I wrote this on December 10th, 2005, at 3:33pm in Vail, Colorado, right after finishing a book by Alice Sebold called "The Lovely Bones;" its aftershocks are potent, and it is a book I highly recommend.
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It shakes me heavily how someone can compose something so poignantly beautiful out of a story so horrifically tragic.
Life does not exist in separate blocks of happy and then sad, but these emotions are constantly juxtaposed, eternally vying for attention. My thoughts are forever torn between memories that stab like icicles and thoughts that make something inside me literally bubble with emotion, as if I may at any moment break into song or laughter or crying or some unknown, frightening combination.
Today, as life is starting (my sister is having a baby today -- right now, actually), so also life is disintegrating as I, we, all grow older, some pieces of us fading to black and some lighting up with color in previously unexplored places.
And time; time is not our enemy but our healer -- a disturbing, patient ghost that forever ties us together with infinite strands we call moments.
If we could only find a way to marry our atoms to the moment we're living, I think we would find our life's music in tune.
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"To believe in God is to believe in the salvation of the world."
"The paradox of our time is that those who believe in God do not believe in the salvation of the world, and those who believe in the future of the world do not believe in God."
"Christians believe in 'the end of the world;' they expect the final catastrophe, the punishment of others."
"Atheists in their turn... refuse to believe in God because Christians believe in him and take no interest in the world..."
"Which is the more culpable ignorance?"
"...I often say to myself that, in our religion, God must feel very much alone: for is there anyone besides God who believes in the salvation of the world? God seeks among us sons and daughters who resemble him enough, who love the world enough so that he could send them into the world to save it."
-- Louis Evely, In the Christian Spirit (Image, 1975)
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It amazes me that someone can run a thread of purpose through our miniscule, pain-filled lives, but I do believe it.
If I didn't believe there was something out there I don't understand that is able to do this utterly impossible something -- namely: create purpose out of the constant mess of life -- well, from my perspective, I'm just not sure what there would be to live for.
For some reason, I still have hope -- and sometimes that's all I have.
But most of the time, it's enough.
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