To lose a brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, creatures to people the tree of your life and give it new branches. To lose your father is to lose the one whose guidance and help you seek, who supports you like a tree trunk supports its branches. To lose your mother, well, that is like losing the sun above you. It.
The sun was beginning to pull the curtains on the day.
They were like curmudgeonly old friends who would never admit that they liked me yet came round to see me all the time. The.
I can well imagine that somewhere far off, 150 miles away, a ship’s watch looked up, startled, and later reported the oddest thing, that he thought he heard a cat’s meow coming from three o’clock. Days.
We are all born like Catholics, aren’t we – in limbo, without religion, until some figure introduces us to God? After that meeting the matter ends for most of us. If there is a change, it is usually for the lesser rather than the greater; many people seem to lose God along life’s way.
What a strange, wondrous thing, music. At last the chattering mind is silenced. No past to regret, to future to worry about, no more frantic knitting of words and thoughts. Only a beautiful, soaring nonsense.
With questions that are orders.
The boundaries are not to be blurred. I was sent off, struck by his harshest thunderbolt, excommunication. In his eyes I am no longer a man of the cloth. But I yet feel the Lord’s hand holding me up.
It is the irony of this story that the one who scared me witless to start with was the very same who brought me peace, purpose, I dare say even wholeness.
It’s the sun that makes a landscape, drawing out its color, defining its contours, giving it its spirit.
He often repeated something Father Abrahan said to him once, how faith is ever young, how faith, unlike the rest of us, does not age.
Now he realized that this matter of faith was either radically to be taken seriously or radically not to be taken seriously. He stared at the crucifix, balancing between utter belief and utter disbelief.
Her fear was something useless that only hampered her.
Do you understand? You’ve been praying to a crucified chimpanzee all these years. Your Son of Man is not a god-he’s just an ape on a cross!
Things floated in the water but none that brought me hope. I could see no other lifeboats.
What are we without the ones we love?
We loved our son like the sea loves an island, always surrounding him with our arms, always touching him and crashing upon his shore with our care and concern. When he was gone, the sea had only itself to contemplate.
Animals that escape go from the known into the unknown – and if there is one thing an animal hates above all else, it is the unknown. Escaping animals usually hind in the very first place they find that gives them a sense of security, and they are dangerous only to those who happen to get between them and their reckoned safe spot.
In the wild, animals stick to the same paths for the same pressing reasons, season after season.
It was only later that I realized that this voice was my own thinking, that this moment of anguish was my first inkling that I was a ceaseless monologue trapped within myself.