The Signature of All Things

by Elizabeth Gilbert

She wanted to understand the world, and she made a habit of chasing down information to its last hiding place, as though the fate of nations were at stake in every instance.

She could almost hear her mind pacing within her skull, caged and bothered, and she felt the weight of all the years she had yet to live, bearing down upon her with heavy menace.

There is only so long that a person can keep her enthusiasms locked away within her heart before she longs to share it with a fellow soul,

All the natural world was a divine code, Boehme claimed, containing proof of our Creator’s love.

“And yet Boehme said that God had pressed Himself into the world, and had left marks there for us to discover.”

“I do have a dreadful love for understanding,”

My wish is that we two could live together as one, both contented and elevated, and ever-seeking.”

The trick at every turn was to endure the test of living for as long as possible. The odds of survival were punishingly slim, for the world was naught but a school of calamity and an endless burning furnace of tribulation. But those who survived the world shaped it—even as the world, simultaneously, shaped them.

“I will tell you why we have these extraordinary minds and souls, Miss Whittaker,” he continued, as though he had not heard her. “We have them because there is a supreme intelligence in the universe, which wishes for communion with us. This supreme intelligence longs to be known. It calls out to us. It draws us close to its mystery, and it grants us these remarkable minds, in order that we try to reach for it. It wants us to find it. It wants union with us, more than anything.”

This life is a mystery, yes, and it is often a trial, but if one can find some facts within it, one should always do so—for knowledge is the most precious of all commodities.”