The Morning Star

What happens to the bird does not concern it. It was the most radical thought I had ever known. It would free me from all pain, all suffering. What happens to me does not concern me.

I am here, at this moment in time. It's enough.

That is what life is like, is it not? When we’re young we think there’s more to come, that this is only the beginning, whereas in fact it’s all there is, and what we have now, and barely even think about, will soon be the only thing we ever had.

God’s kingdom was the moment. The trees, the forest, the sea, the lily, the bird, all existed in the moment. To them, there was no such thing as future or past. Nor any fear or terror. That was the first turning point. The second came when I read what followed. What happens to the bird does not concern it. It was the most radical thought I had ever known. It would free me from all pain, all suffering. What happens to me does not concern me.

a person only has to step sideways for everything to look different.

But Nietzsche was impossible to read without consideration of the fact that he himself was a loser, weak and alone, and that everything he wrote about will, about power and about the strong, was to compensate for his own inadequacy.

Our every worry, our every trouble, our every anxiety will then fall way- what happens to the bird does not concern it, he wrote. Our burdens are given up to God. Such innocence still of the animals and the smallest children, was torn from us by the awareness of death, which made us and our godless world.

Forty was when you met yourself in the doorway and could take stock one last time, before it was too late to change direction.

Ideas didn’t have to be true to enthuse him, nor even probably true. It was enough for them to be new.

It’s all the wrong people talking about God,” she said once. “So it’s hardly surprising no one believes anymore. There’s something wrong from the outset with a man who wants to be a priest, and it is still mainly men.” “Who else should talk about God?” I asked.

Death belongs to the future—perhaps it even establishes the future—and can be perceived only as a future occurrence

When we’re young we think there’s more to come

[The Bible says] 'And death shall flee from them.' I believe 'those days' to be near. I believe 'them' to be us. But if it is the case that death one day will be gone, what then of the already dead?

You’ve got lots of interesting thoughts. Not all priests have.

The priest who once supervised me as a student had once said to me that a person only has to step sideways for everything to look different. He'd been talking about the priest's role as a director of souls. I don't know why I remembered it so vividly, because he said all sorts of clever things, but I reasoned it was because it was true, and because it was something I needed to know and thus found significant. People disappeared into their own lives and conflicts, and in doing so they lost perspective, not only on where they were, but also on who they were, and who they had been or could become. But stepping sideways in one's own life was well nigh impossible.

We had the children, of course. They would always be ours. But did we have anything besides them?

Man is fundamentally good, it’s society that turns him bad. Have you ever known a bad baby?’ It wasn’t difficult to see where these opinions

The dynamic between freedom and dependency is in other words fundamentally the same for monocellular life and

We are just as unnecessary as death, and however odd it may sound, our presence here is more closely attached to death than to life. Death created us. —

Criticizing a person was the same as putting yourself above them, telling them you’re better than they are. There was no other way of looking at it.

In a strange way, what I read coincided with what I was. I read about the raging sea as the sea raged, I read about the whispering forest as the forest whispered, and when I read that to pray was not to speak, but to become silent, that only in silence could God's kingdom be sought, God's kingdom came. God's kingdom was the moment. The trees, the forest, the sea, the lily, the bird, all existed in the moment. To them, there was no such thing as future or past. Nor any fear or terror. That was the first turning point. The second came when I read what followed: What happens to the bird does not concern it. It was the most radical thought I had ever known. It would free me from all pain, all suffering. What happens to me does not concern me.

But something must have happened, unbeknown to my conscious self I must have been working away at it, because during the winter I had become converted. In an indescribable moment of joy, everything slotted into place. The insight, for that's what it was, had since faded somewhat, and I strove continually to approach it once more. And although the days were dark, its light was somewhere always shining, whether in my soul I was in the forest or on the sea, all I had to do was go towards it.

Meaning wasn’t in me, meaning wasn’t in another, meaning arose in the encounter between us.