Carmen prayed hard. She prayed while standing near the priest in hopes it would give her request extra credibility. What she prayed for was nothing. She prayed that God would look on them and see the beauty of their existence and leave them alone.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a deep contemplation on existence and the desire for divine neutrality in the face of life's challenges.
In this quote, Carmen's prayer is not for intervention or change, but rather for acceptance of their existence as it is. She acknowledges the beauty of life and hopes for divine indifference, suggesting that simply being can be enough and that sometimes, remaining untouched by external forces is a worthy request to a higher power.
In practice
In a discussion about spirituality, this quote can highlight how acceptance is a form of prayer.
Show kindness whenever possible. Show it to the people in front of you, the people coming up behind you, and the people with whom you are running neck and neck. It will vastly improve the quality of your own life, the lives of others, and the state of the world.
There was such an incredible logic to kissing, such a metal-to-magnet pull between two people that it was a wonder that they found the strength to prevent themselves from succumbing every second. Rightfully, the world should be a whirlpool of kissing into which we sank and never found the strength to rise up again.
It was too much work to remember things you might not have again, and so one by one they opened up their hands and let them go.
Why is it that we understand playing the cello will require work, but we attribute writing to the magic of inspiration?
Reading fiction not only develops our imagination and creativity, it gives us the skills to be alone. It gives us the ability to feel empathy for people we've never met, living lives we couldn't possibly experience for ourselves, because the book puts us inside the character's skin.
Write because you love the art and the discipline, not because you're looking to sell something.
. . . money . . . is really the difference between men and animals, most of the things men feel, animals feel, and vice versa, but animals do not know about money.
Each of your breaths is a priceless jewel, since each of them is irreplaceable and once gone, can never be retrieved.
Normativity, I believe, is very different from motivating force. Neither includes, or implies, the other. Other animals can be motivated by their desires and beliefs. Only we can understand and respond to reasons.
Sincere Christians can disagree about the details of Scripture and theology - absolutely.
Fundamentally, mankind was unimportant in the ecological system. Then, in one fell swoop, an evolutionary blink of an eye, the human race is transformed from something unimportant to the most important thing in the world.
The more we try to live in the world of words, the more we feel isolated and alone, the more all the joy and liveliness of things is exchanged for mere certainty and security. On the other hand, the more we are forced to admit that we actually live in the real world, the more we feel ignorant, uncertain, and insecure about everything.
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