[For the genuine believer] There are moments in life when God's pursuit of us seems like that of a persistent mosquito, constantly buzzing around our heads and causing us pain, and we are utterly powerless to shake him off.
It took Descartes to deduce that God would not wish to deceive us. The world must be as it appears to be, the Frenchman deduced, because a perfect God would never wish to deceive us. Nothing has been explicable since.
Pride and curiosity are the two scourges of our souls. The latter prompts us to poke our noses into everything, and the former forbids us to leave anything unresolved and undecided.
Sometimes, when something hurts us, our hearts break a little-in a slightly ... more literal way than for humans. Our pain sort of spills out and onto anyone around us. We call it a cracked heart.
All stones are close to us. The last is behind us. (Toutes les pierres sont près de nous. - La dernière est derrière nous.) (The Bird and its Sun / L’Oiseau et son Soleil)
We are all broken in some way. But it’s all the shattered pieces that give us depth. Like stained glass, it’s how the pieces and colors fit together that truly makes us beautiful.
When we fulfill any need of the human body, it gives us pleasure. To breathe gives us much pleasure.
If we are all made of God, it is our friends who remind us. We pass the gift of God to them. They pass it back to us when we need it most.
I wish I could just fling myself into bed with you, but I can’t. I don’t want to be used that way and I don’t want to use you! Can’t you understand that?
I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.
If God rewards us on earth for good deeds—the Old Testament suggests it’s so, and the Puritans certainly believed it—then maybe Satan rewards us for evil ones.
If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.
If you're going to carry a dagger, you need to learn to use it." I frowned at him. "I know how to use it. I stick the pointy end in things I don't like.
Lies cannot nourish or protect you. Only freedom from fear, freedom from lies, can make us beautiful, and keep us safe.
Neither of us had anything to say, or rather we had everything to say, but after all those nights of not saying a word, we suddenly found we had not one dollar of time left between us.
Underneath all notions of justice is a set of faith assumptions that are essentially religious, and these are often not acknowledged.
isn't that dangerous?" I objected. "What if somebody used it on people - what if they put it on replace and turned us all into fictional characters?" "How do you know they haven't?" asked Marc.
No past to make us sentimental, no future to embarrass us...a difficult moment when you are out of practice - a moment that makes you go cold, cold and wary.
People need stories...we use stories to teach, to learn, to make sense of the world around us. As long as we need stories, we will need books.
Where but in the very asshole of comedown is redemption: as where but brought low, where but in the grief of failure, loss, error do we discern the savage afflictions that turn us around: where but in the arrangements love crawls us through
Saved or searching, we all need to be reminded of God’s interest in us individually and His love for us personally.
