Recognizing Inferno

"...seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."

-Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

What Hell Looks Like - 2

"The oppressive weight of disaster and tragedy in our lives does not arise from a high percentage of evil among the sum total of all acts, but from the extraordinary power of exceedingly rare incidents of depravity....In an...utterly tragic principle regulating the structure of nearly all complex systems, building up must be accomplished step by step, whereas destruction need occupy but an instant."

-Steven Jay Gould, reflecting on 9/11, Globe and Mail, Thursday, September20/01

"...it is hope that those who take up permanent residence in hell must first of all abandon."

"The really significant events of human life are hidden from view when they occur....But there is still a difference between seeing only [forebodings of disaster] and seeing in it the eclipsing shadow of a power that is still fighting for us."

–Northrop Frye

The Non Perceivables

"Everything about us, everything we see without looking at it, everything we brush past without knowing it, everything we touch without feeling it, everything we meet without noticing it, has swift, surprising and inexplicable effects on us, on our senses, and through them on our ideas, on our very hearts."

-Maupassant, The Horla

Surprise

"...its not that writers know more things than other people, or understand more things than other people, but that hey are surrprised by more things than other people....to me they seem really extraordinary and things I want to explore."

-Alice Munro, Globe and Mail, Saturday, Sept. 29/01

Theology and Poetry

"I assert that theology and poetry can be said to be almost one and the same thing; indeed I say more: that theology is nothing more than a poem of/on God."

-Boccacio, Life of Dante as quoted in Steiner, How to Read and Why, 2001

Melville on Shakespeare's Truth

Through the mouths of the dark characters of Hamlet, Timon, Lear and Iago, he craftily says, or sometimes insinuates the things which we feel to be so terrifically true that it were all but madness for any good man, in his own proper character, to utter, or even hint of them.

Emily Dickinson and the Kingdom

"Blessed are they that play, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

"Life is death we're lengthy at, death the hinge of life."

"Remoteness is the founder of sweetness; could we see all we hope, or hear the whole we fear told tranquil, like another tale, there would be madness near. Each us of gives or takes heaven in corporeal pieces, for each of us has the skill of life."

"I believe we shall in some manner be cherished by our Maker– that the One who gave us theis remarkable earth has the power still farther to surprise that which He has caused. Beyond that all is silence....

-E.D. to her Norcross neices

"'Twas Christ's own personal Expanse
That bore his from the Tomb–"

-E.D., Poem #1543

"Who has not found the Heaven–below–
Will fail of it above."

-E.D. Poem #1544

"But the world is sleeping in ignorance and error, sin, and we must be crowing cocks, and singing larks, and a rising sun to awake her..."

-E.D. to George Gould

"Hope is the thing with feathers."

-E.D. Poem #254

The Friend

A few years ago now, a friend of mine suddenly died. He was my age. He had spent the last ten years or so working very, very hard to build a computer company. He was a wonderful man, great at a party and somewhat of a raconteur. He always brought people together. He once said that he was compiling a list of incredible people but the truth was that he was the incredible person who connected so many of us. Still, he was a remote person, hard to get close to in an intimate way. He was like a lot of men I know. Robert Bly put in best when he said, "It's well known that any man would prefer to walk thirty miles upwind in a blizzard than talk for ten minutes about his relation to a woman or to God." My friend was like that.

In the latter years of his life, his ambition became a dominant force in his life. When he died, his company was trading on the New York Stock Exchange. He was worth in the neighborhood of three million dollars. I had lost touch with him and only heard of his passing in the newspapers.

Just a few days after he died, I had a dream about this man. We were all at a party. I was very surprised to see him there. I walked up to him and said in my most direct manner, "So your not dead." He looked at me, quite shocked and a little hurt, "No," he said. "It was just a test." He seemed a little softer to me, a little more buffeted by the wind than I remember him. And then he said, "I'm more compassionate now. I listen to people more." And I rejoiced to have my friend back and I rejoiced to have my friend back somehow a better man than he was - and he was a very good man. And then I woke up -to grieve for him once more, while God continued to delight in his company.

Living With The Silence of God

Tell me it's a bad dream. Tell me it's not real. Tell. me. Tell me ... I'm tossing and turning and soon I'll wake up from this nightmare. tell me I'm still happy ... Vishnu preserve me, Allah protect me, Christ save me, I can't bear it ... I had never experienced such intense pain, such a ripping of the nerves, such an ache of the heart.

[All] have drowned. Every single thing I value in life has been destroyed. And I am allowed no explanation? I am to suffer hell without any account from heaven? In that case, what is the purpose of reason, .... Is it no more than to shine at practicalities– the getting of food, clothing, shelter? why can't reason give greater answers? Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer? Why such a vast net if there's so little fish to catch?

- Yan Martel, The Life of Pi