Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace. New York: Vintage Classics, 2008, 293.
“It would be good,” thought Prince Andrei, looking at this icon which his sister had hung on him with such feeling and reverence, “it would be good if everything was as clear and simple as it seems to Princess Marya. How good it would be to know where to look for help in this life and what to expect after it, there, beyond the grave! How happy and calm I’d be, if I could say now: Lord have mercy on me! . . . But to whom shall I say it? Either it is an undefinable, unfathomable power, which I not only cannot address, but which I cannot express in words -- the great all or nothing,” he said to himself, “or it is that God whom Princess Marya has sewn in here, in this amulet? Nothing, nothing is certain, except the insignificance of everything I can comprehend and the grandeur of something incomprehensible but most important!”
2 comments:
In War and Peace, Tolstoy’s characters inwardly articulate the great questions of life, struggling to find meaning in their lives. They ask these questions of themselves, without addressing them to anyone else, and some of the characters don’t believe in God. Yet the questions take on the quality of prayer because the characters are focussing so intently on what really matters.
"Nothing, nothing is certain, except the insignificance of everything I can comprehend and the grandeur of something incomprehensible but most important!”
Wow!
Godess, Your wholeness is certainly incomprehensible to me, yet Your love and residence in my own soul as well as all other beings of Your creation indicate to me Your truth. Help my unbelief and thank You for the faith I do have, which grows with each moment of conscious contact.
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