The Beachhead

by Christopher Mari

Toughest thing in the world to believe is that things have a purpose even when so much of life makes no sense.

There would be no do-overs after this moment. Her life would be only one way or the other.

life is trial and error. It’s about how we face our trials and overcome our errors that matters most. We must keep trying, and we shouldn’t think of ourselves or others as simply bad fruit. We might just need a bit more love and careful tending. And then, with that tending, our seed—what we do—might produce something truly wonderful. And then we would find ourselves awake inside our greatest dreams.”

“Free will, my dear. It all comes back to that. God loves us enough to not have made us automatons or machines. He gives us the choice to love him back and love one another and improve the world. Or he allows us to destroy ourselves—even while giving us this final hope of redemption in this new world.”

Death always softened memories. It always tricked the senses. Even the worst relationships lost their harder edges once someone was no longer among the living. For those that still were, the hurt faded as the healing nature of everyday life asserted itself like creeping vines over raw and fertile mourning.

How many chances would God give humanity to begin again in a new Eden before he finally ended his experiments?

She could hear Grace’s voice, cragged with age and rich with experience, telling her that God’s love was infinite, his forgiveness unending, that it was in a very literal sense impossible for anyone to imagine. It was difficult to draw comfort from an idea beyond man’s ken.

If history was always written by the victors, how could the losers know themselves?

“Staying true to ourselves in a world that’s always trying to make us less than what we are is everything. It’s the only thing. What we really are or however we got here, how we live here and now is all that matters.”

Heartbreaking: to know people once lived and no longer did, to know they were real and of this world and no longer were, to hope but never know if you’d see them again—this was heartbreak, pure and true.

“The lowest state of man is when he feels he has no choice in life. At that time he is most like the animal he was never intended to be and least like the image in which he was created.

The world was very far away now. Death had moved out from the background and was close to her shoulder and ready. Everything felt slow and still.