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Too much mystery is merely an annoyance. Too much adventure is exhausting. And a little terror goes a long way.
“Spare me that I may serve,”
If you live your life with imagination and verve, God will play along just to see what outrageously entertaining thing you’ll do next. He’ll also cut you some slack if you’re astonishingly stupid in an amusing fashion.
We are not, however, a species that can choose the baggage with which it must travel. In spite of our best intentions, we always find that we have brought along a suitcase or two of darkness, and misery.
some people are devils in their own right, their telltale horns having grown inward to facilitate their disguise.
Most people desperately desire to believe that they are part of a great mystery, that Creation is a work of grace and glory, not merely the result of random forces colliding. Yet each time that they are given but one reason to doubt, a worm in the apple of the heart makes them turn away from a thousand proofs of the miraculous, whereupon they have a drunkard’s thirst for cynicism, and they feed upon despair as a starving man upon a loaf of bread.
A cynic once said that the most identifying trait of humanity is our ability to be inhumane to one another.
Recognizing the structure of your psychology doesn’t mean that you can easily rebuild it. The Chamber of Unreasonable Guilt is part of my mental architecture, and I doubt that I will ever be able to renovate that particular room in this strange castle that is me.
Life, Stormy says, is not about how fast you run or even with what degree of grace. It’s about perseverance, about staying on your feet and slogging forward no matter what.
“In the belly of Leviathan, Mr. Thomas, one can either despair and perish, or be cheerful and persevere.”
