read from the book of ezekiel with Ian Gray last night. It was one of his first encounters with the bible, and in retrospect ezekiel might not have been the best place to start. I should have known, but I had never really encountered ezekiel in any serious manner before, at least that I could remember, so I had no idea what we were getting into. the book of ezekiel starts with ezekiel's vision, which involves four four-faced animals moving with four wheels, which are in rings, which are in eyes. ANd then he has a vision of God, and then God speaks to him and tells him to speak to the children of Israel, to do various things with a tile and an iron pan, to eat rice cakes made from human dung and live on the street for three hundred and nintey days. if any of us were to encounter ezekiel on a city street, there is no chance we would take what he had to say seriously. why is he there? to portray the desperation of suffering, to embody the delerious challenges of the inherent human struggle to see God?