Believe me, when I say; There are no two powers That command the soul. One is God The other is the tide. -Anon From the novel Abarat
Interpretation
The quote suggests that the soul is influenced by two fundamental forces: divine power and the natural flow of life.
This quote reflects the idea that human beings are subject to two great influences in their lives—the spiritual or divine, represented by God, and the natural or existential, represented by the tide. It implies that while we can be guided by a higher power, we are also shaped by the inevitable changes and currents of life, which affect our souls and destinies in profound ways.
In practice
In a motivational speech about overcoming life's challenges and spiritual strength.
Of course it’s the apparently tranquil periods that deceive us. Though our instruments or our senses or our wits may not be able to see the processes that are leading toward these clusters of events, they’re happening. The star, the wheel, the butterfly—all are in a subtle state of unrest, waiting for the moment when some invisible mechanism signals that the time has come. Then the star explodes; the wheel makes poor men rich; the butterfly mates and dies.
We’re too much ourselves. Afraid of letting go of what we are, in case we are nothing, and holding on so tight, we lose everything else.
In this sense love is of a different order to any other phenomenon, for it may be both an event and a sign of that invisible mechanism I spoke of before; perhaps the finest sign, the most certain. In it’s throes we need neither luck nor science. We are the wheel, and the man who profits by it. We are the star, and the darkness it pierces. We are the butterfly, brief and beautiful.
Perhaps a wiser eye than hers would be able to read tomorrow in tonight's stars, but where was the fun in that? It was better not to know. Better to be alive in the Here and the Now--in this bright, laughing moment--and let the Hours to come take care of themselves.
With the inevitability of a tongue returning to probe a painful tooth, we come back and back and back again to our fears, sitting to talk them over with the eagerness of a hungry man before a full and steaming plate.
You cut up a thing that's alive and beautiful to find out how it's alive and why it's beautiful, and before you know it, it's neither of those things, and you're standing there with blood on your face and tears in your sight and only the terrible ache of guilt to show for it.
When I was a kid in Ireland, there were not very many black people. I was very much like the strange brown thing, intriguing and cute. I didn't experience racism there. The first time I did was in London. It was that moment that you realize you're black. A kind of lifting of the veil.
One day the absurdity of the almost universal human belief in the slavery of other animals will be palpable. We shall then have discovered our souls and become worthier of sharing this planet with them.
Do you ever suddenly find it strange to be yourself?
The blind have no notion of time. The things of time are hidden from them too.
We are finite and God will not call us everywhere or to support every worthy cause. And real needs are not far from us.
There can be but one will the master in our salvation, but that shall never be the will of man, but of God; therefore man must be saved by grace.
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