***berabokkk***

Sometimes a journey arises out of hope and instincts, the heady conviction as your finger travels along the map. Yes, here and here... and here. These are the nerve ends of the world. A hunderd reasons clamour for your going. You go to touch on human identities, to people an empty map. You have the notion that this is the worls'd heart. You go to encounter the protean shape of faith. You go because you are still young and craze excitement, the crunch of your boots in the dust. You go because you are old, and need to understand something before its too late. You go to see what will happen.

There is no act of faith more beautiful that the generosity of the poor.

One of the reason why we crave for love, and seek it so desperately, is that love is the only cure for loneliness, and shame, and sorrow. But some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truth about yourself are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you.

There's a kind of luck that's not much more that being in the right place at the right time. A kind of inspiration that's not much more than doing the right thing in the right way and both only really happen to you when you empty your heart of ambitions, purpose and plan. When you give yourself completely to the golden, fate-filled moment.

It is said that you can never go home again, and it's true enough, of course. But the opposite is also true. You must go back, and you always go back, and you can never stop going back, no matter how hard you try.

Even if we never pity them at any other time, and in any other way, we should pity the dead when we look at them, adn touch them. Pity is the one part of love that asks for nothing in return and, because of that, every act of pity is a kind of prayer. And dead men demands prayers. The silent heart, the tumbled nave of the chest unbreathing, and the guttered candles of the eyes - they summon our prayers. Each dead man is a temple in ruins, and when our eyes walk there we should pity, we should pray.

...every virtuous act is inspired by a dark secret. t mightn't have been true of everyone, but it was true enough about me. The little good that I've done in the world has always dragged behind it a shadow of dark inspiration. What I do know now, and didn't know then is that, in the long run, motive matters more with good deeds than it does with bad. When all the gult and shame for the bad we have done have run their course, it's the good we did that can save us. But then, when salvation speaks, the secrets we kept, and the motives we concealed, creep from their shadows. THey cling to us, those dark motives for our good deeds. Redemption's climb is the steepest if the good we did is soiled with secret shame.

For all hs wisdom, he did not know that love cannot be tested. Honesty can be tested, and loyalty. But there is no test for love. Love goes on forever, once it begins, even if we come to hate the one we love. Love goes on forever because love is born in the part of us that does not die.

...good soldiers are defined by what they can endure, not by what they can inflict.

posted at 9:28 PM