“I see the eight of us in the Annex as if we were a patch of blue sky surrounded by menacing black clouds. The perfectly round spot on which we’re standing is still safe, but the clouds are moving in on us, and the ring between us and the approaching danger is being pulled tighter and tighter. We’re surrounded by darkness and danger, and in our desperate search for a way out we keep bumping into each other. We look at the fighting down below and the peace and beauty up above. In the meantime, we’ve been cut off by the dark mass of clouds, so that we can go neither up nor down. It looms before us like an impenetrable wall, trying to crush us, but not yet able to. I can only cry out and implore, “Oh, ring, ring, open wide and let us out!”

“It looms before us, an impenetrable wall, trying to crush us, but not yet able to.”

“Hebrews 12:1- Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

“Like it or not, we either add to the darkness of indifference and out-and-out evil which surrounds us or we light a candle to see by.”

“We are finite creatures...and because of this everything that is us and surrounds us is beautiful - for we do not know when our end will come - it is the majesty of our existence that rings true and echoes in eternity.”

“We realize that anything can be everything and each is also its opposite-then the image of zero's perfect ring shines before us.”