A dangerous promise of space and light
"I do sometimes wonder if we are subsumed in something much larger than our senses can perceive"
It’s the details that count; it doesn’t matter if they’re banal—they lead to a sense of trust. Everything has to be real, first and foremost, for me. To be, not to seem. If I believe, then other people will, too. And so I believe. I like believing. This is why I’m never honest about anything, least of all myself. The most elaborate—and the most fragile—lie I’ve ever come up with is me.
—Domenico Starnone | “Tortoiseshell”
As for me, I’m only truthful when I’m alone. When I was a little boy I thought that from one minute to the next I could fall off the face of the earth. Why don’t clouds fall, since everything else does? Because gravity is less than the strength of air that keeps them up there. Clever, right? Yes, but one day they fall as rain. That is my revenge.
—Clarice Lispector | The Hour of the Star
What is a human life? Is it designed? Is it accidental? The latter, I think, but I do sometimes wonder if we are subsumed in something much larger than our senses can perceive. What if we are to greater beings what the fish in the river is to us? When it is hooked on a lure and hauled through the upper limits of its world into a higher realm, does it wonder at the naiveté of its brief sojourn in the water?
—Michael D. O’Brien | Strangers and Sojourners
Do they, too,
The little unborn ones,
Fear to barter the quiet womb-dark
For a dangerous promise of space and light?
Have they, too,
A mute and unanswerable dread of change?
Is it a wail of parting,
That first cry?
—Hazel Collister Hutchison | “Change”
The wonder that we seek has its grounding in profound mystery. It is the mystery of meaning beyond the universe, but also the mystery that has formed the universe. So no matter our creed or lack of it, if we are in search of wonder, we will inevitably, I believe, bump into a mystery that is ultimately spiritual. When we ask, “What does it all mean?,” we are asking a theological question. When we seek to compose a coherent plot—a story that has meaning—we are acknowledging, whether we admit it or not, that there is such a thing as meaning. We are saying that the universe is not the realm of blind chance and chaos—that, however turbulent our individual lives may be, they are not adventures down the rabbit hole, but life in a universe the ordinary workings of which are so dependable that we mistakenly call them “laws.”
—Katherine Patterson | “In Search of Wonder”
You’ve got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists.
—G. K. Chesterton | The Man Who Was Thursday
The story was always different but always the same. There was a time of trials and tribulations. A dictatorship with a deified leader. A musty old Church, living on alms. An army of mercenaries that guaranteed the peaceful digestion of the rich. A population of slaves. Incessant preparation of new wars of rapine to maintain the prestige of the dictatorship. Meanwhile mysterious travelers arrived from abroad. They whispered of miracles in the east and announced the good tidings that liberation was at hand. The bolder spirits, the poor, the hungry, met in cellars to listen to them. The news spread. Some abandoned the old temples and embraced the new faith. Nobles left their palaces, centurions deserted. The police raided clandestine meetings and made arrests. Prisoners were tortured and handed over to a special tribunal. There were some who refused to burn incense to the state idols. They recognized no god other than the god that was alive in their souls. They faced torture with a smile on their lips. The young were thrown to wild beasts. The survivors remained loyal to the dead, to whom they devoted their secret cult. Times changed, ways of dressing, eating, working, changed, languages changed, but at bottom it was always the same old story.
—Ignazio Silone | Bread and Wine
Know this.
Spent bullets die in the mouths of the forgotten dead.
I have seen it. I have also seen buried guns, sown by the rain,
grow and blossom in the black smoke, and larks make their nests
between bayonet-branches.
Know this.
I have gathered thoughts and secrets twelve inches
beneath empty skulls
where stagnant water still etches the sky of day that is gone.
Know this.
I have heard the orchestra of breasts that burst like warships,
I have hoisted the sail of eyelids white with agony,
and have wet my hands in the bitter waters of heavenly seas
peopled with archangel captains.
Know this.
I know what the cold is like of those clenched hands
that seek a tombstone in the quarry of dawn
and a cross in the flight of a random swallow.
I know what it is to clutch memory
and bite it to the bursting lips:
to call out my own name
in the silence of comrades who can not answer me
or recognize me...
Know this.
I have heard the lips of mortal wounds
say Mother..., Dearest..., My son...,
in the ironclad calm of night,
and I could go on drinking in my heart
the water of untroubled quiet.
Know this.
I have eaten the earth where I lay
as though it were food made of the world’s first honey.
And I have counted the days—and the nights of heedless moon—
on the calendar of my scars.
Know this.
I know what the sound is like
of a bullet which strikes the body of a comrade already dead,
and what the wind says when it strikes the harp of barbed wire...
Know this, Comrades, and forget it.
Forget it. Forget it. Forget it.
I will return with them.
I will return with life,—without it, even.
The spirits that dwell in the wind will carry me,
or the young air of the accordions:
sobs and curses will carry me,
corners and avenues compel me...
But never ask me. It is a secret, Comrades.
A secret!
know this.
—Angel Miguel Queremel | “Manifesto of the Soldier Who Went Back to War”