"When he was nearly thirteen my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow."
Harper Lee. To Kill a Mockingbird. London: Mandarin, 1989. 1.
it all begins with brokenness.
"'If you stumble at mere believeability, what are you living for? Isn't love hard to believe?...Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?...Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers at bay. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater.'"
Yann Martel. Life of Pi. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2002. 297-8.
then there's a little mystery.
"I sit up and start using my hands. I'm starting to feel as though I understand what I am saying. I don't care for her, but I want to say this.
'The whole point of God,' I continue, 'is that God can't be explained. God is the very thing that causes the thought of God and the thought itself. I have God thoughts and that's what God is: the fact that my brain has the thought is...'
I have no real idea what I am saying after all.
Mandy rolls over noisily to face the wall. 'That doesn't make sense! How can God be just the thought of God? You're just going round in circles! I'm going to sleep.'
Mandy falls asleep quickly (as I thought she would) and she snores; a kind of vacant rattle.
I lie on my back for hours and think of life and whether I believe in anything at all. I open my mouth and exhale my final answer into the silence. God is like all those bits of wood in Mr Bell's shed waiting to be made into a chair and God is what happens when Mr Bell talks himself into making the chair even when his hands are cold and his stomach is full of bright green soup.
'G'night,' I say to myself. 'Sleep well.'"
M.J. Hyland. How the Light Gets In. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2003. 308.
a little clarity.
"Mornings were good. (Mornings are good, enjoy them.) She liked the fact that all over the city, people were having their coffee and showers, deciding on their clothes. This was as close as it got to collective innocence, this mass transition from sleep (however troubled) to wakefulness (however tormented). Just about everyone, or everyone who was at least minimally functional, had to get up and get dressed. Even the ones who were going to call her and tell her about their plans to shoot or stab or ignite somebody. Even the ones who were going to strap a bomb to their chests and blow up a businessman on the street. Here we are, all of us, going through this daily miniature rebirth, and doing it all together."
Michael Cunningham. Specimen Days. London: Fourth Estate, 2005. 114.
and remembering interconnectedness.
