When Crickets Cry

People marvel at the genius of Mozart because he supposedly wrote "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" at the age of three and composed his first symphony at the age of twelve. And yes, of course he was a genius, but another way to look at it is that he just discovered early what it was God made him to do. That's all. For some reason, God gave him a little extra, or a little something different, and Mozart found out what that was and then got a head start on using it. Of course he was brilliant, but that's not the point. The point is he knew, and then he got to work.

Termite, you're young, and I'm not sure if you're going to understand what I'm about to say, but here's the nugget: Without the heart, nothing else matters. She could be the Goddess of Love, you could have all the mind-blowing sex you could physically handle, but when the shooting is over, and you're starting to think about getting a bite to eat, smoking a cigarette, or what you do with her now, you're just lying in bed with a woman who means little more to you than the remote control for your TV. Love is not tool; neither is a woman's heart. What I'm talking about, you won't find in that magazine." "How would you know? You just said you've only loved one woman. I think you need to test-drive a few cars before you buy one." "You can buy that lie if you want, but if you're working for a bank, you don't study the counterfeit to know the real thing. You study the real thing to know the counterfeit." Reese talking to Termite, pg. 109-110

If anything in the universe reflects the fingerprint of God, it is the human heart"...It derives no benefit from the blood it pumps making it the most unselfish of organs...it is also the most courageous and faithful." (124, 126) - Reese

...but maybe life is like that - you never know when something that's been hidden is going to rise up and bite you, or glow with a golden hue.

When I find myself wondering what hell must be like, I'm reminded of the terminals in Atlanta. Thousands of people, most of whom don't know one another, crammed into a limited space, all in a hurry and trying desperately to get out.

From out of your heart, you speak." -Emma, When Crickets Cry

Emma once told me that some people spend their whole lives trying to outrun God, maybe get someplace He’s never been. She shook her head and smiled, wondering why. Trouble is, she said, they spend a lifetime searching and running, and when they arrive, they find He’s already been there.

Hope is not the result of medicine or anything that science has to offer. It is a flower that sprouts and grows when others pour water upon it. I think sometimes that I spent so much time worrying about how to protect and strengthen the flower - even going so far as to graft in a new stem and root system - that I forgot to simply water it.

Puzzles forced me to look at something from several angles before I moved on, to look again, and again, and possibly again because each piece—no matter how small or seemingly insignificant—was critical to the whole.

if anything in this universe reflects the fingerprint of God, it is the human heart.

A lot of dead writers feed my mind with their ever-present whisperings.

Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.

Annie, the best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched; they must be felt with the heart.

Sometimes I think that hell is two places: it's a place you end up, but it's also a place that you live before you get there. I don't know if the devil's got horns and a spear for a tail, but I don't think that's the point. The point is that hell is separate from love. If Lucifer knows anything, he knows that. And ever since Emma left, I'd known the same thing. It's a lonely, desolate place.

I guess sometimes it's got to hurt before it can get better." I nodded. "Hearts are like that.

How many times had I wanted to scream the same way? To purge myself and release the pain in my soul. But somehow, I never had. Maybe those who felt free to do so were only those who didn't posses the guilt of having put the pain there in the first place.

Back home, I went to my closet and pulled out the old engineer’s transit case stored there. When we were kids, Emma and I had found it in the attic, dusty and empty, and the leather strap used to carry it had a small cut in it. The tag on the top of the wooden-hinged lid read Circa 1907. It was mostly weatherproof and offered plenty of room for the things I valued—like books.

Augustine said it best: You stir man to take pleasure in praising You, because You have made us for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.

It was often what Charlie didn’t say that spoke the loudest.

That which we cannot speak about, we must pass over in silence.” At the time

But what I knew in my head stayed up there, swirling about the other ten zillion things I had retained. That knowledge informed my actions, what I did and how I did it. What Emma knew filtered from her head down into her heart and informed who she was—what I have since come to call the Infinite Migration. If my wonderings about life were scientific, bent toward examination and physical discovery, Emma’s all leaned toward matters of the heart. While I could understand and explain the physics behind a rainbow, Emma saw the colors. When it came to life, I saw each piece and how they all fit together, and Emma saw the image on the face of the puzzle. And every now and then, she’d walk me through the door into her world and show it to me.

The amazing thing about transplantation, aside from the fact that it worked, was that it allowed people to feel again. The thing I liked best about my previous life was the first smile when a patient woke up. Because with that smile, I knew that I hadn't simply given that persona new pump, I had given him or her a new pump that allowed that person to live, to express emotion. It was the smile, even more than the first beat of the heart, that told me it had worked.

A lot of dead writers feed my mind with their ever-present whisperings. I