Intended From The Beginning
“...Then he decided there was no reason why he should not go a bit farther up the ravine. Finding himself at the top, he turned east and ambled along a country road without any goal or intention, passing fields where farmers loaded bags of potatoes onto carts beneath honking arrows of southbound geese.
There he recognized the view that had always meant so much to him—the high perspective where one could look out over the valley and see a beautiful recumbent woman in the contours of the land. He smiled and moved on, realizing that he had grown beyond this fixed point where his soul had sought to anchor itself in a spinning cosmos. Man, he saw, was intended for both permanence and transience. He lived in an incarnate world where each soul sprang from its appointed place, its roots in the earth. But the trunk and the branches must grow beyond the fundamental soil, must reach up into the light, if they were to flower and bear fruit. There would be many times in the days and years to come when he would return here to meditate, but now he understood that this could never be the final station of his journey.
The hills rolled slowly onward, and the fields gave way to stands of swaying trees. He stopped and surveyed the surrounding hills with pleasure, wondering what the next stage would be, wondering how God would continue to shape him into what had been intended from the beginning...”
~Michael O’Brien (from The Father's Tale)
There he recognized the view that had always meant so much to him—the high perspective where one could look out over the valley and see a beautiful recumbent woman in the contours of the land. He smiled and moved on, realizing that he had grown beyond this fixed point where his soul had sought to anchor itself in a spinning cosmos. Man, he saw, was intended for both permanence and transience. He lived in an incarnate world where each soul sprang from its appointed place, its roots in the earth. But the trunk and the branches must grow beyond the fundamental soil, must reach up into the light, if they were to flower and bear fruit. There would be many times in the days and years to come when he would return here to meditate, but now he understood that this could never be the final station of his journey.
The hills rolled slowly onward, and the fields gave way to stands of swaying trees. He stopped and surveyed the surrounding hills with pleasure, wondering what the next stage would be, wondering how God would continue to shape him into what had been intended from the beginning...”
~Michael O’Brien (from The Father's Tale)
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