Once in my life I knew a grief so hard I could actually hear it inside, scraping at the lining of my stomach, an audible ache, dredging with hooks as rivers are dredged when someone's been missing too long. I have to think my mother felt something like that.

Leif Enger

Categorized in : Thinking Mother Grief

Sometimes heroism is nothing more than patience, curiosity, and a... by Leif Enger

Sometimes heroism is nothing more than patience, curiosity, and a refusal to panic.

heroism panic curiosity

Love is a strange fact - it hopes all things, believes all things, endures all things. It makes no sense at all.

love-is believe facts

Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature. It's true: They rebut every rule all we good citizens take comfort in. Lazarus obeying orders and climbing up out of the grave - now there's a miracle, and you can bet it upset a lot of folks who were standing around at the time. When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of the earth.

climbing-up pain real

Pride is the rope God allows us all. by Leif Enger

Pride is the rope God allows us all.

rope pride

I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, the air gold and so clean it quivers.

october gold air

You can embark on new and steeper versions of your old sins, you know, and cry tears while doing it that are genuine as any.

cry sin tears

Many a night I woke to the murmer of paper and knew (Dad) was up, sitting in the kitchen with frayed King James - oh, but he worked that book; he held to it like a rope ladder.

dad kings book

Where do you think you’re going?” Dr. Nokes demanded…. “What do you have for directions?” And Dad… said, “I have the substance of things hoped for. I have the anticipation of things unseen

unseen dad thinking

Fair is whatever God wants to do. by Leif Enger

Fair is whatever God wants to do.

fairs want

Hope is like yeast, you know, rising under warmth. by Leif Enger

Hope is like yeast, you know, rising under warmth.

yeast rising knows

So thoughtlessly we sling on our destinies. by Leif Enger

So thoughtlessly we sling on our destinies.

our-destiny destiny

Once traveling, it's remarkable how quickly faith erodes. It starts to look like something else--ignorance, for example. Same thing happened to the Israelites. Sure it's weak, but sometimes you'd rather just have a map.

ignorance example looks

It is one thing to be sick of your own infirmities and another to understand that the people you love most are sick of them also. You are very near then to being friendless in the world.

sick people world

Of all facial expressions, which is the worst to have aimed at yo... by Leif Enger

Of all facial expressions, which is the worst to have aimed at you? Wouldn't you agree it's disgust?

disgusting worst expression

Is there a single person on whom I can press belief? No sir. All I can do is say, Here's how it went. Here's what I saw. I've been there and am going back. Make of it what you will.

single-person saws belief

Why is it our failures only show us more clearly the people we ar... by Leif Enger

Why is it our failures only show us more clearly the people we are failing?

failing shows people

Good advice is a wise man's friend, of course; but sometimes it just flies on past, and all you can do is wave.

wise men past

We see a newborn moth unwrapping itself and announce, Look, children, a miracle! But let an irreversible wound be knit back to seamlessness? We won't even see it, though we look at it every day.

miracle children looks

Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in... by Leif Enger

Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature.

pain real people

What else exhausts like sustained deception? by Leif Enger

What else exhausts like sustained deception?

deception