With love and prayers by F. Jarvis. Quotes IX

-My unwillingness to suspend disbelief deprived me of the beauty of classical music. If you begin with the assumption that there is no meaning, you will find none.
-Thoughtful people down the ages have suspended disbelief and looked and listened for clues that life has meaning. We see such longing and seeking in the three wise men, the three privileged, affluent, well-educated Roxbury Latin graduates of the ancient world, who left all the luxury and security of their homes to follow a star that led them to the baby Jesus at Bethlehem.
-The search for meaning in life is often difficult, costly, and discouraging. And there will always be a nihilist to tell you that the journey is folly. And yet, somehow the three wise men persisted in their search, continued their arduous journey believing, in spite of all the hardships, in spite of the cynics who told them: 'This was all folly', that they would find something worth finding. And what did they find? A baby. Not at all what they expected, not at all what they thought they would find.
-I remind you of this story of the three wise men because its subject is man's deepest longing: the longing for meaning. You cannot even begin to search for life's meaning unless you hope and believe there is something to find. You cannot even begin to search for life's meaning unless you suspend disbelief.
-That is what we are all seeking, whether we know it or not: a deeper union, a deeper communion, with something beyond all the passing things of life: beyond grades, beyond college admission, beyond even a good job or a good wife.
-Death is the only certainty in life; each of our journeys leads to death.
-We must live with our bags always packed.
-You can never see or hear anything beautiful if you don't suspend disbelief, stop, look, and listen.
-Everything is cold, everything is dead. But when we come out here next summer, it will all be lush and green: the trees in full leaf, grapes ripening on the vines. You have to wait, but then Good brings back life from death. Winter can be long and dark, but in God's good time, it always gives way to spring.
-Those who managed to hold on owed their survival more to spiritual than to physical strength. They believed there was a reason to live despite of the apparent hopelessness of their lives and they held on.
-Your own life, like everybody else's, will have troubles, bleak periods when the landscape of death seems to destroy the hope that spring will ever come. Sometimes in life, you have just to hold on.