I feel most alive, most electric with faith, breath, and courage, when I think of God as a current that runs through all that is. Not by will or by choice. Not as a benediction but because there are laws even God must obey.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the idea that faith and courage are intertwined with the divine essence that sustains life, implying a natural order or laws governing existence.
Tracy K. Smith expresses a profound connection to the divine as an inherent current that energizes and uplifts life. She suggests that faith and courage are not merely choices but rather essential elements of experiencing life to its fullest, governed by a set of universal laws that even the divine acknowledges, highlighting a balance between human agency and a larger cosmic order.
In practice
In a motivational speech about overcoming challenges, you can use this quote to emphasize the role of faith and courage.
We all need poetry. The moments in our lives that are characterized by language that has to do with necessity or the market, or just, you know, things that take us away from the big questions that we have, those are the things that I think urge us to think about what a poem can offer.
I wanted to write the kind of poetry that people read and remembered, that they lived by - the kinds of lines that I carried with me from moment to moment on a given day without even having chosen to.
I love the sense of looking at the sad, paltry, and yet very familiar spectacle that we must make from moment to moment in our lives, and in our frenzy, as something that's as out there as alien life.
Losing my father made me want to find out if I could come up with a version of God or the afterlife that I could feel like was acceptable now that both my parents are in it.
Prose is something that is persistent in staying in one place long enough to not only zero in on the dramatic effect of something that might have happened, or something that might have been seen, but also in watching how it played out and thinking about the cause and the effect.
A question is a pursuit, an invitation to envision and explore a series of possibilities, to struggle and empathize and doubt and believe. The question moves, whereas our sense of what an answer is can often be static, a stopping point.
When the voice of truth rises from the minarets, the Buddha smiles, and the broken chain of history reconnects.
The idea of cultural relativism is nothing but an excuse to violate human rights.
Experience having long taught me the reasonableness of mutual sacrifices of opinion among those who are to act together for any common object, and the expediency of doing what good we can; when we cannot do all we would wish.
There is no fundamental difference in the ways of thinking of primitive and civilized man. A close connection between race and personality has never been established.
Now I see that all relationships are virtual, even those that take place in person. Whether we use our bodies or a keyboard, it all comes down to two minds crying out from their solitude.
A man falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding stones.
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