Some Final Quotes from Strangers and Sojourners
Solitude is the natural dwelling place of truth . . . It is there you will wrestle. It is there you will be tested by fire and by darkness.
Oh, Nathaniel [the main character’s grandson], Nathaniel, understand this: There is no longer any sanctuary. The only indestructible palace is in the heart.
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There had been pain even then, and no one yet knew except the doctor. But she needed to be free to the last moment with no one nagging her for her own good. No, this was the real good, to bear your pain and to breathe deep the last few moments of free flying.
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“Suppose there is a great Love behind creation, but the original unity of this vast work of art has been damaged, and all of existence as we know it is merely a brief moment during which the artist repairs his masterpiece. If he is that beautiful, it would be unspeakably shattering to have a glimpse of his face. Do you understand, Stephen? So what can I give him, really? Nothing . . . nothing except the gift of trust in what I can’t yet see face to face. There is beauty in the world. There is no reason for it to be here. If it’s all biology, all eating and getting eaten and the strongest devouring the weakest, then it’s madness. Nothing more than madness. It’s dying and drowning, and all love is illusion. But there is love, you see. Poor, weak, and broken love—a sign of something from a distant land.
. . . [W]hoever made these must be very wonderful indeed. If I am to meet him, then I want to stride into the dark holding an image of beauty and the goodness of being right here in the center of me. Do you understand?”
He was silent.
“I am naked before God, Stephen. I have nothing to give him except this . . . faith.”
“It’s said that he loves best what’s little and truly is itself.”
“Well, I am small.”
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Memory “is the food we digest when life allows us to lie down.”
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. . . He began to walk down the mountain, holding the stone cross against his heart.
“I didn’t know I was empty”, he said to it. “I didn’t know. I was blind. I didn’t know I’ve always been afraid. But where else could I have learned this, except in the face of terror?”
He was empty, and he was full. He was alone. Yes, he was alone among men. He was an alien, a stranger and sojourner like all his fathers before him. He knew now the anguish of exiles, the depth of their loneliness. And he saw that this was a gift, for it was the state of pilgrims journeying toward their own true home.
“I didn’t know I was alone”, he said . . . “I didn’t know I was not alone until you came unto my aloneness. And I was no longer alone.”
. . . Then he sings a word or two in a language that has almost ceased to exist, words that endure beyond forgetting, his face raised into the sky, an old man in a burned field, waiting for light.
~Michael O’Brien (from Strangers and Sojourners)
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