“She was pointing into the empty, angel-less heavens beyond.
Everything else. The universe.”
Source: Terminal World (2010), Chapter 30 (p. 550; closing words)
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Alastair Reynolds 198
British novelist and astronomer 1966Related quotes
“The Angel was in the earth, and she led me to fix my eyes in Heaven.”
And the remnants of the world were renewed by children and it was called Paradise.
“Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is just opinion.”
“Beyond a certain point, the whole universe becomes a continuous process of initiation.”
The Widow's Son
“Having a friend made everything else suck less.”
Source: The Impossible Knife of Memory
“She moves like and angel
And seven evening stars
Dance through the window
Of her universal house”
Angelsea
Song lyrics, Catch Bull at Four (1972)
Cited In Private Correspondence To Bruce Baillie's student, the abstract 16mm motion-picture maker, Douglas Graves("Palms")
Source: The Sacred Depths of Nature (1998), p. 167
Context: We are, each one of us, ordained to live out our lives in the context of ultimate questions, such as:
Why is there anything at all, rather than nothing?
Where did the laws of physics come from?
Why does the universe seem so strange?
My response to such questions has been to articulate a covenant with Mystery. Others, of course, prefer to respond with answers, answers that often include a concept of god. These answers are by definition beliefs since they can neither be proven nor refuted. They may be gleaned from existing faith traditions or from personal search. God may be apprehended as a remote Author without present-day agency, or as an interested Presence with whom one can form a relationship, or as pantheistic — Inherent in All Things.
The opportunity to develop personal beliefs in response to questions of ultimacy, including the active decision to hold no Beliefs at all, is central to the human experience. The important part, I believe, is that the questions be openly encountered. To take the universe on — to ask Why Are Things As They Are? — is to generate the foundation for everything else.
