Doug

“the mystery we have met in life overcomes us in death. The mystery that awaits us beyond death is but the antiphonal response to the mystery that anticipated our birth.”
― Wallace M. Alston Jr., The Power to Comprehend with All the Saints: The Formation and Practice of a Pastor-Theologian

“Once for five minutes seven years ago they had been lovers—if you could give that name to a relationship in which she had never used his baptismal name: to her it was just an incident, a scratch which heals completely in the healthy flesh: she was even proud of having been the priest’s woman. He alone carried a wound, as though a whole world had died.”
― Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory

“when we say the Apostles’ Creed we are reminded that life itself is founded on trust. Christians in the ancient church went naked to the waters of baptism. The second birth is like the first. We are totally dependent. We bring nothing with us except life. The birth cry of baptism is the threefold “I believe” of the creed, a cry of total trust in the Triune God.”
― Benjamin Myers, The Apostles' Creed: A Guide to the Ancient Catechism

“He saw her fixed in her life like a fly in amber—Maria’s hand raised to strike: Pedro talking prematurely in the dusk: and the police beating the forest—violence everywhere. He prayed silently, ‘O God, give me any kind of death—without contrition, in a state of sin—only save this child.”
― Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory