One Door Away from Heaven

When we make our own misery we sometimes cling to it even when we want so bad to change, because misery is something we know. The misery is comfortable.

Change isn't easy. Changing the way you live means changing the way you think, means changing what you believe about life. That's hard.

The world is full of broken people. Splints, casts, miracle drugs, and time can't mend fractured hearts, wounded hearts, wounded minds, torn spirits.

For those who dispair that their lives are without meaning and without purpose, for those who dwell in a lonelines so terrible that it has withered their hearts, for those who hate because they have no recognition of the destiny they share with all humanity, for those who would squander their lives in self-pity and in self-destruction because they have lost the saving wisdom with which they are born, for all these and many more, hope waits in the dreams of a dog, where the scared bature of life may be clearly experienced without all but binding filter of human need, desire, greed, envy and endless fear. And here, in dream woods and fields, along with the shores of dream seas, with the profound awareness of the playful presence abiding in all things, Curtis is able to prove what she thus far only dared to hope is true: that although her mother never loved her, there is one who always has.

Even in the darkest moments, light exists if you have the faith to see it. Fear is a poison produced by the mind, and courage is the antidote stored always in the soul. In misfortune lies the seed of future triumph.

Every world has dogs or their equivalent, creatures that thrive on companionship, creatures that are of a high order of intelligence although not the highest and that therefore is simple enough in their wants and needs to remain innocent. The combination of their innocence and their intelligence allows them to serve as a bridge bewtween what is transient and what is eternal, between the finate and the infinate.

Anger was a reliable defense, but one that allowed no chance of final victory. Anger was a medicine but never a cure, briefly numbing the pain without extracting the thorn that caused the agony.

There's lots of law these days, but not much justice. Celebrities murder their wives and go free. A mother kills her children, and the news people on TV say she's the victim and want you to send money to her lawyers. When everything's upside down like this, what fool just sits back and thinks justice will prevail?

Hope, however, isn't all that's needed to achieve change. Hope is a hand extended, but two hands are required to be pulled out of this deep hole. The second hand was faith...

...a wasted opportunity wasn't just a missed chance, but was a wound to your future. Miss too many opportunities, thus sustaining too many wounds, and you wouldn't have a future at all.

Fear is an unavoidable element of the mortal condition. Creation in all its ravishing beauty, with its infinite baroque embellishments and subtle charms, with all the wonders that it offers from both the Maker and the made, with all its velvet mystery and with all the joy we receive from those we love here, so enchants us lack we lack the imagination, less than the faith, to envision an even more dazzling world beyond, and therefore even if we believe, we cling tenaciously to this existence, to sweet familiarity, fearful that all conceivable paradises will prove wanting by comparison.

Curtis' mother always said that the better you know others, the better you will know yourself, and that in the fullest sharing of experience, we learn the wisdom of the world.

CHANGE ISN’T EASY, Micky. Changing the way you live means changing how you think. Changing how you think means changing what you believe about life. That’s hard, sweetie. When we make our own misery, we sometimes cling to it even when we want so bad to change, because the misery is something we know. The misery is comfortable.

Anyway, knowledge isn't wisdom, and we aren't here just to stuff ourselves with facts and figures. We are given this life so we might earn the next; the gift is a chance to grow in spirit, and knowledge is one of the many nutrients that facilitate our growth.

Still abiding under the same vault of stars that were, to her, filled with wonder and mystery; but that were, to him, nothing more than distant balls of fire and cataclysm

I couldn't make up anything as weird as what is.

One of the three candles burned out, and darkness eagerly pulled its chair a little closer to the table.

There’s lots of law these days,” she interrupted, “but not much justice.