Lorna Jane Cook

Even if the decisions one made on a given day seemed crazy, it helped to think that all things happened for a mysterious reason.

Life on Earth indeed can seem but one hard-earned lesson after another, with moments of grace and beauty in between to keep people sane, and hopeful. While some die peacefully at the natural end of a long, well-lived life, even they still haven't completed everything they meant to, or lived without regret. And some of us thought we'd have more time to things right. I tell myself that at least we planted some seeds- ideas of love, and faith, and loyalty- that are starting to show signs of growth. Time will tell.

The human spirit, padded in ignorance, is a wondrous thing. They move within their own orbits- each of the seemingly lost, or intentionally lost in his or her own endeavors- while shifting into and out of one another's lives.

...perhaps it wasn't a matter of strength so much as pliability, a willingness to let life become unpredictable and sometimes even unravel.

Even so, in the midst of this complicated love, there is a holy union.

It is all new and all the same. A hundred years. A day. Ten thousand moons. For them, each day indeed is brand new, full of possibility, the unknown: a wonderland.

It is no different from the way it is on Earth, if one is paying attention. If only people would pay closer attention, to everything. Then they would know what mattered without stumbling blindly (albeit at times willingly) in the wrong direction. Man may be born to trouble, be he doesn't have to stay there.

Denial is a very effective human trick. People often tell how a situation was "unbearable," though, clearly, they have borne it. Lived to tell, so to speak.

Well, they say there is no real faith without doubt.

Someone once joked, Hell is other people. But the truth is that connection to other people can be sacred. Why else did God give so many people life? (Adam was't enough.) Or more simply, why else would He design hands that so perfectly clasp?

She reminded herself that all things happened for a reason. In thy book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was one of them. Surely God had a plan larger than Dinah's.