We wake, if we ever wake at all, to mystery, rumors of death, beauty, violence... - Annie Dillard

You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.

We don't know what's going on here. If these tremendous events are random combinations of matter run amok, the yield of millions of monkeys at millions of typewriters, then what is it in us, hammered out of those same typewriters, that they ignite? We don’t know. Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.

The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.