Or just close your eyes and remember everything you already know. Let whatever mysterious starlight that guided you this far guide you onward into wh… - Cheryl Strayed

Let whatever mysterious starlight that guided you this far guide you onward into whatever crazy beauty awaits.

Within forty minutes, the voice inside my head was screaming, WHAT HAVE I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO? I tried to ignore it, to hum as I hiked, though humming proved too difficult to do while also panting and moaning in agony and trying to remain hunched in that remotely upright position while also propelling myself forward when I felt like a building with legs.

To use our individual good or bad luck as a litmus test to determine whether or not God exists constructs an illogical dichotomy that reduces our capacity for true compassion. It implies a pious quid pro quo that defies history, reality, ethics, and reason. It fails to acknowledge that the other half of rising — the very half that makes rising necessary — is having first been nailed to the cross.

Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren’t a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was.