If we all knew each morning that there was going to be another morning, and on and on and on, we's tend not to notice the sunrise, or hear the birds, or the waves rolling into the shore. We'd tend not to treasure our time with the people we love. Simply the awareness that our mortal lives had a beginning and will have an end enhances the quality of our living. Perhaps it's even more intense when we know that the termination of the body is near, but it shouldn't be.

Friends do everything they can to protect each other." --Polly

It is an extraordinary and beautiful thing that God, in creation. . . works with the beauty of matter; the reality of things; the discoveries of the senses, all five of them; so that we, in turn, may hear the grass growing; see a face springing to life in love and laughter. . . The offerings of creation. . . our glimpses of truth.

To be a witness means to live in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not exist.

Yes! I dare disturb the universe.

I don't know if they're really like everybody else, or if they're able to pretend they are.

The part of us that has to be burned away is something like the deadwood on the bush; it has to go, to be burned in the terrible fire of reality, until there is nothing left but . . . what we are meant to be.