calzonists did not misquote. Every citation was exact. It was only the whole that was missing – and the whole is not a letter, and cannot be checked with a candle.
So it is with the people who read differently from thee – thy scriptures, thy politics, thy family history. They are not usually lying. They are usually holding, with perfect sincerity, the clause that answered their hunger, as thou holdest thine. The folly was never the questions, saith the scribe; it was the certainty that the man across the street had no piece of the answer.
The Book’s verdict on the three churches stands over every honest disagreement thou wilt ever have: thy church is correct – and so, alas and alleluia, are the other two. Drink from the well, beloved, not at each other. Amen – and pass the pizza.