Status Updates From An Ocean Full of Angels

“‘I mean I died inside. I was totally helpless. I didn’t control my body anymore and my body didn’t control my world anymore.’
She said, ‘That must have been a horrible experience for you.’
He replied, ‘It was the most precious experience of my life. I tasted death, and I tasted the sweet tang of life, and now I can see.’”

“Libby once said of Eva, ‘She’s a little piece of God. She’s broken off of God and fallen to earth. That’s why she’s broken.’ Literally, of course, that’s pantheism, and idolatry. But poetically, it’s profound.”

“I began to walk toward the edge of the fifty-foot-high rocky cliff. I felt no hurry and no hesitation. I felt no hope and no fear. There was Nothing within and Nothing without. The sea below seemed to beckon. I had no more will. I was following another will, a will without pity and without pain. I had no fear of death. I had already died. I was impervious.”

“Mama had crossed the sea of light and I was left alone in the dark. She had gone up in a chariot of fire and I was left in the water. My attempts at prayers fell like birds without wings. I had been preparing for this moment for months, yet nothing could possibly have prepared me for this moment. It was too big.”

“If the Almighty should solicit my advice for designing an afterlife for animals, I would suggest that a heaven for dogs and a hell for rabbits can be combined very economically.”

“I wonder: if I am not able to love the girl with a beautiful soul in the ugly body, does that mean I have an ugly soul?”

“He tended to stare at a person, unaware of how uncomfortable this made others feel. He had the owl-like habit of turning his neck and head rather than his eyes when he turned to the side. He always preferred to stare straight ahead, like an angel.”

“The meaning of life is absolutely simple. It is simply Islam, Surrender, Submission, unqualified Yes to the Perfect Will of Allah.”