2012
It doesn’t matter how educated, moneyed, or smart you are: When your child’s footprints end at the river’s edge, when the one you love has gone into the woods with a bleak outlook and a loaded gun, when the chaplain is walking toward you with bad news in her mouth, then only the clichés are true, a nd you will repeat them, unashamed. Your life will swing suddenly and cruelly in a new direction, and if you are really wise – and it’s surprising and wondrous how many people have this wisdom in them – you will know enough to look around for love. It will be there, standing right on the hinge, holding out its arms. And if you are wise, you will fall against it and be held.
Here If You Need Me
Kate Braestrup
If only is like hindsight. A useless exercise. . . Who knows? . . . As for God, I frankly admit I find it easier to live with the age-old questions about suffering than with the many easy or pious explanations offered from time to time. Some of which seem to verge on blasphemy. . . . The one thing we should never say . . . is, “It is the will of God.” We simply don’t know enough to say that. . . . [When a tragedy occurs] I am convinced that God’s is the first heart to break. . . . Life is sweet. Beyond the pain, life continues to be sweet. The basics are there. Beauty, food, and friendship, reservoirs of love and understanding.
Winter Solstice
Rosamunde Pilcher
