Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
and what if life is never more than this faint glimmer
of wonder dreamed and greatness wished?
i think it will have been enough
the blossom morning all spring
the light gentle leaves twilight
the flowers perfume scent ephemeral
it will have been enough
who could have thought them up
and willed these things to be?
no man —- and yet
they eclipse man’s most noble thoughts.
and my dreams, though they mean the world to me
no more than ash before the wind.
why do i tear and clutch
when truth is hid behind the veil?
it is enough
the forever falling colours wind whirling
the white hard cold chanting still
the spilling star sky night darkness
more than enough
and then
a greater rising of the sun
and 195 countries I have not visited.
Yet I am stuck in this insignificant town,
Being pressured into making decisions about my future,
When I barely even know who I am
(Source: lluxuria)
(Source: untilasinglesolitonsurvives)
There are few mysteries left in today’s world. In an age of instant gratification, anything is possible at the mere striking of a key. Well, almost anything. Despite conquering space, sexuality, and the sound barrier, one baffling conundrum continues to haunt scientists, philosophers, and commoners alike: how to love. From Jesus Christ to John Lennon, and there and back again, the profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person has remained brilliantly elusive, immune to countless attempts at replication. In fact, it is in such purity of being and spontaneity of existence that the greatest treasure any man or woman could ever hope for lies.
There isn’t enough love in the world. There are notions of it certainly, but its existence is rarer than any endangered species. Why? Such inquiry first begs a definition. What is love? What does it mean to confess “I love you?” “I love you” has become ordinary, commercialized even. It’s uttered “not only on anniversaries and birthdays but spontaneously, in bed or at the kitchen sink.” Man yearns for something more, “something that extends not only beyond the sweet and the comforting but beyond passion itself. Man aches not for a phrase, but a state of being; man desires that which is described in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.
Love is patient. It always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. In love, there’s no such thing as “spoiling your life.” Suffering is as integral to a relationship as happiness is, and in both the ecstatic and desperate moments of life, an indivisible bond of love is forged. Two people could not be happier knowing that each promises to be true to the other in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health.
Love is not self –seeking. For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, to love is to honor another person, all the days of your life. To literally, quite literally, live your life for another person. Love is not proud. Love is patient. Love is kind. Without question, motherhood demands a tremendous amount of sacrifice. Any notions of glamour and fame are freely relinquished to nourish the extraordinary needs of a child. But in that surrender, mothers achieve a sense of joy and fulfillment foreign to any other relationships. The bond a child shares with their mother is beyond expression in any Hallmark card. Remember that this Mother’s Day.
Love never fails. The emotional burdens associated with living and loving are not for the weak of heart. In love, you renounce everything for another person. No object, desire, or citizenship takes precedence before them. Too often, we discover too late that had we been more selfless, we might have discovered a friendship “so searing and profound it would accompany us to the grave and possibly beyond.” An ordinary life, albeit one filled tremendously with love, surpasses that of any movie star.
Where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is love, love remains. Love endures because love is total. Conversely, there is so little love in the world because love demands a total gift of self. Fostering genuine relationships requires a level of commitment seldom practiced in the modern age. Between the countless opportunities to be consumed by self-interest and the pervasive fragility of existing relationships, the fortitude and courage required to truly love is incredibly difficult to muster. Yet, in the struggle to love and be loved, we encounter moments where such perfect love is possible, and in holding dear to those moments, we are able to survive the hours of frustration and despair; we hope, more than anything, for more.
Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
(via ssufficiently)
Will eternity be anything like what I have seen, or what I have heard, or what I can imagine? No, eternity will be nothing like anything I have seen, heard or imagined. Listen to the voice of God: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love Him.”
If the Timeless so much surpasses Time that there can be found no parallel for it, then I begin to understand the great mystery of the shape of the human heart. The human heart is not shaped like a Valentine heart, perfect and regular in contour; it is slightly irregular in shape as if a small piece of it were missing out of its side. That missing part may very well symbolize a piece that a spear tore out of the universal heart of Humanity on the Cross, but it probably symbolizes something more. It may very well mean that when God created each human heart, He kept a small sample of it in heaven, and sent the rest of it into the world of Time where it would each day learn the lesson that it could never be really happy, never be really wholly in love, and never be really whole-hearted until it went back again to the Timeless to recover the sample which God had kept it for all eternity.
- Fulton Sheen, “Moods and Truths”
