I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wondering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty bats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them.

The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us and to praise the people who are here with us.

It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.

It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave.

We have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet.

I had been chipping at the world idly, and had by accident uncovered vast and labyrinthine further worlds within it.