"It's ... more difficult to understand, for Christians," says Laertes. "There is no place that God is not, for us. Nothing that can be hid from Him; no stain upon the heart that He does not see. God ..." He thinks. He is, he feels acutely aware, probably about to speak some kind of heresy because he flat-out does not understand doctrine well enough to speak it correctly. "... God is not like a man whose life is fixed, and who travels through the world doing deeds and seeing sights. The gods of my ancestors were such gods; there were things they wanted and had not, or things they did not know and had to learn. God does not have to learn. When He contends with mortals, He does so like a playwright grappling with his characters--they can do nothing that He does not author, make no choice that He does not in some way know and ordain. And now ..." He gazes up and up, into the crown of the tree where it stands silhouetted against the blank grey sky. "... now, it is as though some other author holds the pen."