Revival

by Stephen King

Christ ascended into heaven in his body, we are told, but all too often we poor mortals here on earth are left with ugly heaps of maimed meat and that constant, reverberating question: Why? Why? Why?

‘It’s no good asking, my brethren, because you wouldn’t understand, anyway.’

“Let us say plainly what Saint Paul meant when he spoke of that darkened glass. He meant we’re supposed to take it all on faith. If our faith is strong, we’ll go to heaven, and we’ll understand the whole thing when we get there. As if life were a joke, and heaven the place where the cosmic punchline is finally explained to us.”

“Just one more thing. We came from a mystery and it’s to a mystery we go. Maybe there’s something there, but I’m betting it’s not God as any church understands Him. Look at the babble of conflicting beliefs and you’ll know that. They cancel each other out and leave nothing. If you want truth, a power greater than yourselves, look to the lightning—a billion volts in each strike, and a hundred thousand amperes of current, and temperatures of fifty thousand degrees Fahrenheit. There’s a higher power in that, I grant you. But here, in this building? No. Believe what you want, but I tell you this: behind Saint Paul’s darkened glass, there is nothing but a lie.”

All this shit starts with E.

“It’s wicked to wish time away,”

Question: Death, where is thy sting? Answer: Every-fucking-where.

The three true ages of man are youth, middle age, and how the fuck did I get old so soon?

Home is where they want you to stay longer.

Life is a wheel, and it always comes back around to where it started.

“Something tricks us. That’s what I believe.”

This is how we bring about our own damnation, you know—by ignoring the voice that begs us to stop. To stop while there’s still time.

At the heart of every established religion is one sacred mystery that supports belief and induces fidelity, even to the point of martyrdom. Did he want to know what lay beyond death’s door? Yes. But what he wanted more—I believe this with all my heart—was to violate that mystery. To drag it into the light and hold it up, screaming Here it is! What all your crusades and murder in the name of God were for! Here it is, and how do you like it?