Sometimes my doubt seems intuitive, but most likely it derives from an implausibility or a logical problem I may at first find difficult to identify and articulate. It is interesting to me to work through questions that arise in this way.

This is not to say that joy is a compensation for loss, but that each of them, joy and loss, exists in its own right and must be recognised for what it is ... So joy can be joy and sorrow can be sorrow, with neither of them casting either light or shadow on the other.

I’m writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you’ve done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God’s grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you.

You never know when you might be seeing someone for the last time.

The Lord is more constant and far more extravagant than it seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?

...if you ever wonder what you've done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God's grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle.

Light is constant, we just turn over in it.