Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Wholly

I was reading Meet the Austins by Madeleine L'Engle before I hand it off to Alinea so we talk about it together and found this quote. It reminds me so much of the incredible views we have on our Bay of Fundy:

"One side of the room is all a big window which Grandfather had put in. It has shutters you can close, but when they're open you look down the steep bluffs to the ocean and the only thing that's farther out on the bluff than Grandfather's stable is the lighthouse. Mother and Daddy always look forward to sleeping in the enormous bed, but Mother says that the first couple of nights, even if they close the shutters, she always stays awake for a long time to see the lighthouse light as it swings around. There are no pictures in the room; Grandfather says you can't ask any picture to compete with that view. But on one wall he painted in soft gray Gothic letters:

"God is over all things, under all things; outside all;
within, but not enclosed; without but not excluded;
above, but not raised up; below, but now depressed;
wholly above, presiding; wholly without, embracing;
wholly within, filling."

That has always been one of Grandfather's favorite things, so we knew that it was by Hildevert of Lavardin, who wrote it sometime around 1125."

Meet the Austins, Madeleine L'Engle, pg. 151

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