For over 10 years I've wanted to do this book - Jesus in his own words," Rice writes. "For five years, I've been obsessed with how to do it, and for the last three years I've been consumed with nothing else

The ultimate questions, the ones distilled from a thousand others, were so obvious as to be frightening. What did it feel like to be Jesus? What did it feel like to be God and Man as a child?

In all my career, I don;t think I've ever faced such a daunting task. And there were moments when I came near to giving up. I prayed. I asked for guidance. I scrapped hundreds of pages. At moments, I was on the verge of accepting that perhaps I couldn't do what had to be done here...

I'm not a priest. I can't be one. I'll never be able to go to the altar of the Lord and say the words of consecration at Mass, 'This is my body. This is my blood.' No, I can't work that magnificent Eucharistic miracle. But in humility, I have attempted something transformative which we writers dare to call a miracle in the imperfect human idiom we possess. It's to bring Him here in the form a story, and that story is Christ The Lord.

"I'm not a priest," Rice adds. "… But in humility, I have attempted something transformative which we writers dare to call a miracle in the imperfect human idiom we possess. It's to bring Him here in the form a story, and that story is Christ The Lord."

Another year older

Comedian Don Rickles, 79...