Theophany Quotes

“O grace abounding and allowing me to dare
to fix my gaze on the Eternal Light,
so deep my vision was consumed in it!

I saw how it contains within its depths
all things bound in a single book by love
of which creation is the scattered leaves:

how substance, accident, and their relation
were fused in such a way that what I now
describe is but a glimmer of that Light.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradise

“I was 'led' to read The Shack by Wm Paul Young after the sudden & unexpected death of my fiance', Marina DeAngelo in July of 2012. It helped me as it has millions of people with the trauma and grief associated with the great personal loss of a loved one."

~R. Alan Woods [2013]”
― R. Alan Woods, The Journey Is the Destination: A Book of Quotes With Commentaries

“If I open my eyes, I just may die, I thought.”
― Chris Manion, God's Patient Pursuit of My Soul

“And yet leaving the room, she did not leave me, for we were mysteriously linked together during the next hours. When Tib left 405 she'd gone outside to walk on the boardwalk. After a while she stepped down onto the sand where she could walk right at the water's edge. She walked for a long, long time. The sun sank lower in the winter sky. Facing south as she was, her eyes began to be bothered by it. Tib has always been extremely light-sensitive, choosing chairs that looked away from windows and so forth. She started to turn around and head north with her back to the sun when a sentence popped into her mind with the force of a command.

"Look neither to the right nor to the left, but only straight ahead."

But straight ahead was the dazzling sun. She walked on a little farther, squinting her eyes. It was getting late. She was a long way from the hotel by now. The meeting in Room 405 must be over, she thought: I would be looking for her. But each time she started to turn around and retrace her steps, the extraordinary words reappeared in her mind.

"Neither right or left. Only straight ahead."

The sun was lower still. Glittering on the waves, glaring straight into her eyes. And still Tib walked on, into the blinding light...”
― John Sherrill, They Speak with Other Tongues: A Skeptic Investigates This Life-Changing Gift

“Writing is secondary speech and speech is secondary being. This Gaudí knew: that creation must be born of theophany (communion with the silence beneath beings and identities).”
― Sondra Charbadze, The Sea Once Swallowed Me: A Memoir of Love, Solitude, and the Limits of Language