José Saramago, a Portuguese writer and Nobel Prize winner, died last month.  He was 87.  From Baltasar and Blimunda, Saramago’s 1982 love story between a soldier who has lost his left hand and a clairvoyant, set in 1711 Lisbon, during the Inquisition:

Baltasar recoiled in alarm, he made a rapid sign of the cross, in order not to give the devil time to commit any mischief, What are you saying, Padre Bartolomeu Lourenco, where is it written that God is one-handed, No one ever said so, nor has it ever been written, only I say that God’s left hand is missing, because it is on His right, at His right hand, that the chosen sit, nor do you find any reference to God’s left hand either in the Holy Scriptures or in the writings of the holy doctors of the Church, no one sits at God’s left hand, for it is a void, a nothingness, an absence, therefore God is one-handed.  The priest gave a deep sigh and concluded, He has no left hand.